Dexter Is Dead

TWENTY-FIVE

I waited. It’s a lot harder than it sounds. I could imagine a thousand things happening up on the bridge, and only one of them was good. What was taking so much time? Was there a guard up there? There must have been or Brian wouldn’t have jumped over like that. Did Brian surprise him? If so, why was it taking so long? Maybe he was enjoying himself, making it last a little longer than necessary. Maybe the guard had surprised Brian. It could be that the boat was about to explode with shouts and shots, and here I was crouching at the bow like an idiot.

And if that did happen, I wasn’t ready to offer even token resistance. I’d left my fillet knife in its sheath, so I wouldn’t cut myself climbing up. It was still there. I pulled it out and held it ready. It didn’t seem very dangerous, not compared to six or seven men with assault rifles. And why did the grip feel so slippery? Almost as if my hands were sweating, which was silly. I was Dark Dexter, Cold Killer. My hands didn’t sweat, even now, when Brian was really taking far too long and it was almost certain that something had gone drastically wrong.

Just when I had persuaded myself to follow Brian and take a look, he appeared again, waving happily, the fillet knife in his hand still dripping red. He motioned me up; clutching my knife anxiously, I crawled up the slope and onto the bridge as quickly as I could, grumbling the whole way. He didn’t have to look so pleased with himself. One guard, big deal — and he had clearly taken his time and had a little fun, while I huddled abjectly below.

I pulled myself up and over the bridge windscreen. It really wouldn’t screen out much wind; it was only around a foot high. But at least that made it easier to climb over, and I did. Brian stood a few feet away, looking fondly down at a crumpled body. It had fallen onto a cushioned area about knee-high off the deck that was, astonishingly, right next to an actual honest-to-god hot tub, big enough for four people at a time. I was still gaping at it when Brian leaned over and took my elbow.

“There’s only one guard outside below us,” he whispered, nodding toward the stern of the yacht. “He’s standing right at the foot of the stairs.” He dropped to his knees and motioned me down with him, and together we crawled to the edge of the bridge, where a flight of molded steps led to the main deck ten feet below.

I dropped to my belly and peeked over. At first I didn’t see anything. Maybe he’d gone inside to pee or something. Then he coughed, shuffled his feet, and I saw him — right below me, hugging the shadows and looking around vigilantly.

I pulled back and put my head next to Brian’s. “I thought there’d be two,” I whispered.

Brian shrugged, very difficult when you’re lying flat on your stomach. “Raul must be very overconfident,” he whispered back.

I looked over again. There was still only one guard. I slid back and Brian raised an eyebrow at me. My eyes fell on the padded bench beside the hot tub. I crawled over and stood up, grabbing one of the cushions, a heavy, canvas-covered thing about three feet square. I beckoned to Brian and handed it to him. “Drop this over here, onto the main deck,” I whispered, pointing to my left.

He understood right away, taking the cushion and moving silently over to the rail. He looked at me expectantly and I once more dropped to my belly and slid forward to the steps. I held my knife ready, took a deep breath, and waved to Brian.

Right away I heard the cushion thump onto the deck below. It was followed immediately by a muffled, “Conyo,” from the guard, directly below me — all according to plan. And now the plan said the guard would step around the corner of the cabin to the deck along the rail, and look to see what had made the sound, and I would be down and on him.

But the idiot on the main deck clearly didn’t know the script; he leaned forward instead and stared upward, right at me, and I barely pulled back in time to escape being seen. “ ’Tonio, pendejo,” he whispered loudly. “¿Qué es eso?”

’Tonio, of course, did not answer, since he was fully occupied with being dead at the moment. I waited, feeling my palms sweat again. Until tonight I’d never had sweaty palms, and now twice. I didn’t like it, and I didn’t like being the kind of nervous Nellie who had sweaty palms. But I also didn’t seem to have a choice. I waited, feeling my hands go slick and disliking myself. At last I heard “Conyo” again, and then a light shuffling of feet — moving away from me.

I inched forward. The shadowed spot below was empty. I rose to a crouch and slid down the stairs as quickly as possible, stepping into the darkness at the corner of the cabin. A moment later I heard a few more whispered syllables of what was probably profanity, and then the cushion Brian had dropped came marching around the corner.

In a fit of tidy pique, the sentry had picked up the cushion, probably to carry it back up to the hot tub and, in the process, berate ’Tonio for his sloppiness. But alas for Neatness and Tongue-lashing everywhere, he did not make it up the stairs. Because by holding the cushion in front of him like that he had provided the ideal blind spot for Dexter, and before the guard could do more than blink twice I slipped behind him and then I was on him, one arm tight around his throat and my knife diving into him.

He was very strong, and he nearly broke loose, but I held on tight, twisting the blade out and plunging it back in, and he gave out only a single croak, muffled by my forearm on his throat, and then he went limp.

