Heartbroken (28 page)

Emily and Dean walked down the floating dock, each of them carrying a bag. Emily had their few supplies. Dean had the bag with the money and the gun. The dock wobbled beneath them; the water, black as tar, slapped hard against the side. Conditions were bad: A high wind lashed at them, and the rain felt like needles on her face. Maybe tonight was not the night. It couldn’t be more different than the other times she had come here. Maybe it was an omen. She yelled to Dean that maybe they should find someplace else to spend the night. He either didn’t hear her or didn’t feel like answering. Since awakening, he’d been edgy and cross.

The rain had worsened by the time they found a boat with a key on board. He’d chosen a boat called
Serendipity
. Emily had always loved that word. It spoke of when unexpectedly good things happened, things that were surprising in a happy way. Or something like that.

“These are the kind of people who leave a spare key somewhere,” said Dean when he read the name. He said it with a smirk, as if all people who looked for good in the world were fools who deserved to have things taken from them. Sure enough, when he unsnapped
the canvas cover and climbed into the hull, he found one under the captain’s bench.

Emily remembered that, too, from her visits here. That people left keys in their boats and cars, left their doors unlocked. It was isolated, and everyone knew everyone, her father had said. Emily remembered thinking how that was so nice, and about the gates on her mother’s windows in their house on the bad side of town. How did you wind up in a place where you didn’t need to lock yourself in and gate the world out?

She and Dean were loading their gear into the boat when they heard a shout and saw the beam of a flashlight moving toward them. Dean quickly took the gun from the bag and shoved it in his pants. As a lightning bolt sliced the sky over the distant mountains behind the approaching front, Emily felt that familiar lash of hope and fear.

“Let me do the talking,” said Dean. He climbed back up onto the dock. He waved his arm in greeting, as if he had every right to be there. Emily felt as though fear had turned her to stone. She stood rooted with the boat rocking beneath her.
Go away
, she thought.
Please, please go away
.

The hooded man approached. “What’s going on here?”

“Hi, there,” said Dean. “We’re Anne and Rob Glass? We’re doing a home exchange on Heart Island?”

Emily couldn’t see the other man’s face. But she imagined a deep frown of skepticism and distrust.

“No one told me about any exchange. Far as I know, the Burkes are still on the island. And it’s the middle of the night.”

His voice was gruff and unpleasant, but something soared inside Emily. Did that mean Joe was here? She imagined herself running into his arms, his big warm embrace.
My little Em!
She started to shiver. Everything on her, from her jacket to her underwear, was soaked through.

“I know,” said Dean with a little laugh. He was such an easy liar. Even she would believe him. “We had bad weather. And we got
lost … those damn navigation computers. They are always wrong, aren’t they?”

The other man was silent for a minute. Did he not notice that Dean had his hand in his pants?
Let us go
, prayed Emily.
How much are they paying you to be the night watchman here? Let us go
.

“And this is not the Burkes’ boat.”

“Right, right,” said Dean. “They told us to look for
Serendipity
, that the key would be under the captain’s chair. And here it is.” He held up the key. The other man didn’t say anything. Dean was so sure of himself, so convincing, that Emily thought the other man was going to let them go, maybe with some warning about the weather.

“I’m going to have to check on this,” he said.

“Don’t do that, man,” said Dean. “Like you said, it’s late.”

Emily heard how his tone had shifted from amiable to menacing. It was just a shade’s difference, but Emily’s heart started to thrum. She heard a rushing of blood in her ears.

The man started to back away from Dean, who took out the gun. “Don’t move, man,” he said. “Just stay where you are.”

The other man raised his hands in the air, the flashlight beam shooting off into the night sky, leaving them dark.

“Give me the lines,” said Dean.

“The what?” said Emily.

He turned to flash her an angry look. “The rope, for Christ’s sake,” he snapped. “Don’t you know anything?”

The man on the dock took advantage of Dean’s momentary distraction and started to run up the dock toward land. He was slow and limping. Dean gave chase, and Emily watched them both lumber up the dock while it rocked violently beneath their footfalls.

