Fair Play (All's Fair Book 2) (3 page)

Chapter Four

“Are you going to be okay here on your own today?” Elliot asked Roland on his way out the door the next morning. The ferry schedule had changed in the spring and they had to catch the boat at 6:15 now. Funny how fifteen minutes didn’t seem like a lot of time until that alarm went off every morning.

Roland looked up out of his thoughts. He set down his coffee mug and smiled. “Of course. Don’t worry about me, son.”

“I do worry about you though.”

“Don’t. I didn’t lose anything I can’t live without.” Roland shrugged. “It’s just stuff.”

Elliot thought of the tears in his father’s eyes the night before as he’d gently shuffled through the old photos and slides. Yeah, stuff. But collection and care of stuff took up a lot of space in any life.

“If you boys are going to be home tonight, I’ll fix dinner,” Roland added. This morning he sounded like his old self, though there were bags under his eyes and a gaunt look to his bearded face. Was there more silver in his hair?

“I’ll be home. I don’t know about Tucker.”

Tucker called from the front room, “I’m not sure yet. I’ll have to let you know.”

“Whatever it is, it’ll heat up again.” Roland glanced at the clock. “You two are going to miss your boat.”

Elliot hesitated, finally saying, “I’ll see you tonight, Dad.”

Roland nodded pleasantly.

“Is he really taking losing all his worldly possessions as well as he seems to be?” Tucker asked on the short drive down to the ferry.

“I can’t tell. He seemed numb last night. He’s more like himself today.”

They got their coffee to go at the Coffee House, one of the island’s only two eateries, sitting in Elliot’s Nissan, sipping and talking idly while they watched the squat white ferry chugging slowly toward them, churning blue water white as she entered the bay.

“One more week and I’ll be making this trip alone,” Tucker said. The navy of his suit jacket brought out the blue of his eyes and the fiery glints in his hair.

Elliot smiled. “Till the fall.”

He’d been looking forward to having the rest of the summer to himself. Himself and Tucker. Now he needed to factor Roland into their plans. Anyway, that was okay. Tucker would still be working most of the time, which meant less time for him and Roland to get on each other’s nerves. And in August, Elliot and Tucker were planning on taking a vacation together, their first. Where was still undecided. They were enjoying debating all the possibilities too much.

“You have your physical therapy this afternoon?”

“Yeah.” Elliot’s knee was about as healed as it was going to get, but six months earlier he’d broken his right arm, so he still had a deep tissue massage every couple of weeks—though all that poking and prodding and lifting and stretching felt too strenuous to be called “massage.”

“I’ll let you know if I can make dinner.”

“It’s not a concern.” He was grateful though that both Tucker and Roland seemed to be making an extra effort to get along. It didn’t always go that way.

After they landed at Steilacoom, Elliot dropped Tucker off at his car and then headed over to the university.

During summer term Elliot only taught one class on Fridays. American Transcendentalism, an interdisciplinary study of the New England Transcendentalists and their critics, was about as easy a course as it got. He’d picked it up when Dr. Fish, head of the Philosophy Department, had come down with appendicitis. Basically it involved assigned readings and discussions of Emerson’s essays, Thoreau’s
Walden
, Fuller’s
Woman in the Nineteenth Century
and Hawthorne’s
The Blithedale Romance.
There was no research paper to be graded, and Dr. Fish had already prepared the final—probably twenty years earlier—so Elliot answered questions, dropped a few hints as to the fact that the final would be heavily slanted toward the philosophical and not the literary or historical, and departed to keep his scheduled office hours.

No one showed up asking his advice or requiring words of wisdom, so he was able to finish grading the last painful batch of essays on the topic of whether Lincoln’s presidency made the Civil War inevitable, before he headed out to his physical therapy.

He arrived back on the island late afternoon, drove up to the cabin and found a white Subaru with rental license plates parked in front.

