Envy the Night (26 page)

“Who is he?”

“He was in special forces with Frank’s father. They were tight.”

“Special forces with Frank’s father,” Atkins echoed. “You’re kidding me, right? Morgan, this is unbelievable. I needed to know all of this yesterday!”

“You know it now,” Grady said.

“I will you tell you this, Morgan: If you call that kid again today I’ll see that charges are brought, do you understand?”

“I won’t call him, if you get your ass moving and get out there. And I’m headed that way, Atkins. I’ll leave now, but I don’t know how long the drive is.”

“Keep your car in the garage, asshole. I don’t want you within a hundred miles of this.”

“I’m coming up.”

“Yeah? Well, if I see you, I’m putting you in handcuffs.”

Atkins hung up. Grady stood with the phone in his hand for a minute, then set it on the counter, poured his coffee into the sink, and picked up his car keys.

Frank had coffee going by the time Nora woke up. Her hair was fuzzed out an extra six inches from static, and when she looked at him it was with one open eye, the other squinted almost shut.

“What time is it?”

“Ten past seven.”

“Have you heard from Ezra?”

“I expect he’s on his way.” Ezra’s boat had been missing when the sun rose. Frank had even used binoculars to search for it, but found no trace.

“Then we’ll go to the island,” she said.

“Yes.” Frank took the coffeepot and poured a cup, then brought it to Nora. Seeing her this way, bleary-eyed and sleepy, made him want to lean down and
kiss her forehead, but he didn’t. He wasn’t sure how she’d react to him this morning, with the alcohol and that brief moment of romance in a tense, fear-filled night now pushed aside by sleep and daylight.

He returned to the kitchen and poured his own coffee, waited for her to express a new concern, wonder aloud whether they should call the cops. She didn’t say anything, though. Just drank the coffee and smoothed her hair with her palm, then rose and went into the bathroom, reemerging five minutes later looking more awake, fresher.

“Did you sleep?” she said.

“No.”

“Aren’t you tired?”

“No,” he said, and this was the truth. Anticipation of Devin’s arrival provided more fuel than sleep would have. He was ready for him, but Nora was a problem. He and Ezra had discussed that before Ezra slipped back into his boat and out into the lake.

Frank would not deceive her. Couldn’t do that. But he knew, and had tried to explain to Ezra, that she was not going to be kept off that island. He remembered the steel in her voice when she’d said,
If anyone here deserves answers, it’s not you guys. It’s me.
She was right. He wished she weren’t a part of it, but she was, and he needed to decide what to tell her, how to explain what he was going to do. That would have to come after they heard what the pair on the island had to say.

He left in her in the cabin and walked out into the day, found the air to be uncommonly still, the gray water like dirty glass. He stood with his coffee in hand and turned in a full circle, took in the lake and the trees and the sky.

Which direction would Devin come from? Would he drive right up to the dam, launch a boat and head out to the island, or would there be more to it than that? He knew they were on the island. Surely his advance team of gunslingers had reported that back to Miami, and while Tomahawk might have been a mysterious destination for them, it would not be to Devin. By now the island was anything but a hiding spot to the two who waited on it. Frank saw the game plan clearer this morning, understood that Jerry Dolson’s murder had been merely routine maintenance, the removal of one of those loose ends he’d been worried about from the start. Either by then or soon after, the pursuit had effectively ended. The men from Miami knew about the island, had to know by now, and yet they had not moved on it. That meant one thing: They were waiting on Devin.

“He’ll be here today,” Frank said. He’d spoken in a soft voice, but it still rang out loud. There was no trace of wind to whip the words away.

Ezra arrived by boat, and when he saw that Nora still intended to go to the island with them, he didn’t object. She watched his eyes go back and forth between Frank and her and wondered what he was thinking. Had he seen them outside the night before, as Frank predicted? Probably. There was something about Ezra that gave you the feeling he’d been watching you for a long time.

“All right,” he said as she and Frank walked down to the boat. “We’re going out there to hear the story. Their side of it, at least. That’s all we’re doing right now. Whatever happens next will depend on what we hear.”

He was staring at Frank while he said it, but Frank wasn’t paying attention. He was looking up in the direction of the road; his gaze seemed unfocused.