Just as the man reached land, Dean was on him. Emily saw them both go down, though it seemed to be happening on a small screen far away. It was a movie she was watching with the sound down, strange and slow.

Violence in the real world was clumsy and awkward. Flesh on
flesh didn’t make much sound, she was thinking when she heard a high-pitched scream. It was girlish, and it radiated through her as something inside recognized a primal yell of pain. She was startled, knocked from the trance she’d been in, and ran after them. She found herself stumbling along the rocking dock, and the distance between her and them seemed to stretch and go.

“Don’t, Dean,” she yelled. She wasn’t sure what it was that she wanted him to stop. She couldn’t see what he was doing. She just knew that it was bad and wrong.

As she approached, she heard the gun go off. It was a sharp, quick sound that seemed to echo all around them and then be absorbed completely by the rain. She stopped running. She could hear Dean panting as she approached, see him straddling the other man.

“Stupid motherfucker,” said Dean. “Why’d you have to run like that? I was just going to tie you up.”

He sounded sad and desperate, like a little boy, and Emily was seized with a terrible hatred for him.

“What did you do?” she asked. “What did you do?”

Her voice, shrill and loud, sliced through the darkness, and Dean turned, startled. The man beneath him was utterly still, his legs splayed as if he were running in a weird, twisting gait. Life recognizes death, somehow.

“What did you want me to do?” he screamed. He stood and moved toward her. “He was going to call the police.” He came up close to her. “I had to do
something
.”

She hauled back and slapped him hard across the face. He stared stunned, stricken, lifted a hand to his cheek.

“Look what you’ve done to us,” she shrieked. The words were bursting out of her, like they’d done at her mother’s. She couldn’t stop herself from screaming with all her rage and sorrow.
“You’ve ruined us. You’ve destroyed us. How could you do this to us? I loved you.”

“Emily.”

She started pounding on his chest, beating at him in all her fury.
She was screaming about how she had wanted so much for them and why had he done this and they could have had everything. The rain poured down on them, and the lightning and thunder seemed to ramp up with her growing misery. Dean just stood there until she exhausted herself, her arms aching from hitting him, and laid her head on his chest, weeping. She felt his arms close around her.

“I’m sorry, Em,” he was saying over and over. “I’m so sorry.”

“I’m pregnant,” she wailed. Because it didn’t seem right to say it that way, as if the words were too weak to make him understand, she said, “I’m carrying our child inside me.”

He held her tight, and then she felt him start to shake, too. At first she thought he was laughing. But then she realized that he was crying. And they stood like that, the rain coming down on them, the water splashing over the dock and the seawall, the boats rocking in their slips. They might have stayed there forever if Emily hadn’t seen someone else approaching in the darkness. It was a large man moving toward them quickly.

“Dean,” said Emily. “There’s someone else.”

Dean spun around and drew the gun again. Emily’s stomach clenched when the other man walked into the light. His face was swollen black and blue around the eyes and jaw; his hair hung in great wet chunks around his face. And he had that same blank, empty stare, that same mirthless, hungry smile. Seeing the gun, and the body on the ground, Brad kept his distance.

“You always were dumb as dirt, Dean. You never should have told me where the marina was. I never would have found you.”

“Brad.” Dean lifted his free hand. “You should have kept your hands off my girl.”

“You told him about this place?” she asked. It wasn’t possible. “When?”

“Shut up,” he hissed at her.

The guilty, angry look on his face told her everything she needed to know. They were coming here all along, she realized. It was all
part of his plan with Brad. She hated herself in that moment for loving a liar, for betraying Carol, for allowing an innocent boy to lose his life. She’d made the mistake of sharing her dreams about this place with him. And, now, after he’d taken everything else, he was taking that, too. And it was right, because she deserved to lose it all.

“Where’s the money?” said Brad. “I just want my cut.”

“I don’t think so,” said Dean. “You fucked it all up, man. It wasn’t part of the plan for those people to get hurt.”

“Just give him the money,” Emily whispered. “What difference does it make now?”

“It’s all we
have
.” It was true. Five thousand dollars was all they had. They were bankrupt in every other possible way.

