and lead them into the woods, do it, man. Go ahead. But I came here to take care of her, and I am going to do it.”
“No,” Ezra said. “You’re not.”
Vaughn stared at Ezra with a strange flicker in his eyes. It surprised Ezra, almost made him want to lean back, a crazy quality in the look.
“You want to take care of her,” Ezra said, “then you’ll help me occupy these boys.”
“I’m not—”
“Please, Vaughn,” Renee said, and her voice was gentler than Ezra had heard before. “Please.”
That stopped him, and he looked away from Ezra and stared at Renee. “I can take care of you,” he said. “We don’t need to listen to him, Renee. We don’t need him.”
“Yes, we do,” she said, tone stronger now.
Ezra couldn’t hear his boat’s engine anymore. That meant they were stopped, which probably meant they were at the island, checking the empty cabin.
“We got to go,” Ezra said, “and you’re coming with me.”
Vaughn sat in a furious silence while Renee climbed off the boat and into the puddles and mud onshore.
Ezra reached under his seat and found the gun he’d taken from her on the porch, the one she’d stuck in his eye. “Here.”
She took the gun, and Ezra gave her a good-luck nod and then pushed the boat offshore, sent them back into the water as she walked toward the trees. Before he fired up the motor, he reached behind his back and withdrew the gun he’d taken from Vaughn on the beach earlier that day, held it out.
“You ever actually used this?” he said.
Vaughn’s eyes were dark and small, his face wet with rain.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve used it. Probably in ways you wouldn’t guess.”
“Fantastic,” Ezra said. “Maybe you’ll get to tell me the story sometime. Right now, it’s time to move.”
He pressed the gun into Vaughn’s palm.
32
__________
They were back in the boat as the rain billowed down at them like laundry tossing on the line, flapping in gentle gusts, but each gust was a solid wall of water. Nora’s hair clung to her neck in tangles, water running into her mouth and eyes, the whole world gone wet, lake and sky blending into a liquid universe. She sat in the back with King’s hand locked into her arm, his gun close, as Frank started the engine and took them back out into the lake.
AJ’s mood was different than it had been before the island, wilder, his self-control held together by a few overstretched threads. She wasn’t sure if it was the realization of what he’d done back at the cabin catching up with him or more a sense of anticipation—it was now clear that Ezra knew they were coming.
But did he? Was he really somewhere north of here, taking refuge in the storm with Renee and Vaughn? Or had Frank been lying, saying whatever it took to get that gun out of his mouth?
The engine roared louder behind her and the boat lifted again, shoving her backward, tightening King’s grip on her arm. She’d have another set of bruises from him now, more blue streaks from his big ugly hands.
They hammered across the lake, the bow banging against windblown waves, and for some reason her thoughts turned to her mother, always wanting Nora married off and tucked away from the world, and Nora suddenly wondering if this was why. The world could send its evil blowing into your life disguised as something as innocent as a car with a smashed front end, and you’d never see it coming.
But she should have seen it coming. Had known even as she pocketed the two thousand dollars that her father wouldn’t have done it, that he’d have demanded ID and some more information, or maybe refused the car altogether.
Her focus should probably have been on the hand that was digging into her arm and the guns around her, but she couldn’t take her mind off the earnest, pleading look on the face of the man she’d believed to be Dave O’Connor as he’d put the cash into her palm and assured her he could be trusted. She closed her eyes, reopened them, tried to see the lake instead of the mistake that had taken her here.
This far north, there was nothing to see except wilderness. The trees lined the shore in unbroken formation, like soldiers from some ancient battle massed and ready for action. Here and there stumps and weathered trees jutted out of the water, and the sky was empty of the osprey and eagles and gulls that normally filled it, empty of everything but roiling clouds and sheets of rain. AJ was speaking into Frank’s ear and pointing, sending Frank along first one shore and then the other, cutting back and forth across the lake, searching for Ezra and the others. It was a random, worthless method, even Nora knew that. Someone like Ezra would be able to hide the boat so well that they’d never find it, not if they spent the whole weekend out here. He probably had it onshore by now, dragged into the woods and covered with branches and underbrush, utterly invisible.
So what then? What would AJ and his near-the-breaking-point temper do when he realized they’d never find the boat?
She hadn’t formulated an answer to that question yet when Frank abruptly dropped the throttle and the boat sloshed to a stop, rocking on its own wake. Nora stared over his shoulder and felt her stomach dip with horror and astonishment—the boat was dead ahead. Not hidden at all, completely unconcealed, in fact, just sitting there on the flooded main shore, tied among the trees, dead center in the bay, visible from a hundred yards out even in the storm.
What was Ezra thinking? Had he lost his mind?
Ezra sat in the wet leaves for a long time with Vaughn at his side, thinking about the line he’d uttered as Ezra passed him the pistol and asked if he knew how to use it.
He thought about that and about the way Vaughn had reacted to being separated from Renee, the sort of desperate need he’d shown for her, took those two moments and put them together with the worry he’d had before, the notion that Vaughn was not the sort of man Devin seemed likely to turn to in a time of crisis. He considered all of those things for a while as they sat in the rain and waited for their pursuers, and after a long time he turned to Vaughn and said, “Devin’s alive.”
Vaughn had been staring out at the lake, and now he continued to do that, but everything in him seemed to shut down, not a breath coming, not a blink.
“He is alive,” Ezra repeated. “Left the hospital yesterday. Hasn’t been seen since. The way Frank heard it from the FBI, they think Devin might have been headed this way.”
This time, Vaughn got himself together enough to muster an attempt. He cocked his head, turned away from the water to face Ezra, and said, “I don’t know if I believe you, but if you’re serious, then that’s good news.”
Ezra said, “No. It is not good news for you.”
“I don’t understand,” Vaughn said.
“I think I do,” Ezra said. “I think I understand.”
Vaughn’s tongue slipped out of his mouth and ran across his lips, as if they needed moisture even with the rain beating off his face.
“Now,” Ezra said, “it being just the two of us out here in the rain, and Devin’s wife far from hearing range, I’d like to ask you a question and receive an honest answer. Did you shoot him?”
“What? Man, we sat on that porch and I
“I know what you told me,” Ezra said, “and this time I’m asking for the truth.”
A gust of wind blew hard for a few seconds, bending the treetops and showering Ezra and Vaughn with water, and then it faded and the rain slowed and the woods grew quiet around them.
“I’m the only chance you’ve got today,” Ezra said. “You better
There was a long pause, and then Vaughn said, “She’s scared of him. That’s all it was. She doesn’t love him.
