Chapter 12
The tension in the little skiff was so taut that Holly felt as though she would snap in half if anything jumped out at them.
Her grandmother could be secretive, but something about her actions, the fact it was the middle of the night, and they were heading out into the maze of the bayou with no idea where she was taking them. ..
Holly sat on the bench beside Simon and slipped her hand in his. He stared forward, studying the channels in the starlight.
Holly had spent her youth on the bayou. She knew many of the channels and had navigated them day and night.
Where her grandmother was taking her wasn’t a place she’d been to often.
She paid attention in case she had to find her way back.
Hard enough in the daylight, it would be even harder at night.
Her grandmother navigated the waterways with a steady hand as if she’d taken this particular route many times. Her confidence made Holly wonder if she really knew her Mémère. So many questions bubbled up in her mind.
Her grandmother had been clear. Asking questions wouldn’t be allowed or tolerated.
For thirty or more minutes, the little skiff wove through the channels, taking them deeper into the less-traveled areas.
When Holly thought they might be lost, the skiff slowed, rounded a bend and aimed straight for the weeping branches of a willow tree.
Simon and Holly parted the soft curtain as the skiff entered a shadowy grotto beneath the tree.
Holly glanced back at her grandmother, unable to make out her face in the gloom. Was this the place? This grotto deep in the bayou?
Her grandmother steered the skiff through the other side of the willow’s curtain into what appeared to be a dead end.
The skiff floated slowly toward a small island that rose out of the dark water.
Its steep, unwelcoming banks were covered in twisted vines, discouraging anyone from setting foot on its soil.
As the skiff neared the steep banks, the island shuddered.
Holly and Simon stiffened at the same time and raised their arms in defense.
“It’s okay,” her grandmother said. “It won’t hurt you.”
The banks suddenly parted, a soft grinding noise accompanying the movement. Then, as if out of nowhere, a pale, yellow light appeared, casting a cone of light over the end of a wooden dock. The dock led away, disappearing into a strange, black abyss.
The skiff floated up beside the dock.
Simon looped a line around a piling.
The grinding, mechanical noise sounded again as the island closed around them, trapping them inside.
Holly’s pulse quickened with the sudden instinct of fight or flight.
“We get out here,” Mémère said softly.
“Where are we?” Holly asked.
“All will be revealed,” was all her grandmother said.
Simon stepped up onto the dock and helped Holly alight beside him. Between the two of them, they handed Madam Gautier safely onto the wooden platform.
She led the way toward the utter blackness at the other end of the dock. The darkness was a solid metal wall with a metal handwheel painted the same black as the wall.
Madam Gautier waved a hand toward the wheel. “Will you do the honors?”
Simon gripped the wheel and turned it left. A watertight bulkhead door separated from the black wall and swung open. Bright light shone out on them, revealing a hallway beyond.
Holly’s grandmother stepped through the door and down a staircase.
Holly followed with Simon close behind.
The staircase led down into what could only be described as an underground bunker.
Shelves full of various supplies, including canned goods, bags of dried beans, bottles of butane and other fuels, lined the tunnel they passed through.
There was enough food and supplies for several people to live on for weeks, if not months.
Holly guessed the place belonged to a prepper ready for an apocalypse.
The more she studied the corridor, the more it looked like...
“This is or was a ship,” Simon said. “A small one, but a ship, nonetheless.” He pointed to the stenciled nomenclature on one of the walls they passed. “I’d bet it's either a decommissioned Navy vessel or an old Army ship.
“It’s a decommissioned 1955 Coast Guard Cutter,” a deep voice came to them from ahead of them in the corridor.
“It’s been converted into a self-contained bunker with its own power source and satellite connections to allow connection to the outside world without being detected.
” A man wearing Bermuda shorts and a black T-shirt padded barefoot toward them.
His salt and pepper hair was buzzed to within less than an inch long on his head, though his face sported at least a day or two’s worth of gray beard.
He held out his hand to Simon. “Joe Middleton,” he said.
“You must be Sinclaire Sevier, former Delta Force, now working with Remy Montagne’s Brotherhood Protectors. ”
Simon took the man’s hand, although hesitantly. “You have the advantage.”
