Envy the Night

fit the mold for the rest of them. What do you know about him?”

“Nothing, yet. But people in Miami are looking into him.”

“That’s where he’s from?”

“Originally. He works at Coleman, though. As a guard.”

“Coleman,” Frank echoed, and Grady knew he remembered, knew he was thinking about Manuel DeCaster, drawing all the same connections Grady had.

“Atkins seems to think the guy is still in your area, though,” he said. “Thinks that’s what today’s killing was about.”

“Yeah, that’s the simple math.”

“Do you know where he is?”

Silence.

“Frank, if you know, tell me.”

“I hadn’t seen the guy before yesterday, and I haven’t seen him since.”

Again the evasiveness. Grady said, “Frank, listen to me—I want you to leave. Get in your car first thing in the morning, and get out of there. Will you do that?”

“Atkins might not like it.”

“I’ll deal with Atkins. You need to get out of there.”

“Devin’s going to make it? Three bullets weren’t enough?”

“He was recovering.”

“Was?”

Grady hesitated. “Yeah.”

“So what changed?”

“He’s gone, Frank. He left the hospital against doctor’s orders, and he’s gone. Now, I don’t know what the hell is going on up there, but I think he wants a part of it. And you need to be gone when he gets there. All right? You need to be gone.”

Frank didn’t say anything, but his breathing had changed, slowed.

“Are you listening, Frank? Get out of there, first thing in the morning.”

“I don’t have a car,” Frank said, and there was something in his tone that made Grady get out of bed and onto his feet.

“Look, I’ll drive up there myself. I’ll drive up and talk to this Atkins guy and then you can ride back down with me. Leave them to figure it out. That’s what you’ve got to do, Frank.”

“No, Grady. You stay down there. Okay? You stay down there.”

“Frank—”

“Thanks for the insight, though. This is important to know.”

“If you know where Vaughn is, you’ve got to tell—”

“I’ll talk to you soon, Grady. Thanks again.”

He hung up, and Grady swore loudly into the dead phone. The conversation had ended too fast. Grady should have told him. It was time now. He had to tell him. He turned the light on, and blinked against the harsh brightness until he could see the numbers clear enough to call back.

Frank had turned the phone off again.

23

__________

The flashlight blinked three times, then stopped. Ezra waited for the pause, then hit the lights on his boat, just tapped them on and right back off, enough to show Frank that he understood the signal.

It was almost two in the morning, and Frank wanted Ezra to come in? This couldn’t be good. Ezra ignored the outboard—too noisy—and turned the trolling motor on, brought the boat in to the beach with no sound but that soft electric whir. Frank met him in the shallows, waded out, and took the bow line and threaded it through the U-bolt Ezra and Frank’s father had bored into the log wall long ago.

“You all right?” Ezra stepped off the boat and onto firm ground.

“We’re fine.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

There were no lights on the boat or outside the cabin, and Frank’s face was only a few shades lighter than the shadows that surrounded it.

“Devin’s on his way.”

The wind was blowing warm and steady out of the southwest, and Ezra turned his face into it, breathed it in.

“How do you know?”

“Just talked to Grady Morgan. You remember him?”

“FBI.”

“That’s right.”

“Didn’t seem to be my biggest fan.”

“Didn’t know you.”

“Sure,” Ezra said. “Well, what did Mr. Morgan have to say?”

What Frank told him then made some sense. Made a lot of sense, actually, because the one thing Ezra had never been able to get his head around was why Devin would possibly have called him and told him to open the cabin up. The only reason he could have understood was if it had been a taunt, Devin deciding he’d screw with an old man’s head, make it damn clear that Ezra no longer intimidated him or never had. Problem with that was the tone of the call. The message had been simple, businesslike, as if he’d never had a problem with Ezra. The answer, Ezra understood now, was that it hadn’t been Devin who made the call. The other guy, Vaughn, had apparently understood Ezra’s role as caretaker, but it didn’t seem he knew the back story.

“He’s out of the hospital,” Ezra said when Frank was done, “with three bullets in him?”

“That’s what I’ve been told.” Frank was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and Ezra could see the muscles of his chest and shoulders under the shirt, taut and hard in the easy, natural way they could be only when you were young. Ezra could remember when he had looked like that. Could remember when Frank’s father had looked like that. The boy’s features didn’t resemble his father, he’d taken after his mother in that way, but the way he stood now, the energy in his words, the eagerness for battle . . . those traits ran warm through his blood.

“Sounds like Devin’s hurt bad, then,” Ezra said. “Hell, he might not make it up here, son.”

“But you know he’s coming,” Frank said. “You know he is. That’s his wife out there on that island, and either she shot him or Vaughn did. They betrayed him, tried to kill him. You think he could be headed anywhere else?”

Ezra didn’t answer, and after a few beats of silence Frank said, “He gave my father up. Brought him into it, and then turned right around and gave him up to save his own ass.”

“I know the story, son.”

Frank extended his arm, pointed out across the dark water. “He’s coming for them, Ezra. The people out there on that island. Why? Because they tried to take him down, and that’s something I sure as hell respect. They did our work for us.”

“Unsuccessfully.”

“Fine. Unsuccessfully. But I’m not going to let that son of a bitch come out here, to the place my father and his father and you and me all shared, and kill those two, Ezra. I’m not.”

“At least one of those two is headed for jail, Frank. You don’t want to interfere with that.”

“You want to see them go? You want to see them go to jail for shooting Devin? Don’t you remember—”

“I remember it all,” Ezra said, and there was a depth of anger he hadn’t heard to his own voice in a long time. “Don’t stand there and ask me if I remember. It goes back a hell of a lot farther than you, back to places you’ll never see and can’t imagine. Understand that, son?”