Envy the Night (36 page)

How long I have to kill your friend on the boat
.

The shouting man and Frank were already twenty yards behind Ezra and Vaughn and pushing farther away, walking in a straight line and making so much noise that there was no way they could hear anyone around them. Ezra might have taken a shot if he’d had to, but the one thing this guy did that was smart was stay pressed against Frank, preventing a clean line of fire. That was all right, though. If the time limit was honest, then the guy who mattered most
wasn’t in the woods anyhow. He was back in the boat with Nora, well out of handgun range.

A damn good thing, then, that this idiot had just ferried Ezra’s rifle back across the lake and left it behind in the boat.

He let them push on, still shouting, for another fifteen steps, and then turned back to Vaughn, who was stretched out on his face in the wet leaves and dirt. Ezra nudged him with the toe of his boot, and Vaughn lifted a mud-streaked face.

“I’m going to the boat. You’re staying here.”

Vaughn had a wild, unfocused look, the one he’d been wearing ever since Ezra had told him that he would not kill Devin, that he would not preserve these lies for Renee.

“Stay here,” Ezra repeated. “If he comes back, shoot him.”

“No, don’t—” But Ezra was already moving, taking advantage of another roll of thunder that offered some additional sound cover. He moved on his belly, using his knees and forearms, a quiet and fast crawl that had saved his life more than once. Saved his old life, saved old Ezra.

They walked deep into the woods with AJ shouting out a constant stream of threats and explanations, intimidation and coercion. None of it got a response. The rain was falling harder than ever, slapping through the trees beneath steady rolls of thunder. When the lake was out of sight, AJ grabbed a fistful of Frank’s shirt and shoved, pointing him so they were now walking north, parallel to the shore.

“You start talking now,” AJ said. “Make that old bastard hear you. Only a couple minutes left.”

AJ was right; there couldn’t be much time left at all—three minutes, maybe—and still Frank hadn’t made a move, just walked along and waited as if some great opportunity were going to present itself. That wasn’t going to happen.

“I said talk,”
AJ hissed.

“Ezra!” Frank called, and his voice sounded wooden and too soft. He shouted louder. “Ezra, if you can hear us, answer, or people are going to die. Nora’s back there on that boat. Answer us!”

The answer Frank wanted Ezra to provide was a bullet right between AJ’s eyes, but neither it nor a verbal response was offered.

“Old man is going to let her die,” AJ said. “You believe that shit?”

Frank started to yell again, then stopped, his eyes going toward a spot fifty
feet ahead. The ground seemed to give way there, dipped down a short, steep hill and then rose again on the other side, a sort of sinkhole. It was the best spot he’d have, and he shifted slightly to the left, walking toward it, AJ so distracted by searching the trees that he didn’t notice or, if he did, didn’t react. The hole would give Frank a chance. Make a move on AJ right now and his first instinct would be to fire. With the gun pressed against his spine, that wasn’t an instinct Frank wanted to encourage. Make a move that started a fall, though, and do it fast enough, and the shooting response might not be AJ’s first instinct. Catching himself, stopping the fall, would come first. Right?

Better be right. If it wasn’t, then Frank was dead.

“Keep talking,” AJ said. His voice was tense and he jerked his head around constantly, peering into every shadow, shaking rain out of his eyes, his confidence slipping. These dark woods were not home to him. His sort of killing was done in different places, under streetlights and in alleys and at construction sites. He didn’t like it out here, didn’t trust himself the same way in this environment. Good.

“Ezra, damn it,
answer us
!” Frank shouted, completely unaware of the words leaving his mouth, focused instead on a quick mental rehearsal, choreographing the move he was going to need to make.

AJ was behind him, holding the gun against Frank’s back. That was okay, though. He’d done it this way before, down in that basement in Chicago, his father coaching him through the steps. This was the normal position, the way you held a gun on somebody when you were sure he couldn’t take it away from you. Stand behind him and jam the gun into his back and you had the illusion of total power and control. No way the guy in front could move fast enough to take the gun from you, right? No way.

It could be done, though, had been done before.

