Deadly Pursuit

14

“Terrific lunch.” Jack polished his mouth with a paper napkin. “Steve, you’re a lucky man. Not only is your wife beautiful, she’s also a hell of a cook.”

Kirstie showed him a cool smile. “Cheeseburgers aren’t exactly gourmet fare.”

She was seated across the patio from Jack, her tray balanced in her lap, her suntanned legs stretched lazily along the chaise longue. Sometime earlier she had kicked off her sandals; her bare toes wiggled. Jack thought she had cute feet.

“Ordinary cheeseburgers-no.” He enjoyed taunting her with his phony courtesy, his lying compliments. “But yours are something special. What’s that sauce you put on them?”

“Ketchup.”

“Oh, come on, there was more to it than that. Some secret ingredient. Am I right?”

Her shoulders lifted. “Dash of Tabasco.”

“The master stroke.”

She looked away, a muscle in her cheek ticking angrily.

“I think you’re embarrassing her,” Steve said through a mouthful of potato chips. “She’s not accustomed to such rave reviews.”

“Well, she should be. Treat her right, Stevie, or you never know. I just might steal her away.”

Kirstie turned in his direction again. Her eyes were two blue slits.

She was not embarrassed, of course. Jack knew that. She hated him, feared him, and she wanted him off the island, out of her life. Well, he could hardly blame her.

The sun beat down. Flies buzzed, droning their insect songs. Anastasia, curled at Jack’s feet, burred in deep sleep.

Jack was glad they’d chosen to eat outdoors. The house was stifling, claustrophobic. It felt like a cage. Memories jumped at him from every corner-good memories, but tough to face now, as he pondered the problem of what to do about the Gardners.

The patio felt safer. Here he could smell the flowers and smile at the blue sky. Surrounded by beautiful distractions, he hardly even had to look at Steve… or at Steve’s wife.

But it was hard not to look at Kirstie. She was perfect. She was exactly his type.

He studied her as she finished her sandwich. A slender woman, not fashion-model tall, but perfectly proportioned. The teasing breeze had thrown her hair into lovely disarray. It tumbled across her shoulders-thin, gently rounded shoulders naked save for the tank top’s straps, the smooth skin dusted with soft freckles.

He liked the graceful curve where her neck met her collarbone, liked the way her skin stretched tight over the bone, liked the thinness and fragility of the clavicle itself, delicate as a wishbone, so easily snapped. And below it, above the yellow tank top, a vee of tanned cleavage that drew his gaze inexorably downward to her small, firm breasts, the nipples poking pertly at the thin fabric…

A slow shudder passed through him like a current of electricity, leaving a tingling numbness in his extremities. Abruptly he was hot and dizzy.

“If you don’t mind”-he heard a cheerful, buoyant voice, realized it was his own-“I think I’ll avail myself of the facilities.”

Gently he dislodged his feet from under Anastasia without waking her, then rose from the patio chair. He did not look at Kirstie again.

Leaving the patio, he hurried down the hall to the bathroom and shut the door. The latch slipped into place with a soft snick.

He lowered his head, exhaling a fluttery breath. All morning he’d fought to suppress the impulses raging in him like fever. He’d endured breakfast with the Gardners, then Steve’s endless guided tour of the house, then meaningless chitchat about old times, and finally lunch.

The interludes with Steve hadn’t been so bad. Almost pleasant, in fact. It was good to recall old times, the summer days on the island, the invigorating sense of freedom and expanding horizons he had known in his youth. Steve was one of the few friends Jack had ever known in his active, extroverted, yet ultimately unsocial existence.

Which made it all the more difficult to contemplate what he might have to do.

He didn’t want to… hurt Steve. Didn’t want their friendship to end… that way.

But he wasn’t sure he had any choice.

Turning in slow circles, looking blankly at the room around him, he considered his situation.

At breakfast Steve had told him that he and Kirstie hadn’t watched television, listened to the radio, or read a newspaper in two weeks. For the moment, then, he was safe; the Gardners suspected nothing. But once they left the island, they would learn he was a fugitive. They would call the police, report that he’d been on Pelican Key only a short time earlier. The search would narrow, the net tighten. There was little chance he could get away.

Unless he had transportation. Something faster than the little runabout, and with a longer range. Something like the thirty-foot sportfisher that would arrive at the island tomorrow, piloted by a man named Pice.

Steve had mentioned the boat while they were talking on the beach. The Black Caesar.

Jack stopped turning. Motionless, intrigued, he focused his gaze inward on the slowly materializing outline of a plan.

A vessel thirty feet long would carry a fair quantity of fuel. Probably one hundred fifty gallons. At its maximum cruising speed, say thirty knots, it would burn roughly ten gallons per hour, allowing for a range of four hundred fifty miles.

The boat could get him to Andros Island, at the edge of the Bahamian archipelago, in seven hours. From there he could proceed southeast around Snap Point and lose himself among the seven hundred islands in the chain.

