Page 104 of Mirror Image
“Read,” she says, putting a hand atop the bag with the books. “It’s all there. Every vile thing spelled out in his own handwriting. Then you’ll understand what I need to do, and, hopefully, you’ll know how to help me do it.”
I don’t bother asking her to clarify again. She’s not going to tell me any more than she already has.
I swallow. “All right. I’ll take these back to the hospital and—”
She grabs my shoulders, not roughly, but with urgency. Her eyes pin mine.
“No. He might see them, and he can’t know what I’ve done—not yet. You need to take these somewhere safe. Dr. Flores, swear you won’t tell him anything about this conversation.”
It comes out more as a plea than a demand.
“I—yes—sure—”
“Swear it.”
Her intensity steals my breath.
“I swear.”
She releases me slowly. Then lifts her duffel.
“I’m going to lay low for a while,” she tells me. “And I’ve ditched my phone, but I’ll reach out when I can.”
“Can’t you give me any more than that? I still don’t understand.”
“You will,” she says nodding toward the bag on the bench. “When you read.”
And then she turns and walks away, leaving me with a bag full of his handwriting and the sinking realization that I’ve just stepped into someone else’s war.
Chapter Forty
Mary
Last weekend
“I don’t think this is it,” she told me for the tenth time.
“Yes. Yes, it is!” I assured her. “Sam, I’ve spent days paddling this waterway.”
“Yeah, but not this far out. You told me yourself that you’ve never actually been through here before. So how do you know?”
I groaned in exasperation. “I just know, okay?”
She looked doubtfully at the fallen tree trunk blocking our way about a hundred feet ahead. Just one of a dozen we’d encountered since entering the stretch known as the Nightmare a few miles back. It was a solid eight miles of narrow, winding channels, flanked by huge mangrove roots resembling dark, withered hands with long, craggy fingers. Low-hanging branches and vines dripped from above, where the tree canopy grew so tight and thick that not much of the late-afternoon sunlight filtered through. On the one hand, it provided shade as well as protection from the rogue storm, but, on the other, little to no breeze circulated through here.
We’d been able to bushwhack our way through the earlier branches, vines, and trunks in our path, but this one was different. It was nearly two feet in diameter, and there was no way we were cutting that bad boy with the tiny saw we had with us. More than that, though, we didn’t have the time to spend—the tide would start to ebb shortly, and we still had another four miles to go. If we stayed too long, the tide would go out, and we’d be left stranded without enough water to paddle out on. I do mean stranded—there was zero cell phone reception out here, and we hadn’t seen another soul for miles.
She gestured toward the narrow channel, almost completely choked by branches and vines, many toppled into the waterway. “I just can’t believe people consider this to be a viable cut through. I mean, look at all this overgrowth, all these fallen trees! Jeez, you’d think we were the first people to ever try to get through here!”
“I know, you’re right. But you saw the map. The entrance was right where it was supposed to be, just past Marker 21. And it’s not like people didn’t warn us about how bad it could get in here. Besides, we’re nearly halfway through at this point. A little late to turn back and go all the way around.”
“Yeah, well, nobody bothered to mention just how creepy it’d be back here. I feel like I’m riding through one of those Tunnel of Horror rides at the amusement park. But instead of monsters and ghosts and murderous guys with chainsaws, this one’s full of spiders and alligators and snakes.”
She shuddered at her own description.
I exhaled a long column of air. “I agree. I’m thinking we don’t make this part of our tour route unless it’s absolutely necessary—like to get out of a storm or something.”
“Well, yeah! I mean if you and I have trouble navigating it, how can we expect a bunch of tourists to do it?”