I held him tight until I was very sure he was absolutely no-kidding dead. Then I lowered him carefully to the deck and straightened slowly, quite pleased with myself. I had taken my turn, and I had done it just as well as my brother — a little better, in fact, since I hadn’t dawdled to enjoy myself like he had. No, I had been pure lethal efficiency, and a true shining example of how these things should be done.

I was only halfway up to a standing position and still congratulating myself when the cabin door beside me opened outward and I heard a new male voice whisper, “Ah. Una meada buena es como—¿Qué?”

A shame I never learned what a good piss was like. But as the new man stepped out from the cabin and closed the door, he saw me, and all thoughts of poetic rhapsody on the subject of piss left him. Luckily for me, he spent a full two seconds gaping, which would have been more than enough time for me to silence him forever—

— except that as I stepped forward to do that I stumbled on the body at my feet and dropped to one knee, and I could only watch as the pisser scrabbled at the assault rifle that hung from his shoulder on a sling.

All the guard had to do was move the rifle into firing position and pull the trigger, and Dexter was as dead as the dodo. But Time slid down into a sludge-muddled crawl and the sentry seemed to be taking forever at this oh-so-simple task. It was like watching an old silent comedy run in slow motion as he fumbled with the strap, broke a fingernail on the stock, and smacked his own forehead with the gun barrel, jittering the whole time with a sluggish but frenzied stiff-fingered anxiety, his tongue stuck out one side of his mouth, and I watched helplessly as he awkwardly but finally brought the gun slowly around and scrabbled for the trigger, and just before he found it a dark shape dropped from above and drove him down to the deck and a moment later he found his voice at last, just in time to give a final gurgle, kick his legs, and go still.

“Well,” Brian whispered from his crouch above the newly dead sentry. “Apparently there were three guards after all.”

“So it seems,” I whispered back crossly. “You sure it isn’t four?”

We crouched there like that for a minute, just to be sure no one had heard the thump of Brian and the guard hitting the deck. It had seemed awfully loud, even in my slow-motion stupefaction. But apparently Raul and the rest of his crew were sound sleepers. There was no outcry, rush of feet, sound of the trumpet, nothing. So we left the two late members of the night watch where they’d fallen and took a quick and silent tour of the deck, avoiding the windows — they were too big to call them portholes. When we were done I stepped over to the rail and leaned out. The little rainstorm that had made all this possible was fading now, and I could see Deborah quite clearly, a few feet off the bow and hanging on to the anchor line with my boathook. I waved to her and she let go of the line, put the boathook down, and pulled herself along the side of the boat, back to the stern.

I stepped down onto the diving platform on the back end of the boat. Brian was just behind me on the deck, watching for signs of unwanted life. The superyacht’s launch was already there, tied to a cleat and bobbing gently behind us, and I peeked into the cockpit. It looked like it cost more than a three-bedroom, two-bath house. It had a control panel that Captain Kirk would have felt at home with, plush seats, and even a small step-down cabin. The keys were in it, dangling from the ignition beside the wheel. Maybe Raul really was overconfident. Maybe having a boat filled with heavily armed men did that.

I heard a soft swirl of water and Debs came around the corner. She pulled my boat in beside the launch and I grabbed the bowline from her and tied off so my boat would drift about ten feet back, where it wouldn’t bump the yacht and send an unwanted alarm.

Debs grabbed her shotgun and scurried up and onto the yacht’s deck like she was famished and late for dinner. “What the fuck took you so long,” she whispered fiercely.

“Traffic,” I told her.

She didn’t seem to think that was funny, and she kept her scowl. But before she could charge up onto the yacht and start shooting everyone, Brian made a psst! sound from his spot above us on the deck. I turned to him and he pointed. “The bag,” he whispered. I must have looked blank, because he stepped quickly down and pulled my boat back in. He hopped into it and grabbed a heavy canvas bag from the bow, next to where he’d been standing as we approached the yacht. He slung it over a shoulder and brushed past me again, murmuring, “Ee-bahng’s toys.”

I wasn’t sure what he wanted with Ivan’s bomb bag at this point. It seemed to me that we should save the explosions for the cleanup, after we’d found the kids. As I now knew quite well, bombs are loud, messy things, and I didn’t like them. I also didn’t trust them — they might go off at any moment for no rational reason, and it seemed foolish to carry them into a situation where shots might well be fired in anger.

But Brian had made up his mind, and anyway he was already gone, up onto the yacht’s deck. So I shrugged it off and climbed up after him, and Debs followed me back to the door that led into the main cabin, where Brian waited impatiently. He pulled open the door and stepped carefully inside, and a moment later I followed.

