Envy the Night

28

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His fingers froze on the armrest when the cell phone rang. Jumpy. He took the phone out, saw it was Nora’s number. She was probably calling to order him out of the truck, not wanting to see him when she came outside.

“There’s a problem,” she said when he answered. Tension in her voice, but not the angry sort.

“What?”

“One of them is inside with me, and the other is watching you through a gun scope.” Speaking softly but clearly. “I’ve been asked to tell you to take your gun out, hold it in the air for a second, and then put it inside the glove compartment. If you don’t listen, they will shoot you.”

Told you, told you, told you! the ghost screamed at him. It’s over now, son, over because you got lazy and dumb and told yourself that wouldn’t matter. It always matters.

“You’re with your father?” Frank said. “This guy was waiting in your father’s room?”

“No, I—” There was a rustle, a whisper, and then her voice returned. “Frank, put the gun in the glove compartment, and do it fast.”

Shit. He hadn’t seen anyone watching, had no proof that this thing about the guy with the scope wasn’t a bluff, but he had to listen. He already knew there could be someone in those woods north of the building. Had been trying to ignore the notion for the last ten minutes. Moving slowly, he reached inside his jacket with his free hand and withdrew the Smith & Wesson, held it in the air, then squeezed the phone between his ear and shoulder while he opened the glove compartment and put the weapon inside.

“I put the gun away.”

More whispering, then, “We’re coming outside. He wants you to get behind the wheel and keep your hands above the dash. If you see anyone else, look normal.”

The call was disconnected, but he kept the phone at his ear as he slid across the seat, banging his knees on the gearshift. Without looking at the display, he punched the CALL button with his thumb. That would bring up a list of previously called numbers, and Ezra’s number, entered just before leaving the island, would be at the top of the list. Most times it doesn’t work on the water, but I’ll give you the number. It’ll ring, if nothing else.

Frank hit the CALL button again, keeping the phone up and hoping the watcher wasn’t going to be aware of exactly when the call from inside the nursing home had ended. Still, he wouldn’t have much time, because as soon as Nora and the guy with her left the building, it would be obvious that Frank should no longer have the phone to his ear.

One ring, then two, no answer, and right then he saw them—Nora and the man he’d knocked out in the body shop, rounding the corner of the building. Either there was another door, or they’d gone through a window. Odds were good nobody in the building had seen them leave. He closed the phone without getting an answer, dropped it into his lap, and thought, Figure it out, Ezra, figure it out. There’s trouble on the way.

Nora walked to the truck quickly but without obvious fear, eyes up, stride steady. That was a good word for her, steady. She’d hung together through all of this, with the one exception coming when they’d found Jerry’s body. Brave girl. She didn’t deserve this.

Frank noticed the door was locked when they were about ten feet from the truck and leaned over to unlock it. When he moved, the gun in the tall guy’s hand showed for the first time, rising fast. Frank unlocked the door and leaned back, held his hands up again, indicating it hadn’t been an aggressive move, no suicidal idiot sitting in this truck, no, sir. The gun dropped, and then the door was open and Nora was inside the truck and sitting beside him, the tall guy piling in behind her.

“Keys,” the guy said, and Nora fished her keys out and passed them to Frank.

“Start it up and drive out of here. Take a right out of the parking lot, and go straight until I say something else. Keep both hands on the wheel, keep the speed down, and keep your mouth shut.”

Simple enough. Frank did as he was told, made a right turn away from the nursing home without anyone stopping them or even seeing them. They’d gone about a half mile before he noticed that Nora’s leg was trembling against his.

Ezra rotated the cell phone in his palm and stared out across the water. The wind was coming at the island in uneven gusts, pushing tendrils of gray clouds ahead of it. Just one boat had passed in all the time he’d been out here, and he’d recognized it as Dwight Simonton’s pontoon. Unthreatening. A peaceful afternoon, a lonely lake.

But there was the phone in his hand, small and still and silent since those two rings, just two, that had come in from Frank Temple’s son. Ezra didn’t like the two rings. Liked it even less that there had been no second attempt.

