Spilled Blood

48

Florian did as he was instructed; he told no one about his rendezvous with Aquarius. If he brought the police, Julia died. He went alone, but he didn’t go without protection. The Ruger that he normally kept in his glove apartment was buried in the pocket of his wool coat. It was a cold day. He would keep his hands in his pockets, the way anyone would. All he needed was an opportunity to pull the trigger.

He didn’t know who this man was, or what he knew, but he had no intention of letting him leave their meeting alive. This game ended today. Aquarius would be gone.

He listened to Brahms on the car stereo as he drove. The sound was so rich and vivid, it was as if the pianist were with him in the car, fingers meticulously unlocking the puzzle of the music. It calmed him. He remembered how much Ashlynn had loved this concerto as a girl. She’d acquired his taste for the classics at a young age. She would close her eyes and pretend to play, and when it was over, she would bow, as if the audience were silently cheering her.

Ashlynn.

He wondered if it was true that she’d turned against him. He wondered how much she knew before she died. He hated to think that, in her last days of life, she would have hated him for what he’d done.

Florian passed the headquarters of Mondamin on the river as he drove north, but he didn’t stop. The guards at the gate recognized his car; they waved at him. He tooted his horn in salute. The facility operated 24/7; it was never empty, never idle. A decade earlier, there had been nothing on that land. He’d built it all from his own sweat, his own vision. People’s livelihoods depended on him. If Mondamin was at risk, if it was under threat, he was sworn to defend it. That was his job.

Ashlynn, try to understand.

If only she’d come to him and given him a chance to explain.

He continued into the dense wilderness. The meeting-ground wasn’t far. Trees on both sides leaned over the road, and he caught glimpses of the river winking in and out of the forest. For three miles, the highway was like a tunnel crossing from one world to the next, and when he finally burst into the open, he was at the county gateway. The Spirit Dam muscled across the water. The thick trees gave way to swaths of dormant park land tracking the giant lake. Ribbons of charcoal clouds stretched overhead in dark layers.

He parked on the Barron side of the dam and got out. He buttoned his coat and tugged up his collar. The wind off the water bit his skin. He shoved his hands in his pockets and marched onto the concrete bridge. To his left, the lake sprawled over a mile of erratic banks like a well-fed spider. Below him, winding toward the town, the Spirit River swirled in white foam as the dam squeezed a pulsing current through its gates into the narrow canal.

Florian saw a dark blue van parked on the concrete deck. Its windows were smoked; he couldn’t see inside. Its headlights blinked at him. Aquarius was waiting, but Florian didn’t hurry. As he crossed the dam, he glanced in every direction to make sure they were alone. His fingers gripped the gun in his pocket.

The driver’s door of the van opened. A man climbed out. Without his anonymous threats, and with his identity unmasked, Aquarius was an ordinary man. He was a stranger, but he wasn’t scary. Florian didn’t know him, but he studied him carefully, assessing the danger. The man was underdressed for the weather, with no coat. He saw no gun in the man’s hands and no place where he could hide one. He wondered if the man was foolish enough to think that Florian would come unarmed.

He didn’t see Julia.

They approached each other warily, like spies at a prisoner exchange. When they were ten feet apart, Florian stopped, and so did Aquarius.

‘Mr. Florian Steele,’ the man announced. ‘I’ve waited a long time for this moment.’

‘Where’s my wife?’

‘First things first. I’m sure you have a phone. Please throw it in the river.’

Florian reached inside his coat and slid out his phone from an inner pocket. He stood next to a steel railing. In the warmer months, people fished here, dropping their lines into the agitated water. He flipped his phone into the whirlpool, where it disappeared.

‘You came alone?’ the man asked. ‘No police?’

‘That’s what you told me to do.’ His eyes darted toward the van and the lake. He listened, but the roar of the water through the dam was a thunder covering every other noise.

Aquarius smiled. ‘You’re wondering if I’m alone. You’re wondering if someone else is in the van with your wife. Or perhaps there is a sniper on the bank, with a cross-hair trained on your head.’

‘Is there?’

The smile washed away. Aquarius headed for the passenger door of the van and opened it, and he helped Julia out to the bridge. His wife, always as perfectly arranged as jewels in a store window, looked fragile and pale. Aquarius took a pocket knife from his pocket and cut the bonds that held Julia’s hands behind her back. She stretched her fingers, restoring the circulation.

Their eyes met. He tried to decipher her expression. He saw sadness and fear. Anger. There was sorrow, but no love. Her heart was dead to him. He realized you can’t rescue someone from a cage you built yourself.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked her.

She said nothing. She brushed her tangled hair from her eyes.

Aquarius held out his hand to Florian. ‘Your car keys, Mr. Steele.’

‘Why?’

‘I promised you I would free your wife. I’m keeping my promise.’

‘And me?’

‘I thought it was understood, Mr. Steele,’ Aquarius said. ‘You’re not leaving.’

Florian wanted to laugh. The threat sounded hollow, but there was no hint of a bluff in the man’s eyes. There was no mercy. He shrugged, extracting his keys from his pants pocket, throwing them across the short space. The man caught them and passed the keys to Julia.

‘Go,’ Aquarius said.

Julia shook her head. ‘I’m staying.’

‘This doesn’t involve you, Mrs. Steele.’

‘Go, Julia,’ Florian told her. ‘Get out of here. Please.’

Her hesitation was eloquent. There needed to be words between them, but they were at a loss. She didn’t want to hear him say he loved her. They were beyond that. She didn’t need empty encouragement, and she wouldn’t believe it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, because he’d brought them here, to this place, to this moment. It was his fault.

He looked for tears and didn’t see any. Not Julia.

‘I was wrong, Florian,’ she said. ‘God didn’t want any of this to happen.’

She hugged herself in the cold, and she hurried past him. He heard the tap of her shoes, click click, moving away from him, until her footsteps were covered up by the rumble of rushing water. He didn’t look back; he didn’t take his eyes off Aquarius. Seconds later, he heard his car engine on the other side of the bridge. She’d left him here, which was the only thing she could do.

She was safe.

‘Now we’re alone,’ Florian said. ‘Or do you have accomplices with you?’

‘We’re alone, Mr. Steele. It’s just the two of us.’

‘That’s what I wanted to know.’ Florian drew out the Ruger from his pocket and pointed it at the chest of the man in front of him.

He fired.