Elliot considered this as he pulled into the garage. Roland hadn’t said anything about renting a car, but it probably made sense. He wasn’t going to be content marooned on a small island in the middle of the Puget Sound. All the same, Elliot didn’t like the idea of his dad tooling around the countryside if someone really had set that fire intending to kill him.

Elliot got his briefcase and walked through the garage to the kitchen. The homey aroma of baking bread reached him, and his stomach growled. As the door swung open, he heard a woman’s voice.

“Then I’m not sure what you want from me.”

“This isn’t just my problem—” Roland broke off, spotting Elliot. He didn’t exactly jump, but he definitely looked startled. “You’re early!” He tried to make it sound like an unexpected pleasure but didn’t quite succeed.

The woman was possibly his father’s age. She was tall and lanky with close-cropped graying dark hair. Her black T-shirt bore the slogan
Woman Up!
and she wore square glasses with black-and-blue-striped frames. She too looked nonplussed to see him, which was a little exasperating given that it was his house.

“It’s summer session,” Elliot reminded Roland. “I was done at noon.” He nodded politely to the woman.

“In that case, you’re late.” That forced jovial tone was so unlike Roland that Elliot felt a twinge of real unease. What the hell?

Roland looked at the woman, and before the awkward moment stretched any further, she smiled and said, “I know who you are. You’re Elliot.” She offered a hand. “It’s so nice to meet you at last.”

“Elliot, this is Mischa Weinstein. Mischa is an old friend,” Roland said.

“Old friend is one way of putting it.” Mischa had a firm, warm grip. She winked at Elliot. “I was your father’s first wife.”

“Oh,” Elliot said blankly.

Elliot knew his father had been married before. Married twice before, as a matter of fact. It was old history. Nothing relevant. Nothing pertinent. He had no idea Roland still kept in touch with his exes. Of course, there was no reason he shouldn’t. There was no question who the love of his life had been. Even so.

Mischa laughed. “He really
was
an FBI agent. I don’t think he even blinked.”

Yeah, well, it wasn’t all that funny, but Elliot smiled. He couldn’t tell from Roland’s expression if he had wanted the full extent of his relationship with Mischa revealed or not.

“I get the feeling I’m missing something,” Elliot said.

“I think everyone around Rollie gets that feeling eventually,” Mischa replied. “So you’re teaching at PSU now? How do you like it?”

Elliot told her how he liked it. He answered all her questions. She came up with a stream of polite conversation-leaders, clearly more than casually versed on the topic of him. Which, in Elliot’s opinion, underlined how odd this encounter was.

Mischa listened attentively to all his answers, and Roland threw in some cheerful commentary as well, but Elliot was more and more conscious with every passing second that he had intruded, interrupted, and they needed him to go away.

You didn’t have to be an ex-FBI agent to know something was going on between the pair of them. But curiosity aside, what business of his was it? And even if it was his business, there was simply no good excuse for pushing in where he wasn’t wanted. Roland was neither his child nor a suspect in his investigation.

He didn’t have investigations anymore.

“If you’ll excuse me, I need to catch up on some things before dinner,” Elliot said finally. “It was very nice meeting you, Mischa.”

Mischa smiled. It was a genuine smile, no little part of it being relief.

Roland looked relieved too, though he hid it better. “Supper will be ready by six, son. Eggplant parmesan casserole.”

“Great. Sounds good.” Veggie casserole was probably not going to be enough for Tucker. He should probably give him a heads-up.

Mischa said, “I can’t tell you how nice it was to finally meet you in person, Elliot.” She smiled an odd smile at Roland. “You know, once upon a time your father—all of us—believed it would be immoral to bring a child into a world of such violence and chaos.”

A world into which they’d introduced their own share of violence and chaos.

“I’m glad you changed your mind,” Elliot said to his father.

“About a lot of things.” Roland’s smile was warm, and Elliot returned it.

One thing he had never doubted growing up was that he was loved.

