Acts of Nature

I tie his hands up first?”
    “Only if you want to feed him yourself,” Buck said, a touch of condescension in his voice that made the other one smile.
    Wayne brought the can over to me and set it down on the floor a foot or so from my bound ankles.
    “Can you get me a fork?” I asked.
    “Yeah, right,” the kid said. “Somethin’ nice and sharp.” He turned and walked away.
    I stretched out and took the can and then shuffled on my knees to Sherry’s bedside and then with my fingers I gently fed a peach slice to her. At the taste of the sweet juice her lips parted like a weak fish and she suckled at it at first and then slightly opened her eyes and took the whole thing into her mouth. I waited for her to chew and swallow and then gave her another.
    “You’re a cop too, ain’t you, Freeman?”
    Buck was speaking, but I did not turn my eyes from Sherry’s.
    “You’ve got the look. That confidence thing like cops and prison guards got. I seen plenty of it over the years.”
    While Sherry ate I swallowed a couple of the peach slices myself. I had not eaten anything but a small piece of the chocolate in more than twenty-four hours and was thinking of my own strength.
    “I think Wayne here was right about what he heard when the lady said she was a cop. And I think you’re one too. You ain’t called her your wife or your honey or your fiancée.”
    I fed another slice to Sherry and one to myself. I was listening, just as Buck had obviously been doing. I may have underestimated him and that was a bad sign.
    “What I think, Officer Freeman, is that she’s your partner,” Buck said. “You all might have been stupid enough to be out here in the Glades during a hurricane, but I don’t believe that it was for no reason.”
    He paused again, maybe letting his thoughts catch up with him. It reminded me of the long, southern drawl used by Nate Brown, who never hurried his speech, but never said much that was just filler either. I found myself wondering whether they lived in the same area of southwest Collier County.
    “No, officer. I think you all know exactly what’s in that fucking room next door and that’s the reason you’re out here,” Buck said. “Nobody builds a bunker like that out in these parts without having something damn valuable to store inside. And the fact that we got two cops out here trying to get into it makes me believe that there are drugs involved. Bricks of cocaine? Bundles of pot? Stuff got air-dropped into the Glades and then pulled out by some group of dealers who are smart enough to store it out here until they got a buyer on the coast that can move it fast.”
    Again he took that pause, and when I looked up his face was in shadows but the light was on those of his young crew and they were more hang-mouth stunned than I was.
    “No shit! Buck,” Marcus said, a smile beginning to build in his eyes.
    “Whoa,” was all Wayne could say and if Buck’s scenario hadn’t included a couple of law enforcement officers, one near death and one tied up in the corner, the two of them would have high-fived each other.
    Still I didn’t react. I had to give Buck some credit. If I hadn’t already been inside the computer room next door, seen the digital readouts and odd collection of cables and wiring, the tale he was spinning might have made perfect sense to me too.
    “So whataya say, Officer Freeman? Am I right? You and your partner there doing a little recon work and got stuck in the storm?”
    This time I kept my eyes focused on the dark circles where Buck’s eyes could still not be seen in the shadow, but I knew he could see mine.
    “No. You’re one hundred percent wrong,” I said. It was an easy line to say convincingly because it was the truth.
    That childish hissing noise came from one of the boys behind him.
    “Yeah, right.”
    “Well, it don’t matter what you say now, officer. I’m thinking we got a big payday coming and when daybreak comes so we can find a way into that room, that’s what we’re gonna do come hell or high water,” he said and tossed Marcus the roll of tape.
    “Tape his hands back up,” he said to the boy.
    Marcus came over, swaggering a little now, and gave me a little chin nod, and I reacted instantly by crossing my wrists and offering them up to him.
    “So you ain’t such big shit after all, Mr. Law,” Marcus said, wrapping the tape around while I again flexed my tendons to keep the binding as loose as possible. But I had already won my