Envy the Night

31

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The island showed itself as a dark silhouette against the gray sky, each tree taking on a gradual shape as they neared from the south. Frank was tempted to keep running, head straight into the shore. That’d change some things up, for sure. All four of them in the water, it’d be a matter of who surfaced fastest and who held on to their guns. Since he didn’t have any of the guns, though, probably wasn’t the wisest choice.

“This is it?” AJ was leaning down to make his words heard over the wind, his face close to Frank’s, the gun within reaching distance. Frank looked at it and wondered if he could get his hands on it, whether he could move fast enough. He thought he probably could, but then there was the one they called King to worry about, and Nora directly behind him, in line to accept any bullet that passed through his body.

“Well?” AJ pressed closer, raised the gun a few inches. “Is it?”

Frank nodded, throttled down, the island maybe fifty yards away now, the cabin visible between the trees.

“All right,” AJ said, and his voice was different now, softer and measured. “All right. Bring it in slow, kid. Everybody look happy. We’re all friends, remember.”

He had the gun pressed into Frank’s chest.

Thunder hammered through the sky again, and the darkness was such that the trees across the bay seemed to disappear into a night sky. It couldn’t be later than one in the afternoon.

Frank was staring up at the house and the trees closest to it, trying to imagine where Ezra was. He’d be watching them approach, Frank was certain of that. The motor was loud, even over the thunder and wind, and Ezra wouldn’t ignore it. So where was he? Frank couldn’t see him anywhere in the trees, but they were dark and whipped by the wind, branches tossing. The beach was close now, twenty feet ahead, and Frank had the motor throttled all the way down.

“Take us in,” AJ said.

“All the way?”

“Yes.”

Frank gave the throttle a quick hit, goosing the motor enough to send them toward shore with a hard push, and then cut the engine, had the blades off by the time the boat scraped into the gravelly bank.

“Get her out,” AJ said, speaking to King. “Get out her out fast and keep that gun in her back. Come on!”

King rose awkwardly, a big man with land legs, then pulled Nora up, his gun in her back as instructed. He stepped out and got one foot down in the water, almost fell clearing the other one. Nora was submerged nearly up to her knees.

“Move,” AJ said, giving Frank’s stomach an encouraging twist with the gun barrel. “Out and into the trees.”

Frank went up to the front of the boat, passing AJ to do so, that familiar Smith & Wesson just inches from his hand for a second. He cleared the front of the boat with a jump, got almost out of the water, soaking only his shoes before joining King and Nora on the beach. Then AJ was out, and everyone was looking at him and waiting for instructions except for Frank, who kept his eyes on the trees by the cabin. Ezra was in there somewhere. Had to be. Why not shoot? Surely he saw the guns.

Take them, Ezra, he thought. Damn it, take them!

No shots came. No sound at all except for more thunder and the howl of the wind across the lake and AJ ordering everyone up to the house.

Frank was shoved into the lead, and he climbed the trail with a cold fear sliding through his body, squeezing his chest. He’d put everything on Ezra, every chance any of them had left, and now Ezra was nowhere to be found. What if Frank had been wrong? What if Ezra hadn’t gotten the phone call or been alarmed by it, hadn’t heard the motor, was completely unprepared for any of this? If Ezra wasn’t ready, that left nobody but Frank for the job.

They came up over the hill, and the cabin came into view. AJ stepped closer to Frank, wrapped one hand in his shirt to keep them together, used the other to press the gun against Frank’s kidneys.

“That door going to be locked?”

“I don’t know.”

“If it is, you call out for Ballard.”

Up the steps of the porch as the rain began to fall faster, pattering through the leaves and beading on the floorboards, then to the door, Frank’s hand closing around the knob as AJ released his shirt and reached back for his second gun. Locked.

“Call his name,” AJ said, hissing it in Frank’s ear, and Frank opened his mouth and a laugh came out instead of a name.

“The boat,” he said and laughed again, turning away from the door.

“What?”

“It’s gone. They’re gone.”

How in the hell had he missed that? Staring at that island so intently as he’d brought them in, scanning the trees, double-checking every shadow, and he’d forgotten the damn boat. They were gone, all right, gone in the boat and into the storm, and that meant Ezra had understood the warning.

“They took the boat and left,” he said. AJ shoved him aside and raised his foot and slammed it into the center of the door, tore the hasp out of the frame and burst into the dark house, calling for King to stay on the porch.

They waited while he searched the place, found it as empty as Frank already knew it would be.

“Where did they go?” AJ returned with a snarl, his hand so tight on his gun that the muscles and veins in his forearm stood out. All of the composure and calm were gone now, nothing but fury left behind.

“They left in the boat,” Frank said again.

“I know that!” AJ grabbed Frank’s throat and drove him backward, slammed him into the cabin wall and pressed the gun into his mouth, banging the muzzle through his teeth. Nora screamed, and King said something in a harsh whisper. Frank couldn’t see either of them, couldn’t see anything but AJ’s face and the gun. The metal was cold against his tongue.