He nodded goodbye to Mischa, who was watching them curiously, and then headed upstairs to shower off the massage oil and analgesic gel from his therapy session. He was a little sore but pleasantly tired. The hot water felt good. He turned the taps on full and let the heat rain down on his neck and shoulders.

Mischa’s car was still parked in front of the house when Elliot got out of the shower. He eyed it thoughtfully through the bedroom window as he toweled off.

He dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, padding into his office and turning on his computer.

Formerly this room with its gorgeous, tree-framed view of the Sound had been his bedroom. But after the gruesome events of last fall, he and Tucker had done some redecorating. Now Elliot’s office was located in his former bedroom, and he and Tucker slept with a view of towering pine trees and distant Mt. Rainier.

He did have plenty to do, no lie. But he found himself listening to the muffled voices in the room below him. The cabin was solidly made. He couldn’t make out words, but he could tell by the tone that they were arguing. Quietly, but intensely.

He typed
Mischa Weinstein
into the search bar and up popped a bunch of photos of an actress, Mischa Somebody, at a place called the Weinstein Company. There were a couple more pages of Mischas and Weinsteins before he found what he was looking for. Mischa Weinstein, Director for the Center for Justice for Women and Children in NYC. The organization seemed to be a combination of education and legal aid for low-income women. Mischa had held the position of director for over a decade.

Her official bio described her as a “feminist” and a “human rights activist,” and listed an impressive array of credentials and degrees.

All well and good, but...Elliot kept searching.

A bird sang sweetly outside the window. Downstairs they were still talking. The argument seemed to be over.

Eventually he found a newspaper editorial from a few years earlier protesting Mischa’s appointment to CJWC, referring to her as “a former sixties radical and ex-con.”

In 1984
,
Weinstein
,
a
member of the Collective
,
a
violent offshoot of the national antiwar group Students for a Democratic Society
,
pled guilty to the 1975 attempted armed robbery of a Brinks armored car in Snohomish County
,
Washington.
She was sentenced to 10
—
15 years in prison
,
but was released in 1992 for good behavior.
By 2004
,
Weinstein had landed the coveted position of Director for the Center for Justice for Women and Children in New York City.

He read the rest of the editorial with distaste. Not that he generally approved of sixties radicals and ex-cons, but there was such a concept as paying your debt to society. Then again, some people didn’t accept apologies.

He clicked out of the screen and leaned back in his chair, staring up at the cedar logs of the open rafter ceiling. You couldn’t work in law enforcement and not be aware there were some weird coincidences in every life. But Roland’s ex-wife, a fellow former radical who lived in New York City, just happened to be passing through Seattle around the same time Roland’s house burned to the ground? No. That was no coincidence. Who had initiated contact—and why?

From down the hall, his cell phone was ringing. Elliot listened. That was Tucker’s ring tone.

He pushed his chair back and went to find his phone, locating it at last in the pocket of his discarded trousers.

He was too late to pick up, but Tucker had left a voice message.

“Hey. Something’s come up. I think I’m going to stay overnight here in town. Tell your dad I’m sorry about dinner.” There was a pause. “I love you,” Tucker said, and disconnected.

I
love you?

Elliot stared at the screen of his phone. Tucker’s postage stamp-sized photo gazed enigmatically back at him.

It wasn’t that there was anything out of the ordinary in Tucker having to stay main side. But that bald “I love you”? That wasn’t usual. In fact, during the whole call Tucker’s voice had sounded odd. Strained. Had it been anyone but Tucker, Elliot would have said he sounded...nervous.

Chapter Five

“Is there something I should know?” Elliot asked when he came downstairs after watching Mischa’s Subaru trundle off down the dirt road in the direction of the ferry.

Roland laughed, sounding so relaxed that Elliot wondered if maybe he had imagined the earlier undercurrents.

“No way. I was as surprised to see her as you were,” Roland said. “Mischa heard about the fire from Nobby and flew out on the first plane she could grab.”

Oscar Nobb or “Nobby” was another of Roland’s revolutionary pals from the far out days of
turn on
,
tune in
,
drop out.
He owned an organic farm outside of Bellevue.