The room was lit with only a couple of very dim lights, but even so, I had a very strange moment in which I thought I’d gone through a wormhole instead of a door, and ended up miles away in the penthouse of a luxury hotel. The room seemed too big to fit on the boat, and it was impossibly opulent. Except for the long heavily tinted window along the sides, the walls were lined with gilded mirrors. As Brian had said, there was a kitchenette in the corner at the far end of the room and the stairs down to the cabins beside it. But there was also a formal dining area, with low-hanging candelabra and a heavy golden table and chairs, and an absurd number of overstuffed glove-leather couches and chairs, and a huge flat-screen TV.

There was more rich furnishing than I could possibly take in at one glance, and I turned slowly to see it all, but Brian saw me gawking and grabbed my arm, shaking his head at me with disappointment. We cat-footed toward the stairs, Brian in the lead, Debs jostling me for second place.

At the head of the stairs Brian paused, peering downward intently. He motioned with one hand for us to wait and carefully put the canvas bag of Toys to one side. Then he drew his pistol and slunk silently down the steps. There were only five or six stairs and I could see my brother’s head and shoulders quite clearly as he edged forward a few feet, paused, and then backed up again. He glanced up and beckoned, and before I could move Deborah bolted past me and onto the stairs with her gun out and pointed up.

As I joined them in the hallway at the foot of the stairs, Debs and Brian were having an animated mime argument. Debs was pointing to the door on the right, and Brian was making slow-down gestures and apparently urging caution. Debs screwed her face into a determined frown, lowered her head, and stepped to the right-side door, hand out to open it. I stepped over quickly and grabbed her arm and she looked up at me with fierce resentment. But I just held up one finger, then used it to tap my ear. She stared at me with blank hostility, until I leaned forward and placed my ear on the door.

As I listened intently for some kind of telltale sound, Debs put her own ear on the door beside me. As if that had been the cue, we were rewarded by the sound of a thunderous snore from the other side of the door, followed almost immediately by another, softer and higher-pitched.

Debs jerked her head back from the door, and I straightened, too, in time to see her crossing the hall and putting her ear on the door opposite. She listened for only a second and then jerked upright so suddenly that I thought someone had poked her through the keyhole with a knife. But her face, even more frighteningly, was covered with a huge smile. She pointed excitedly at the door and mouthed, Nicholas! And then, without waiting to explain what she’d heard that made her think her son was in the room, she shoved her shotgun into my hands, grabbed the doorknob, and pushed the door open.

Brian looked at me with a face full of panic and jumped forward to stop her, but he was too late. Debs was already in the room and moving rapidly across a thick shag carpet. My brother stepped back from the door, glancing about wildly. I followed Debs into the room.

The kids were there, all of them. Cody and Astor were on the nearest bed, sound asleep and snuggled up together. Lily Anne and Nicholas, the babies, were on the other bed. Nicholas was kicking his feet and gurgling, the sound that had clued his mother in that he was here.

And lying next to the two babies, also asleep, was a stocky young woman. She had dark hair and wore a pink flannel nightgown, which I thought was an odd touch for a drug lord’s nanny. But it would be far too much to hope that she would remain asleep for long. I could think of only one sure way to keep her quiet while we took the children and ran for home. So as Deborah carefully scooped up Nicholas, I took my fillet knife from its sheath and stepped forward — and an iron hand clamped onto my arm.

“No!” Debs said in a ferocious whisper. “Not like that!”

I looked at her with exasperation. Of all the times to be saddled with empathy, this was one of the worst. One tiny peep from the sleeping woman and we were all dead — but no, I couldn’t make her permanently quiet. “Then how?” I whispered back.

She just shook her head and nodded at Cody and Astor. “Wake them,” she said softly.

I stepped around Deborah to the bed where Cody and Astor lay sleeping. I leaned the shotgun against the wall beside the bed and put a hand on Astor’s shoulder, shaking her gently. She grumbled, frowned, and then opened her eyes. She blinked at me several times, then shot straight up in bed.

“Dexter!” Astor said excitedly.

I waved frantically for her to be quiet, and she bit her lip and nodded. I shook Cody, only twice, and he sat right up and looked at me, fully awake. “Knew you’d come,” Cody said, and it was a mark of his excitement that he actually said it loud enough to hear.

“Quick as you can,” I told them, soft but urgent. “And be quiet! Up the stairs and out — my boat is tied to the back. Go!” They blinked at me, then at each other, so I said it again. “Go! Now!” and Astor jumped up, grabbed Cody’s hand, and the two of them hurried out.

Deborah was standing impatiently in the middle of the room, her pistol in one hand and Nicholas in the other. I moved around her and back to the other bed, where Lily Anne slumbered on. She lay quietly beside the sleeping nanny, sucking fiercely on a pacifier. I bent over with all the quiet care I could muster and slid a hand under the baby’s head, then the other one under her bottom. I lifted her slowly, carefully, and I had her nearly halfway up before she grumbled and spit out the pacifier. I held my breath, but Lily Anne settled right back into sleep. I looked down onto the bed to retrieve the fallen pacifier, and saw right away that it would not be possible.

