Envy the Night (31 page)

Vaughn was lying.
Had to be, because this no longer made any sense: The two men who’d arrived pursuing Vaughn and Renee were indeed here, but Devin was with them. Vaughn’s story had just come unhinged, but right now, staring his old nemesis in the face, Frank had no concept of the truth, just understanding of the lie.

“This is a crazy damn world, you know?” Devin said, and his voice came from some tight, trapped place in his chest. “I mean, I send two guys up here to do a job, and who do they tell me got in the way but Frank Temple Junior.”

“The Third,” Frank said.

“Huh?”

“Frank Temple the Third. No junior here.”

Devin looked at Frank for a long moment, and then gave a low laugh as his eyes went to his shorter partner.

“You believe that? It’s his son, no question.
No junior here
.”

He laughed again, and the other guy gave an awkward smile, as if he didn’t know what was so amusing but felt obligated to share in the fun. Devin’s laughter swept through Frank as pure white rage. He willed himself still, willed himself silent. Let the prick laugh. Let him enjoy this. Let him think that Frank didn’t know what had happened those many years earlier, and then, when the time was right, let him pay.

Devin stopped laughing, but it wasn’t clear if it was because the humor had passed or because he’d run out of breath. He waited for a moment, jaw clenching, eyes watering, and when he looked up and spoke again his voice had less energy and a darker tone.

“You want to tell me, Temple
the Third,
what the hell you’re doing here?”

Frank said, “I came to send you home.”

“What?”

“Ezra Ballard told me that you were coming back. We didn’t think that should happen.”

Devin gave him a look caught between anger and wonder. “Ballard’s a crazy old bastard. I don’t know what he told you, kid, but it was all bullshit. Me giving your old man up? That’s a lie.”

This time Frank didn’t think he’d be able to will the anger down, thought it was going to tug his foundation loose and sweep him away with it, send him rushing into that van, the other two and their guns be damned. But he fought it down again, didn’t say a word.

“Whatever,” Devin said. “I don’t give a shit what you two think. I’ll tell you what I told Ballard—whoever tipped the FBI, it wasn’t me. Supposed to be somebody close to your dad, though. Hell, could have been you.”

Frank was halfway to the van when the tall man stepped in and swung his gun sideways, going for his throat. Frank blocked it, got his hand up and met the guy’s forearm with his own, was still moving forward, still heading for Devin, when the second man placed the barrel of a gun against Frank’s cheek.

He stopped then, had to, and the tall guy turned his gun over and pressed it into Frank’s ribs, two guns against him now, two fingers on the trigger. Devin hadn’t moved, just sat there and watched with his own gun still on his lap.

“Your old man never shut up about you,” he said. “All this bullshit, telling
everybody how fast you were, how good with a pistol. On and on. And you know what I finally figured out? He had to keep talking about it, because he knew you were a pussy. He knew that, and it shamed him.”

He got out of the van slowly, almost went down once, but when the tall man moved to help him he put up his hand and shook his head. He steadied himself, took a couple of steps toward Frank, until they were face-to-face. The tall man had moved back toward Nora, but the other one kept his gun on Frank’s cheek.

“How did you hook up with Vaughn Duncan?” Devin said. “Did he find you, or did you find him?”

This provided an answer to a question Frank hadn’t even really had time to consider yet: If Devin was already here, why hadn’t he just gone out to the island? Frank was the reason. Frank was the wild card, the development Devin hadn’t been able to understand. Frank and Nora—loose ends.

“I drove him off the road,” Frank said, each word coming slow, the pressure of the gun working against his jaw muscles, “because I thought he was you, and I was going to kill him. Like I said, it’s why I came up here.”

Devin Matteson stared at him for a long time. “You’re serious,” he said. “You’re
serious
.”

It wasn’t a question. Devin looked away, at each of his partners and then at Nora, and shook his head, limped a few steps back, so he could lean on the van.

“Well, hell, kid,” he said. “Sorry to disappoint. It wasn’t me, was it? But you and him, you guys got something to share. You wanted to kill me, he tried.”