“Why?”

Roland frowned. “Why what?”

“You’re not in regular contact with her, are you? Why would she drop everything to fly out here?”

Roland stared. Then his face cleared. “I think Nobby made it sound worse than it was. That cat’s always been a closet romantic.”

“
Nobby?
”

“That’s right.”

“Shit-kicking, cow-tipping, tractor-racing Nobby is a closet romantic?”

“That was all a long time ago. Or maybe he’s still got a thing for Mischa. He always used to say splitting with her was the worst mistake I ever made.”

“And that’s saying something.”

Roland shook his head mournfully. “This is the gratitude I get. I raise you, I feed you, I pay for an expensive education—”

“That I then squander on becoming a storm trooper for the Evil Empire. I think I know this song by heart. So are you holding some kind of ex-radicals’ fiftieth reunion? Will there be pipe-bomb party favors? Should I avoid eating the brownies?”

“No. Mischa is catching a plane home tonight.”

“That really was a flying trip.”

Roland didn’t reply, sprinkling crispy bread crumbs over the top of the casserole.

“Dad—”

Roland set the casserole dish on top of the stove. “Okay.
Finito
. Everything’s ready. The casserole only takes forty-five minutes to bake, so I’ll just shove it in the oven a little before we want to eat. When’s Tucker due?”

Elliot was studying his father. Roland looked better than he had that morning. Maybe it was Mischa’s visit. Maybe it was the fact that he had rested, showered and was dressed in a new pair of jeans and denim shirt he’d bought the day before. He always said they came from sturdy stock, so maybe this was sturdy stock in action.

Elliot answered, “He called to say he’s going to have to spend the night in town.”

“That’s a drag,” Roland said, not sounding too broken up over it. “Well, it’s a beautiful evening, what do you say we go for a walk and then come back and have our supper?”

“Sure.”

They walked the three-mile loop called Old Road, crossing Little Bridge and then Big Bridge, moving deeper into the wilderness at the center of the ten-mile-long island, not talking much except to point out the occasional rabbit or fox.

“Any word from the arson inspector?” Elliot asked after a time.

“Nah.” Roland sounded untroubled. And maybe that was good. If Roland really could take a philosophical attitude about this catastrophe, more power to him. Elliot was probably worried enough for both of them.

Birdsong filled in the comfortable silences. Bees hummed in the liquid gold of the closing day, and clouds of gnats drifted over the long sun-tipped meadow.

“‘In wilderness is the preservation of the world,’” Roland observed, when they stopped to study a distant blacktail doe urging her fawn into the safe shadows of the woodline.

“Thoreau.”

Roland smiled. “Very good.”

“See. Even Storm Troopers can appreciate a nice turn of phrase. And a pretty day.”

Roland chuckled.

Of course, Thoreau had also said,
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.
The obedient must be slaves.
Elliot glanced at his father’s profile. Roland was still smiling, but it was clear his thoughts were miles away.

It was tempting to view your family as an extension of yourself, but it was a mistake. And no one knew that better than Elliot, having had the clearest possible illustration when he’d been accepted into the FBI and his father had effectively disowned him for betraying the values he’d been raised with. Roland had backed down from that stance, but by then Elliot had been wounded and furious over his own sense of betrayal.

That was all in the past now. All but forgotten.

“Your mother would have liked this place,” Roland said suddenly.

Elliot nodded.

His mother had been killed in a hit-and-run several years earlier. In fact, it was his mother’s death that had brought about his reconciliation with his father. It was hard to say how long he might have hung on to his hurt and anger. Tucker had occasionally accused him of being intractable, and he was probably right.

Elliot said, mostly thinking aloud, “I don’t know how you do that. Stay friends with someone you used to be in love with.”

“I can’t think of a better reason to stay friends than that this is someone you’ve loved.” Roland eyed him consideringly. “You don’t stay friends with your ex-lovers?”

