Dog Tags

CHAPTER 15

DONOVAN CHAMBERS LEARNED OF HIS IMPENDING DEATH IN THE NEWSPAPER. That was unusual in and of itself, but to find it buried on page seven of the Nassau Advocate was also a little demeaning. To read it sitting on a glorious beach while simultaneously soaking up sun and a piña colada… well, that was about as weird as it got.

Not that Donovan was mentioned by name in the story; he wasn’t even referred to indirectly. But the message he received was as clear as if the headline had read, “Donovan Chambers About to Be Murdered.”

The story was a two-paragraph item that identified the victim of a murder outside a New Jersey club the week before. Donovan couldn’t remember reading about the murder previously, but he knew that it would not have interested him if it hadn’t named the victim as Major Jack Erskine.

The identity of the victim meant that Donovan himself was going to die. And living in this exotic, out-of-the-way locale would not protect him at all. These were the kind of people that would find you no matter where you were hiding.

He never should have confided in Erskine.

Donovan had no way of knowing whether the story was itself dated. The Nassau Advocate would sometimes run pieces days after picking them up from mainland newspapers. If this was one of those cases, then those who’d be after him already had a head start.

Not that they would need it.

Donovan wasn’t feeling fear, though he assumed that would come later. His dominant emotion was sadness. He was finally living the life he always wanted, but never thought possible. And now it was over.

Donovan wasn’t going to give up; that wasn’t his style. And he certainly wasn’t going to go to the cops and tell them what he knew, or what he had done. That would simply guarantee a prison sentence, and that would be the easiest place of all for his killers to find him.

What he would do would be to run, and to hide, and he was good at both. It would make things easier that he had so much money; there would be no need to get a job and risk exposure in that way. He had concocted better plans for the money, but that was now in the past.

Donovan briefly considered whether to spend the rest of the afternoon on the beach, since it would be the last time he was there. He decided against it. Time was not something he had the luxury of wasting; it might be too late already.

He walked up the beach toward his house, a sprawling one-level place sitting on a small cliff overlooking the water. It was an absolutely spectacular setting. He was renting it with an option to buy, an option he had been about to exercise. Now he was glad he hadn’t yet done so, since the process of selling it would no doubt provide clues to his whereabouts.

At this point, Donovan himself did not have any idea as to the location of those future whereabouts. It would have to be someplace unexciting, and modest, where he would be unlikely to attract attention. It would be boring, but he would be alive, until the moment that he wasn’t alive anymore.

There would not be any flights off the island until the next morning, so he called and reserved a seat. He would pack right away, so that all he’d have to do in the morning would be to wake up and leave.

Donovan took his loaded gun out of the desk drawer and put it in his pocket. He hadn’t carried it in a while; there wasn’t any need, and it was illegal. Now it made him feel more comfortable, more secure, as it always had in the past.

But he knew that the feeling of comfort was illusory. When they came at him, it wouldn’t be a gunfight at high noon in the center of town. He wouldn’t see them coming until it was too late to do anything but die.

Donovan had finished packing and was carrying the suitcases out to the car when the first bullet penetrated his brain. He never felt it, nor the two that followed.

And he never saw his killer.