4 Twas the Bite Before Christmas by Lee Charles Kelley

Author:Lee Charles Kelley [Kelley, Lee Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

22

I also remember I was cold and I was wet and I was underwater. Salt water. And the back of my head was on fire with pain. Oh, did I mention? I couldn’t breathe.

Slippery hands were reaching for me and voices were saying something I barely remember:

“Grab his hands,” I think someone said.

“Help me get him up on the dock,” said someone else.

I was pulled out of the water and found Bailey and an old man in a yellow rain slicker hauling me up onto the slippery planks. I lay there and coughed and sput-tered and tried to catch my breath.

There were other words, of the “are you all right, Jack?” variety, which I didn’t focus on. All I could think about was how cold I was and my confusion as to what the hell happened.

“What the hell happened?” I said, looking up at Bailey.

“You don’t remember?”

I told him the last thing I remembered was getting

190

LEE CHARLES KELLEY

out of the car. He was puzzled, but explained that we’d gone down to the Andilar together. That he had identi-fied himself as a police officer and asked for permission to come aboard. There was no answer so we boarded the boat, heard some noise coming from the hold, went down the stairs, looked around, didn’t find anything, then heard footsteps up on deck, went back up the stairs, with me in the lead, and I was hit from behind.

“You don’t remember any of this?”

“Nope.” I rubbed the back of my head. “He must have hit me pretty hard. God my head hurts. What’d he use?”

“An oar.”

“Interesting. So then what happened?”

“You went down like a stone, though you scratched his face as you fell. I drew my weapon and then a woman hit me. I don’t know what with. And I didn’t totally lose consciousness when I got hit, though you apparently did.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That would explain why I don’t remember anything. So then what happened?”

“Then they dumped us overboard.”

“Did you get a look at either of them?”

“Just the one who hit you. It was definitely Chris Bright. I didn’t see the woman, though I remember thinking it might’ve been another friend of Karl’s.”

“Why do you say that?”

“She had a Russian accent.”

“Really? That might’ve been Ivana.” I explained that maybe, since the Russians had no luck finding Karl through me, they might have sent her after Chris Bright.

“Sounds reasonable. Anyway, I did manage to grab

’TWAS THE BITE BEFORE CHRISTMAS 191

the oar out of Bright’s hand.” He pointed to an oar on the dock.

“Good. It might be evidence.”

“Of course it’s evidence.”

“No, I mean it may be the murder weapon. Ugh!”

“No kidding? Don’t try to stand up yet, Jack.”

“I’m freezing my ass off down here.”

“Okay,” he said to the older man as he gripped me under one arm, “help me get him to the car.”

“I don’t need any help walking . . .” I said as they pulled me up, “. . . Jesus, it’s cold . . . just getting to my feet.”

“Are you sure you can make it to the car?”

“Yeah.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.