Envy the Night (34 page)

“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.

__________

T
hey were back in the boat as the rain billowed down at them like laundry tossing on the line, flapping in gentle gusts, but each gust was a solid wall of water. Nora’s hair clung to her neck in tangles, water running into her mouth and eyes, the whole world gone wet, lake and sky blending into a liquid universe. She sat in the back with King’s hand locked into her arm, his gun close, as Frank started the engine and took them back out into the lake.

AJ’s mood was different than it had been before the island, wilder, his self-control held together by a few overstretched threads. She wasn’t sure if it was the realization of what he’d done back at the cabin catching up with him or more a sense of anticipation—it was now clear that Ezra knew they were coming.

But did he? Was he really somewhere north of here, taking refuge in the storm with Renee and Vaughn? Or had Frank been lying, saying whatever it took to get that gun out of his mouth?

The engine roared louder behind her and the boat lifted again, shoving her backward, tightening King’s grip on her arm. She’d have another set of bruises from him now, more blue streaks from his big ugly hands.

They hammered across the lake, the bow banging against windblown waves, and for some reason her thoughts turned to her mother, always wanting Nora married off and tucked away from the world, and Nora suddenly wondering if
this was why. The world could send its evil blowing into your life disguised as something as innocent as a car with a smashed front end, and you’d never see it coming.

But she should have seen it coming. Had known even as she pocketed the two thousand dollars that her father wouldn’t have done it, that he’d have demanded ID and some more information, or maybe refused the car altogether.

Her focus should probably have been on the hand that was digging into her arm and the guns around her, but she couldn’t take her mind off the earnest, pleading look on the face of the man she’d believed to be Dave O’Connor as he’d put the cash into her palm and assured her he could be trusted. She closed her eyes, reopened them, tried to see the lake instead of the mistake that had taken her here.

This far north, there was nothing to see except wilderness. The trees lined the shore in unbroken formation, like soldiers from some ancient battle massed and ready for action. Here and there stumps and weathered trees jutted out of the water, and the sky was empty of the osprey and eagles and gulls that normally filled it, empty of everything but roiling clouds and sheets of rain. AJ was speaking into Frank’s ear and pointing, sending Frank along first one shore and then the other, cutting back and forth across the lake, searching for Ezra and the others. It was a random, worthless method, even Nora knew that. Someone like Ezra would be able to hide the boat so well that they’d never find it, not if they spent the whole weekend out here. He probably had it onshore by now, dragged into the woods and covered with branches and underbrush, utterly invisible.

So what then? What would AJ and his near-the-breaking-point temper do when he realized they’d never find the boat?

She hadn’t formulated an answer to that question yet when Frank abruptly dropped the throttle and the boat sloshed to a stop, rocking on its own wake. Nora stared over his shoulder and felt her stomach dip with horror and astonishment—the boat was dead ahead. Not hidden at all, completely unconcealed, in fact, just sitting there on the flooded main shore, tied among the trees, dead center in the bay, visible from a hundred yards out even in the storm.

What was Ezra thinking? Had he lost his mind?

Ezra sat in the wet leaves for a long time with Vaughn at his side, thinking about the line he’d uttered as Ezra passed him the pistol and asked if he knew how to use it.
I’ve used it. Probably in ways you wouldn’t guess.

He thought about that and about the way Vaughn had reacted to being separated from Renee, the sort of desperate need he’d shown for her, took those two moments and put them together with the worry he’d had before, the notion that Vaughn was not the sort of man Devin seemed likely to turn to in a time of crisis. He considered all of those things for a while as they sat in the rain and waited for their pursuers, and after a long time he turned to Vaughn and said, “Devin’s alive.”

Vaughn had been staring out at the lake, and now he continued to do that, but everything in him seemed to shut down, not a breath coming, not a blink.

“He is alive,” Ezra repeated. “Left the hospital yesterday. Hasn’t been seen since. The way Frank heard it from the FBI, they think Devin might have been headed this way.”

This time, Vaughn got himself together enough to muster an attempt. He cocked his head, turned away from the water to face Ezra, and said, “I don’t know if I believe you, but if you’re serious, then that’s good news.”

Ezra said, “No. It is not good news for you.”

“I don’t understand,” Vaughn said.

“I think I do,” Ezra said. “I think I understand.”

Vaughn’s tongue slipped out of his mouth and ran across his lips, as if they needed moisture even with the rain beating off his face.

“Now,” Ezra said, “it being just the two of us out here in the rain, and Devin’s wife far from hearing range, I’d like to ask you a question and receive an honest answer. Did you shoot him?”

“What? Man, we sat on that porch and I
told you
—”

“I know what you told me,” Ezra said, “and this time I’m asking for the truth.”

A gust of wind blew hard for a few seconds, bending the treetops and showering Ezra and Vaughn with water, and then it faded and the rain slowed and the woods grew quiet around them.

“I’m the only chance you’ve got today,” Ezra said. “You better
know
that, friend. I’m it. And I need the truth.”

There was a long pause, and then Vaughn said, “She’s scared of him. That’s all it was. She doesn’t love him. How could you, guy like that? But how do you leave him, too? I’d be scared, if I was her.”

“You think she’s in love with you?” Ezra said. “Because I didn’t see that.”

Vaughn tensed, a quick flash of anger. “She could be. She might be. Man, you haven’t seen us, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I spent times with her, so many times, when she was telling me how much she liked all the ways I was different from him, how a guy . . .”

His voice trailed off, but Ezra understood what Vaughn never would, that Renee had been part of the game, packaged with the cash to keep this guy happy and playing for Devin’s team. Someone in law enforcement, buying him off might not be enough protection. Devin would have wanted to bring Vaughn in close, lure him as near as possible so he could be watched. You looked for something that kept a guy like Vaughn on the hook. Renee, it seemed, had played that role awfully well.

“Were you having an affair with her?” Ezra asked. “Sleeping together?”

Vaughn shook his head. “No. It wasn’t there yet. But she was scared of him, and I know she wanted to leave him, I
know that for a fact.
”

He hissed the last line at Ezra, spit showing on his lips.

“All right,” Ezra said slowly. Then, “Why’d you run
here
? Of all the places you could have gone, you came here?”

Vaughn didn’t offer an answer, but after a moment Ezra gave himself one. “You needed someplace that would seem like Devin’s idea. To convince her.”

That got a nod. “He’d talked about it once. Right at the beginning. Offered me the place if I wanted to stay there, you know, a vacation or whatever. Wrote your name down”—he nodded at Ezra—“and said I should just call you and say when I was coming. He acted like it was funny, though. Seemed real entertained by it.”

“He would have been,” Ezra said. “I promised him if he ever came back here, I’d kill him. He probably thought it would be real damn funny if you called me and said he’d sent you. If you thought you’d killed the guy, though, why did you need to run at all?”

“To be with her,” Vaughn said, his voice barely audible. “To be with her, away from the rest of it. To show her what I could be. That I could take care of her. That I could be like him, only . . . better. If she knew that he’d trusted me, if she knew . . .”

He looked up at Ezra, hope filling his eyes. “You won’t tell her. Will you? You hate him, too. You understand.”