Seeing a light glowing through the opening, I was almost paralyzed with dread. Sunday was in there with my family. And he was waiting for me to arrive.
I knew how potentially suicidal my next move was, but I made it anyway, advancing fast and quiet across the deck and up beside the loose hatch. I reached over and tried to open the door as silently as I could.
“Just come on in, Dr. Cross,” Sunday called from inside. “We’ve been waiting for you for the longest time.”
“Dad?” Jannie cried softly.
“Alex?” Nana Mama choked. “No. Go away. He’s going to—”
I heard a slapping sound, and my grandmother groaned. Embracing death, I threw the hatch door open. Pistol up, finger on the trigger, I stepped into a clear line of fire and then ducked inside, hearing my grandmother sobbing quietly.
The smell was nasty: sweat, shit, and stale ammonia. It shocked me, made me suffer my family’s mistreatment even before my eyes adjusted. Six bunks bolted into the walls.
All but one held a member of my family. There was hospital apparatus around every one of them. On the near right wall, Jannie was twisting against her restraints to look back at me.
“Daddy?”
“Right here, little girl,” I said, my voice quivering.
Just seeing her alive and hearing her voice after all that I’d been through, I almost lost control and wanted to go straight to hold and comfort her.
But I couldn’t go to her, or to Ali, who seemed to be out cold below her, or to my grandmother, who was breathing shakily on the bunk under Damon’s, or to Bree, who was opposite him on top of the second set of bunks on the right.
Sunday had taken cover between the two right-hand sets of bunks and was aiming a nickel-plated Colt .357 Magnum at Jannie and a smaller Ruger nine-millimeter at my grandmother. His face was only partially showing behind a pair of medical monitors, but he appeared very different from his author’s photo and from his fake driver’s license as the red-bearded Thierry Mulch.
Sunday’s face was shaven, and his salt-and-pepper hair close cropped. Gaunt, maybe late thirties, but what struck me most were his gray soulless eyes that danced with excitement.
“Put the gun down, Cross,” Sunday ordered. “Or I shoot th
e both of them.”
Sunday was twenty-five, maybe thirty feet from me, and my instincts screamed, Head-shoot him! Head-shoot the bastard like he did the crew!
“Daddy!” Jannie said again.
“Quick, Cross,” Sunday said. “Or that will be the last word of hers you ever hear.”
If I hit him in the perfect spot, which was anywhere above his eyes and below his hairline, he would go lights-out, lose all muscle control, and collapse, the guns with him. But if I was just the slightest bit off, he’d tense before he dropped, the guns would fire, and Jannie and Nana would die.
“It’s over,” I said, pressuring the trigger and trying to keep the sights on the center of his forehead. “The Coast Guard’s on the way.”
“Are they, now?” Sunday said, amused.
I heard feet scrape behind me, and Captain Creel said, “Not a chance, Marcus. And Detective? I’ve got a twelve-gauge pointed at your spine. You might want to drop that.”
CHAPTER
93
SUNDAY GLOATED. “I’VE NEVER had problems getting followers, especially those people needing money and a whole new life. The way the captain tells it, his wife, Shirley, is a nominee for bitch of the century, and he just can’t take it anymore. So, one last time, drop your weapon, Cross.”
“Don’t, Alex,” Nana Mama said.
I lowered the gun.
“On the floor, and kick it to me,” Sunday ordered. “Then on your knees, hands behind your head.”
I did as I was told. What else could I do?