Envy the Night

sorrow, and the second time he could roll his eyes and chalk it up as No Big Deal, Kids Being Kids.

He hoped.

As he pushed back from his desk and walked to the window and looked out at the Chicago skyline, he sent a silent request to Frank Temple III somewhere out there across the miles.

Tell me it was just fun. Tell me, Frank, that you were out with some buddies having beers and chasing girls and laughing like idiots, like happy, happy idiots. Tell me that there was no fight involved, no temper, no violence, not even a closed fist. You’ve made it a long way.

A long, long way.

Frank III had been eighteen years old when Grady met him. A slender, good-looking kid with dark features contrasted by bright blue eyes, and a maturity that Grady hadn’t seen in a boy of that age before, so utterly cool that Grady actually asked a psychologist for advice on talking to him. He’s showing nothing, Grady had said. Every report we’ve got says he was closer to his father than anyone, and he is showing nothing.

He showed something in the third interview. It had been just him and Grady sitting in the Temple living room, and Grady, desperate for some way to get the kid talking, had pointed at a framed photograph of father and son on a basketball court and said, Did he teach you how to play?

The kid had sat there and looked at him and seemed almost amused. Then he’d said, You want to know what he taught me? Stand up.

So Grady stood up. When the kid said, Take that pen and try it to touch to my heart. Hell, try to touch it anywhere. Pretend it’s a knife, Grady hadn’t wanted to. All of a sudden this was seeming like a real bad idea, but the kid’s eyes were intense, and so Grady said what the hell and made one quick thrust, thinking he’d lay the pen against the kid’s chest and be done with it.

The speed. Oh, man, the speed. The kid’s hands had moved faster than anybody’s Grady had ever seen, trapped his wrist and rolled it back and the pen was pointing at Grady’s throat in a heartbeat’s time.

Half-assed effort, Frank Temple III had said. Try again. For real this time.

So he’d tried again. And again, and again, and by the end he was working into a sweat and no longer fooling around, was beginning to feel the flush of shame because this was a child, damn it, and Grady had done eight years in the Army and another fifteen in the Bureau and he ran twenty miles a week and lifted weights and he could beat this kid . . .

But he couldn’t. When he finally gave up, the kid had smiled at him, this horribly genuine smile, and said, Want to see me shoot?

Yes, Grady said.

What he saw at the range later that afternoon—a tight and perfect cluster of bullets—no longer surprised him.

Seven years later, he was thinking about that day while he stared out of the window and told himself that it was nothing but a public intox charge, a silly misdemeanor, and that there was nothing to worry about with Frank. Frank was a good kid, always had been, and he’d be absolutely fine as long as he stayed away from a certain kind of trouble.

That was all he needed to do. Stay away from that kind of trouble.

2

__________

Frank woke to the grinding of a big diesel motor pulling away, sat up, and saw gray light filling the sky. When he opened the door and tried to get out of the Jeep his cramped muscles protested, and he felt a quick razor of pain along the left side of his stiff neck. He was hungry now, the alcohol long since vanished from his cells and the Gatorade calories burned up. He took the edge off with a Snickers bar and a bottle of orange juice from the vending machines, ate while he studied the big map on the wall. He’d come closer last night than he’d realized; Tomahawk was only one hundred miles ahead.

The closer he got, the more his resolve wavered. Maybe it would be best to pretend he’d never gotten that message from Ezra, didn’t even know Devin was on his way back. Maybe he’d just spend a little time in the cabin, stay for a weekend, catch some fish. It would be fine as long as he didn’t see Devin Matteson. If he stayed away from Devin, if it was just Frank and Ezra and the woods and the lake, this could end up being a good trip, the sort of trip he’d needed to take for a while now. But if he did see Devin . . .

What are you doing here, then, if it’s not about Devin? he thought. You really think this is some sort of vacation?

Whatever part of his brain was supposed to rise to that argument remained silent. He drove with the windows down as the gray light turned golden and the cold morning air began to warm on his right side. Past Wausau the smell of the place began to change—pine needles and wood smoke and, even though there wasn’t a lake in sight, water. There would be a half-dozen lakes within a mile of the highway by now. He knew that both by the change in the air and from the map in the rest stop, this portion of the state freckled with blue.

The smells were triggering a memory parade, but Frank wasn’t sure if he wanted to sit back and watch. It was that sort of place for him now. The deeper he got into the tall pines, the faster the memories flooded toward him, and he was struck by just how much he’d loved this place. It was one thing to recall it from somewhere hundreds of miles away, and another to really be here, seeing the forests and the sky and smelling the air. Maybe he’d stay for a while. The summer stretched ahead of him, and the money wouldn’t run out. Blood money, sure, and spending it while hating the methods that had earned it made Frank a hypocrite at best and something far darker at worst, but it was there.

The first few times he and his father had made the trip, the highway had been two-lane this far north. Then the tourism dollars began to knock on the right doors down in Madison, and soon the four-lane was extending. Frank’s mind was on the cabin, and he blew right past the Tomahawk exits before remembering that he had nothing in the way of food or supplies. He’d have to come back down after he’d unpacked, grab some lunch and buy groceries and then head back to the lake.

He exited at an intersection with County Y, a narrow road slashing through the pines, and had gone about a mile down it when someone in a silver Lexus SUV appeared behind him. From the way it came on in the rearview mirror Frank knew it was really eating up the road, had to be doing seventy at least. As the car approached, it shifted into the oncoming lane, the driver planning to pass Frank without breaking stride. Had to be a tourist, driving like that. The locals had more class.

It was that thought that made him look at the license plate. He probably wouldn’t have done it otherwise, but now he wanted to prove his theory correct, so his eyes went to the plate.

Florida.

The car was gone in a silver flash then, swerving in ahead of him and pulling away. The muscles at the base of his neck had gone cold and tight and his breath seemed trapped.

Florida.

It didn’t mean anything. A strange little touch of deja vu, sure, but it didn’t mean anything. Yes, the Willow Flowage was an isolated place and a damn long drive from Florida, but there were several million cars with Florida license plates. There wasn’t even a chance that Devin Matteson was driving that car.

“Not a chance,” Frank said aloud, but then that message from Ezra filled his head again—I got a call from Florida . . . he’s coming back—and he pressed hard on the gas pedal and closed the gap on the silver Lexus. A closer look was all he needed. Just that minor reassurance, enough that he could go on to the cabin laughing at himself for this reaction.

He kept accelerating, closed until he was only a car length behind. Now he was leaning forward, his chest almost against the steering wheel, peering into the tinted rear window of the Lexus as if he’d actually be able to tell who the driver was.

There was only one person in the car, and it was a male. He could tell that much, but nothing else. He pulled