The pacifier had fallen right onto the nanny.

And the nanny was now awake, staring up at me with very wide-open brown eyes.

And then her eyes went wider and she opened her mouth just as wide. I juggled Lily Anne quickly to my left arm and clamped my right hand tightly on the nanny’s throat. “Silencio,” I whispered, sounding as deadly as I could. “No un sonido.”

Her mouth slapped shut and she nodded vigorously. I stepped back, keeping my eyes on the nanny, and handed Lily Anne to Deborah. “Take them to the boat,” I said.

Deborah tucked Lily Anne into her other arm, but only took a step backward. I glanced at her and saw that she was preparing to argue about running to the boat. Before either of us could say a word, Brian stuck his head in the door. “What is keeping you?” he whispered savagely. And then, “Oh, for shit’s sake,” as he saw the nanny staring at us with gigantic eyes. “She’ll scream any second,” Brian said, and he stepped toward her, pulling out his knife.

But he was wrong. The nanny didn’t scream. She didn’t say a word. She looked at my brother approaching with knife at the ready, and calmly reached under her pillow, drew out a revolver, and fired point-blank at Brian.

I could not see where, but I was sure he was hit. Even so, he leaped forward with incredible quickness. Before the woman could fire again, Brian’s left hand was pinning her gun to the bed, and his knife was in her throat. She thrashed briefly; I couldn’t see what Brian did, but his shoulders bunched with effort and the thrashing stopped abruptly. Brian stood, much slower than he’d jumped onto her, and there was blood all over his hands, the front of his shirt, his pants. Throat wounds can spray horribly, and most of the mess had to be from the nanny. Most of it, but not all.

As Brian straightened he swayed slightly and put a hand to his abdomen, just above and to the right of his navel.

It’s funny how the mind works, isn’t it? It might have been because I was stunned by the incredibly loud bang of the gunshot in this small room, but whatever the reason, my head was spinning. And for half a second it flashed through my mind that Raul would need a new nanny, and I pictured what the ad would say. Nanny wanted. Must be comfortable with Spanish, English, and small arms. But Brian wobbled again and I shoved the thought away.

“Brian,” I said.

That’s all I got out. From somewhere outside the room I heard a shout, and then another. A gunshot in close quarters is a remarkably effective alarm clock, and the nanny’s shot had been enough to wake the other guards. “Debs, go!” I said, and this time she didn’t argue. She spun on her heel, a baby under each arm, and sprinted for my boat.

“Brian,” I said, moving to his side. “Are you all right?” It was a stupid question, since I knew he’d been shot, which is not “all right” no matter how you care to define it.

But Brian just gave me a pained look. “I believe we may have lost the element of surprise,” he said. He grinned feebly, and I was worried enough not to notice what a terrible job he did.

“Can you make a run for it?” I asked him.

“I don’t see very many choices,” he said. He dropped his knife to the floor and pulled out his pistol. “I think we’re going to want that,” he said, nodding at Deborah’s shotgun. I grabbed it, racked a shot into the chamber, and we hurried out of the room.

The moment we stepped into the hall I was very glad the shotgun was ready to go, because the door opposite, where we’d heard the snores, was inching cautiously open. Without bothering to aim, I pointed the gun at the door and fired.

The noise was deafening, far beyond the sound the nanny’s pistol had made. But the result was truly gratifying. A hole the size of a basketball appeared in the door as it slammed partway open and then bounced shut again. I turned and hurried up the stairs.

Brian was already there, kneeling beside the top of the steps, rummaging in the canvas bag of Ee-bahng’s toys. He was moving stiffly, obviously in pain, but other than that he looked like he was enjoying himself. “I knew these would come in handy,” he said. He pulled out a chunk of something grayish-brown, about the size and shape of a brick, and held it up happily. “Ivan did very good work,” he said. He pointed to what looked like a calculator taped to the side. “Simple to use, and very effective.” He poked at the calculator with a finger. “Just set the timer, and—”

I heard more noises below, voices raised and clearly urging each other to get up and get ’er done. “Brian,” I said, but he ignored me. I crouched down, half-behind my brother, shotgun ready.

“One, two,” Brian said. He threw the brick, hard, down into the hall. He turned his head toward me, almost certainly to say, “Three.” And he might have said it. But if so, it was drowned out by the enormous roar of an explosion, a huge bright ball of noise and smoke and flame and debris that lifted Brian up and flung him right at me, and I went over backward and into a dark red-tinted place where there was no light and no sound except a terrible painful too-loud ringing noise that wouldn’t stop.

And I lay there. At first I couldn’t move, and then I just didn’t. I couldn’t think at all, not even the simplest thought, and apparently you need to think in order to move.

So I just lay quietly. I don’t know how long. It could not have been as long as it seemed. Eventually I became aware of something heavy on top of me. Then I had my first thought, which was: It shouldn’t be on top of me. I let that ring for a while, and then slowly, syllable by syllable, I added: I should move it off.

