Chapter 6 - The Black Skiff
We didn't take my truck. If they were watching the house, they had trackers on my vehicle before I even stepped off the plane. Instead, we slipped out through Emma's backyard, using the thick overgrown line of hydrangeas as cover until we reached the salt marshes that bordered the northern edge of Pelican Row.
The mud was thick and black, sucking at Emma's bare feet and my boots with every step. The marsh grass grew taller than our shoulders, its sharp blades cutting against our skin as we navigated the dark channels in total silence. The storm that had been threatening all afternoon finally broke, a cold, driving rain that washed the mud from our clothes but chilled us to the bone.
"He told me he was staying in the old bait shack near the abandoned oyster processing plant," Emma whispered, her teeth chattering against the cold. She was shivering violently now, her white shirt soaked through and clinging to her skin.
I pulled off my heavy canvas overshirt and draped it over her shoulders, pulling her close against my side as we walked. "How did he get here, Emma? If he's been running for two years, how did he end up back on Pelican Row?"
"He said he was running out of time," she said, looking up at me through the rain. "He said he discovered a growth in his lungs six months ago. He didn't want to die in some anonymous ditch in South America. He wanted to see the Atlantic one last time. And he wanted to make sure you knew the truth before his clock ran out."
The news felt like another anchor dragging me down into the deep water. My father, dead or missing. My brother, alive but dying. And the uniform I wore—the one I had sacrificed my youth for—was the very thing hunting us through the dark.
After another twenty minutes of wading through the black water, the skeletal silhouette of the old oyster plant loomed out of the mist like a sunken wreck. Beside it, a small wooden shack sat on rotting stilts over the tide, its windows dark and covered with tarpaper.
I held the captured pistol ready, stepping onto the slippery wooden dock that led to the shack's door. The wood groaned under my weight.
"Julian," I called out softly, using the old private call we used when we were kids playing hide-and-seek in the Norfolk woods—a short, double-whistle that imitated a piping plover.
For a long moment, there was nothing but the sound of the rain drumming against the tin roof of the factory.
Then, the door of the shack creaked open an inch. A pale face appeared in the gap, illuminated by a sudden flash of lightning across the bay.
It was my brother.
He looked twenty years older than the boy I had buried. His hair was thin and shot through with white, his cheeks sunken and sallow. But his eyes were the exact same shade of slate gray as mine, and the long, jagged scar over his left eyebrow was unmistakable.
He looked at me, then at Emma, his lips parting in a ragged exhale that turned into a deep, painful cough.
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"You're late, Jonah," he whispered, his voice sounding like dry leaves scraping across concrete. "I told Emma you'd be here on Friday."
"It's Thursday, Jules," I said, my throat tightening so hard I could barely get the words out. I stepped forward, dropping the gun to my side, and threw my arms around my dead brother's shoulders.