“I never have. It’s too awkward. Most people don’t fall out of love at the same time. One person always wants more than the other person can give them. And that ends in bitterness.”

“You wouldn’t want to stay friends with Tucker if things didn’t work out between you?”

Elliot was silent for a moment, absorbing the pain the idea brought him. “Honestly? I don’t want to think about that.”

“Of course. No reason you should think about it,” Roland turned away from the green, sunlit sea of the meadow.

“Do you think you’ll ever marry again?”

Roland laughed shortly. “I don’t think so. I’m pretty old and pretty set in my ways now to try to set up house with someone new.”

And the person he would most likely want to set up house with was married to his best friend.

They continued on their way in silence, walking toward home now. Roland suddenly chuckled.

“What?” Elliot glanced over at him.

“I just remembered something. When you were about seven you used to sing along with ‘Purple Haze.’” Roland sang in his raspy baritone, “‘Actin’ funny but I don’t know why. Excuse me while I kiss this guy.’”

Elliot laughed.

There was a hard, dull thunk to his right. He glanced over, but it took his eyes a moment to pick out the shining slender shaft protruding from the trunk of a towering Douglas fir. And then another second to make sense of the red-and-yellow fletching, the red nock...

An arrow.

An arrow lodged in a tree. Not two arms’ lengths away from where they stood.

“
Christ.
” Elliot rushed at Roland, hustling him off the sandy road into the trees, yelling over his shoulder, “There are people here, you asshole!”

“What’s the matter with you?” Roland sounded astonished, trying to free himself and face Elliot.

Elliot was already second-guessing his instinctive dive for cover. Tree foliage was a mistake if they were dealing with a hunter having trouble telling humans from deer. But no. That couldn’t be. Not a hunter. There were no hunters on this island. Hunting was prohibited by law. Besides, Elliot’s T-shirt was red. Roland’s denim shirt was blue. They had been walking in the middle of a road. In full view. Their voices would have carried.

Not a mistake then. Not a hunting accident. Not an accident at all. Someone had tried to kill them. Or, more likely, tried to kill Roland.

“Don’t stop!” Elliot kept pushing his father toward the shelter of thick trees. Another gleaming missile whistled past, this time to their left. Elliot veered sharply, feeling the ominous twinge in his bad knee as he tried to drag Roland the other way. “Christ almighty, Dad. Didn’t you see that? Didn’t you hear that?”

Another arrow cut through the air—to the right again. Elliot jerked away from the thin, tight-pitched hum it made, his heart jumping. The hum was followed by another heavy, dead thud as the arrow penetrated a tree trunk a few feet beyond the bigleaf maple they landed behind.

The sick knowledge of what that missile could do to flesh and bone...

It was impossible to know how far away their attacker was. There were too many variables. The design of both the bow—draw weight of the bow and the shooter’s draw length—the design of the arrow, as well as weather conditions, particularly wind, were always going to be factors. The shooter could be a thousand yards away, for all he knew.

Or he could be moving up on them right now.

Elliot’s pulse thundered deafeningly in his ears. Which was probably good. Because that other sound—the lack of real sound—was a damn sight more unnerving than the Hollywood whoosh of projectiles. In fact, somehow, that winged, deadly silence was even more frightening than the sound of gunshots—and he’d had plenty of opportunity to compare.

“What the hell?” Roland exclaimed, looking from the arrow-studded tree back to Elliot. His dark eyes were furious and alarmed.

“Stay down. Keep as flat as you can.” Elliot felt the vibration as another steel arrow hit the trunk of the maple. This bastard was not giving up.

He felt around his pocket for his phone, and slid it over the loose soil and dead leaves to Roland, who took it blankly, as though he’d never seen such a device. “Call 911.”

“What are you—” A look of true horror crossed Roland’s features and his hand shot out, grabbing a fistful of Elliot’s T-shirt before Elliot could slip away. “No. Goddamn it, no. You don’t go anywhere.”

