Envy the Night

behind the building, following instructions, then parked and cut the motor. Nothing around them but the deserted building and the trees, with buzzing insects and wind-tossed cattails indicating a marsh about a hundred feet behind the bar. Frank turned away from it. It would take a long time before a body dumped in that marsh was found.

“Now we sit here and we wait and nobody says a word,” the guy with the gun said. His weapon was a Beretta, resting against his knee and angled toward Frank.

They sat for five minutes, maybe ten, and then gravel crunched under tires as someone left the paved road and drove into the parking lot. A few seconds later the new arrival appeared around the building. A van, light blue with darkly tinted windows, suburban-looking, about as anonymous as a vehicle could get. It pulled in beside the truck, and the driver climbed out. Shorter than the guy inside the truck, but quicker, more graceful in his movements. Strong, too. Frank remembered that from the way the guy had whipped his gun into Mowery’s face beside the police car.

“Out,” the guy beside Nora said, and Frank opened the door and stepped out onto the dusty parking circle, a warm gust of wind flapping his shirt against his body. It was his first opportunity to see the second man face-to- face, and he didn’t like the way the guy stared at him as if they’d already met, a sense of the familiar in his gaze. The guy held that look for a long moment, then turned away from Frank and slid the van’s side door open, and Frank found himself staring at Devin Matteson.

The last time Frank had seen him—the only time—it had been eight years earlier, in Miami. He hadn’t been around him long, maybe an hour, just enough for the dislike to put down roots, but what he remembered from that meeting was two qualities: arrogance and strength. The strength was no longer present.

Devin was leaning sideways against the seat so that he could face out, a gun resting in his lap, but it looked like just keeping his head up was taking a real effort. His usual deep tan and strong jawline had turned into a junkie’s face, fish-belly complexion with hazy, red-rimmed eyes and muscle lines that seemed given to tremors. Bulges showed under his shirt, and Frank realized after a second look that they weren’t bulges from a holster but from bandages.

Vaughn was lying. Had to be, because this no longer made any sense: The two men who’d arrived pursuing Vaughn and Renee were indeed here, but Devin was with them. Vaughn’s story had just come unhinged, but right now, staring his old nemesis in the face, Frank had no concept of the truth, just understanding of the lie.

“This is a crazy damn world, you know?” Devin said, and his voice came from some tight, trapped place in his chest. “I mean, I send two guys up here to do a job, and who do they tell me got in the way but Frank Temple Junior.”

“The Third,” Frank said.

“Huh?”

“Frank Temple the Third. No junior here.”

Devin looked at Frank for a long moment, and then gave a low laugh as his eyes went to his shorter partner.

“You believe that? It’s his son, no question. No junior here.”

He laughed again, and the other guy gave an awkward smile, as if he didn’t know what was so amusing but felt obligated to share in the fun. Devin’s laughter swept through Frank as pure white rage. He willed himself still, willed himself silent. Let the prick laugh. Let him enjoy this. Let him think that Frank didn’t know what had happened those many years earlier, and then, when the time was right, let him pay.

Devin stopped laughing, but it wasn’t clear if it was because the humor had passed or because he’d run out of breath. He waited for a moment, jaw clenching, eyes watering, and when he looked up and spoke again his voice had less energy and a darker tone.

“You want to tell me, Temple the Third, what the hell you’re doing here?”

Frank said, “I came to send you home.”

“What?”

“Ezra Ballard told me that you were coming back. We didn’t think that should happen.”

Devin gave him a look caught between anger and wonder. “Ballard’s a crazy old bastard. I don’t know what he told you, kid, but it was all bullshit. Me giving your old man up? That’s a lie.”

This time Frank didn’t think he’d be able to will the anger down, thought it was going to tug his foundation loose and sweep him away with it, send him rushing into that van, the other two and their guns be damned. But he fought it down again, didn’t say a word.

“Whatever,” Devin said. “I don’t give a shit what you two think. I’ll tell you what I told Ballard—whoever tipped the FBI, it wasn’t me. Supposed to be somebody close to your dad, though. Hell, could have been you.”

Frank was halfway to the van when the tall man stepped in and swung his gun sideways, going for his throat. Frank blocked it, got his hand up and met the guy’s forearm with his own, was still moving forward, still heading for Devin, when the second man placed the barrel of a gun against Frank’s cheek.

He stopped then, had to, and the tall guy turned his gun over and pressed it into Frank’s ribs, two guns against him now, two fingers on the trigger. Devin hadn’t moved, just sat there and watched with his own gun still on his lap.

“Your old man never shut up about you,” he said. “All this bullshit, telling everybody how fast you were, how good with a pistol. On and on. And you know what I finally figured out? He had to keep talking about it, because he knew you were a pussy. He knew that, and it shamed him.”

He got out of the van slowly, almost went down once, but when the tall man moved to help him he put up his hand and shook his head. He steadied himself, took a couple of steps toward Frank, until they were face-to-face. The tall man had moved back toward Nora, but the other one kept his gun on Frank’s cheek.

“How did you hook up with Vaughn Duncan?” Devin said. “Did he find you, or did you find him?”

This provided an answer to a question Frank hadn’t even really had time to consider yet: If Devin was already here, why hadn’t he just gone out to the island? Frank was the reason. Frank was the wild card, the development Devin hadn’t been able to understand. Frank and Nora—loose ends.

“I drove him off the road,” Frank said, each word coming slow, the pressure of the gun working against his jaw muscles, “because I thought he was you, and I was going to kill him. Like I said, it’s why I came up here.”

Devin Matteson stared at him for a long time. “You’re serious,” he said. “You’re serious.”

It wasn’t a question. Devin looked away, at each of his partners and then at Nora, and shook his head, limped a few steps back, so he could lean on the van.

“Well, hell, kid,” he said. “Sorry to disappoint. It wasn’t me, was it? But you and him, you guys got something to share. You wanted to kill me, he tried.”

It took a second for Frank to process that. Then the truth that had felt so close when Renee slapped him— the reality of her loyalty to Devin imprinted on his cheek, stinging his flesh—finally arrived, came screeching up in a cloud of smoke, engine revving. Vaughn was after Renee. You didn’t have a chance to take a woman like Renee away from a man like Devin. Not when he was alive.

“Vaughn shot you,” Frank said.

“Three times,” Devin said.

“That’s not what your wife thinks,” Nora said, and everyone but Frank turned to look at her.

“My wife,” Devin said, offering the phrase guardedly, as if he were afraid of its power. “You’ve seen her.”

Nora nodded.

“She’s here. With Vaughn.”

“Yes. But she thinks you’re dead.”

Devin said, “AJ,” and waved his hand at the man who held the gun to Frank’s face. The gun dropped away and the man stepped back, cleared some space so Devin could see Nora clearly.

“Tell me,” Devin said, “what they told you.”

Nora told him. Frank heard her words but wasn’t focused on them, was instead staring at Devin and trying to smell out the lie. He had to be lying, didn’t he? Vaughn had shot him? But Frank could see that now, could see it in the way Vaughn and Renee had interacted, his obvious adoration for her. And Vaughn had told the story, provided all the details, details that were clearly lies. Everything Renee knew about the reasons they’d fled came from Vaughn. None of it had come from Devin, at least not the way she’d told it to them that