Envy the Night

34

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They’d been alone on the boat for maybe five minutes before King began to talk to Nora.

“Uh-oh,” he said, turning back to her with a slight smile. He’d been standing, or trying to stand, in the pitching boat and watching AJ and Frank head off.

“Know where they are now, baby? On the shore. And you know what that means.” He tilted his wrist, looked at it, and then frowned. “Damn. Look who forgot his watch. That’s no good. How am I going to know when ten minutes go by?”

He leaned close to her, and she tried to slide away but found it impossible with both hands and feet bound. His face, long and angular and covered with rough stubble, was against hers, his breath on her cheek.

“I’ll have to guess,” he said. “You know, estimate? I was always bad at that, though. Thought five minutes felt like ten.”

The wind rose again in a hard gust, and the boat rolled. He put out his hand to catch himself, falling almost on top of her, his legs heavy against hers. Somewhere in her stomach liquid churned, threatening to rise. No, no, no, she couldn’t be sick, not with that tape over her mouth. Get sick and she’d choke on it, die, make this even easier on him.

“Look at that,” King said, pushing her sideways, running his fingertips along her forearm, over the bruises he’d left two days earlier. “Little love marks. They from me? I bet they are.”

She was stretched out on the seat, and he was on his knees now in the bottom of the boat, not even looking at the island, just staring into her face as the wind pulled his shirt tight across his chest and the rain dripped down his face and onto hers. He reached out and took her hair in his hand, squeezed hard enough to make her eyes sting.

“It was dumb-shit luck that kid showed up when he did. Too bad, because we were going to have some fun, you and I. Might still have some.” He rocked his hand left to right, jerking her head sideways. “I take that tape off your mouth, we could have some serious fun. But you might be a biter. Yeah, I could see that. You’re the type, aren’t you? Angry little bitch. So maybe that tape stays.”

He lifted her by her hair, and she would have screamed if the tape didn’t prevent it. Her eyes were streaming now, nose following suit, the pain demanding a physical response. He pushed her back against the side of the boat and leaned against her, pressing his body down on hers. The sudden change was almost too much for the boat; they rocked hard to one side, and he pulled back at the last possible second, the boat rolling with him. What if he hadn’t recovered? What if they’d just kept going over, ended up in the water, with tape over her mouth and her hands and feet bound? She’d die then, too. That or wait the ten minutes.

“That tape stays,” he said, flicking his index finger off her mouth, smashing her lip back against her teeth. “Keep you from biting. Tape on the hands can stay, too. You won’t need those.”

He moved suddenly, slammed her head back against the boat hard enough to make her vision blur, and then he got to his feet and moved back to the bow, leaned against it, and stared into the woods. She tilted her head, tried to see what he was looking at. The angle wasn’t right, though, and she couldn’t turn any farther without rolling her whole body over. Didn’t want to do that, and draw his attention back, so instead she kept craning her neck in that awkward position and tried to see where the boat had gone.

She couldn’t see the boat, could hardly see the main shore. There was another island that she could see, but that wasn’t where AJ had taken Frank. She let her eyes pass over that shore and then started to look away, wanting to ease that awful pressure on her neck, when she saw motion.

There was someone on the island. No, couldn’t be. She was seeing things, some weird reflection, the sun playing tricks even behind the dark clouds. Where had it gone? Wait, there it was again. Yes, someone was moving through the trees on the island just beside them.

Nora kept herself in that awkward position, the pain momentarily irrelevant, and stared. Now the motion was gone, but she was positive she’d seen someone, and not where the boat had been beached. So had the boat been a trick, a ruse?

King turned back from the bow then, and Nora moved her head, but it was a second too slow. He’d seen her staring out across the water, seen the intense look in her eyes, and he followed it.

“Son of a bitch,” he said, lifting the gun, and Nora knew she’d just ruined someone’s chance to escape.

Ezra crawled to the top of the rise and paused, looking out across the angry gray lake. There was the boat, a few hundred yards out, small but visible. Wait till he had it in the scope. Wouldn’t be small then, no, sir. Be nice and clear, a perfect picture of some poor bastard waiting to die.

He couldn’t hear the shouting anymore, which could be good or bad. Maybe the idiot was out of shouting range now, and maybe he was quietly working his way back to the boat. Ezra didn’t know, and he wasn’t going to waste time worrying about it. Time was slipping away, and he needed to get out to his boat. They’d tied it up right in the middle of the stumps and partially submerged trees that surrounded this part of the shore. He could hear a rapping sound as the hull banged against a stump, and it made him like these bastards even a little less. Ezra took damn good care of that boat.

Maybe twenty feet of fairly open ground to cover before he reached the lake and had to plunge into that mess of branches and water, fight his way out to the boat. It would take about thirty seconds to get on board, but he’d be in the open the whole time, and if whoever was out there with Nora had a rifle, Ezra might die before he ever got to take a shot. Nothing to do about that, though. Times came when you had to gamble, that was all. Ezra had gambled before, and still had the dice in his hand.