He would take the runabout with him. Having hidden the Black Caesar in some isolated cove, he could use the tender to make short excursions to more populous areas. He would put a new name on the sportfisher, maybe repaint the brightwork and make other alterations. Meanwhile he’d drop a note in the mail to Teddy Lunt and set the wheels in motion for the creation of his new identity.

Slowly he nodded.

Yes, it really could work. Everything he’d planned to do on Pelican Key, he could accomplish just as easily in the Bahamas-if he had the boat.

But to get it, he first had to put Steve and Kirstie out of the way.

His mind recoiled from the most obvious solution.

Killing Kirstie would be no hardship; quite the contrary. But Steve Gardner, good old Stevie, once his best friend…

Desperately he groped for an alternative.

Knock him out? Strike a blow to his skull from behind? Unconscious, he could be bound with the mooring line from the runabout or with some other rope.

Jack studied the idea for a long moment, then reluctantly discarded it.

Too risky. In the movies it looked easy, but in real life it was hard to drop a man with a single blow. And if Steve failed to go down, Jack would have to fight him. Jack was in better condition, but that might not matter. In prison he had seen scrawny, underfed cons defeat bruisers twice their size. Adrenaline could do astonishing things for a man.

No, half measures were inadequate. Evasions were pointless. There was only one sure way to incapacitate his friend, and that was to use the knife.

One quick thrust, and Steve’s throat would open up like a torn paper bag.

Jack bent forward at the waist and pressed his palms to the wall above the commode, his fingertips squeezed white against the smooth ceramic squares. He stared at the tiles, at the complicated pattern of inlaid pieces, but he was not seeing the pictures they made, was not seeing anything in this room.

It was the future he saw, the future that had been sealed by fate, as firmly as if by an oracle’s prophesy, since the moment when he and Steve shook hands on the beach at sunrise.

He didn’t want to do it. But he had no choice.

Unless…

“I can run,” he whispered. “Run right now.”

If he left the island immediately, headed south in the runabout, then went to ground somewhere in the Lower Keys…

The Gardners might not hear of the manhunt until they returned to Islamorada tomorrow afternoon. He would have a twenty-four-hour head start.

But suppose they learned the news sooner. Suppose his abrupt departure raised suspicions in their minds. He would lose his small but crucial advantage.

And there was one other consideration not to be neglected.

Kirstie.

If he left now, he would never have her.

Jack pivoted away from the wall, faced his reflection in the mirror above the basin. Asked himself if his need for Kirstie Gardner outweighed his friendship with Steve. Was his obsession that strong? His compulsions so irresistible?

He was mildly shocked to know that the answer was yes.

He looked away. His face in the silvered glass was too hard to watch.

All right, then. He would do it. Kill them both. Steve first, Kirstie later. Find a way to separate them, then feed his knife their blood.

Jack relieved himself, washed and dried his hands, and ran the damp towel over his face. Finally he felt calm and composed once more.

The Gardners were carrying their trays inside when he returned to the patio. He picked up his own tray and followed them into the kitchen.

“Hey, Steve,” he said casually, “you have any snorkeling gear around?”

“Sure. Kirstie and I have been out to the reef twice.”

“I’d like to try that. Go skin-diving on the reef again-like we used to do. You up for it?”

“Sounds great.”

“Kirstie, how about you?”

She ran the plates under a stream of hot water. “I’d rather not.”

Good. Jack had been hoping she would say no.

“Let me get the gear,” Steve said. “Have you got a bathing suit?” Jack shook his head. “You can borrow one of mine. I’ll be right back.”

He disappeared down the hall in the direction of the bedroom. Jack, left alone with Kirstie, felt the familiar itch in his palms.

She leaned over the counter, toweling off the plates, her back to him. He took a step toward her, put insouciant friendliness in his voice.

“Want some help with that?”

“No, thank you.”

“I can wash the glasses.”

“I’ll do it.”

“You’re sure?”

“Very.”

The plate in her hand squeaked. She was rubbing hard.

“You don’t like me,” he said softly, “do you?”

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

“If you got to know me, you’d feel different.”

She turned. Gave him a hard, level stare. “No, I wouldn’t.”

Blue eyes. So deeply, consummately blue. They stabbed the hot, impulsive part of him like ice picks.

He was conscious of the knife in his pocket, the blade that would snap free at the prick of his thumbnail, the wicked triangular point …

One second. That was all it would take to pin her against the counter, slam the spear blade into her soft throat.

“Are you… feeling all right?” she asked slowly, watching his face.

He needed to get away from her. Right now. He took a faltering step toward the doorway.

“Just a little gas.” He managed a smile. “Must’ve been that Tabasco sauce.”

He left her. Went through the dining room, out the French doors, onto the patio. Inhaled the calming fragrance of roses.

Anastasia, stirring from sleep, trotted over and licked his hand. He scratched her ears.

“Good girl. That’s a good, good girl.”

The dog mewed softly, and Jack thought of Ronni Tyler in her death throes, whimpering with her last hissing exhalation of breath.

It would be better with Kirstie. The best so far. Even without the syringe, it would be perfect.

Soon, he promised himself.

He let his mouth relax into a smile.