"No. At least not yet. As soon as she threatened my family, I went to the police. Since I had only a voice on the phone, and couldn't tell them what she looked like or where she lived, all they could do was keep an eye out for her and do regular patrols past my house."

"And I take it that didn't work."

Weldon shook his head. "That same night, my son was bitten by a brown recluse spider and had to be rushed to the hospital-he was only three and almost lost his arm. And right there, in Kevin's hospital room, the woman calls me on my cell phone and says this was just a warning. Had I changed my mind? I hung up but she called right back and asked me if my daughter was afraid of snakes. And if not, she should be." Weldon rubbed a hand over his face. "I've got to tell you, that spooked me. I don't know how she knew about the spider bite, I don't know how she got a brown recluse close enough to my son to bite him, but I was really spooked."

Jack couldn't blame him. He knew how he'd felt when Vicky had been threatened.

"Did you go back to the cops?"

"What for? I couldn't tell them any more then than before. So I took matters into my own hands. I packed up my wife and both kids and sent them to stay with my in-laws in Woodstock, right outside Atlanta. I figured putting them hundreds of miles away in a different town, a different state, would keep them safe." He shook his head. "The very first day there Laurie was bitten by a copperhead and almost died. After spending a week up north, waiting for Laurie to be released from the hospital, I finally returned home-alone, because I couldn't bear the thought of bringing them back here until I'd dealt with this woman."

"Obviously you didn't succeed."

"Not for lack of trying. When I got home I found this young woman with white hair waiting in my backyard. She was sitting with her back to me, holding her hands up to her face, and in an instant I knew who she was. I grabbed the revolver I keep in the top of our bedroom closet and went out to her. I was going to shoot her, so help me, I was, but as soon as I raised the pistol I was attacked by a swarm of bees and-"

"Killer bees?"

Weldon nodded. "Only they didn't sting me enough to kill me. They concentrated on my face and my gun hand and didn't let up until I'd dropped it. Then she turned and I saw her face for the first time. I was surprised that she was so young. From her white hair I'd a.s.sumed she'd be some old witch, but she was young and-"

"Not bad looking. I know."

"You've met her then. How did you-?"

"Let's stick to you. What did you do then?"

"What could I do? She told me I already had two strikes against me. I still remember her words: 'Strike three and your wife is out.' What else could I do? Tell me you would have done any different."

"My approach to settling problems differs a bit from the average."

"I don't know how, but this woman somehow controls snakes, insects, birds, and who knows what else? Don't you see the position I was in?"

Jack stared at Weldon. No question, the guy had been thrust into an appalling situation: Finger a relative stranger for death or lose a family member. A no-brainer, but also a no-win.

"I see that a man has to put his family before strangers, which is regrettably acceptable. But when one of those strangers is my father, we have a problem." Jack jabbed the knife blade at Weldon's face, stopping the point an inch from his nose. "We have even more of a problem when it becomes clear that you took an awful predicament and used it to turn a quick buck."

"I did no such thing!"

Weldon cowered back, pressing himself against the door as the knife point touched the tip of his nose.

"Now's not the time for lies, bozo." Jack was doing his best to check his flaring rage. "I could go along with you doing what you had to if you'd picked out the sickest Gateways folks, the ones with the shortest life expectancy. But you didn't do that. Instead you picked ones who were not only the healthiest, but were unattached, guaranteeing that their homes would go back on the market years, maybe even a decade or two before their natural time."

"No!"

"Yes!" The word hissed through Jack's teeth. "Yes, you son of a b.i.t.c.h! You fingered people whose deaths would turn you a profit! And one of them was my father!"

Weldon's face crumpled. His eyes squeezed shut and he began to sob.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."

"Three innocent people are dead and my father was put in a coma, and that's all you can say?" He wanted to drop the knife and throttle him. "Get out!"

Weldon looked at him. "What?"

"Get out, you pathetic b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Out before I cut you."