I did. I shoved at the heavy thing. It slid to one side and I sat up. That made my head hurt a lot. For a few more moments I just sat there and clutched my head. I still couldn’t hear anything, but if I opened an eye I could see things now. When my head didn’t hurt as much I opened my eyes.

I looked at the heavy thing. It looked a lot like it used to be Brian. It wasn’t Brian anymore. It didn’t move and it didn’t breathe. It just lay where I had pushed it and watched the ceiling with calm, wide-open eyes. His face was frozen into a half smile, that same awful awkward terrible fake grin plastered forever now onto that face that looked so much like mine.

I just stared until the word came into my head. Dead. Brian was dead. My brother was gone and I would never have another one. Dead.

I felt a small rush of wind on my face and I turned to where the stairs had been a few minutes ago. I still couldn’t hear anything but the ringing noise, and I couldn’t see the stairs anymore. Instead there was just a lot of smoke. A few tiny flames flickered under it, down very low. They were pretty. I watched them for a while. My head was pounding and it felt like it was full of thick dark mud, and I couldn’t think of anything at all, not right now, so I just watched the small twitching flames under the great bloom of smoke.

Then something moved out of the smoke.

At first it was just a dim shape in the hall below, a slightly darker shadow in the surrounding darkness. It moved slowly toward me, gradually taking on the shape of a person. Slowly, one careful big cat step at a time, the shape came out of the smoke until I could see what it was.

It was a man. He was average height and build. He had dark black hair and a smooth olive complexion. It didn’t make sense, but he was wearing only a pair of dark green boxer shorts. Why would somebody dress like that? I frowned and shook my head to clear it, but it didn’t work, and it didn’t change the picture. The man still wore nothing but green boxers, and he still came forward. He had several pounds of gold chain around his neck, some of it with large and gaudy gems attached. He looked at me, and then he smiled. That didn’t make sense, either. I didn’t know this man. Why would he smile?

But slowly, as he took one more tiger-smooth step toward me, another word formed in my brain: Raul.

I thought that over. It was hard to do, but I tried, and I thought of something about Raul. That word was a name. I knew something about that name, but I didn’t know this man. Was it his name?

And then he raised his hand. It had a pistol in it, and I remembered, and I knew why he was smiling. And I was right, because as he aimed the pistol right at me his smile got bigger. I watched him, trying to remember what I was supposed to do. I knew I should do something, but with the pounding in my head I couldn’t think of it. Say something? Maybe ask him not to shoot me? Or did it involve movement of some kind? So hard to think…

Just before the man pulled the trigger, I remembered something else. Guns can hurt you. Stay away from them. And at the very last instant I thought, Run!

I couldn’t run. I was still sitting down. But I rolled to one side and somewhere very far away I heard a tiny muffled bang!

Something hit my shoulder very hard, as hard as if somebody had smashed me with a metal baseball bat. I felt my mouth go open, but if I made a sound I couldn’t hear it. But the pain did something. It made my brain start to work just a little. I knew I had to move again, get away from the man with the gun, and I began to crawl away from the stairway.

It was very hard. The shoulder that had been hit didn’t work. Neither did the arm hanging from it. I pulled myself along the floor with the other arm, and my brain was working even better, because I remembered that I had guns, too. If I could find one I could shoot Raul. That way he couldn’t shoot me again.

I raised my head and looked. The big explosion had flung everything back, away from the stairs. Far away, over by the door that led out onto the deck, I saw the heavy canvas bag that had caused so much trouble, and beside it I saw what had to be the shotgun. If I could get that, I could shoot the man.

I crawled harder, faster. But I hadn’t gone very far when something grabbed my ankle and yanked and flipped me onto my back.

The man with the gun stood above me, pointing at me. Raul. He was staring down at me like I was a stain on the carpet. He looked very dangerous for somebody wearing only green boxers and a lot of gold chains. And then he smiled again. He squatted down beside me. I could see his mouth moving, but I couldn’t hear anything. He cocked his head, waiting for me to say something. When I didn’t, he frowned and poked my hurt shoulder with his gun.

The pain was enormous. I opened my mouth and I heard a strange, animal noise coming from far away that matched the shape of my mouth. It was a horrible, inhuman sound, but the man liked it. He poked me again, much harder, and this time he twisted the gun barrel inside my shoulder and I felt something inside where he touched it give way with a kind of snip and I made the noise again.

But Raul must have gotten tired of my noises. He stood and stared down at me with a look of complete contempt. He raised the gun and looked at me like he could make me vanish just by staring at me hard. And then he nodded and pointed the gun directly at a spot between my eyes.

And then he vanished.