“Okay,” Nora told Ezra, because it seemed as if he deserved some sort of response, and then he offered a hand and guided her as she stepped onto the boat. There was a mammoth outboard on the back, a motor of disproportionate size to the actual craft, and Ezra positioned her on the rear seat with her back to it. Frank took the seat in front of her, and Ezra settled in without a word and turned the key and the larger motor came to life with the throaty, muscular sound that reminded Nora of the better cars they’d had in the shop, those with expensive, fine-turned engines.

“Okay,” Ezra said, spinning the wheel and pointing them out into the lake. “Let’s go see what the hell we’re looking at.”

He shoved the throttle forward and the motor behind her roared with delight and then the front end of the boat rose several feet out of the water and if Ezra said anything else Nora could not hear it.

Frank sat staring straight ahead, his clothes rippling as they tore across the lake. Behind the wheel, Ezra was impassive, his face shaded by a baseball cap with a Ranger Boats logo and his eyes hidden by Oakley sunglasses. They both wore light jackets that Nora knew concealed guns. As she sat there clutching the boat seat under her butt and squinting against the force of the wind, she felt a surge of doubt. They were essentially strangers, Frank and Ezra, and she’d put an awful lot of trust in them with this trip to the island. No one,
no one
had any idea where she was.

The sun was creeping out, sparkling off the water, and though her hair was streaming out behind her like a flag in gale-force winds, the trees on shore were
still, untouched by any breeze. It was too calm, and that probably meant rain by the afternoon. The humidity felt wrong for so early in the day.

They went past one enormous rock that jutted angrily out of the water, then through a cluster of islands, and came out in a large bay that seemed even more desolate, only two other boats in sight. Ezra slowed and worked his way around what appeared to be a sandbar, then brought the motor back to a roar and the front of the boat lifted again and they were off, tearing past a bay filled with stumps and half-trees that seemed like menacing guards to the empty shoreline.

Nora shifted on her seat and thought about reaching out and tapping Ezra’s shoulder, asking him to stop and turn around.
Take me back,
she could say.
I’ve been thinking about it, and this is wrong. We shouldn’t come out alone. We should leave that to the FBI and the police. They’ll know how to protect me; it’s what they do.

Ezra actually turned and looked at her then, and for a split second she wondered if she’d voiced her thoughts aloud, but then he faced the water again and she’d let the moment pass without saying a word.

A few minutes later he did slow the boat, and the motor quieted and Nora’s hair fell back around her shoulders. Out here there was nothing to look at but trees and water, no sign of another boat. Then she saw an island ahead, over Frank’s shoulder, partially blocked by his body.

“Shit.” This came from Frank. “There’s somebody down there, Ezra. Somebody on shore.”

Ezra leaned to the side for a clearer look. “Sure is. And it looks like the fella’s having a bit of trouble with his boat motor. Might be we should stop by and offer a bit of assistance.”

“He’ll recognize Nora and me.”

“Bound to happen sooner or later.” Ezra brought the boat’s speed down even more, eased in closer to the shore, and Nora looked over Frank’s shoulder and saw the man and the boat for the first time. It was the gray-haired Lexus driver, Vaughn, and he was looking up from the motor, his attention focused on the approaching craft. Nora slid down into the seat and tilted her head a bit, trying to put herself back behind Frank, out of Vaughn’s sight.

“Little trouble?” Ezra said, shouting over the sound of the motor.

Vaughn waved them away. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Sure about that? Doesn’t look like it’s going well.”

“It’s not a problem.”

“Tell ya what,” Ezra yelled. “How about I come in and give it a look, and
then you and me and your girlfriend have a chat? I’m the caretaker of this cabin. Feeling a bit guilty about the way I been neglecting you all.”

Though Ezra’s voice had been friendly, it produced a new rigidity to Vaughn’s body. He took a step back and let his hands fall away from the motor, studying them carefully now.

“The caretaker?” he asked. He was speaking to Ezra, but his eyes seemed to be on Frank.

“Uh-huh. That place has been my responsibility for a damn long time.”

“We’re doing fine,” Vaughn said, and the boat had drifted so Nora could no longer see him. She sat up straighter to compensate, and when she did Vaughn’s eyes locked on her face and she felt the recognition across the water a split second before he reached behind his back.