He’d thought about calling Frank himself. Would take maybe ten seconds of conversation to clarify the situation.

He didn’t call, though. Because if it hadn’t been a mistake, if Frank had intended to hang up that quickly, without getting a chance to talk to Ezra or leave a message, then the afternoon was about to get interesting. Either Frank had been interrupted in his attempt to call—an option that prickled at the back of Ezra’s neck—or he’d made the call as a warning. One or the other. Or a mistake.

Ezra felt Frank would understand the effect of an aborted call like that, would anticipate the worry on Ezra’s end. That belief tilted the scales, ever so slightly, in the direction of trouble. No matter how gentle a shift that was, it was something he had to listen to. If you ignored it, the first chance you’d have to regret it wouldn’t come until too late.

He was alone on the porch. Vaughn and Renee were still inside, though he hadn’t heard much conversation from them. Vaughn had looked shifty, even angry, the last time Ezra was inside, but the woman seemed to have taken a measure of comfort now that some time had passed. She would listen to Ezra willingly, and Vaughn, if it came down to it, would listen to Ezra because he would be given no other choice. Ezra went to the door.

“You two got any rain gear?”

They were sitting together in the living room, Vaughn speaking to Renee in a harsh whisper, and when Ezra entered and spoke they both looked at him as if they didn’t understand the language.

“What?” Renee said.

“Rain gear? If not, don’t worry about it. I got a few of those emergency ponchos in the boat, if we need ’em. Chances are, we’re going to need ’em, too. Those clouds don’t look like kidders to me.”

Vaughn stood up. “What are you talking about? If it rains, we’ve got a roof over our heads.”

“Not anymore.” Ezra was turning down the blinds now, the sunlight disappearing from the room in strips. “We’re going on a boat ride, kids. And we’re going on it in a hurry.”

Now Renee was on her feet, too. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Vaughn said. “This guy’s crazy. What the hell are you talking about, boat rides?”

“Shut up,” Ezra said, and the argument died on Vaughn’s lips. There was still anger in his eyes, his forehead lined with dislike, but he quit talking. He was scared of Ezra, and that would make things easier.

“They’re coming, aren’t they,” Renee said, and there was neither question nor alarm in her voice. Just a calm, if disappointed, understanding.

“They could be,” Ezra said. “And I’ll tell you this—an island is a damn tricky place to sneak away from. So best to get off it early.”

“Where are we going?”

“Not quite sure about that one yet, but we’ll need a boat, and we’ll need to move fast.”

“I want my gun back,” Vaughn said. “If they’re coming for us, I want my damn gun.”

Ezra gave him a cool, even gaze until Vaughn looked away.

“When it comes time for shooting,” he said, “I’ll see that you got something to do it with.”

Three times the man with the gun instructed a turn. Those were the only three times the silence was broken. They’d gone maybe five miles, were well out of town and into the woods, before he told Frank to stop. They were at a ramshackle bar with CLOSED and FOR SALE signs in the windows, an ancient gas pump out front. Frank drove behind the building, following instructions, then parked and cut the motor. Nothing around them but the deserted building and the trees, with buzzing insects and wind-tossed cattails indicating a marsh about a hundred feet behind the bar. Frank turned away from it. It would take a long time before a body dumped in that marsh was found.

“Now we sit here and we wait and nobody says a word,” the guy with the gun said. His weapon was a Beretta, resting against his knee and angled toward Frank.

They sat for five minutes, maybe ten, and then gravel crunched under tires as someone left the paved road and drove into the parking lot. A few seconds later the new arrival appeared around the building. A van, light blue with darkly tinted windows, suburban-looking, about as anonymous as a vehicle could get. It pulled in beside the truck, and the driver climbed out. Shorter than the guy inside the truck, but quicker, more graceful in his movements. Strong, too. Frank remembered that from the way the guy had whipped his gun into Mowery’s face beside the police car.

