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Back The Empress File Save as PDF
Chapters (20)
  1. Prologue
  2. CHAPTER 1
  3. CHAPTER 2
  4. CHAPTER 3
  5. CHAPTER 4
  6. CHAPTER 5
  7. CHAPTER 6
  8. CHAPTER 7
  9. CHAPTER 8
  10. CHAPTER 9
  11. CHAPTER 10
  12. CHAPTER 11
  13. CHAPTER 12
  14. CHAPTER 13
  15. CHAPTER 14
  16. CHAPTER 15
  17. CHAPTER 16
  18. CHAPTER 17
  19. CHAPTER 18
  20. CHAPTER 19

you’re the politician. What you need is a deal, to cut a deal.” I looked at my watch. “And I’ve got to take you back now. You’ve got about two minutes to get to Bell. Two minutes to figure out how you’re gonna get a bridge for him.”

“Ah, Jesus,” she groaned. “We’re so close. So close. What am I going to do?”

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 18

I dropped Marvel in a pool of darkness a half block from the City Hall, hoping that nobody would see us or recognize us. She hurried away, not looking back. The outcome of our attack on the city was now in her hands. I had no ideas for her.

And I had LuEllen to worry about. She should have been out of animal control, but I had to check. I was supposed to keep track of Hill and St. Thomas, and in the encounter with Marvel, I’d lost them.

The road to animal control, after it got past the tank field, was dark as pitch. My headlights on the lonely gravel road would attract the attention of anyone at the place, but driving without them was impossible. I finally left them on, kept my speed up, and blew past the turnoff into the complex. There were lights on in the building, and Hill’s van squatted under the pole light in the yard.

“Goddamn it,” I muttered. I smacked the steering wheel with the palm of my hand. LuEllen should have seen their headlights coming. But if she’d been inside, looking for a spot to hide Hill’s pistol, it was just barely possible that she’d been trapped. I went on down the road, parked, got a flashlight out of the glove compartment, and jogged back.

The night had cooled, and the smell of mud, road gravel, weeds, and something else rode on a river breeze. Goose bumps popped up on my arms as I ran, and I finally identified the “something else” as the stink of decomposing flesh, probably from Hill’s killing pen.

At the entrance to the animal control complex I slowed, cut a corner through the weeds, prayed that all copperheads were asleep, and stepped over a fence. The complex was in a flat, open area cut in the riverside brush. I skirted the open area, cut behind the pen where we’d seen Hill and St. Thomas killing the cats-the smell of rotting flesh grew stronger, and I started breathing through my mouth-and climbed the levee. Nothing; I was too far away to see whether or not the boat was tied to the wall. I started down the levee, picking my way along the nearly invisible game trail. The boat loomed up like a ghost in the night, just a light spot in the humidity, a trick of the eyes. In another fifty yards it had solidified. No lights, nothing moving around it.

“LuEllen? LuEllen?”