He turned back to her, shaking his head emphatically. “No, you don’t need to do that. Tell you what—you go on down to the hospital like you said, check in on Mowery, tell him old Jerry says hello. Then I’ll give you a holler on the cell phone when this fancy-ass thing is ready to go.”
“I think there should always be two people in this shop, Jerry. Until the car’s gone, we should both be here.”
He lifted a hand to his forehead, rubbed above his eyes like an exhausted man with many miles ahead. “I leave you here on your own last night for all that shit to happen, and now you want to stay around for me. Want to keep
It wasn’t a complaint; he was more musing to himself than talking to her.
“I just think it would be safest for both of us.”
“I got something to tell you, Nora.” He looked anguished. “And I want you to understand this first—I didn’t know nothing about this car or what had happened to you at the time, okay? I mean, shit, if I’d known what happened . . .”
“Jerry, what are you talking about?”
He lowered his hand and walked past her, to his locker. Pulled it open and reached inside and withdrew a small plastic box. Even when he passed it to her and she held it in her own hands she had no idea what it was.
“It’s a tracking device, Nora. Sends out a signal, and if you got the receiver you can follow it along.” He ran his tongue over his lips. “It was on that car. I pulled it off the bumper reinforcement yesterday.”
She ran her fingertips over the smooth plastic. This was the secret. This little thing was the source of the chaos. It had brought those bastards into her life.
“You found this yesterday afternoon?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“I’m sorry, Nora. I just . . . I don’t know what to say. I wasn’t thinking, that’s all.”
“Okay.” Perhaps she should have been furious, screaming at him right now, blaming him. Instead, all she felt was confusion. Was this discovery good or bad? Would the device help her, or was it an increased risk just to hold it in her hand?
“I’m sorry,” Jerry said again.
“It’s all right. You’re telling me now. That’s what counts.”
“Hang on,” Jerry said. “There’s more.”
15
__________
Frank had no intention of watching the Matteson island—no conscious intention anyhow. When he got the boat in the water and the motor fastened onto the transom, his only thought was of taking a ride, seeing the lake again.
He made it all of five minutes with that as the morning’s lone goal. Out of the little bay and around the sandbar—the lake was still high enough that he probably could have gone right over the top of the bar, but old habits guided him around it—and then, just after he hit the main body of the lake, he opened up the throttle and pointed toward the Four Islands. Past them and around the point, out into the more desolate stretches of the lake, was the Matteson place. He had to see it. Just a look.
It was twenty minutes with the little outboard running at full throttle before the island came into view. There were so many islands out here that it could get confusing; half of them looked like the shore from a distance, and then you’d be around them and into a bay that looked big enough to be the main portion of the lake and suddenly you were damn lost.
Toward the northernmost reaches of the Willow the lake became more desolate, and tucked into the eastern shore was an area called Slaughterhouse Bay, so named because of the liberal collection of stumps and dead trees that protruded out of the water and could easily and swiftly ruin a boat. Navigating among the dozens of stumps, even at slow speeds, was treacherous, and though Frank and his father had always assumed it would be a treasure trove of pike and perhaps bass, they’d never taken a good fish out of the bay. It was an eerie spot, particularly at dusk, when the partially submerged trees blended with long shadows and made the place look almost like a Florida swamp.
Skirting the bay and its stumps by several hundred yards, Frank crossed Slaughterhouse Point, approaching the headwaters where the Tomahawk River fed the flowage. Between Slaughterhouse Point on the south side and Muskie Point on the north, lying offshore of hundreds of acres of unbroken forest, he found the Matteson island. After a seven-year absence, maybe it should have been difficult to locate, but he didn’t have any trouble. The place was burned deep in his memory.
Although there were dozens of good-sized islands on the flowage, few would have been hospitable to development even if not state owned. The waters in the flowage fluctuated too much; in a low-rain year the lake was responsible for feeding much of the Wisconsin River valley, and the dam would be opened to the point that the lake level would dip as much as much ten feet below the norm. A high-rain year, they’d close the dams up and the lake would rise dramatically, creating an ever-changing landscape that turned islands into mainland one summer and partially submerged them the next spring. The Matteson place was an exception due both to the high bluffs that bordered it and its placement in the middle of the lake. The water would never reach the ground level upon which the cabin was built, and any major recession simply expanded the beach below the bluffs.
He passed the island on the west side, keeping about a hundred feet out, saw the roof of the cabin and two of the
She was walking out into the lake, waist deep now, testing the footing and moving slowly. What in the world was she thinking, going for a swim in this lake in April? Even though the air temperature was unseasonably warm, at least ten degrees above normal, the water would be frigid. She didn’t seem concerned, though.
Frank didn’t react to the sight of her, didn’t slow or cut the motor or do anything else that would make a clear show of his interest. Instead, he turned his head and stared straight out over the bow and gave the throttle an extra twist, picking up speed. He took the boat out into the lake, angled away from the island. The day had risen clear and beautiful, the breeze warming as the sun rode higher, everything reminding him of a number of days spent on this water with his father. He’d been ready for the memories today, but now they were sinking away, pushed down by that woman in the water.
She was a beautiful woman. Even from fifty yards out, he’d seen that. Tall and elegant, and from the short look he’d gotten at her body, it probably seemed more suspicious that he had
Dave O’Connor, or Vaughn, or whoever the hell the gray-haired man really was, did not seem a match for that woman. He was such a strange-looking man, so nervous and awkward. On the other hand, he drove a Lexus and had thousands in cash on him, along with a gun. Maybe she was the sort who was attracted to money or danger.
That was another problem with Vaughn, though. He didn’t seem like a dangerous guy. Even with the gun, even with the duo that had shown up on his heels, he didn’t fit the mold. Those guys at the body shop yesterday had been a different story. Vaughn didn’t seem anything like them or like other dangerous men Frank had known. Didn’t seem anything like his father.
There he was, though, sitting in Devin Matteson’s cabin with a woman who could turn heads from across the lake, two gun-toting badasses in pursuit. Nothing about that scenario felt right to Frank. Not after the time he’d spent with Vaughn yesterday.
He brought the boat around in a circle and ran back across the lake, a little farther out this time. She was leaving the water, and he could see another figure on shore. The distance was too great for a definite identification, but he assumed it was Vaughn.
Down maybe three hundred yards to an osprey nest, then back around for another pass, watching that island.
