The Empty Chair (Lincoln Rhyme 3)

"You bring what I asked for?"

"Oh, yeah." He dug in the glove compartment and handed her a yellow-and-green box of Remington bullets. She ejected the round-point cartridges from her pistol and Speedloaders and replaced them with the new bullets--hollow points, which have more stopping power and cause much more damage to soft tissue when they hit a human being.

Jesse Corn watched her closely but it was a moment before he spoke, as she knew he'd do. "Amelia's not dangerous," he said, in a low voice, the words meant for her only.

/> Lucy set the gun down and looked into his eyes. "Jesse, everybody said Mary Beth was at the ocean but turns out she's in the opposite direction. Everybody said Garrett was just a stupid kid but he's smart as a snake and's conned us a half-dozen times. We don't know anything anymore. Maybe Garrett's got a store of weapons someplace and has some plan or another to take us out when we walk into his trap."

"But Amelia's with him. She wouldn't let that happen."

"Amelia's a damn traitor and we can't trust her an inch. Listen, Jesse, I saw that look on your face when you saw she wasn't under the boat. You were relieved. I know you think you like her and you're hoping she likes you.... No, no, let me finish. But she busted a killer outa jail. And if you'd been the one out there in the river instead of Ned, Amelia'd have shot at you just as fast."

He began to protest but the chill look in her eyes kept him quiet.

"It's easy to get infatuated with somebody like that," Lucy continued. "She's pretty and she's from someplace else, someplace exotic.... But she doesn't understand life down here. And she doesn't understand Garrett. You know him--that's one sick boy and it's just a fluke that he's not doing life right now."

"I know Garrett's dangerous. I'm not arguing there. It's Amelia I'm thinking of."

"Well, it's us that I'm thinking of and everybody else in Blackwater Landing that boy could be planning on killing tomorrow or next week or next year if he gets away from us. Which he might just do, thanks to her. Now, I need to know if I can count on you. If not, you can go on home and we'll have Jim send somebody else in your place."

Jesse glanced at the box of shells. Then back to her. "You can, Lucy. You can count on me."

"Good. You better mean that. 'Cause at first light I'm tracking them down and bringing 'em both back. I hope alive but, I tell you, that's become optional."

Mary Beth McConnell sat alone in the cabin, exhausted but afraid to sleep.

Hearing noises everywhere.

She'd given up on the couch. She was afraid that if she remained there she'd stretch out and fall asleep then wake to find the Missionary and Tom gazing at her through the window, about to break in. So she was perched at a dining room chair, which was about as comfortable as brick.

Noises...

On the roof, on the porch, in the woods.

She didn't know what time it was. She was afraid to even push the light button on her wristwatch to glimpse the face--out of the crazy fear that the flash would somehow beckon to her attackers.

Exhausted. Too tired even to wonder again why this had happened to her, what she might have done to prevent it.

No good deed goes unpunished...

She stared out at the field in front of the cabin, now completely black. The window was like a frame around her fate: Whom would it show approaching through the field? Her killers or her rescuers?

She listened.

What was that noise: A branch on bark? Or the rasp of a match?

What was that dot of light in the woods: A firefly, or a campfire?

That motion: A deer goaded to run by the scent of bobcat or the Missionary and his friend settling in around the fire to drink beer and eat food then prowl through the woods to come for her and satisfy their bodies in other ways?

Mary Beth McConnell couldn't tell. Tonight, as in so much of life, she sensed only ambiguity.

You find relics of long-dead settlers but you wonder if maybe your theory is completely wrong.

Your father dies of cancer--a long, wasting death that the doctors say is inevitable but you think: Maybe it wasn't.

Two men are out there in the woods, planning to rape and kill you.

But maybe not.