He got his breathing steadied and thought about doing a countdown, ten seconds and then move, but decided the hell with it. A countdown didn’t make it any easier, and he didn’t have seconds to waste. He pushed off the ground with his hands and went upright for the first time since he’d left Vaughn, got his feet moving and ran down the hill.

It was a slippery, dangerous mess in the rain, and twice he almost went down on his face, righted himself somehow and kept moving, hit the water knee deep and sloshed through it as quietly as he could, hunching now, trying to stay below the boat. The whole procedure seemed loud as hell to him, but out there on the lake with the wind whipping across the bay he doubted they’d hear. If they were watching close enough they would have seen him by now, which meant he needed to get the gun out fast.

No shots came; no motor roared to life. He waded out to the stern, the water up almost to his armpits, and then braced his hands on the side of the boat and heaved. Damn, it was hard work. He was weighted down with water and wet clothes, and his upper body wasn’t what it used to be. He got over, though, flopped across the side and slid down to the floor, lay there breathing hard for a few seconds and waiting for a shot that didn’t come.

Still silent. He pushed himself into a sitting position and cast one glance at the console, saw the empty ignition. They’d taken the key, as he’d feared. That could be dealt with later, though. Right now, he needed the rifle.

He’d left it in the storage compartment under the floor, a space designed for fishing rods. He flipped the latch and lifted the cover and peered inside, felt a moment’s horror when he saw nothing but rods. But there it was, tucked all the way against the side, a gun that had never seemed as beautiful as it did now.

It was a custom-built bolt-action rifle that Ezra had paid an absurd amount for six years earlier, and it was also the best long-range gun he’d ever held, one that would make the Browning A-Bolt and the Remington 700 look like pawnshop pickups. A high-velocity cartridge rested inside, waiting to head out of that perfect bore at twenty-eight hundred feet per second. Each round that left this gun was a gorgeous product of engineering.

He pulled the rifle free and closed the storage compartment, then slipped the cover off the scope. It was a Yukon night-vision scope, a piece of equipment that cost more than Ezra had paid for some cars but that had seemed only an appropriate pairing for the rifle. He’d often chastised himself for both purchases, which felt like obscene wastes of money when he was in a rational mood. Today, it all felt incredibly cheap. He couldn’t believe they’d ferried it right across the lake to him so unwittingly. His own enemy had delivered him his sword. Mercy be on their souls now.

Crawling back toward the outboard, he pressed himself in against the bench seat and lifted the gun barrel, rested it on the stern. Then he lowered his cheek to his shoulder, closed one eye, put the other to the scope.

A night-vision scope, even a good one like this, didn’t demand total or near-total darkness for use. It had an infrared illuminator that could be engaged for such conditions, but today the standard image tube was all Ezra would need. It gathered the natural light and enhanced it, and in this storm that would work fine. He slid the rifle left a few inches to bring the boat into view, tweaked the scope to clarify the scene.

The shouting man had not lied. There were two people in the boat, Nora Stafford and a big son of a bitch with a gun in his right hand. Nora had tape over her mouth, and the guy with the gun was—hold on a second, he had just lifted the gun.

The shot rang out loud and clear even in the wind and rain, and for a second Ezra was absolutely baffled, because the guy was turned away from Ezra and firing across the lake. What the hell? Ezra thought, and then he got it: Renee. The tall man had spotted Renee and opened fire without bothering to see who the hell he was shooting at.

“Shit,” he whispered and brought the crosshairs down quick, sighted along the big man’s chest, his finger tight on the trigger. It was a hell of a long shot, even with the scope, at least a hundred and sixty yards. Tougher still because the guy was standing sideways from Ezra’s position, offering only his profile. All these details ran through Ezra’s mind fast and then were pushed aside because the son of a bitch had fired again and Ezra couldn’t let him continue. He clenched his teeth together, steadied his breathing, and pulled the trigger.

It was maybe the best shot he’d ever made. Certainly the best he’d made so quickly. The bullet hit the guy in the neck, blew a cloud of blood into the air, and then he was falling forward, collapsing against the side of the boat. Shit, he’d fallen right on Nora. As Ezra watched through the scope, the boat tipped dangerously to the left. For a moment he thought the body would slide into the water and the boat would right itself, but somehow the guy hung up on the side. The boat rocked back to the right, but then Nora struggled beneath the body and her motion made it roll to the left again. There was a half-second pause where equilibrium was still possible, but she kept thrashing and the little boat overbalanced and tipped, spilling them both into the water.

“Damn!” Ezra lowered the gun and peered out, as if that would somehow help him see, then lifted it again and looked back through the scope. He hadn’t meant to send them both into the water like that, but it wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened. He’d seen the bullet’s impact, knew that it had missed Nora, hitting at least three feet above her. She could swim, surely, or at least hang on to the upside-down boat until Ezra could get out there.

He kept the scope to his eye and watched the water and saw nothing. Nobody moving, nobody splashing. What the hell was she doing? Surely she hadn’t been knocked out in the fall.

Then he remembered the tape.