“You know where they are,” AJ said, the words slow and soft. “You know, and don’t lie again, do not lie again. You got one chance, and you tell it right this time. Did they go to the police?”

Frank shook his head ever so slightly, not wanting to tamper with that gun.

“He doesn’t know!” Nora shouted from somewhere behind AJ. “They were here when we left!”

“Shut up.” AJ’s eyes never left Frank’s. “He knows, and he’s got one chance to tell me.”

The voice was back then, Frank’s father’s voice, whispering again.

Trust Ezra. You already did once, and that was a bigger risk than this, because you weren’t sure he’d gotten the warning. Now you know he did. He’s ready for them, son.

“He doesn’t know,” Nora said again, her voice tight with tears.

But you do know. Have a general idea, at least, because you know what I would have done. You learned from me. Don’t want to remember it now, but you learned from me, listened to all the old stories and remember every damn one and who did I learn from? Ezra.

AJ pulled the gun back slowly, the spit-covered barrel sliding out of Frank’s mouth.

“Where are they?” he said.

“On the lake.”

AJ’s head canted to the right, into a shadow. “Where on the lake?”

Frank swallowed, worked his tongue around his mouth, still tasting the metal of the gun. The last taste his father had ever had in this life.

“The north end. That’s as much as I can tell you. They were here when we left. They’re gone now, and they didn’t tell me where they were going. He knew you were coming, somehow.”

AJ’s anger seemed barely tempered by a need to believe Frank.

“Then why would they still be on the lake?”

Frank looked past AJ’s shoulder, saw Nora watching him.

“He wasn’t sure how much time he had before you got here. Couldn’t even know for sure that Nora and I had ever gotten away from my cabin. And since he wasn’t sure, he couldn’t risk going south to get back to the boat ramp or to the cabin. Too much of a chance he’d run straight into you. So he’d go north.”

“What’s north?”

“Nothing,” Frank said. “Nothing but water and woods.”

Nine times Grady had called; nine times Atkins had failed to answer. What in the hell was going on?

He’d driven past Wausau and into a rainstorm, cruise control set at ninety now and still nobody stopping him. All he could hope for at this point, as Tomahawk neared and his wipers slapped back and forth at the highest speed setting, was that Atkins couldn’t take his calls because he was too busy with Frank. Interviewing him in some safe room in a building far away from Vaughn Duncan and Devin Matteson, maybe. Or maybe it was already done; maybe Matteson and Duncan were both in handcuffs, and Atkins was preparing for the mountain of paperwork that lay ahead.

Maybe a lot of things. As many optimistic options as Grady could produce, he couldn’t believe any of them. Not today. Because it was a karmic world, Grady believed that in his heart, and he’d spent too many days and too many years telling himself that he could always make up for his lie, that there would always be time, somewhere down the road, to sit down with Frank Temple and set him straight, give him the truth and apologize and explain why he’d done it, explain that they’d wanted so badly to take Devin down that a little misdirection had seemed so, so insignificant.

The gambit hadn’t paid off, though, and so Grady kept that damn watch on Frank Temple out of a little fondness and a lot of guilt and reminded himself often of a personal pact that one day, if it ever seemed necessary, he would tell the kid that it hadn’t been Devin who gave up his father.

Grady had let seven years roll by, twenty-five hundred days, and had never said a word. Because it hadn’t mattered, not anymore—Frank had swallowed the lie, but it hadn’t hurt him, and now, after all this time, there was no way that it could.

Wrong. It was going to hurt him now. Frank and who knew how many others. And all Grady could do was streak up the interstate through the rain, destined to be too late.

As they had so many times in the past, Ezra’s ears warned of disaster before his eyes. For a moment he questioned it over the noise of the storm, but then the wind abated for just a moment, as if the lake were going to give him one break today, and that was enough to confirm his suspicions: There was a boat on the water.

He could hear the engine faintly, this one riding a lower and stronger pitch than the little outboard under his hand would create. It was a familiar sound, the growl of a Merc two-twenty-five pounding hard, the rhythm of his daily life in the summers.

“What?” Renee said, seeing his face.

“There’s a boat coming.”

“Could be anybody,” Vaughn said. “Let’s go, man. Faster we get back to the car, faster we’re out of here.”

The fear was returning to his voice now, that jerky panic that he’d talked with earlier in the day.

“No.” Ezra shook his head. It could be Frank, alone, but something told him it wasn’t, told him that the game was in play now.

“You don’t even know it’s them. I can’t see any boat—”

“It’s them,” Ezra said. “I know the sound of my own boat.”

He looked down at the throttle under his hand, knowing that it would dictate what happened next as much as anything would. His boat ate up the water faster than anything else on this lake. Trying to outrun them with the little nine-point-nine would be like a car chase between a Lamborghini and a dump truck.