It took a second for Frank to process that. Then the truth that had felt so close when Renee slapped him—the reality of her loyalty to Devin imprinted on his cheek, stinging his flesh—finally arrived, came screeching up in a cloud of smoke, engine revving. Vaughn was after Renee. You didn’t have a chance to take a woman like Renee away from a man like Devin. Not when he was alive.

“Vaughn shot you,” Frank said.

“Three times,” Devin said.

“That’s not what your wife thinks,” Nora said, and everyone but Frank turned to look at her.

“My wife,” Devin said, offering the phrase guardedly, as if he were afraid of its power. “You’ve seen her.”

Nora nodded.

“She’s here. With Vaughn.”

“Yes. But she thinks you’re dead.”

Devin said, “AJ,” and waved his hand at the man who held the gun to Frank’s face. The gun dropped away and the man stepped back, cleared some space so Devin could see Nora clearly.

“Tell me,” Devin said, “what they told you.”

Nora told him. Frank heard her words but wasn’t focused on them, was instead staring at Devin and trying to smell out the lie. He
had
to be lying, didn’t he? Vaughn had shot him? But Frank could see that now, could see it in the way Vaughn and Renee had interacted, his obvious adoration for her. And Vaughn had told the story, provided all the details, details that were clearly lies. Everything Renee knew about the reasons they’d fled came from Vaughn. None of it had come from Devin, at least not the way she’d told it to them that morning.

“I cannot believe he had the balls,” Devin said when Nora was done, his voice barely audible. “That cocksucker . . . he planned it for a while. Spent some real time on it. Had a story ready for her. And I’m laying in the hospital and he’s up here with my
wife
.”

He banged the butt of his gun against the van, then again, and again, until the effort took his strength and he had to wait a minute to get it back, hanging against the door.

“You thought she left you for him?” Frank said, and Devin’s eyes slid unpleasantly back to him. “That’s why you didn’t name the shooter for the police? You thought she was involved?”

Devin waited for a moment, then said, “I wanted to conduct my own investigation. That’s all.”

“Then how did these two”—Frank nodded at the other men—“get here before you?”

“I sent them. When they told me he’d come here, I left so I could see it to the end in person.”

“If this is the truth,” Nora said, and her voice was wavering, “then why did you bastards have to kill Jerry? Why did you have to do that? You knew Vaughn was going to that island!”

“Unfortunately,” Devin said, nothing showing in his bleary eyes, “I was out of communication with these two for a while. So they had to keep following the trail.”

That justified it to him. It was enough. Frank looked at Nora, saw the shock and horror in her face, and wondered if she understood what else this meant. She was playing Jerry’s role now: a liability.

“They’re on that island?” Devin said, ignoring her question, stepping away
from the van again, closer to Frank. “They’re on
my
island? Vaughn and my wife?”

Frank nodded.

“Who’s with them?”

He didn’t say anything. Neither did Nora. But Devin stared into Frank’s eyes and said, “Ballard. He’s out there with them, isn’t he?”

Frank still didn’t respond, but Devin was nodding his head, already convinced.

“Okay,” he said. “AJ, King, get them in the van. We’re close, boys. We’re close.”

__________

P
ast Madison and gaining on Stevens Point, maybe two hours away if he could keep this speed up. Grady was driving hard and staring at the clock, willing it to tick a little slower.

He wanted to call Frank, see if the kid had his phone on today, if he’d answer. There was news to share, damn it. Atkins hadn’t been kidding when he said he’d press charges over another phone call, though, and Grady had the sense that Frank was done talking to him anyhow. He had a plan of some sort, was putting something in motion.

If Duncan was good for the murder, as the fingerprint suggested, then this thing was shaping up exactly as Grady had feared: Devin Matteson was headed out to that lake to settle the score, and Frank Temple had placed himself in the way.

By the time he passed the first exit for Stevens Point he couldn’t wait for news anymore, grabbed the phone and called Atkins again.

“He’s still gone,” Atkins said, without bothering to exchange a greeting. “I’ve also tried to find the guy you mentioned, Ballard, but he’s MIA as well. Thing is, there’s a boat down here now.”