“Don’t.” It was a single word, spoken and not shouted, but somehow Ezra’s voice still seemed to boom out across the water and shake the trees. Nora saw that his arm was extended, his gun pointing at Vaughn. How in the world had he gotten that out so fast?

Vaughn stood with his arm behind his back and didn’t say a word. Ezra kept his gun pointed while he adjusted the wheel with his left hand, bringing the boat in close to shore, the water now shallow enough that Nora could see the bottom. Frank had been keeping his back to Vaughn, but when he heard Ezra’s one-word command he finally turned, and Vaughn’s eyes flicked to him.

“How you doing?” Frank said. “You owe the lady here a car, and owe both of us some answers.”

“Don’t hurt her,” Vaughn said. His voice was high and it cracked on the last word. Nora felt a moment’s confusion—
don’t hurt me?
—before she realized that he was talking about the woman on the island.

“Nobody here has done any hurting, or intends to,” Ezra said. “But your buddies have. And we need to talk about that. Now put that gun of yours on the bottom of your boat, and then catch the bow line when Frank tosses it to you.”

Vaughn dropped the gun. It took him four tries to catch the bow line and pull them to the beach.

__________

V
aughn was back to that damn chattering even before they were all ashore, the same routine he’d gone through while waiting with Frank for the tow truck two days earlier.

“. . . and I don’t know what you’ve been told or what you think, but I was going to come back on Monday and give you the money I owed you, which, you know, there’s no reason to be pulling guns on me, your car is fine, I promise it’s fine, and I didn’t know any—”

“Stop,” Ezra said.

Vaughn stopped. His face reminded Frank of a dog his mother had when he was a kid, a beagle that would always sit with its tongue hanging out. Frank’s father would say,
Put your tongue back
, and the dog would snap his jaws shut, hiding the tongue, and look at Frank’s dad with a perplexed expression. Vaughn looked about as sure of himself as the dog used to.

“Gonna be plenty of time for you to talk,” Ezra said, “but I figure we should all be present and accounted for. You could work on slowing down a touch, too, give us a chance to hear what the hell it is you’re saying.”

Vaughn nodded, and Ezra gestured up at the cabin.

“She in there?”

Another nod.

“Then let’s go up and have us a seat and bit of conversation.”

They walked across the beach to a trail that led up the bluff. Vaughn went first, slipping a few times, his footwork awkward and clumsy. Frank was last, following Nora, who walked easily. He didn’t know what she was thinking. Probably hadn’t been real encouraged by the way Vaughn had reached for that gun.

The cabin was in remarkable shape for a building that had sat empty for so long, but Frank didn’t marvel over it. He expected no less from Ezra, who would take care of an empty cabin that didn’t belong to him better than most men would ever care for their own homes. Vaughn took the steps up to the porch with a quickened stride and was talking before he reached the door.

“Renee? We got some company. Man here says he’s the caretaker—” Vaughn twisted the doorknob and pushed the door open and stepped into the house just as the blond woman stepped out. Frank saw the gun in her hand, then saw it in Ezra’s eye socket. She just stepped onto the porch and stuck the gun in his eye, no hesitation.

“You reach under your jacket any farther,” the woman said, speaking to Frank without taking her eyes off Ezra, “and I’ll kill him.”

“Shit, Renee, what are you doing?” Vaughn was standing in the doorway, jaw slack.

Renee Matteson. That would be the full name. She was something to watch. Even in this moment, when the only ready-to-shoot gun was the one in her hand, Frank was taken with her. So poised, so strong. He let his hand fall away from his jacket and took one step backward.

She’d stuck the gun into Ezra’s eye with enough force to open up the skin and start a small trickle of blood. Now Ezra cleared his throat and said, “This isn’t a real good way to get things started.”

“He’s the caretaker—” Vaughn began, but she cut him off.

“Caretaker my ass. I saw his gun, Vaughn.”

“We’re not the ones you should be scared of,” Frank said. “Though you should know that they are not far away.”

“He makes a good point,” Ezra said, the blood flowing down his cheek. “Perhaps it would be best to save the gunplay for those gents of whom he speaks.”