“Out,” the guy beside Nora said, and Frank opened the door and stepped out onto the dusty parking circle, a warm gust of wind flapping his shirt against his body. It was his first opportunity to see the second man face-to-face, and he didn’t like the way the guy stared at him as if they’d already met, a sense of the familiar in his gaze. The guy held that look for a long moment, then turned away from Frank and slid the van’s side door open, and Frank found himself staring at Devin Matteson.

The last time Frank had seen him—the only time—it had been eight years earlier, in Miami. He hadn’t been around him long, maybe an hour, just enough for the dislike to put down roots, but what he remembered from that meeting was two qualities: arrogance and strength. The strength was no longer present.

Devin was leaning sideways against the seat so that he could face out, a gun resting in his lap, but it looked like just keeping his head up was taking a real effort. His usual deep tan and strong jawline had turned into a junkie’s face, fish-belly complexion with hazy, red-rimmed eyes and muscle lines that seemed given to tremors. Bulges showed under his shirt, and Frank realized after a second look that they weren’t bulges from a holster but from bandages.

Vaughn was lying. Had to be, because this no longer made any sense: The two men who’d arrived pursuing Vaughn and Renee were indeed here, but Devin was with them. Vaughn’s story had just come unhinged, but right now, staring his old nemesis in the face, Frank had no concept of the truth, just understanding of the lie.

“This is a crazy damn world, you know?” Devin said, and his voice came from some tight, trapped place in his chest. “I mean, I send two guys up here to do a job, and who do they tell me got in the way but Frank Temple Junior.”

“The Third,” Frank said.

“Huh?”

“Frank Temple the Third. No junior here.”

Devin looked at Frank for a long moment, and then gave a low laugh as his eyes went to his shorter partner.

“You believe that? It’s his son, no question. No junior here.”

He laughed again, and the other guy gave an awkward smile, as if he didn’t know what was so amusing but felt obligated to share in the fun. Devin’s laughter swept through Frank as pure white rage. He willed himself still, willed himself silent. Let the prick laugh. Let him enjoy this. Let him think that Frank didn’t know what had happened those many years earlier, and then, when the time was right, let him pay.

Devin stopped laughing, but it wasn’t clear if it was because the humor had passed or because he’d run out of breath. He waited for a moment, jaw clenching, eyes watering, and when he looked up and spoke again his voice had less energy and a darker tone.

“You want to tell me, Temple the Third, what the hell you’re doing here?”

Frank said, “I came to send you home.”

“What?”

“Ezra Ballard told me that you were coming back. We didn’t think that should happen.”

Devin gave him a look caught between anger and wonder. “Ballard’s a crazy old bastard. I don’t know what he told you, kid, but it was all bullshit. Me giving your old man up? That’s a lie.”

This time Frank didn’t think he’d be able to will the anger down, thought it was going to tug his foundation loose and sweep him away with it, send him rushing into that van, the other two and their guns be damned. But he fought it down again, didn’t say a word.

“Whatever,” Devin said. “I don’t give a shit what you two think. I’ll tell you what I told Ballard—whoever tipped the FBI, it wasn’t me. Supposed to be somebody close to your dad, though. Hell, could have been you.”

Frank was halfway to the van when the tall man stepped in and swung his gun sideways, going for his throat. Frank blocked it, got his hand up and met the guy’s forearm with his own, was still moving forward, still heading for Devin, when the second man placed the barrel of a gun against Frank’s cheek.

He stopped then, had to, and the tall guy turned his gun over and pressed it into Frank’s ribs, two guns against him now, two fingers on the trigger. Devin hadn’t moved, just sat there and watched with his own gun still on his lap.

“Your old man never shut up about you,” he said. “All this bullshit, telling everybody how fast you were, how good with a pistol. On and on. And you know what I finally figured out? He had to keep talking about it, because he knew you were a pussy. He knew that, and it shamed him.”

He got out of the van slowly, almost went down once, but when the tall man moved to help him he put up his hand and shook his head. He steadied himself, took a couple of steps toward Frank, until they were face-to-face. The tall man had moved back toward Nora, but the other one kept his gun on Frank’s cheek.