Dimly and distant I felt a huge roaring percussive bang. It slapped the air in the room into a sharp jerking bump, and it was so loud that I could hear it too, just a little. It blasted out once and took Raul away and then it stopped. I lay still for a moment, in case it happened again. Before I could decide to move a new person appeared and knelt beside me and I knew who this was right away.

Deborah.

She was holding the shotgun in the crook of her arm and looking at me and moving her mouth urgently, but I still couldn’t hear. She put a hand under my shoulder and helped me sit up, still moving her mouth and looking at me with terrible concern. So I finally said, “I’m fine, Debs.” It was a strange sensation, knowing I had said something, and feeling the vibrations of it in my throat and my face, and still not actually hearing my own voice. So I added, “I can’t hear anything. The explosion.”

Debs looked at me intently a moment longer, but then she nodded. She moved her mouth in an exaggerated way and I am pretty sure she said, “Let’s go,” because she stood up and helped me stand up, too.

For a few seconds it was almost as bad as when I sat up right after the explosion. Huge and violent waves of dizzy nausea crashed through me, accompanied by a thundering pain in my head and my shoulder. But it didn’t last quite as long this time. Debs led me over to the door and I could walk okay. And oddly enough, even though everything inside me seemed to be much too loose and my legs felt tiny and far away, my brain started to work again. I saw the canvas bag beside the door and I remembered one last important thing. “Evidence,” I said. “Get rid of evidence.” Deborah shook her head and tugged at my arm, and it was the wrong arm, the one that was attached to the shoulder with the bullet in it. I made a sort of dumb spastic aaaakkh sound that I couldn’t hear and she jumped back.

The shoulder pain didn’t last. It dropped down into a kind of dull background agony. I looked at the wound. I was wearing a black shirt, of course, for nighttime stealth, so there wasn’t a lot to see other than a surprisingly small hole. But there seemed to be an awful lot of wet shirt around it. I patted it with a hand, gently, and looked. My hand was very, very wet with blood.

To be expected, of course. Gunshot wounds bleed. And when Raul had poked it the second time, I thought he might have broken a vein or something in there. It did seem like rather a lot of blood, though, and I don’t like blood. But that could wait until later, and anyway Debs was tugging at my arm again. I shook her hand off. “We have to blow it up,” I said. I felt the words in my mouth without hearing them.

Deborah heard them. She shook her head and tried to pull me out the door, but I lurched away, back into the ruined cabin. “There’s too much evidence, Debs,” I said. “From the kids, from the guns, Brian’s body. It connects to you, Deborah. And to me.” She was still shaking her head, looking more scared than angry, but I knew I was right. “Have to blow it up,” I said. “Or we both go to jail. Kids all alone.” I knew I was speaking much too loud, and the words were taking too much work and they felt sort of wrong, too, as if I wasn’t quite shaping them properly.

But she clearly understood me, because she shook her head and tugged me toward the door, moving her mouth rapidly and urgently. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t hear her. “Have to blow it up,” I said in my hollow wrong-sounding unheard voice. “Have to.” I bent and picked up the canvas bag. For a moment everything spun in bright red circles. But I straightened at last. “Go,” I told her. “With the kids. I’ll be right there.”

Her mouth was still moving as I took the bag and stumbled back toward the stairs, but when I was halfway there I turned to look. Deborah was gone.

I paused for just a moment. The bomb that killed Brian had made a lot of noise, smoke, fire, but it had not made a hole in the boat big enough to sink it. I had to put this bomb in a better place. Someplace where it would take out the whole superyacht. Maybe next to the fuel tanks? But I didn’t know where they were, and I wasn’t sure I could move around until I found them. And the bag was much heavier than I remembered and I was very tired. And cold. I was suddenly feeling very cold. Why was that? It was a warm Miami night, and I didn’t think the air-conditioning could still be working. But a definite chill settled over me, all of me, and some of that bad red-tinged dizziness came back at me. I closed my eyes. It didn’t go away, so I opened my eyes again and looked at the stairway ahead. I could just put the bomb down there. It would probably do the job. And it couldn’t really be as far away as it looked. I could probably get there in just a few more steps.

I stepped. It was harder than it had been a moment ago. In fact, it was almost impossibly hard. I was so cold. And I needed to rest, just for a moment. I looked for a place to sit. None of the chairs or sofas had stayed upright in the explosion. There was still a built-in plush bench over at the wall. It seemed very far away. I couldn’t really go all that way just to sit, could I? No, of course not. But I did want to sit, and right there at my feet, there was the floor. It was still flat. I could sit there.

I did. I sat and closed my eyes and tried to find the strength to get up and finish it. It isn’t that hard, Dexter. Just stand up, set the bomb where it will do the job, and go back to my boat. Simple.

