Envy the Night

30

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We didn’t need this. Damn it, we didn’t need this!”

Devin was standing above Atkins’s body, staring at AJ, his face now stricken by both pain and anger.

“You said handle it, man.”

“Handle it, shit, you think that means you gut the guy? An FBI agent? This is something we needed?”

AJ showed a ghost of a smile, spread his hands. “Dev . . . what can I say? You know, it’s done. I’ll deal with it.”

Frank, watching him, thought, He did it because he likes it. That was all. Devin was dangerous, but Devin had a brain. This wild son of a bitch, AJ, he was closer to the edge. Bloodthirsty, driven by it. He’d killed Atkins because it was not only what he knew to do but what he liked to do. Any guilt over his own stupidity, over the additional attention this was going to bring down around them, was buried beneath the pure pleasure he’d taken in the moment.

“I mean, I saw a badge, you know? I saw a badge, Dev, I just reacted.” AJ was watching Devin, the knife gone and the gun back in his hand. It was a Glock, and he kept rubbing his thumb over the butt as he looked at Devin. There was a strange symbol tattooed on the back of his hand. A lefty, too. Frank had only known one left-handed shooter, but that guy had been damn accurate.

“You’ll deal with it.” Devin shook his head, disgusted, and stared at the corpse at their feet for a long time. When he finally looked up, his eyes found Frank, lingered there, and then he nodded.

“All right,” he said. “We’ll make it work.”

He made Frank drag the body down to the boat, a crimson smear marking their path over the grass, the trail of blood leading right to the cabin door. That’s what the cops would see, Frank knew, and what the newspaper and TV people would use for drama. When they were all dead and the cops came up here to sort out the mess, all they’d see was that trail of blood leading to the door of a dead murderer, and the Temple name would be infamous again, Frank accepting the baton from his father. He understood that perfectly as he followed Devin’s instructions and handled the body, leaving fingerprints all over the corpse of an FBI agent who’d surely voiced his suspicions of Frank to colleagues already.

Devin hadn’t wanted this complication, but he knew how to deal with it.

“Take that anchor line,” he said, “and loop it around his neck. Make it tight.”

Frank was standing in the shallows, knee deep in the lake, the body slumped facedown in the water as he wrapped the line around Atkins’s neck. Devin stood above him on dry land, using a tree for support and studying the lake with the gun held down against his leg, checking for other boats. There weren’t any, though. The weather was on Devin’s side, rain starting to fall now and thunder crackling just a few miles west, a good storm on the way. A Sunday before fishing season, with a storm coming in, guaranteed an empty lake. Empty except for them and those on the island.

Atkins was the first of at least three victims today if things went Devin’s way. He was clearly aware of the possibilities left by making Frank handle the body, but he might not appreciate just how well this would work, might not know that Atkins was already investigating Frank, the hit man’s son. Some quick, quiet killing at the island and a fast trip out of town were the only things keeping the trio from Miami from disappearing like phantoms, leaving the police to try making sense of a situation they’d probably never understand.

Grady. Frank thought of him as he secured Atkins in the anchor line. Grady was an element Devin didn’t know about, couldn’t plan for. Grady had been putting the puzzle together for everyone, and he’d know where to start when Atkins was announced as missing or the body was found. He wouldn’t believe it was Frank’s doing. Would he?

Shit, what would it matter? If nobody was left but Grady, let them think what they wanted.

Devin was weaker than Frank had thought at first, hardly able to stand. He’d taken a long time just to cross the short stretch of yard to the tree he leaned against now, and his pain was visible even from down here in the water, his face pale and shiny, his mouth always hanging open to help with breathing. The day’s killing would be done at his whim but not by his hands. That was fitting.

Frank finished tying Atkins to the line and set the anchor back into the stern, the body now tied in the middle of the line. Then AJ waved at Frank with the gun.

“Get in.”

Frank climbed into the boat, and then Nora and King followed suit and AJ turned back to look at his boss. Devin pushed off the tree, took a wavering step toward them, and then leaned backward and clutched for the tree again, used it to regain his balance.

