Envy the Night

How could you, guy like that? But how do you leave him, too? I’d be scared, if I was her.”

“You think she’s in love with you?” Ezra said. “Because I didn’t see that.”

Vaughn tensed, a quick flash of anger. “She could be. She might be. Man, you haven’t seen us, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I spent times with her, so many times, when she was telling me how much she liked all the ways I was different from him, how a guy . . .”

His voice trailed off, but Ezra understood what Vaughn never would, that Renee had been part of the game, packaged with the cash to keep this guy happy and playing for Devin’s team. Someone in law enforcement, buying him off might not be enough protection. Devin would have wanted to bring Vaughn in close, lure him as near as possible so he could be watched. You looked for something that kept a guy like Vaughn on the hook. Renee, it seemed, had played that role awfully well.

“Were you having an affair with her?” Ezra asked. “Sleeping together?”

Vaughn shook his head. “No. It wasn’t there yet. But she was scared of him, and I know she wanted to leave him, I know that for a fact.”

He hissed the last line at Ezra, spit showing on his lips.

“All right,” Ezra said slowly. Then, “Why’d you run here? Of all the places you could have gone, you came here?”

Vaughn didn’t offer an answer, but after a moment Ezra gave himself one. “You needed someplace that would seem like Devin’s idea. To convince her.”

That got a nod. “He’d talked about it once. Right at the beginning. Offered me the place if I wanted to stay there, you know, a vacation or whatever. Wrote your name down”—he nodded at Ezra—“and said I should just call you and say when I was coming. He acted like it was funny, though. Seemed real entertained by it.”

“He would have been,” Ezra said. “I promised him if he ever came back here, I’d kill him. He probably thought it would be real damn funny if you called me and said he’d sent you. If you thought you’d killed the guy, though, why did you need to run at all?”

“To be with her,” Vaughn said, his voice barely audible. “To be with her, away from the rest of it. To show her what I could be. That I could take care of her. That I could be like him, only . . . better. If she knew that he’d trusted me, if she knew . . .”

He looked up at Ezra, hope filling his eyes. “You won’t tell her. Will you? You hate him, too. You understand.”

“I am a damn fool,” Ezra said. “An old fool.”

“What?”

Ezra stared down at him, felt contempt for Vaughn and loathing for himself rising warm out of his belly.

“People are dead, and more are going to die,” he said. “For you. And I’m out here protecting you.”

“You think I wanted that? Think I wanted any of you people anywhere near us?”

Ezra didn’t answer.

“You won’t tell her,” Vaughn repeated. “Right? You said you’d promised to kill Devin. You just told me that. So you understand.”

So he understood. This sniveling, murdering little shit was looking Ezra in the eyes and seeing a kindred spirit.

“I will tell her that her husband is alive,” Ezra said.

“What?”

“He is alive,” Ezra said, “and she deserves to know that. You didn’t kill him, and now whatever you were hoping to pull off with her, it’s over.”

“It’s not over,” Vaughn said, speaking carefully, “if Devin is dead.”

It was quiet for a minute, his suggestion hanging in the air.

“No,” Ezra said. “No, we’re not killing anybody so you can get his wife. I’m not being a part of that.”

“You said you wanted to kill him.” Vaughn was pushing off the ground, his body rising with his voice. “You just told me that the reason he didn’t come back up here anymore was because you said you’d kill him. So what do you care, man? It’s nothing to you.”

Nothing to him. Vaughn was right about that. Yet here Ezra sat with him in the wet woods with a gun in his hand and a bloody mess headed his way. He started to speak but stopped when he heard a motor.

They were here. He leaned out of the trees and looked across the water, Vaughn joining him, and saw his boat out in the lake, coming to a stop about a hundred yards from shore. Ezra could see four figures in the boat, recognize Nora but none of the others. It could be Frank behind the wheel. Yes, that was probably Frank. They’d make him run the boat.

“Is Devin out there?” Vaughn said. “If he’s out there, man, kill him and let’s be done with it. Just let us go. Let me take Renee and go.”

“Shut up.” Ezra wanted to lift his gun and bring it down in the middle of Vaughn’s face, hit him again and again until his lips were smashed into his teeth and he couldn’t say another word.

The motor came back to life, and the boat was headed their way, coming into shore. Ezra watched them come, saw that it was indeed Frank behind the motor, and wished again for his rifle. It would be over now, if he had his rifle. Instead, they had to wait and let the battle come to them. It wasn’t what he wanted.

They landed the boat, and Ezra rolled back against the base of the tree, looked at Vaughn, and said, “They’re coming onshore, and we’ll let them come, okay? These guns, they don’t have the range we need. So we’ve got to sit here and wait, wait quietly.”

Vaughn didn’t answer or even nod, just looked at Ezra with blank eyes. A hell of a combat partner he was going to be. It was up to Ezra, nobody backing him up out here, no Frank Temple or Dan Matteson like in the old days.

“When they come on shore,” Ezra began, but he was interrupted from further instructions by the sound of another motor. What the hell? From where he stood, he could only see his boat, and the big Merc was shut down. He shifted a few steps to the side, knelt again, found the little aluminum boat. Yes, there was someone on board, starting the engine. Frank was on the beach, pushing the aluminum boat back into the water. Ezra had wedged it well into the sand.

Frank got the boat free, climbed in with the tall man who was at the motor, and then both boats pulled away, out into open water. Kept going until they were a good two hundred yards offshore, and then the anchor went out from the little boat, which was pitching hard in the wind.

“Shit,” Ezra said, watching them. This was a good move. A damn good move. They didn’t want to have to follow Ezra into the woods and leave both boats on shore. If they made a mistake and let Ezra double back and return to the boats, that would be end of it. With just two guys, they also couldn’t afford to leave one guarding the boats. The solution, one Ezra would have considered if he were in their shoes and felt good about how much time he had, was to remove one of the boats. With this storm keeping the lake desolate, they had the time.

“What are they doing?” Vaughn said, whispering even though there was no chance of being heard down on the beach.

“They’re moving one of the boats offshore. Far enough away that we can’t get to it. Then they’ll come back.”

They would come back in his boat, which was bigger and faster and also possessed the most important quality for this situation: It required a key to start. Take the key with you and the boat was dead in the water, unlike the little boat with the outboard and its pull cord. Ezra had no second key hidden away on the boat, but he could probably hotwire the thing if he had enough time. Finding that sort of time, though, was difficult when people were shooting at you.

Far out on the water, an exchange was taking place on the two boats, men stepping off one and into the other. They’d anchored almost directly across from the island where Ezra had left Renee, no more than fifty yards from its shore, and he hoped she was well hidden.

The exchange was completed, and it looked like Ezra had been right and they were taking the little boat on their return trip. The showdown was coming, and Vaughn didn’t matter anymore, could be dealt with later, after this last bit had played out.

If the first goal was to separate Nora from AJ and King, then Frank supposed he should count this as