A Deal with Lucan Drycott

Chapter 5

By day sixty, I had spent a lot of money, and I felt like a thief in my own shopping.

I never bought too much at one time. That was the rule. If I bought a thousand blankets in one store, someone would ask questions. So I went to twenty different stores in three different towns. I bought blankets here, canned beans there, and fuel in small drums from a farm supply shop that did not ask what I was doing with it. Goldie came with me on weekends and wrote everything in her careful nurse handwriting.

“You have bought forty boxes of bandages,” she said, frowning. “Are you opening a hospital?”

“Maybe,” I said. “We will see.”

She gave me a long, worried look but did not push.

Everyone else thought I was crazy. My old coworkers whispered when I called to resign. A woman from my old church said she was praying for me. Caspian told people that I had a breakdown and was “resting.” He said it with such a sad, patient face that people patted his arm and brought him casseroles. I only found out because Goldie showed me a message from a mutual friend.

“He is telling everyone you are sick,” she said, angry for me.

“Let him,” I said. “It is easier if they think I am mad. No one wants to steal from a crazy woman.”

But some things I could not do alone. I needed a generator bigger than the one in the bunker. I needed more fuel stabilizer, a water filter system, thermal blankets, and a boat for the sea if the roads closed. I did not know the first thing about any of it. So on a gray Tuesday, I drove to a big marine supply yard on the edge of the harbor.

The yard was huge, and it smelled of salt, oil, and rope. Rows of boats sat on stands. Shelves reached the roof. I took a big cart and pushed it down the first aisle, reading my list.

Generator. Diesel stabilizer. Water filters. Thermal blankets. Flare guns.

I turned a corner and nearly crashed my cart into another one.

“Sorry,” I said.

“No problem,” said a deep voice.

I looked up, and up some more. The man in front of me was very tall. He had dark hair cut short, and a face that looked as if it had been carved from something hard. His eyes were gray and calm, and they did not smile. He wore a plain black jacket, and he stood the way soldiers stand, with weight even on both feet.

His cart was full. I looked at it, and my heart skipped.

Generator. Diesel stabilizer. Water filters. Thermal blankets. Flare guns.

It was the exact same list.

We both looked down at my cart. Then at his. Then back at each other. The silence went on a little too long.

“You are buying a lot of blankets,” he said at last.

“It gets cold,” I said.

“It is August.”

“It gets cold in my house.”

One corner of his mouth moved. It was not quite a smile. “You shop like someone who knows,” he said.

I lifted my chin. “And you shop like someone who is not surprised.”

Now we really stared. His eyes were sharp, as if he was reading me like a map, and I felt my skin go warm and tight. I wanted to run. But something stopped me. It was not fear. It was the strange feeling of meeting someone who was standing in the same dark room.

“Lucan Draycott,” he said and held out a big, rough hand.

I hesitated. In my first life, I shook hands with everyone and smiled at everyone, and every one of them took what they wanted. But this hand did not ask for anything. It only waited.

I took it. “Elowen Marsh.”

“Miss Marsh.” His grip was firm and warm. “Can I ask you something? Why do you need a hundred thermal blankets?”

I could have lied. I could have laughed it off. Instead, I asked, “Why do you?”

He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “I used to command a Navy rescue team. A year ago, our sensors under the sea began to pick up strange tremors. They came again and again, each one stronger. I wrote a report. I said something very big was coming, and soon.” His voice stayed flat. “My bosses said I was tired. They moved me out and split my team across the country. Now I run a salvage yard and wait.”

My throat went dry. Tremors under the sea. That was the beginning of the Sunless. The earth had cracked open somewhere far away, and the ash had covered the world.

“You believe it is coming,” I said quietly.

“I do not believe,” he said. “I know. I just do not know when.”

I felt the secret crawl up my tongue. Eighty-two days, I wanted to say. Twelve past four in the afternoon, on a Tuesday. But I closed my mouth hard.

“You are very calm,” I said instead.

“So are you.” He tilted his head. “You know something I do not. I can see it. You are hiding it well, but it is there.”

I looked him dead in the eye. “If I told you, you would not believe me.”

“Try me.”

“Not today.”

He studied my face a moment longer. Then he nodded, once, like a man agreeing to a small trade. “Fair enough.”

We walked to the front of the yard together, our carts side by side. He told me he owned a dockyard two miles up the harbor and had a big warehouse with a strong lock. I told him about Lantern Point, the cliff, and the little private dock at the bottom that no one used.

“I have a boat,” he said. “A good one. But no safe place to keep her.”

“I have a safe place,” I said. “But no boat.”

“That sounds like a deal,” said Lucan.

We stopped at the counter. The clerk looked at our carts and then at the two of us, confused. We both paid in cash and said nothing.

Outside, the wind was rising, and the sea smelled of rain. Lucan loaded the last box into his truck and turned to me.

“Miss Marsh,” he said. “I do not trust easily. I want you to know that.”

“Neither do I.”

“Good.” He nodded. “Then we will understand each other.”

I watched his black truck leave the lot. My heart was beating fast, and I did not know why. I only knew I had just made my first deal in this new life. It was small and practical. It meant nothing.

I told myself that three times on the drive home.

When I reached Lantern Point, my phone buzzed on the passenger seat. It was the unknown number again. This time the message was short.

I know about the money, Elowen. We need to talk.

Under it, a second message came right away. It was from Caspian.

I am at your gate.

I looked up through the windshield. At the end of the long drive, a tall man stood with his hands on the iron bars, staring at my house.