Elliot gripped his father’s hand hard. “Dad, let me go.”

“No fucking way.”

He jabbed his thumb into the nerves of Roland’s wrist and Roland’s fingers released. But Roland dropped the phone he held with his other hand, and tackled Elliot with both arms in a rough and desperate bear hug.

“Are you crazy?” he gasped. “You’re not going after him. Elliot, I fucking forbid it. Do you hear me?”

“Dad, let go.”

Roland’s arms clamped harder.

Elliot stopped wriggling. “Dad. Dad,
listen
to me.”
Christ.
They had minutes. Maybe less. He did not want to punch his father. Especially if these were their last moments on earth, but they could not afford to waste these precious seconds. He could not afford to wrestle around with Roland while this homicidal Robin Hood tracked them down and nailed them, first one, then the other, to a tree.

Elliot said urgently, trying to make Roland understand before it was too late, “I can’t defend this position. I
have
to go after him. He can walk right over here and pick us off. Neither of us can outrun an arrow.”

If he could find the arrow that had flown past them, he could use it as a weapon. Those modern hunting arrows were made of carbon and jacketed in alloy metal. But it might be anywhere. That thing had probably been traveling about 150 miles per hour. Which was...225 feet per second? Long gone, unless it had been deflected by glancing off a bush or branch.

“Wait,” Roland panted. “Wait. Listen. He hasn’t shot again.”

That was the bad news, even if it seemed to Roland like good news.

“Let me up.
Now
.” Elliot ruthlessly freed himself, ignoring Roland’s pained gasp as he finally let go. Elliot scoured the ground, looking for a suitable weapon, fingers raking through rotting berries and moldering leaves and turkey tail fungus. Something...anything... There was no handy branch, but he spotted a good-sized rock and grabbed it. Better than nothing. He scrambled up, panting, leaning against the tree trunk, listening tensely.

Sweat trickled from his hairline. He wiped his eyes.

“He’s stopped shooting,” Roland whispered, watching the road beyond.

Elliot shook his head. One good thing, their attacker could not cross that road without them spotting him. For those eight feet of open air, he would be visible to them.

Silence.

Not a natural silence. A complete vacuum of sound. He waited for that betraying snap of twig or slide of stone or rustle of leaves.

Where are you
,
you sonofabitch?

He weighed the rock he held absently. Close range—hand-to-hand range—he might actually have a chance. Despite the liability of his bad knee, he still had some pretty good moves in his repertoire, as he knew from the occasional wrestling match with Tucker.

He could not afford to think about Tucker. Could not afford to think that he might never see him again. He looked down at his father.

Roland was listening too, his face grim and intent. His eyes rose to Elliot’s and Elliot shook his head again.

No way would this psycho just walk away. He had to know he had them pinned down. He had to be waiting them out. Waiting for them to break cover.

Elliot kept listening. This was a thick wooded area, and it was all but impossible to move without making noise.

Insects.

Birds.

“There,” Roland said.

Elliot followed Roland’s line of vision. He glimpsed what might have been the nock of a bow and then the top of a brown-gray hoodie moving through the brush on the other side of the road several yards ahead of them. Trying to cut them off before they could reach Blue Badger Farm?

A rustle to the right. Elliot and Roland both whirled.

A marmot stuck its brown head out of the brush, looked almost humanly startled, and retreated into its leafy bower once more.

The untroubled laughter of women’s voices drifted from the road.

Elliot swore and started forward, recognizing that it was already too late. Desperately, he looked for the shooter again. But there was no sign of anyone moving behind the wall of ferns across the road.

Three women, young, fit, in bright exercise gear and visors, went striding past, talking a mile a minute.

Elliot stopped. Had any harm been intended them, it would have already happened. They had either scared away the shooter or the shooter was holding off, waiting for them to pass out of range.

In which case, now was their best, maybe their only chance. He motioned to Roland, Roland nodded, and they began to move the other way through the trees, back toward houses and safety.