Take the gun away from me, Frank. Come on, kid, too slow. You don’t have a chance. You know how many times you’d have died already, trying this? So slow, so slow. Come on, try again. Oh, shit, almost had it that time.

They’d practiced it over and over until Frank could pull it off every time, one of his father’s favorite routines because it showcased Frank’s speed, and Frank Temple II had
loved
his son’s speed. Today the circumstances were right, too. AJ was standing against Frank’s back, thinking that this was the proper approach because he was using Frank for protection, for a shield. It was also keeping him close, though, and close was where Frank needed him to be.

They were closing in on that dip in the earth, a simple, unimpressive slope that held Nora’s best chance at life. The drop-off was in full view now, and
Frank saw it was maybe ten feet from top to bottom. It would be a simple step sideways and a sweep of his right arm and leg, have to do it
damn
fast, but if he pulled it off he could send AJ down the slope.

Your gun is on his back. Tucked in his belt on his back, and if you make a perfect grab, you might get it. Don’t even worry about the gun in his hand. Just get him in front of you and headed down the hill and then go for the gun in his belt.

The drop-off was just in front of them, almost there, but AJ was pulling him away from it now. Shit, he couldn’t let that happen, needed the hill. Frank stopped, bringing AJ up with him, and pointed into the trees.

“What?” AJ said.

“Somebody moving, I think. I don’t know . . .” Frank started walking again, toward the imaginary source of noise, and AJ followed. They were walking alongside the drop-off, and Frank’s pulse was drilling away but his breathing seemed frozen. Four more steps, now two, now one . . .

In the end, he didn’t go with the move he’d rehearsed in his mind, that sidestep and sweep. It had sounded good, sounded like the only thing to try, but in the second that he moved, instinct took over and some subconscious part of his brain told him it wasn’t going to work. Instead of sidestepping he simply spun, a full, fast pivot that took his back away from the gun as he lifted his left arm and held it out straight and kept on turning, caught AJ across the shoulder and drove him forward.

It turned out he’d been wrong; AJ’s first instinct still was to fire. The gun went off a half second after Frank had spun away from it, tore through the air inches from his flesh. Then his arm hit and knocked AJ toward the drop-off. They were a step too far away, and AJ might have been able to recover if Frank hadn’t gotten a foot against the back of his knee as well, ruining any chance of balance he’d had left. AJ stumbled and fell and there was the gun in his belt, right there, all Frank had to do was reach out and . . .

He got it. His fingers closed on the stock and then AJ was gone and tumbling through the wet leaves and broken branches to the bottom and the Smith & Wesson was out of Frank’s left hand and into his right and lifted and aimed.

For one fleeting second, he waited. Just long enough for AJ to land at the bottom of the drop-off and turn back to Frank and start to lift his own weapon. Frank let all of that happen, let him get that close, and then he squeezed the trigger once and killed him with a single round below his right eye socket.

__________

T
hey’d been alone on the boat for maybe five minutes before King began to talk to Nora.

“Uh-oh,” he said, turning back to her with a slight smile. He’d been standing, or trying to stand, in the pitching boat and watching AJ and Frank head off.

“Know where they are now, baby? On the shore. And you know what that means.” He tilted his wrist, looked at it, and then frowned. “Damn. Look who forgot his watch. That’s no good. How am I going to know when ten minutes go by?”

He leaned close to her, and she tried to slide away but found it impossible with both hands and feet bound. His face, long and angular and covered with rough stubble, was against hers, his breath on her cheek.

“I’ll have to guess,” he said. “You know, estimate? I was always bad at that, though. Thought five minutes felt like ten.”

The wind rose again in a hard gust, and the boat rolled. He put out his hand to catch himself, falling almost on top of her, his legs heavy against hers. Somewhere in her stomach liquid churned, threatening to rise. No, no, no, she couldn’t be sick, not with that tape over her mouth. Get sick and she’d choke on it, die, make this even easier on him.

“Look at that,” King said, pushing her sideways, running his fingertips
along her forearm, over the bruises he’d left two days earlier. “Little love marks. They from me? I bet they are.”

