Deadout (35 page)

The way the cliff had eroded, there was an overhang at the top. I pulled up short and let myself drop, still falling six feet before I touched the cliff face. The angle was steep but when I hit the side of the cliff, it took the wind out of me. The surface was slick with a mixture of clay and water, and there was nothing to grab onto. I felt like I was going down a very steep water slide, with chunks of rock sticking out like jagged speed bumps, slowing me down and giving me contusions. I found myself funneled down a small channel in the cliff face, accompanied by a torrent of clay-colored water.

The bottom came up fast, and I hit it with a bone-jarring thud. My feet sank into the wet sandy clay at the bottom. I took a moment to get my bearings; then I crawled out from under all the water coming down. The beach was narrow and strewn with boulders that extended out into the water. I was about to dash down the beach when one of my pursuers came sliding down the cliff twenty feet away from me. I sank back against the cliff, into the sandy clay. I wiped it all over my face, narrowing my eyes to slits, and waited in the dark.

He trotted back and forth, searching for me, his assault rifle at the ready.

Suddenly he seemed to sense I was there, taking a few cautious steps in my direction. My eyes were all but closed, and I decided that if he came any nearer, or if he raised his gun, I would have to try to take him down before he could kill me. If I could get his gun, maybe I could take out the others.

But then a gruff voice barked out, “Where is he?”

The guy in front of me turned to face an older guy just walking up. “Don't know,” the first one said. Three more walked up, each carrying an assault rifle.

I should have gone when I could, I told myself.

The older guy split the others up and sent two down the beach and two up the beach.

Then it was just him and me. He stood there with his back to me. I had the feeling he was trying to lure me out, and I was planning a move, wondering if I could close the distance between us without making any noise. He seemed the kind of grizzled vet who could silently disembowel you using a library card.

I was tensing to make my move when he spun to face me, marched to a spot ten feet away, unzipped his fly, and let out a deep sigh, along with a stream of urine. He was just a little too far away for me to take advantage, so I closed my eyes, waited for him to finish, and then waited a little longer, just in case.

When I opened my eyes, he was thirty feet away and headed up the beach. Beyond him, I could see two of the others, still moving away from me. I could only assume the others were a similar distance in the other direction. Before long, they'd all turn and head back, and then I'd be screwed. The rain was still coming down at a decent clip, rinsing the clay from my skin. I was running out of time.

The mud made a sucking sound as I pulled away from the cliff. I froze, but no one else seemed to have heard it. Then I dashed across the sand, headed straight for a boulder in the surf. When my feet hit the water, I gasped out loud from the cold. A couple of feet deeper I let out a similar sound, slightly higher pitched. Then I dove in and swam.

The boulder was thirty feet out, and I didn't stop until I'd reached it. The waves weren't as big as I'd feared, but they were waves, and I was getting weaker from the cold. Each successive wave threatened to smack me against the stone, but I didn't dare leave it. When I peeked back over it, I saw a trail of clay-colored water in the darkness, an incriminating line pointing to my location, but it soon dissipated enough to be barely visible, the current pulling it to the west. Everybody was still headed away from me, so I swam with the current to the next boulder, then the one after that.

I hop-scotched my way down the beach, watching the gunmen as they slowed, then stopped, then turned around and headed back. We were headed in opposite directions, just about even with each other, when I came to the last big boulder. I clung to it and watched as they headed back down the beach.

The numbness was working its way up my limbs, and the relief as I watched them go was quickly outweighed by a distant but growing sense of panic as the occasional waves splashing over my head came with greater frequency. I was starting to feel heavy. I knew I needed to get moving, get my blood pumping, or I was going to wash up on a beach somewhere and ruin someone's vacation.

After pushing off the rock as hard as I could, I kicked my legs and started swimming, trying to put a little more distance between me and my pursuers. That's when I heard it. At first I thought it was my heart. But it wasn't my heart. It was a helicopter coming around the cliff, its searchlight slicing through the darkness.

