Acts of Nature - By Jonathon King Page 0,73

of a plan that might give us a chance.

Would I be fast enough to cut the bindings on my ankles, make it across the room, get my knife into Buck’s neck, and then handle the boys before they could react? How quick was the Gladesman? He’d already shown his physical ability by tossing me across the room when he’d caught me unaware. But this time I’d be the one with the surprise. Would the young ones freeze up? Or were they seasoned enough to not panic and use their own blades? I looked up from under my eyebrows. Buck was hunched over in the chair, licking his fingers, and cut a look over at me. He was not relaxing; he was doing the same thing I was, working at his next move. They were waiting for something and I was sure he was the only with an idea of what that would be.

“Take a can of those peaches we found over to Mr. Freeman,” he said to the boys without designating which one. The idiots looked at each other.

Wayne finally rose from his position on the floor. He bent and picked up a can and then used the knife from his belt sheath to stab through the tin and cut open the top. He looked over at me and hesitated.

“Should I tie his hands up first?”

“Only if you want to feed him yourself,” Buck said, a touch of condescension in his voice that made the other one smile.

Wayne brought the can over to me and set it down on the floor a foot or so from my bound ankles.

“Can you get me a fork?” I asked.

“Yeah, right,” the kid said. “Somethin’ nice and sharp.” He turned and walked away.

I stretched out and took the can and then shuffled on my knees to Sherry’s bedside and then with my fingers I gently fed a peach slice to her. At the taste of the sweet juice her lips parted like a weak fish and she suckled at it at first and then slightly opened her eyes and took the whole thing into her mouth. I waited for her to chew and swallow and then gave her another.

“You’re a cop too, ain’t you, Freeman?”

Buck was speaking, but I did not turn my eyes from Sherry’s.

“You’ve got the look. That confidence thing like cops and prison guards got. I seen plenty of it over the years.”

While Sherry ate I swallowed a couple of the peach slices myself. I had not eaten anything but a small piece of the chocolate in more than twenty-four hours and was thinking of my own strength.

“I think Wayne here was right about what he heard when the lady said she was a cop. And I think you’re one too. You ain’t called her your wife or your honey or your fiancée.”

I fed another slice to Sherry and one to myself. I was listening, just as Buck had obviously been doing. I may have underestimated him and that was a bad sign.

“What I think, Officer Freeman, is that she’s your partner,” Buck said. “You all might have been stupid enough to be out here in the Glades during a hurricane, but I don’t believe that it was for no reason.”

He paused again, maybe letting his thoughts catch up with him. It reminded me of the long, southern drawl used by Nate Brown, who never hurried his speech, but never said much that was just filler either. I found myself wondering whether they lived in the same area of southwest Collier County.

“No, officer. I think you all know exactly what’s in that fucking room next door and that’s the reason you’re out here,” Buck said. “Nobody builds a bunker like that out in these parts without having something damn valuable to store inside. And the fact that we got two cops out here trying to get into it makes me believe that there are drugs involved. Bricks of cocaine? Bundles of pot? Stuff got air-dropped into the Glades and then pulled out by some group of dealers who are smart enough to store it out here until they got a buyer on the coast that can move it fast.”

Again he took that pause, and when I looked up his face was in shadows but the light was on those of his young crew and they were more hang-mouth stunned than I was.

“No shit! Buck,” Marcus said, a smile beginning to build in his eyes.

“Whoa,” was all Wayne could say and if