“Dev . . .” AJ started toward him, but Devin was already in motion again, trying to walk toward them. He made it four steps before his legs buckled and he went down. AJ caught him by the shoulders, helped him up.

“You got to get out of here, man,” AJ was saying as Devin struggled for his breath. “Got to get to a—”

“Shut up.” Devin had his hands on his knees. “You know what I’m here to do.”

“I’m telling you, we can do it for you.”

“No.”

AJ looked back at the boat, then down at Devin. “Dev, you aren’t going to make it in that boat. You aren’t. And it’s starting to rain, man. Gonna turn ugly soon.”

Devin didn’t respond, just took in fast, panting breaths.

“We’ll go get him,” AJ said. “We’ll get him, and we’ll bring him back to you. All right? Him and Renee. We’ll bring Renee back, Dev. You got to stay here, though. Out in that boat, man . . .”

Devin rose slowly, stared at the group already waiting in the boat, his eyes lingering on Frank the longest.

“All right,” he said. “You go out there and bring them back, and do it fast, damn it, do it fast.”

“Right.” AJ was nodding. “Out and back, man, nothing to it.”

“Take them both,” Devin said. “This crazy old shit that’s out there, he’s good.”

“He’s nothing, Dev, don’t worry about—”

“No.” Devin shook his head. “He’s good, okay? That’s why you need them. You make sure he knows you’ve got the girl, too. Make that good and clear.”

“We got it, Dev. Now let me get you inside.”

AJ left Devin there in the yard and walked back to the boat, extended his hand to Frank, and asked for the key. Frank reached in his pocket and took it out, the key to the last place of clean memories he had with his father, and then he passed it over so Devin Matteson could go inside and wait for somebody else to finish his bloody work.

AJ took the key and went back to Devin, helped him across the yard and into the cabin, Frank watching them go, thinking, I’ll be back for you, you son of a bitch. It won’t be these two coming back. It’ll be me.

Ezra was on the island, and whether he’d gotten Frank’s aborted phone call or not, they would not be surprising him, not by approaching in a loud boat in the middle of a storm. He’d be waiting, and he’d be ready, and then it would be done. Let Ezra handle these two, and then Frank would come back for Devin.

The door reopened and AJ stepped out, started in their direction, then pulled up short and returned to the van, opened the driver’s door, and leaned inside to grab the extra gun, Frank’s father’s gun. It was the second time he’d gone back for it—the first, he’d made sure not to leave it in the glove compartment of the truck—and each time Frank had felt relief. He wanted the gun to travel with them, as if it somehow represented protection no matter the hands that held it.

They were close now, the island no more than twenty minutes away. He had no grand plan, no idea how to stop this from happening except to run directly to Ezra and hope for the best.

“Start the motor,” AJ said, stepping on board and coming back to sit behind Frank.

The big outboard fired at once, smooth and powerful and as loud as a damn train. Ezra had more horsepower on the back of that boat than was in most cars. Frank put the motor in reverse and kept the throttle low until the prop had pulled them into deeper water, then spun the wheel and slammed the throttle forward.

The rain was driving hard now, blowing into their faces and speckling the surface of the lake. Water ran down Frank’s neck and under his shirt, dripped into his eyes. After they were around the sandbar, into the middle of the lake, AJ leaned over the side of the boat and there was a flash of silver from his knife and then the anchor line parted and slipped overboard and Atkins’s body drifted away. His white face was turned up as the anchor tugged it slowly beneath the lake, a ghostly sinking shadow. It was probably twenty-five or thirty feet deep out here. He might surface soon, he might not. If the body stayed wrapped in the anchor line and tangled in any of the stumps that lined the bottom, Agent Atkins might be a resident of the Willow Flowage for a long time.

“Go on!” AJ yelled, and Frank increased the speed, hardly aware that he’d slowed to watch the body.

