The North Face of the Heart - Dolores Redondo Page 0,175

watching over all.

Amaia’s border collie settled down, calm for the first time since they’d wandered away from the hiking trail, for he sensed the master of the forest breathing serenely among the great trees. Ipar remained concerned, for the girl was far from well. Ipar pressed himself against her, trying to transmit his warmth, but especially to let her know he was still there, for even asleep she shuddered, agitated by a terror that denied her rest.

The girl dreamed. She wept as she did.

Ipar licked her burning forehead. She struggled in her nightmare and raised a hand as if to push something away from her face. “I’m just a girl!” she whimpered, still asleep.

In her half-awake state, the girl knew this was a nightmare, but that knowledge offered her no consolation. If she opened her eyes, she’d be lost and surely die. She didn’t want to wake, she didn’t want to be killed again, and that dilemma made her so terribly sad.

She didn’t want to die, but she was terrified of the storm.

The Lady is here, chanted the chorus in her head.

I’m scared! she replied.

The Lady is coming, insisted the child-murdering ghouls, indifferent to her plea.

She scares me! Amaia protested, begging for mercy.

64

CONFIRMING IDENTITY

The swamp

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Thirteen years later in a dark hunting lodge, the child’s anguished plea and the grown woman’s explanation became a single voice. Amaia told them, “A child who believes everyone is conspiring to murder her will be terrified even of a rescuer.”

Bull heard her clearly but had no idea what she was talking about. Charbou, on the other hand, stared at her, intrigued, both amazed and bewildered.

Johnson started to say something, but with a gesture, Dupree cautioned him to remain silent.

Amaia continued. “They stood on the table, trying to keep their heads above water, until the table leg broke. It’s jammed in the corner over there.” She pointed in that direction. “The girls fell into the water on top of one another. They did their best to stay afloat, but they weren’t strong enough. The water rose and they drowned, trapped against the roof. Eventually it subsided and left them here.”

Bull’s sudden interruption broke the spell of her story. “It was an accident, then. Nobody goes to all the trouble of kidnapping girls just to drown them. This was a prison. That’s probably how the Samedi gang handled Médora and the others. They kept them locked up here and transferred them when things quieted down. Nobody would be likely to think kidnappers would use this place.”

“Remember what happened to Médora.” Charbou’s face was grim. “Maybe these poor children were better off.”

Amaia gazed unhappily at the small corpses. “Yes. Maybe the storm saved them from something even worse. The Lady doesn’t do things by half measures. That’s how she operates.”

Johnson raised a hand, cautioning them to be quiet. He cupped his ear and was concentrating, trying to identify something in the distance. It grew louder outside the flimsy wooden walls, and they all heard it. An outboard motor. “His partner’s coming back.”

The whistler had been moving bodies downstairs, so he must have had at least one other associate. No more than that, they’d guessed, because if there’d been more, a second man would have stayed to help with the bodies. And they needed a means of transportation to remove the dead, so there had to be an associate. The snarl of the outboard approaching the hunting lodge confirmed that much.

They rushed down the stairs, hurrying to forestall any precipitate action by the shrimpers. Clive was downstairs and the traiteur was sitting beside Médora, but the older Cajun was nowhere in sight.

“Where’s your friend?” Bull called out.

“My man decide to keep watch out there in the bushes. You say somebody probably coming back.” He gestured toward the corpse floating at the bottom of the stairs.

“No way we gonna let him surprise us like that one did.”

They exchanged alarmed glances. Bull and Charbou rushed to the door, while Dupree, Amaia, and Johnson went to the grime-covered windows. A rifle shot cracked and echoed in the pouring rain. Johnson threw open the window just in time to see a man blasted backward out of an arriving Zodiac. A second man was at the outboard motor. The newcomers had been taken completely by surprise.

“Goddamn it!” Johnson exclaimed.

The second man let go of the throttle, grabbed a shotgun, and fired the first barrel in the general direction of the former hunting lodge. He obviously had no idea where the bullet