Chapter 33

Geronimo wants to see us,” Danny said. Rae knew from the inflection in his voice that he was scared, and Danny was never scared.

“Fuck him,” she’d said, but got up from the comforter she’d been sitting on, watching the sun continue its climb into the eastern sky. Danny said nothing.

“What, the scrambled eggs were runny? He wants a fresh pot of coffee?”

Rae had risen before dawn and without being asked had gone into the big cabin and started making breakfast for everyone. During the night, she’d sent Danny into the lady’s cabin five or six times to check her breathing. He’d said the woman seemed out of it, but was alive.

At sunup before Rae had dished out Danny’s breakfast, she’d told him to take a plate and some coffee to the woman. She didn’t want to do it herself, not with the lady’s hood off. Rae was still holding out hope that she and Danny might get out of this fucking thing with money and anonymity. This summons to the big house might answer that hope or dash it altogether.

When they walked in, the two bucks were at the kitchen counter, playing with food from the refrigerator. Geronimo had taken up his now-familiar position standing with his back to them, staring out of the big windows at the vast Everglades. He had changed his clothes, had found a colorful jacket in the patterns similar to those on the wall tapestry. He had also braided his long hair into two black ropes and pinned them to either side of his head.

Rae’s nose wrinkled at the odor of some kind of incense or burning seed that scented the air. Geronimo left them standing in silence, posturing on purpose, Rae thought, before raising one hand, a signal for the other two, who gathered up a bowl of raw chicken parts and hurried out the door.

Danny waited until the door was closed and then stepped forward, a move that Rae had seen before in other situations, which meant he was done taking the backseat and was ready to drive or move on.

“You wanted to see us?” Danny said.

Geronimo turned and made himself big in front of the sunlit window, but still said nothing.

“What’s the plan, Alvin?”

Danny was using Geronimo’s given name, another clue to Rae that he was done with the bullshit. It was a joke among the kids who knew Geronimo that he was a Chippewa and that Alvin was the name of one of the chipmunks of cartoon fame. It was usually used behind his back.

“Ah, Danny boy,” the big Indian said. “You are now the brave one, eh? No more letting your squaw be the mouth?”

Danny let it go.

“This isn’t what we signed on for, Alvin. I was the driver. A couple of days safely hiding out and then we were supposed to get our money and split. That was the deal, not taking some mystery trip out into the middle of God’s country and hanging on to some pregnant federal judge for who knows how long.”

The words federal judge even made Rae twitch. She’d only found out from texting Kelsey. But again Geronimo didn’t flinch.

“You obviously have some people with money backing this whole gig,” Danny said, raising his hands palms up to indicate the camp. “So how about I drive us back to civilization, you get on your fancy cell phone and talk to whoever it is you talk to, we get our money, and we’ll be on our way.”

This time, Geronimo stepped forward.

“So, driver, you are now the white man who’s going to take over and tell the Indian what to do and when to do it, and then send him back to the rez? Is that what you think?”

Rae could feel the tension in the room rising by the sentence, and even if she couldn’t really tell the future, when Geronimo moved both of his hands behind his back as if taking an at-ease position, the recollection of the bowie knife stuck in the back of his waistband made her reach out and touch Danny’s elbow.

“Look, guys, let’s just ease back, OK?” she jumped in. “Chief, we’re just a little uptight with all of this change-in-plan stuff and want to know what’s up, you know? You’re the man. You’re the one deciding. We just want to be let in on what’s happening, all right?”

The big Indian seemed to look beyond them instead of at them, and then said: “You will get your money.”

“When?” Danny said, not taking the edge off his voice.

“Tomorrow. In the morning, we go to Tampa and you get your money,” the Indian said, and then began turning back to his window. Rae had started to exhale when Danny asked his next question:

“And what do we do with the woman?”

When Geronimo turned back, he was wearing a grin, the first time such an expression had ever creased his face, Rae was sure.

“Ah, great white warrior. I think I will leave that decision to you,” the Indian said, making his face an even more obscene mask by raising one eyebrow.

In the silence that followed, Geronimo turned back to the window again and spoke to the glass.

“You decided to break the rules. And now you live with that decision. It is your face that she has now seen. You are the only one she can identify. Everyone else, including your squaw, can walk away. Been to Florida lately? No, I’ve never been to Florida, Officer. Well, we have an eyewitness who says otherwise.

“So you decide, get-away driver. If it was my decision, I would let nature decide,” Geronimo said, raising his hands to the vision of the Glades before him. “Five miles from this place, she can be set off the boat in the middle of this ancient wilderness and let nature take its course, as it always does.”

Again, silence. Rae knew Danny was doing his thinking, not jumping in with a reaction without first rolling it over in his mind. The catch had not surprised her. She’d thought of the conundrum the first time he’d told her he’d taken the woman’s hood off. But she had let it sit. Cross that bridge when it came. Well, here’s the trestle. She looked at Danny, who was blank-eyed, looking inward.

“OK. Look …” he started. But his words were cut off by a searing sound coming from outside, a wailing that penetrated not just the door of the cabin, but the soul of a young woman who had heard such a rending scream of pain before.