Except that it wasn’t. Nothing was simple now. Come to think of it, things hadn’t been simple for some time. Not for Dumbo Dexter, the Ninja Nerd who gets everybody close to him killed — Rita and Jackie and now Brian and probably Debs and the kids in just a minute or two. And when things are almost all wrapped up nicely he gets himself blown up and shot. And now he doesn’t have to do anything at all but put a little bitty bomb in the right place and set the timer and go home…and he can’t even do that. It just seemed so hard to get up and do anything. I couldn’t do even the simplest things anymore — hadn’t been able to this whole time, ever since I let Jackie get killed. And Rita, too. Dead because of me, my incompetent empty-headed fumbling dumbness. Dead, along with my whole beautiful simple life…dead just like Brian. Killed by my bumbling thumb-brained delusions that I was smart and I could do things. Killed because I actually couldn’t do things anymore. Couldn’t think at all. And now I couldn’t even walk three or four more steps to set the bomb so I could go home. And maybe find somebody to make the gunshot wound stop bleeding so much. Because it really was bleeding too much. I was soaked now, all along the whole front of me, and I didn’t like it.

All right, enough. Up and at ’em, Dexter. And if there’s no “up” left, then just crawl over there and do it. Set the timer, toss the bomb down the stairs, crawl back to the boat. One, two, three. So simple even a dolt like me could do it. Ready?

One: I reached in the flap of the canvas bag. It was still open from when Brian had used it, so I didn’t need to unzip it, which was a very good thing, since I didn’t think I could. I felt around and my fingers closed on something that seemed about right. I pulled out a big square shiny thing. It had the same kind of timer that Brian’s bomb had, but this brick was much bigger. More than enough to do the job. But the timer was throbbing in and out of focus, and the red numbers kept blending with the red background that was pulsing back over me again. That wasn’t good. I frowned and stared at it so it knew I was serious, and it settled down. I punched in zero, zero, five. Five minutes. Plenty of time.

Step two: A deep breath, and then I crawled forward on my one good arm, pushing the bomb ahead of me. No scientific placement needed, not with this great big baby. It wasn’t necessary, and it wouldn’t happen anyway, not with Dexter the Doofus on the job. Still, several feet away I felt myself running down. Not good. Have to save something for my escape. Escaping very important. I tried to stand up. Very hard — I was so heavy! I would really need to go on a diet when this was over. But I was still holding the entire canvas bag — another stupid blunder. I let go of it and worked my way all the way up to a standing position. I rested for a minute. Just one little minute, just resting — and I remembered the bomb. Now I only had four minutes. Still have to escape.

I leaned forward and threw the bomb. It was a very feeble throw. Of course. But it bounced on the top step — and then, happily for us all, tipped over and rolled downstairs. At the bottom it clattered onto something that went bong. That didn’t seem right. I staggered forward one more step and peeked down.

The fire had picked up a little, but that meant the smoke was not quite as thick. I could see a big hole where the carpeted deck had been. The first bomb had taken out the deck, and below it there was something metal, something that went bong when you dropped a big bomb on it. I blinked stupidly for a moment, swaying a little. Then I thought, Fuel tank…? Must be. Fuel tanks go bong, and then boom. Bingo. Very good, Dexter. Very, very good.

I stood there congratulating myself, and then I thought, Why stand to celebrate? I’ll sit here and relax and celebrate at my leisure.

I sat. Not as gracefully as I would have liked. Rather too fast and awkward, truth be told. There seemed to be a few control elements offline. Legs all wobbly, vision in and out, one arm just hanging and the other made of cardboard…But I sat, feeling pleased. I hadn’t hurt myself. And I had put the bomb on the fuel tank. Steps one and two done. Good work, Dexter. Not bad for an incompetent meathead. Because what about step number three, Oh, King of the Dim?

Three. That’s right. Step three had involved going somewhere, hadn’t it? I hoped it would be better lit than this. It was getting awfully dark in here — and even colder, too! Why was that? Why did I have to sit here in a cold place with this icky red all over me? I could feel it under me now, too, sort of a frigid squishiness that I did not like at all. Why did it remind me of something very bad? When had I ever been this cold and this covered with icky-sticky red before? Why did it seem like—

Mommy was just over there. I could see her face over there and she was somehow hiding and peeking up over the…things — just her face showing, her unwinking unblinking unmoving face. And even when I called her really loud she didn’t answer….

“Mommy,” I said. I couldn’t hear it, but I felt the word on my lips. Why did I think of Mommy now? Why here on this battered billionaire’s boat that was about to go boom? Why think of Mommy at all, who I had not even known except for seeing her over there unmoving, and she hadn’t even answered me even

now that I saw her. Why didn’t she even wink? Make some sign that she heard me, that this was all a trick, and soon we would get up and get out of here and go home and be with Biney. But Mommy did nothing at all, like she wasn’t even there, and without Mommy I was alone, sitting here in this deep puddle of awful nasty wet sticky horrible red stuff and I didn’t want to sit here, didn’t want to sit in that, not here on the carpet, not again, not wait and wait in the cold sticky awful until finally the door would open and Harry would come in and lift me out and take me away and the whole thing would begin again in its endless cycle of brainless clueless helpless hopeless Dim and Dark and Dopey Dexter blood blood BLOOD

Not again.