Weldon fumbled behind him for the latch. As the door swung open, Jack raised his right leg and kicked him. Hard.

"Out!"

Weldon fell out the door and landed on his back in the limestone powder and rubble. Without bothering to close the door, Jack threw the DeSoto into gear and hit the gas. He gunned the car into a tire-spinning turn, then raced back toward where Weldon was staggering to his feet. He let him scramble out of the way. Despite Jack's dark urge to maim, maybe even kill the man, Weldon wasn't worth the ha.s.sle.

He tore up the steep roadway out of the pit and onto the street. He knew Weldon wouldn't be going to the police about this; he'd fear it would draw a loot of unwanted attention to the deaths at Gateways. Let him find his own way home.

As he pa.s.sed the trailer park he pulled in. An impulse. He spotted Carl's junker parked by a mildewed trailer. He got out and checked the door. Locked. He lifted the lid of a garbage can by the steps and found take out containers-KFC, Chinese, Domino's. He pulled out his wallet as he scoped the area. No one about so he slipped the door latch with his MasterCard. Inside he closed the door behind him and looked around. He wasn't sure why he was here. Just an urge to know a little more about Carl.

The air conditioner was off and the trailer smelled faintly of old food and sweat. The kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom lay to the left, the main room to the right. He noticed the disa.s.sembled remnants of Big Mouth Billy Ba.s.s, the singing fish, on the kitchen counter, neatly stored in a little box. Jack was struck by how clean the place was. Carl had said he loved his little trailer, and it showed.

In the main room sat a good-size TV. It looked like at least a twenty-seven-incher-pan-o-ramic, one might say. A battered Naugahyde recliner sat before it. The thick Direct TV program guide for September lay open on the seat, marked up with a yellow pen. Jack picked it up and saw that Carl had highlighted Survivor Survivor, Fear Factor Fear Factor, Boot Camp Boot Camp, Big Brother Big Brother...secondhand living.

But that seemed good enough for Carl.

Jack shrugged. Whatever gets you through the night...

But nowhere in the trailer was there a sign of who Carl was. No family pictures, no sign that he had a past. Maybe his past wasn't anything he wanted to remember.

Jack stepped out, locked the door, and drove back toward Gateways. He turned off the road and parked in the trees next to the security fence. He noticed other tire tracks nearby. After wiping down the steering wheel, gearshift, door and window handles, he stepped up on the hood and went over the fence.

Easy. Too easy. Semelee's clan could do the same with their pickup.

Semelee...As he walked back to his father's house he ran the Semelee situation back and forth and sideways through his head, looking for a solution.

He agreed with Weldon on one point: Semelee seemed to be able to control the swamp creatures. How, Jack didn't know, but he'd bet it had something to do with the nexus point at the lagoon. She'd used that power to commit perfect murders-"sacrifices," as she'd put it to Weldon-in plain view without anyone suspecting that a human agent lay behind the attacks. No question in Jack's mind that she was behind the palmetto swarm and the alligator attack as well.

She had to be stopped, that much was clear. He had no idea how, but he'd worry about that later. The first thing he had to do was put Carl back in his trailer...his home.

10.

"There you are," Dad said as Jack stepped through the door. He'd obviously awakened from his nap. Looked like he'd showered and shaved too. "Where have you been?"

"Here and there. Did anyone call or come by while I was out?"

He shook his head. "No. All quiet. You're expecting someone?"

Jack hid his frustration. "Yeah. Sort of."

"Well, I need to do some grocery shopping. How about driving me down to the Publix so I can stock up?"

"How about I give you the keys and stay here? In case that call comes, or someone shows up."

"Are you in some sort of trouble, Jack? Because if you are, maybe I can help."

Jack laughed and hoped it didn't sound as forced as it felt. "Trouble? No, not me. But someone I know might be in a little."

"What kind?"

Jack knew he'd been acting strange-at least in his father's eyes-but he wasn't used to all these questions, or having his comings and goings noted and commented on.