She was stretched out on the seat, and he was on his knees now in the bottom of the boat, not even looking at the island, just staring into her face as the wind pulled his shirt tight across his chest and the rain dripped down his face and onto hers. He reached out and took her hair in his hand, squeezed hard enough to make her eyes sting.

“It was dumb-shit luck that kid showed up when he did. Too bad, because we were going to have some fun, you and I. Might still have some.” He rocked his hand left to right, jerking her head sideways. “I take that tape off your mouth, we could have some
serious
fun. But you might be a biter. Yeah, I could see that. You’re the type, aren’t you? Angry little bitch. So maybe that tape stays.”

He lifted her by her hair, and she would have screamed if the tape didn’t prevent it. Her eyes were streaming now, nose following suit, the pain demanding a physical response. He pushed her back against the side of the boat and leaned against her, pressing his body down on hers. The sudden change was almost too much for the boat; they rocked hard to one side, and he pulled back at the last possible second, the boat rolling with him. What if he hadn’t recovered? What if they’d just kept going over, ended up in the water, with tape over her mouth and her hands and feet bound? She’d die then, too. That or wait the ten minutes.

“That tape stays,” he said, flicking his index finger off her mouth, smashing her lip back against her teeth. “Keep you from biting. Tape on the hands can stay, too. You won’t need those.”

He moved suddenly, slammed her head back against the boat hard enough to make her vision blur, and then he got to his feet and moved back to the bow, leaned against it, and stared into the woods. She tilted her head, tried to see what he was looking at. The angle wasn’t right, though, and she couldn’t turn any farther without rolling her whole body over. Didn’t want to do that, and draw his attention back, so instead she kept craning her neck in that awkward position and tried to see where the boat had gone.

She couldn’t see the boat, could hardly see the main shore. There was another island that she could see, but that wasn’t where AJ had taken Frank. She let her eyes pass over that shore and then started to look away, wanting to ease that awful pressure on her neck, when she saw motion.

There was someone on the island. No, couldn’t be. She was seeing things, some weird reflection, the sun playing tricks even behind the dark clouds.
Where had it gone? Wait, there it was again. Yes, someone was moving through the trees on the island just beside them.

Nora kept herself in that awkward position, the pain momentarily irrelevant, and stared. Now the motion was gone, but she was positive she’d seen someone, and not where the boat had been beached. So had the boat been a trick, a ruse?

King turned back from the bow then, and Nora moved her head, but it was a second too slow. He’d seen her staring out across the water, seen the intense look in her eyes, and he followed it.

“Son of a bitch,” he said, lifting the gun, and Nora knew she’d just ruined someone’s chance to escape.

Ezra crawled to the top of the rise and paused, looking out across the angry gray lake. There was the boat, a few hundred yards out, small but visible. Wait till he had it in the scope. Wouldn’t be small then, no, sir. Be nice and clear, a perfect picture of some poor bastard waiting to die.

He couldn’t hear the shouting anymore, which could be good or bad. Maybe the idiot was out of shouting range now, and maybe he was quietly working his way back to the boat. Ezra didn’t know, and he wasn’t going to waste time worrying about it. Time was slipping away, and he needed to get out to his boat. They’d tied it up right in the middle of the stumps and partially submerged trees that surrounded this part of the shore. He could hear a rapping sound as the hull banged against a stump, and it made him like these bastards even a little less. Ezra took damn good care of that boat.

Maybe twenty feet of fairly open ground to cover before he reached the lake and had to plunge into that mess of branches and water, fight his way out to the boat. It would take about thirty seconds to get on board, but he’d be in the open the whole time, and if whoever was out there with Nora had a rifle, Ezra might die before he ever got to take a shot. Nothing to do about that, though. Times came when you had to gamble, that was all. Ezra had gambled before, and still had the dice in his hand.

He got his breathing steadied and thought about doing a countdown, ten seconds and then move, but decided the hell with it. A countdown didn’t make it any easier, and he didn’t have seconds to waste. He pushed off the ground with his hands and went upright for the first time since he’d left Vaughn, got his feet moving and ran down the hill.