I opened my eyes. I was still sitting on the ruined wet carpet. And I didn’t want to be, not just sitting, not here in the deep puddle of sticky wet while silently somewhere close the timer ticked—

Up. Up. I had to get up, get out of this — and this time I would not wait for Harry. I would get up and get out of it by myself. Do everything different, better, my way, so maybe this time it wouldn’t all turn to shit on me. This time everything would be different, better, smarter, if I could only get myself up and away from the little cold room and go home where things were better, nicer, warmer, brighter—

Somehow I got up. I stood and swayed and everything was very clear somehow and I thought, How much time is left? How long until the big bang? It couldn’t be much. I had to hurry.

But hurry was not on the menu, not tonight, not in Dexter’s Diner for the Dim and Dopey. I tried, but I didn’t really seem able to do more than stand and stagger slowly.

I flop-foot my way over to the side of the room and I flounder toward the door, sliding along the walls and windows and furniture and hearing a terrible soft insistent ticking of the timer in my head and finally feeling the doorknob in my hand, the horribly stiff impossible-to-turn doorknob. And somehow, so slowly, so impossibly brick-fingered, I open it and feel the frigid night breeze on my face, like a blast of punishing cold wind, so strong I almost go backward and I have to lean both arms on the wall again and work my way out and then around the corner to the railing, and I lurch over and lean on that and I know I have gone the wrong way, around the side instead of straight back to my boat, but there is nothing to lean on back that way and I need to lean and so I look over, look back, look for my boat and Deborah and I don’t see her.

And I try to turn to look back and I can’t and my head rolls over instead and I am looking up, into the endless black night above, in its on-and-on forever darkness—

— except no. It isn’t darkness, not all of it, not at all. Right there, right above me, floating over me in its cool and welcome glow. There it is. Dexter’s last friend, last family, last fond familiar face. Old Mr. Moon, come to watch and whisper soft and silvery songs, the music of Dark Joy, the sound track of Dexter’s Life, the beautiful symphony of shadows that follows me into every night of need, that lights me now in its soft and urgent beams as it has forever before, singing sweet nothings to the tune of impending snicker-snee—

— but different now, different tonight. Different notes and a chorus I have never heard, swelling up in the soft and shining light of its distant knowing smile. And not so distant now, not tonight. Closer than ever before. Much closer, and singing a new refrain, not of sly encouraging but of welcome, calling out in sweet and clear harmonies, Come home, Dear Dexter, come home….

The beautiful silver song is shattered by an awful noise, a mechanical cow-sounding blat that cuts through the lilt and tease of that welcoming melody, smashes through so loud that even I can hear it, and even in my halfway-home head I know what it is: a boat horn. My boat horn. And with a wonderful rush of insight I realize what this means — Deborah is calling me, pulling me away from the beautiful welcoming silver darkness, trying to bring me away and back to a very different home….

But no. Not home, not now. Not if I don’t move. The bomb, the boat — I must not linger and listen to the wrong song, and I try to straighten up and stand and I can’t and I hear the horn again and I hear the terrible soft tick, tick, tick louder than ever and I know that any second now the fireball will come and lift me up and out of everything into the deep dark forever nothing and I am not ready for that. Not even with the moon crooning its mother’s summons. Not yet, not now. Not Dexter. No. And so slowly, far beyond effort and pain and almost everything that has ever been, slowly I straighten up. And slowly, still holding on to the rail, I put one foot over and look.

I can just see my boat bobbing easily over there, at an almost safe distance that seems so very far. I look down. The dark water is there, surface rippled with wind and mocking moonlight, and if I can just get down there, get into the water, I can swim to my boat and everything will be all right, and so slowly, carefully, every movement dragging like it was pulled backward by lead weights, somehow I get both feet over the railing and I wave to Debs so far away over there and I make a huge idiot sound to let her know to come get me and I know she will because family is so important no matter what and she sees that now I am sure of it and then I am over and falling and even as I fall the water seems so impossibly far away — and so dark, so deep and dark—

— and then there is a warped and rippled picture of the moon with its happy savage face that morphs into Me rushing up at Me and I hit Me with a soundless crash and Me breaks apart still soundless into a million bright red shattered shards of moon glow that slowly bend their darkening beams around me as I fall through the flickers of light-dark-light until the last of the cool silver light fades away to welcome shadows and now there is cool and comforting peace and I start up again, up into the blackness that whirls me away to the happy welcome of the moon’s dark side and I fall up and in and away and the wonderful chorus of silence swells up as I rise up and up and I feel like I am home again at last as I slide down, down through the beautiful shadowy silence and into the cool and welcoming moon-Mommy Darkness at last and—