This is why I live alone.

"You might say it's a kind of family thing."

"Do those toys have anything to do with it?"

"It might come down to that."

Dad sighed and dropped into his recliner. "You are the hardest person to talk to, Jack. You were a great kid, but now you're a stranger. It's like you don't want to know me or me to know you. You've got this wall around you. Is that my fault? Did I do something...?"

This was painful. Jack could see the hurt in his father's troubled eyes.

"Absolutely not. It's me. It's just the way I am."

"But it's not the way you were."

Jack shrugged. "People change. You must know that."

"No. I don't. Most people don't change. Kate didn't change. And Tom didn't-although it might not be such a bad thing if he had. But you-you're a completely different person."

Jack could only shrug again. He wanted off this uncomfortable topic.

"Enough about me. How about you, Dad? How are you getting on down here?"

His father gave him a long, baffled stare, then shook his head.

"Me? I guess I'm doing pretty well. I like the climate enough, but..."

"But?"

"I don't know. Sometimes I think I made a mistake moving down here. Sometimes I wonder why I ever left Jersey."

"I'd wondered the same thing. So did Kate."

"I've never been the impulsive sort, but this was an impulse. A Gateways South brochure came in the mail one day and that was it. I took one look and had to be here. The graduated care aspect and the idea of never being a burden appealed to me...appealed to me so much it became an obsession that took hold and wouldn't let go. I couldn't get it out of my head that this was the place for me. I sold the old house and reinvested some of the money in this place and..." He spread his hands. "Here I am."

"From what Anya told me while you were in your coma, it sounds as if you've gotten into the swing of things down here."

"I have. I've had to. I had it in my head that Kate and Tom would jump at the chance to gather up the grandkids and come down to Florida to visit. But only Kate did that. And only once. Everyone's so busy these days. So I made a choice: I can sit before the TV and ossify, or get up and about and do things while I still can. I figure I'd rather be a moving target than a stationary one."

Target, Jack thought. h.e.l.luva word choice, Dad. If you only knew...

Dad was shaking his head. "But as nice as it is, I still can't believe I sold the family home and left my kids and grandkids up north to move down here. I know not being a burden was a big part of it, but really...what was I thinking?"

Something in the words sent a chill through Jack. His father had done something he didn't quite understand...developed a compulsion to move down here, to this particular development, right outside the Everglades, close to the lagoon where Semelee and her clan lived...

...close to a nexus point.

Hadn't Carl told him that he'd developed a yearning-an "ache," as he put it-to get back to the place where he'd been born, back to the lagoon...?

Back to that same nexus point.

Coincidence?

He'd been told there'd be no more coincidences in his life.

Was someone or some thing thing moving pieces around the board-Jack's board? moving pieces around the board-Jack's board?

But wait...Anya had said she'd done part time work addressing brochures. Had she sent one to his father? Had she influenced him to come down here? So she could-what?-protect him?

Jack's head spun. One thing he knew was he wanted his father out of here, out of Gateways, out of the whole d.a.m.n state.

"Nothing says you can't go back. In fact, I think you should. I'm sure Jersey's got a load of graduated care places, if that's what you want."

Dad stood silent a moment, then, "I don't know. I'd feel like an old fool."

"Which is more foolish: admitting you made a mistake and rectifying it, or hanging around a place you don't like?"

"When you put it that way..." He shook his head. "I'll have to think about it." He clapped his hands. "But no matter what I decide, we have to eat tonight. I'll run out and get eggs and cheese and some ham. I make a mean omelet. How's that sound for dinner?"

"Perfect."

With a pang of reluctance, Jack gave him the keys to his rental. He had an urge to go with him, to not let him out on his own unprotected, but Semelee had said he wasn't a target, and he believed her. She'd had Jack at her mercy-outnumbered and outgunned-when she'd said it, so she'd had no reason to lie.

11.