I could feel my limbs weakening when I needed them stronger. A wave closed over my head, and it occurred to me that drowning wasn't the worst way to go. If I went down, at least it wouldn't be these guys who found me. I smiled at the thought that, even if just for a few days, they'd think I'd gotten away.

Then I thought about Nola once again. I pictured Jimmy Frank bringing her in to identify my body. I'd seen my share of floaters. Drowning might not be the worst way to die, but it might be the worst way to be found. I couldn't do that to Nola.

I closed my eyes and pictured her, safe and warm, just a few miles away. I could feel her arms wrapping around me, the heat from her body, the softness of her kiss. I could be with her in less than an hour, less than a half hour, if I could survive the next fifteen minutes.

Then it occurred to me that if these guys were here trying to kill me, others at that moment might be trying to kill Nola and Annalisa.

The helicopter was hovering in front of the cliffs, scouring them with its searchlight. I kicked toward the shore, and had just reached the point where the swells were starting to break when the helicopter stopped circling the waters in front of the cliff and started drifting west, toward me. As it approached, the searchlight swept back and forth, from twenty feet into the grasses and scrubby underbrush that lined the beach, then out to sea, where the light faded to nothing hundreds of feet away.

My arms and legs were numb and practically useless. The sound of the helicopter was getting louder as I pulled myself up the wet sand, unable to stand even in the shallow water. The noise grew as the wet sand sucked at my hands and knees, like it didn't want to let me go.

I felt massively heavy as I crawled up the beach, until finally, the sand firmed up beneath me and the waves could no longer reach me. It felt strange being on land, a feeling I thought I'd never experience again. I looked down the beach, amazed at how far I'd come. But it wasn't far enough. The searchlight was slicing across the beach barely a hundred yards away. Straight ahead, a clump of bushes rose from the beach grasses, and I headed for it. The dry sand gave way underneath me, and I stumbled and fell, my limbs treading land as I tried to scramble away.

Finally, my hands reached the edge of the brush. I grabbed a branch, thorns digging into my skin, and pulled myself in, tucking myself as far as I could under the prickly leaves. I prayed that the men looking for me didn't have thermal vision; telling myself that if they did, I'd have already been dead.

The searchlight swept over me, a hundred shafts of light piercing the low canopy of the brush. I kept my head down and my legs tucked in tight, and I tried not to move.

When the searchlight moved on, I opened my eyes the tiniest bit and I smiled.

In the light from the helicopter, I could see the bushes surrounding me were beach plums, half a dozen at least, happily growing on their own, covered in white blossoms, wild at the beach.

 

65

I waited until the helicopter was eighty yards up the beach before I crawled out from under the bushes. I sniffed one of the beach plum blossoms before I left, but all I could smell was patchouli.

I crawled the first fifty feet, but by then the helicopter was far enough away that I could move in the darkness undetected. They weren't going to give up that quickly. Speed was more important than anything else.

After a hundred yards of tough terrain, I came to a thick stand of sea grass, six feet tall, looking very out of place. I whacked at it with my arms, and came up against a massive fieldstone wall, at least eight feet high. But it was only five feet wide. Sliding around it, I realized it was a fireplace, surrounded by a slate patio.

I turned slowly and almost sobbed when I saw the clean modern lines of the glass house where Jimmy was Tesla-sitting.

*   *   *

The key was in the back porch light, right where Jimmy Frank had found it before. I slipped into the kitchen and closed the door behind me, slumping against it just for a moment, listening to the sand and pebbles falling off me and onto the tile floor.

I got a beer from the refrigerator and drank half of it in a gulp. I thought about going upstairs and seeing if I could find some dry, sand-free clothes, but I was in a hurry. Instead I went through the door on the opposite end of the kitchen, and into the garage.

*   *   *

Except for the crunch of the wheels on the gravel and sand, the occasional scrape of a branch on the side, the Tesla was silent as I coasted down the driveway. When I got to the road, I paused for a moment. The helicopter was headed back up toward the cliffs. I waited for it to pass; then I took a deep breath and turned on the headlights. Leaving them off would make me less visible, but if they saw me driving without lights, they'd know it was me. Instead, I drove at a reasonable speed, ten miles above the speed limit, headlights on. Not a care in the world.

