The world seemed frozen. Ashley wanted to run to Jake but she heard movement in the brush behind her and started to swing around instead. A man was standing there, with ink-dark long hair, his face smeared with muck, just as Jake’s had been. Hazel eyes, the only brightness about his face, peered steadily at her. Panic seared through her. An arm fell on her shoulder. She tensed, ready to fight.
“It’s all right, Ms. Montague,” he said, his voice as soft as a whisper on the breeze. “Leave him be. Just for a minute. There’s someone to see you.”
She looked past him. For a moment she thought she had stepped into a horror movie. Night of the Swamp Men. Other figures were moving toward her. They seemed completely confident and at home, moving silently through the water and along the embankment. Amazingly, she recognized one of them.
“Uncle Nick?”
“You bet, Ash.”
She ran, or rather, stumbled to him and found herself caught up in his arms. He held her closely. Neither spoke. The others—five, she counted—hovered in back, silent. And then she heard a noise and turned.
Jake was walking toward the body of his fallen partner. He knelt down, placing his fingers against the man’s throat. He stayed down for several seconds; then he rose. “He’s dead,” he said wearily, walking back toward them.
Ashley wanted to scream. She wanted him to realize it was better that Marty was dead than he was.
“He’s dead,” she managed to say quietly instead. “But there are drug smugglers. I saw them. I—”
“It’s all right, Ashley,” Jake said. His voice still sounded as dead as Marty was. “Marty was wrong about one thing. I knew I couldn’t be the Lone Ranger. That’s Jesse Crane behind you. And some of his men, Miccosukee police.”
The hazel-eyed man gravely nodded an acknowledgment. Something about his solemn demeanor reassured Ashley, and suddenly her mind started working again.
“We need an ambulance. David—John Mast has been shot. He may be dead. I don’t know. And Stuart Fresia and a woman named Mary are barricaded in the house.”
“I’ll radio in, get an ambulance out immediately,” Jesse Crane said.
Jake had already started moving, running hard despite the foliage. Ashley took off in his wake, Nick and a number of the others behind her.
When she reached the rear of the house, the kitchen door was standing open. Jake had already gone tearing in. She raced after him, reaching the entry just behind him.
“John, no!” Ashley cried quickly. “It’s me! And Jake Dilessio. And more cops. Good cops.”
Bloody fingers eased off the gun as John Mast struggled to stay upright. Jake hunkered down at his side. John looked up, groaning.
“Dilessio. It’s you. Oh, Jesus. Ashley will tell you. I kidnapped her and Stuart, but I swear to you, I was trying to protect him.”
“Shut up, kid,” Jake said. “Save your strength.” John winced as Jake tore at his shirt, looking for the wound, trying to stanch the flow of blood.
“What are you going to do to me this time?” John said.
“Nothing, except get you an ambulance. And maybe take you out for one hell of a night on the town—assuming you survive, of course.”
John stared at Jake, then slowly smiled. “I’ll survive, Detective. I’ll survive—just to take you up on that invitation.”
“I thought you might say that.”
John frowned suddenly. “Are you sure I’m not dead already? I hear music. A hymn, I think.”
Ashley listened, then smiled.
“It’s the sing-along next door,” she said, shaking her head.
The people of the commune were keeping their covenant, singing away at the appointed time.
They would see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Maybe they had sensed it was the only way to stay alive.
The singing would stop soon. The place would be swarming with police.
4:00 a.m.
The place had been swarming with cops for hours. The sirens had screamed; lights had blazed; rescue vehicles had come and gone. Both John and Stuart had been rushed to the hospital. Mary Simmons, shaken, had still calmly answered every question with steadfast honesty. She’d admitted to her part in the kidnapping, apologizing profusely. It didn’t matter if she went to jail or not, she said. She’d done what she had to. Her beliefs compelled her to act to save Stuart’s life, because she knew the killers wouldn’t stop trying to get him.
Despite her part in the affair—and the fact that, at a later date, the D.A.’s office might press charges—Mary Simmons was at last allowed to return home.
Jake seemed to have more explaining to do than Mary. Ashley heard some of it, though not all. He was taken to task for not informing his own captain of his intended actions, and he explained over and over again that the only way he could be certain he wasn’t bringing in one of the very men who meant to kill Stuart Fresia was by reaching outside the department.
He didn’t seem to mind explaining, and he kept his temper. Perhaps because everyone realized that a brutal murderer had at last been brought to justice in the swamps, and a major drug ring busted, he was only verbally reprimanded.
There were a few moments when he sat at the back of a police wagon with Ashley and said, “What I really dread now is the paperwork.”