“Where?”

“At Temple’s cabin. There was a small boat the first time I came out, little
aluminum thing, but now there’s a fancy bass boat on the beach. I called in to check the numbers, and it comes back to Ballard.”

“But they’re not inside.”

“No, they’re not inside,” Atkins snapped, his tone icy. “There was a truck here this morning, too, registered to that girl at the body shop, and now that’s gone and this damn boat is here and none of them are where I can find them. This is fantastic, Morgan. I’ve got a murder warrant ready to go, and these assholes know where the guy is, and now I can’t find them.”

“You got anybody else involved?”

“Couple of the locals are running around, trying to turn the girl up. Said she was just in at some nursing home visiting her father, so I guess she’s all right. But I’m the only one out here at the lake.”

“You probably ought to have some help.”

“I’ll get help when I find out where the son of a bitch
is,
Morgan. And I can’t do that until your buddy shows his face again.”

“Wait there,” Grady said. “If Ballard’s boat is there, they’ll probably be coming back to it.”

“I’m going to wait for maybe twenty minutes, and then I’m going back to check Ballard’s house. But I’ll give it another twenty.”

Devin Matteson made them all ride in the van, first instructing Nora to write a note that said,
Out of gas, back soon, please don’t tow,
for display in the windshield of her truck. She hadn’t thought much of it then, but after she was in the van and they were in motion, the note began to disturb her. It would keep anyone who found the truck from immediate concern and imply that Nora had been under her own power when she left the vehicle behind. Those were only temporary effects, of course, but the fact that Devin had considered them made something bitter bloom in her stomach. He was good at these things, kidnapping and murder, so good that the little moves like that note came to him effortlessly, it seemed. Came the way things did after a lot of practice.

AJ was driving and sat alone in the front, Nora in the middle row beside Devin Matteson, Frank all the way in back with the man called King. Devin and King and AJ were all wearing guns. AJ had two, actually; he’d paused long enough to take Frank’s gun out of the truck before they left. It lay on the floor in front of the passenger seat now. She could hear it slide around when they took sharp curves.

Devin Matteson’s true condition began to show itself during the van ride.
He’d looked bad initially, unhealthy, but once they were in the van Nora saw that he’d held it together well for that first encounter. Now he seemed to struggle with every turn and bend, wincing at the motions, patting his chest lightly with his hand. By the time they’d gone five miles his face was bathed in sweat, his breathing audible across the van.

There was nothing between her and the end of this but twenty minutes in the van, another twenty in a boat. The fear should have been intense, cloaking her, forcing her into hysterical sobbing. That seemed right, at least. Instead, she was just sitting here, swaying gently with the van’s motion, listening to the rasping breaths of the man with the gun beside her, numb.

They were going to die. While she believed the story Devin had told, at least the portion about Vaughn, she couldn’t believe that meant any change in her fate. She’d seen these men face-to-face, watched them commit crimes. After all that, they weren’t going to simply head home after finding Vaughn, trusting that she and Frank would pretend none of this had happened.

So we’re going to die
. She almost nodded as if confirming the silent, internal voice. It was true. If things went according to plan for these men, there would be more killing before the end of the day, and it wasn’t going to stop with Vaughn.

All this over a murder,
she thought.
No, wait, it wasn’t even a murder. He didn’t kill Devin, he just tried. And now how many others will die because of that? How many innocent people are going to atone for one man’s attempted killing?

The interior of the van darkened as they drove north, the sun pushed beneath ivory clouds that looked a good deal more ominous to the west. She watched the shadows play across the seats and tried to think of a way to stop this. The moves that came to mind were all in hindsight, though, things she could have done and had chosen not to do. Atkins of the FBI sat somewhere in Tomahawk, awaiting her call. If she’d called him instead of getting in the boat with Frank and Ezra . . .

Ezra
. The thought of him was the closest thing to comfort she could come up with. He was capable, always in control, and, if what Frank had said about him was true, the sort of man who could deal with these bastards. The odds weren’t with Ezra, though. He was without warning, he was without preparation, he was without the support of favorable numbers. He was also all she had to hold her hope.