Devin wanted AJ to have hostages, had made that clear before he’d sent them off without him. Hostages gave AJ a bargaining chip for use with Ezra, leverage to force the situation into his favor. One thing was certain, though: AJ had never had a hostage like Frank Temple III.

Frank held tight to that idea as he squinted against the wind and the spray, pushing the boat ahead fast and hard. All those lessons his father had offered, those violent skills that he’d provided and that Frank had spent seven years trying to suppress, they were about to have a purpose. These assholes might have known Frank’s father, but they didn’t know him well enough. Contract killer or not, Frank Temple II was at heart a teacher—and his son had excelled at the lessons.

There wasn’t a real road within two miles of where Ezra sat. A couple of trails led up to the Nekoosa Kennedy Fire Lane, but even if Ezra got them out of the boat and through the woods to the fire lane, what would he have accomplished? They’d still be a long, long walk from safety, with the boat marking their entrance point into the woods. Find the boat, and it wouldn’t be hard to understand where they were headed if you had a map. He had a feeling these boys would have a map.

“We’re just going to sit here?” Vaughn said. “We left the cabin to come up here and sit in a boat? If they don’t kill us, the lightning will!”

The lightning was a concern, although Ezra didn’t admit it, or even bother to respond to Vaughn at all. The rain was falling now, and the dark thunderheads were on top of them. They needed to get out of the boat and on land for the duration of the storm if nothing else, even though that wasn’t what he wanted. Not for the first time since they’d left, he wondered if he’d made a mistake by coming north. Frank could have made that call from Tomahawk, more than thirty minutes away. With time like that, they could have gotten to Ezra’s truck.

It was a risk he couldn’t have chanced, though. You planned for the worst-case scenario, and the worst-case scenario put these bastards close and coming closer. Circumstance like that, you had to run away from them, not into them. So he’d run, taken the boat into the deepest reaches of Langley Bay, one of the most secluded spots on the lake, with the only approach coming from the water. That meant going back required crossing a hell of a lot of water, too. He turned and looked at the motor on the stern. Stupid little outboard, nine-point-nine horse. It would take them five times as long to get across the lake with it as Ezra’s boat, with the two-twenty-five knocking away.

“If they’re out here to find us, they’ll search the whole lake,” Renee said. She was sitting in the middle seat of the little aluminum boat, and it rocked as she leaned toward him. She was wearing one of the ponchos Ezra kept in the boat, but there was rain on her neck, sliding slowly down to her collarbone. “They won’t get discouraged and give up.”

He understood that, didn’t need it told to him. Truth was, Ezra had some doubts now, and he wasn’t used to doubts. There was a time when something like this, combat preparations and a retreat into the woods, felt as natural to him as a trip to the movies, simple and almost fun. Hell, back then it felt more natural than a trip to the movies, but that time was long ago. Today, shaken out of years of a peaceful existence, maybe he’d slipped. Maybe he’d made a mistake. What the hell were they accomplishing, really, sitting out here in a boat with no idea what was happening on land? Even if his worst suspicions were accurate, then the real concerns were Frank and Nora. These two were at least temporarily safe. The others might not be.

“We can’t just sit here,” Vaughn said again, and his voice made Ezra prickle, filled him with an urge to smack the gray-haired son of a bitch onto the floor of the boat. The hell they couldn’t just sit here. Ezra had sat in worse places than this. Spent nine hours—nine hours—on his face in a mud hole filled with water that smelled like piss, trying not to breathe while an entire battalion of Vietcong milled around the jungle not thirty yards from him. How well would Vaughn have handled that?

Ezra’s stomach was clenched, his mind unsettled in a way it never had been before in a situation like this. It wasn’t fear that had him shaken up; no, it was something even more disturbing than that—uncertainty. It was a good way to get yourself, and others, killed. He needed his old mind back, the old instincts, the old moves. Everything he needed now had that word in front of it: old. He’d spent decades trying to become someone different than he was, and now he was afraid that he’d succeeded at the task.