I made my way back to State Road, then pulled over and waited, looking in the rearview to see if I was being followed. I took out my gun and my phone. I knew the phone would be ruined, and it was, completely dead, water dripping out of it. A couple of cars went by, but nothing suspicious looking. I pulled out behind them and drove off.

 

66

Jimmy Frank was sitting on the porch drinking a beer when I drove up. His face flashed alarm because he didn't recognize the car. He smiled when he saw it was me, then he did recognize the car, and he stopped smiling.

“Son of a bitch,” he said, knocking over his beer as he got to his feet. “Tell me you didn't steal the Constantines' car. Those rich sons of bitches are the best gig I have and you break in and steal their car?”

“Sorry,” I said as I got out. “I'll bring it back.”

“Jesus Christ,” he said, looking me up and down. “What the fuck?”

Nola and Annalisa came out the front door, and Nola ran up to me.

“Where were you?” she asked, wrapping her arms around me, squeezing me tight, then stepping back, brushing the sand off her. “You're a mess. What happened?”

Images came back to me: bullets flying past me, sliding down the cliff, cowering next to a rock, waves breaking over my head. It seemed unreal and long ago, but it provoked a wave of emotion that broke over me. I pulled her to me again, and held her tight, not letting go, partly so she wouldn't see the emotion in my eyes, and partly because I didn't want to, ever.

“Baby, what happened?” she said quietly. “Are you okay?”

“I'm okay,” I said, my face in her hair.

I opened my eyes and saw Annalisa smiling wistfully. Jimmy stepped up next to her as I pulled back and looked down at Nola, wiped the tears from her cheeks.

“You look terrible,” she said.

“I'm okay,” I said.

“You're not okay. Look at you. Where were you?”

“Let's get you inside,” Jimmy said, guiding me up the steps with a hand on my back.

“I got a text,” I said. “From Nola's phone. It told me to meet you at the lighthouse, at Gay Head.”

She screwed up her face. “I never sent that.” She took out her phone and tapped the screen; then she showed me the last text between us—“Be careful”—from when Teddy almost started a riot at the ferry dock.

“Easy enough to fake a text like that,” Jimmy said.

“So what happened?” Nola asked. “At the lighthouse?”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the server set up on the dining room table, a monitor and keyboard plugged into it. “Have you learned anything?” I asked, pointing at it.

“A little,” Annalisa replied.

Nola sniffed the air. “Is that patchouli?”

Annalisa's eyes widened. “Patchouli? What happened?”

“Really,” Nola said with a crooked smile.”Were you at a rave?”

Annalisa came right up to me. “What happened?” she said urgently. “Are you okay?”

I laughed, because it was kind of a ridiculous question, but I knew what she meant. I held up my arm. The welt had shrunk to the size of quarter. “I got stung once.”

Nola stepped between us. “What's going on? What are you two talking about?”

I spotted the sofa and started moving toward it, but Jimmy headed me off with a chair from the dining area.

“Sorry, pal,” he said, pushing me down onto it, “but you're a mess.”

“What happened?” Nola demanded, stepping in front of me.

I took a deep breath and told the part about Pug-face and the bees. I skipped over most of the details, but Nola was still horrified. By the time I got to the part where I came back to the A-frame and she and Annalisa were gone, she was kneeling on the floor beside me, wrapping my hand in hers.

“We were picking watercress for lunch,” she said quietly.

“What?” I asked.

“For salad,” Annalisa added. “Nola found some growing wild.”

I told them about the text, and by the time I was finished with the trip to the lighthouse and my dip in the ocean, Nola was squeezing my hand tightly.

“So what the hell is going on?” Jimmy asked, his voice gravelly and low.

I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “We know the Osterman girl died suspiciously, and another lab tech, Lynne Nathan. We know Julie Padulla died suspiciously as well. We know two guys with guns broke into Annalisa's house. We know the lab sheets were faked. We also know that the bee mites on this island, the little pests that are part of what's wiping out the bees, they seem to have absorbed the genetic material from the genetically engineered bees.”