“It could be that kid and the girl,” Vaughn said. “Just them.”

“Could be,” Ezra said, even though he knew it wasn’t. “If it is, we’ll know soon. Right now, we got to get ready.”

The best scenario would be to ditch the boat and take to the trees and get ready to do some shooting. If he were in his own boat, this bullshit would be over before it got started. He still had his rifle in the boat, with a night scope that would work just fine in this weather. Take that and head into the trees and then he could make damn sure these boys would have a rude welcome. Should never have left it in the boat. Damn. It was the little things that killed you, the missed details and slips of timing, and Ezra felt those stacking up on him now, things that he wouldn’t have missed in another time and another place. He was out of practice, had been happy to be out of practice, but now it was proving to be a dangerous thing.

When they got to the island and saw it was empty, the boat missing, they’d begin calculating the situation just as he was, and whoever came out ahead in this fight would be the one who thought it through the best, saw the moves before anybody made them. Combat was a thinking man’s game, always had been.

So think, then. Think hard and well and think fast damn it.

He looked back at Renee and Vaughn, saw them waiting on him with anxious faces, and nodded to himself. Step one, separate these two. It seemed like a bad idea at first blush, but that was almost a good thing, because it meant the boys in Ezra’s boat wouldn’t expect it. Generally you’d want to keep everyone together, protect one another, seek safety in numbers. The second layer of this move, and the one that probably meant the most, was that the men from Florida wanted Renee and Vaughn together, not separate. So if things played out poorly, if these men caught them, better to make it happen one at a time. That would slow things down, and when you slowed things down you had more time to come up with a countermeasure.

“Is there any way we can get help?” Renee said.

Ezra took his cell phone out to humor her. Nobody could get here fast enough, and anybody who might wasn’t going to be the sort of cop who could help with these guys. It’d be a Fish and Wildlife officer or a sheriff’s deputy or some other poor bastard who’d do nothing but add to the death toll.

“No signal,” Ezra said, the whitest of lies, because the phone showed just one tiny bar, the barest hint of a connection. “We got to get moving again. First thing we’re going to do is split up.”

Renee was silent. Vaughn said, his voice wary, “Split up how?”

“You and me are going to be on the shore,” Ezra said, gesturing north of where they sat, “and she’s going to stay on this island. Temporarily.”

“No way.” Vaughn shook his head. “No chance I’m leaving her alone. You’re a damn coward.”

“We’re splitting up to protect her,” he said, speaking to Vaughn and pointing at Renee. “She stays here while we go across to the main shore, and we’ll make sure they know that we’re going there. We’ll beach the boat in the open, make it obvious.”

“No,” Vaughn said, but Ezra ignored him and spoke to Renee.

“You’re a swimmer, right?”

“Yes.”

“How good?”

“Very.”

He pointed west across the water as lightning lit up the bay. “Can you make that shore?”

It was a hell of a swim, but she nodded.

“All right. Anything happens and you’re on your own, that’s the one to shoot for. Walk far enough, you’ll hit a fire lane.”

“I’m not leaving her!” Vaughn spun toward Ezra, leaning close. “You want to go on and lead them into the woods, do it, man. Go ahead. But I came here to take care of her, and I am going to do it.”

“No,” Ezra said. “You’re not.”

Vaughn stared at Ezra with a strange flicker in his eyes. It surprised Ezra, almost made him want to lean back, a crazy quality in the look.

“You want to take care of her,” Ezra said, “then you’ll help me occupy these boys.”

“I’m not—”

“Please, Vaughn,” Renee said, and her voice was gentler than Ezra had heard before. “Please.”

That stopped him, and he looked away from Ezra and stared at Renee. “I can take care of you,” he said. “We don’t need to listen to him, Renee. We don’t need him.”

“Yes, we do,” she said, tone stronger now.

Ezra couldn’t hear his boat’s engine anymore. That meant they were stopped, which probably meant they were at the island, checking the empty cabin.

“We got to go,” Ezra said, “and you’re coming with me.”

Vaughn sat in a furious silence while Renee climbed off the boat and into the puddles and mud onshore.

Ezra reached under his seat and found the gun he’d taken from her on the porch, the one she’d stuck in his eye. “Here.”

She took the gun, and Ezra gave her a good-luck nod and then pushed the boat offshore, sent them back into the water as she walked toward the trees. Before he fired up the motor, he reached behind his back and withdrew the gun he’d taken from Vaughn on the beach earlier that day, held it out.

“You ever actually used this?” he said.

Vaughn’s eyes were dark and small, his face wet with rain.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ve used it. Probably in ways you wouldn’t guess.”

“Fantastic,” Ezra said. “Maybe you’ll get to tell me the story sometime. Right now, it’s time to move.”

He pressed the gun into Vaughn’s palm.