“How did you hook up with Vaughn Duncan?” Devin said. “Did he find you, or did you find him?”

This provided an answer to a question Frank hadn’t even really had time to consider yet: If Devin was already here, why hadn’t he just gone out to the island? Frank was the reason. Frank was the wild card, the development Devin hadn’t been able to understand. Frank and Nora—loose ends.

“I drove him off the road,” Frank said, each word coming slow, the pressure of the gun working against his jaw muscles, “because I thought he was you, and I was going to kill him. Like I said, it’s why I came up here.”

Devin Matteson stared at him for a long time. “You’re serious,” he said. “You’re serious.”

It wasn’t a question. Devin looked away, at each of his partners and then at Nora, and shook his head, limped a few steps back, so he could lean on the van.

“Well, hell, kid,” he said. “Sorry to disappoint. It wasn’t me, was it? But you and him, you guys got something to share. You wanted to kill me, he tried.”

It took a second for Frank to process that. Then the truth that had felt so close when Renee slapped him—the reality of her loyalty to Devin imprinted on his cheek, stinging his flesh—finally arrived, came screeching up in a cloud of smoke, engine revving. Vaughn was after Renee. You didn’t have a chance to take a woman like Renee away from a man like Devin. Not when he was alive.

“Vaughn shot you,” Frank said.

“Three times,” Devin said.

“That’s not what your wife thinks,” Nora said, and everyone but Frank turned to look at her.

“My wife,” Devin said, offering the phrase guardedly, as if he were afraid of its power. “You’ve seen her.”

Nora nodded.

“She’s here. With Vaughn.”

“Yes. But she thinks you’re dead.”

Devin said, “AJ,” and waved his hand at the man who held the gun to Frank’s face. The gun dropped away and the man stepped back, cleared some space so Devin could see Nora clearly.

“Tell me,” Devin said, “what they told you.”

Nora told him. Frank heard her words but wasn’t focused on them, was instead staring at Devin and trying to smell out the lie. He had to be lying, didn’t he? Vaughn had shot him? But Frank could see that now, could see it in the way Vaughn and Renee had interacted, his obvious adoration for her. And Vaughn had told the story, provided all the details, details that were clearly lies. Everything Renee knew about the reasons they’d fled came from Vaughn. None of it had come from Devin, at least not the way she’d told it to them that morning.

“I cannot believe he had the balls,” Devin said when Nora was done, his voice barely audible. “That cocksucker . . . he planned it for a while. Spent some real time on it. Had a story ready for her. And I’m laying in the hospital and he’s up here with my wife.”

He banged the butt of his gun against the van, then again, and again, until the effort took his strength and he had to wait a minute to get it back, hanging against the door.

“You thought she left you for him?” Frank said, and Devin’s eyes slid unpleasantly back to him. “That’s why you didn’t name the shooter for the police? You thought she was involved?”

Devin waited for a moment, then said, “I wanted to conduct my own investigation. That’s all.”

“Then how did these two”—Frank nodded at the other men—“get here before you?”

“I sent them. When they told me he’d come here, I left so I could see it to the end in person.”

“If this is the truth,” Nora said, and her voice was wavering, “then why did you bastards have to kill Jerry? Why did you have to do that? You knew Vaughn was going to that island!”

“Unfortunately,” Devin said, nothing showing in his bleary eyes, “I was out of communication with these two for a while. So they had to keep following the trail.”

That justified it to him. It was enough. Frank looked at Nora, saw the shock and horror in her face, and wondered if she understood what else this meant. She was playing Jerry’s role now: a liability.

“They’re on that island?” Devin said, ignoring her question, stepping away from the van again, closer to Frank. “They’re on my island? Vaughn and my wife?”

Frank nodded.

“Who’s with them?”

He didn’t say anything. Neither did Nora. But Devin stared into Frank’s eyes and said, “Ballard. He’s out there with them, isn’t he?”

Frank still didn’t respond, but Devin was nodding his head, already convinced.

“Okay,” he said. “AJ, King, get them in the van. We’re close, boys. We’re close.”