“Madam Gautier has been keeping us informed of everything happening in Bayou Mambaloa, including the return of her granddaughter after a year spent in Atlanta.” Joe held out his hand to Holly. “Holly, it’s nice to finally meet you. I’ve heard so much about you.”
Holly shook her head. “I’m sorry, I’ve heard nothing about you.” She waved her hand around. “What is this place, and why are we here? And who else is here besides you?”
“Actually, this is my home. I’ve been working on it since I left the Marine Corps twenty years ago.
I’d had my fill of being around a lot of people after twenty-five years on active duty.
I spent some of my savings on an old boat I’d planned to strip and sell for salvage, but fell in love with her and made her my home.
” His face grew serious. “As for who else is here...” He met Holly’s grandmother’s gaze for a moment.
When she gave him an almost imperceptible shake of her head, he nodded, his lips pressing into a tight line.
“Well...” he continued. “You’ll see. Follow me.” Joe turned and led the way deeper into the ship, passing closed doors until he came to what might once have been the dining hall.
On one side of the dining hall, the tables were crowded with the kind of equipment used in a biological lab like the one Holly’s parents had worked in for years, with centrifuges, microscopes, PH meters, Bunsen burners, dry ovens and so much more.
“We didn’t have a separate room we could turn into a laboratory, so we erected a wall down the middle of the dining hall and filled one side with what we needed for the lab, but still had use of the other side for meals.”
“What are you studying here?” Holly asked.
Joe waved a hand toward the dining room. “I’ll let the other members of the team brief you on that.” He stepped back, allowing them to enter the dining hall, where a man and a woman wearing lab coats rose from a table.
The blood rushed from Holly’s head. She swayed and reached for Simon.
His arm came up around her and pulled her close, or she would have fallen.
“Mom? Dad?” Tears welled in Holly’s eyes, blurring her vision.
“Holly,” they both said as one and hurried forward.
Arms wrapped around her, pulling her into embraces she’d thought she would never experience again.
“What?” Holly sobbed. “Why? I thought you were dead.”
“Oh, honey.” Evangeline Gautier brushed the hair back from Holly’s forehead. “I’m so sorry. We couldn’t contact you. We had to be dead on all accounts to continue our work.”
Holly stood back, frowning. Her gut knotted tightly. “You let me believe you and Dad were dead.”
Her mother nodded. “After they shut down the facility, Paul was killed as a warning. We knew our work was jeopardized, and you were at risk. We thought it best if everyone believed we were dead.
“We staged our ‘death’ with a little help from an old friend,” her father tipped his head toward Joe, “and Maman.” He reached out and hugged his mother, Holly’s Mémère.
Holly backed away from the four of them, her gaze landing on her grandmother, who’d been complicit in the lie. “And you knew all this time?”
The Voodoo queen met her gaze and held it. “The less you knew and the more you believed they were dead, the more likely everyone else would believe it, too.”
Her mother reached out to capture her hands. “We knew you would find a way to support yourself and guessed you might leave the state to keep yourself safe.”
“Did you ever think that I might miss you?” Holly pressed a hand to her chest, a sob rising up her throat. “That your deaths would break my heart?” Tears spilled down her cheeks.
Simon moved closer, his hand resting at the small of her back. He didn’t try to pull her into his arms, but he was there for her.
Unlike her parents.
And her grandmother had been in on it all this time.
Holly’s eyes narrowed. “When I came to you about the possibility that I was cursed, you were the one who suggested I move away from Bayou Mambaloa. The apartment in Atlanta was your idea. A friend of yours, my fanny!”
Her grandmother nodded. “It worked, didn’t it?”
“And changing my name from Gautier to Hazard?”
Her Mémère shook her head. “That was all on you, but another stroke of genius.”
“It didn’t keep them from finding you,” her father said, “but it gave us time to continue our work and kept them from moving forward.”
Her mother exchanged a glance with her father. “We have to tell her everything.”
“Damn right, you do.” Holly crossed her arms over her chest, anger overshadowing the joy of seeing her parents alive. She’d get to the joy again, but the level of betrayal hurt.
“Come, take a seat,” her mother said. “We just made a pot of coffee, and we have fresh-baked cookies Joe made.”
Holly didn’t want to sit. Didn’t want to have coffee and cookies like any other day.
Her parents were alive!
And they’d lied to her for the last six months.
And her grandmother had lied.