Brad was fast, too fast for Dean. When Brad rushed him, Dean fumbled for the gun, and it fell on the dock, nearly sliding into the black water. Brad dove for it and Dean for him, with Emily screaming again.

“
Stop it! Stop it!
” She looked up into the rain. “Help!” she wailed. “Help us!”

Why did no one come? Why was there just the black shadow of the mountains around them and the rain? Why was the rain so loud that it swallowed her voice?

As the two men struggled, Emily thought about running from them, leaving them to kill each other. She could do that. It was another of those moments, and this time she chose right, she did the right thing. She was going to run and run until she found someplace to turn herself in. She began to back away from them. And when she felt firm land beneath her feet, she started to sprint.

It was the shot ringing out in the night that stopped her in her tracks. It was so loud that the sound seemed to stop the rain. She hid behind a car in the lot, a red Toyota. She sat on the wet gravel, and all she could hear was her labored breathing. Then approaching footsteps.

“Emily.” His voice was sickly sweet, a terrible singsong. “Oh, Emily!”

From where she crouched, she could see that Brad had the gun and was holding it to Dean’s head. “My old friend Dean tells me that your family is rich, rich, rich. That your daddy has lots of money.”

She felt a sob rush up from her chest into her throat. She clamped a hand over her mouth.

“He says there’s money on the island, and jewelry.”

She found herself standing, even though she knew she should hide and try to run again when she had a chance. “That’s not true,” she said. “It’s just not.”

It wasn’t true, as far as she knew. She didn’t know anything about that and had never said anything that might have made Dean think that. She’d said that Heart Island was a place that was full of treasures. She meant butterflies and beautiful sunsets, golden memories and wildflowers. That was what she meant. Had he misunderstood her? Was he so empty inside that he’d mistaken her meaning?

Brad was walking toward her, holding Dean with an arm around his neck and the gun to his head. Dean was clawing at Brad’s arm but couldn’t speak. He was kicking out and kicking back toward Brad and missing every time.

“Dean’s been researching Heart Island for a while now, ever since you told him about it. Just like he was casing the restaurant where you worked. He knows more about it than you do.”

Dean wanted to take everything from her, didn’t he? He wanted to destroy everything. She didn’t bother trying to stop the tears.

“Why would they keep any money or jewelry on that island?” she said. God, they were both idiots—mean, murderous fools without a thought in their heads. “They’re only there in summer. It’s locked up most of the year.”

Brad seemed to consider this. Dean was making a strangled grunt, still trying to break free.

“Who knows where rich people keep all their money?” Brad said a little defensively.

“They keep it in a
bank
,” she said. She practically spat the word. “So that maniacs like you can’t get their filthy hands on it.”

“There’s a safe in the bunkhouse,” said Dean, who’d finally found his voice. “I read it in a book:
Great Adirondack Island Homes
or something like that.”

“Shut up, Dean,” said Emily. He was a fool. What book? There was no “bunkhouse” on the island—whatever that was. He didn’t know what he was talking about.

Brad laughed an ugly little laugh, as if he’d caught her in a lie. But he looked a little less sure of himself. “I like you, Emily. I don’t want to kill your boyfriend and anyone I find on that island. But I think you know I will.”

The man Dean had killed had said that the Burkes were on Heart Island. Was it true? Was her father there, a boat ride away?

“And in case you think I don’t know how to get there, I do. We’ve been planning this a good long time, haven’t we, Dean?”

“The storm,” she said weakly. “It’s too rough.”

“Dean and I grew up on boats,” he said. “You know that. Or maybe Dean didn’t tell you how far back we go. Trust me, you haven’t seen a storm until you’ve seen a storm in Florida.”

She floated above herself to see the three of them standing, a sick triangle of bad intentions and ugly mistakes. She tried to run through her choices, the right ones, the wrong ones, what she could do, what she wanted to do. But she found that her mind had gone blank. There was no path except the one that she found herself on. There was no way to go but forward. She couldn’t run and leave Heart Island to those two, especially Brad. No, she had to go with them. She had to salvage what she could of this place she cherished. And maybe, somewhere deep inside, there was a little girl who thought that it might be—as dark and twisting and fraught with peril as it was—the road home.