back to face it, reaching for the rifle.
“Shit,” he said and picked up the rifle but left it pointed down. The movement on shore was from Vaughn, who had just stepped out of the trees, holding his gun ahead of him with a wavering grip.
“Come on!” Ezra yelled, turning to the trolling motor, a hopeless effort but the best he could now make for Nora. “Get out here.”
Get Vaughn and go after Nora. That’s what Ezra was thinking as he stepped up into the bow, the gun held loosely at his side, his eyes scanning the woods to see if anyone else was approaching. No, just Vaughn, and why wouldn’t he hurry, and lower that damn gun before somebody got—
Vaughn fired from the shoreline, and for a second Ezra was so stunned he didn’t react, but then he realized it hadn’t been an accident and he got both hands around the rifle and lifted it as Vaughn took a second shot, missing again, and a third.
The third round caught Ezra in his right side, blew through his ribs and out of his back and splattered blood and flesh off the windshield that guarded the steering console. He tried to keep lifting the rifle, to get it aimed at Vaughn, but the bullet had spun him and now he was stumbling. His knees banged off the side of the boat and he couldn’t right himself, flipped over the side and fell into the tangled branches of a partially submerged tree. The branches snapped under him, and he dropped into the water as Vaughn fired again, missing again. Ezra tried to lift the rifle, but it was too heavy now. Or was it even in his hand?
Another branch snapped, and he dropped again, and then the gray sky was fading into an odd red mist and Ezra couldn’t focus anymore, couldn’t see to fire even if he’d had the gun ready to shoot. The red mist spun into black and then shattered into jagged points of light, and Ezra Ballard closed his eyes and welcomed the water.
Renee got the tape off Nora’s hands first, which allowed her to hang on to the boat while Renee freed her feet. The feeling of power, of
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you.”
The rain was hammering the overturned boat, a sound like a drum corps, but even so they both stopped talking and listened as another sound, a series of cracks, echoed over the water.
“Guns,” Renee said. “Somebody’s shooting.”
Nora didn’t say anything. The strength was already fading from her newly freed legs, and even the gentle kick needed to stay upright seemed difficult.
“Can we roll it over?” she said.
“The boat?” Renee shifted in the water, looked at the capsized boat as if surprised that Nora would want to be inside it. She was treading water easily, her breathing steady. Beneath the surface, her arms and feet moved in ghostly circles, her hair fanning out around her shoulders.
“Let’s roll it,” Nora said and leaned back and tried to push the craft up, succeeded only in driving herself deeper in the water.
“All right. We can try.” Renee swam closer, dipped under the boat, and braced her hands on the edge, as Nora had. “On three.”
It took them two tries, but they flipped it. The motor was the key; once that weight had shifted enough, it overbalanced the boat and did the rest of the work for them. By the time the boat was finally floating upright, though, they didn’t have the strength left to climb into it. They waited for a few seconds, hanging off the side, and then tried again. This time Nora made it easily, then turned back and got her hand around Renee’s forearm and helped her into the boat.
They sat there on the bottom of the boat, getting their breath back and staring at one another. The water had been freezing, but now Nora felt even colder as the wind fanned over them.
“Where are the others?” Renee reached up and gathered a handful of her hair, ran her hand down it in a fist, squeezing the water out. Her eyes were on the lake, away from Nora.
“On the island. Well, one of them is dead. The guy they left on the boat with me is dead. I think someone shot him. That’s why we tipped over.” Nora took a deep breath, wiped water from her eyes, and said, “And Devin is waiting at Frank’s cabin.”
Renee sat with her hand still wrapped in her wet hair and stared at Nora with a look that made Nora’s neck prickle.
“What did you say?”
“Your husband is waiting at Frank’s cabin.”
Renee said, “You’re confused,” but Nora was already shaking her head.
“He’s alive, and he’s there,” she said. “He’s not in good shape, but he’s alive. Vaughn shot him.”
Renee let go of her hair. Her mouth was parted slightly, her eyes distant. “Vaughn shot him?”
“That’s what Devin said.” Nora watched the other woman’s face, then added, “That’s what Devin said while he put me and Frank into a van at gunpoint and came out here and had an FBI agent murdered at the cabin. The one named AJ killed him with a knife.”
The words slid by Renee without any apparent effect. She said, “Vaughn shot Devin. I’ve been up here with him, and he’s the one who shot Devin. He tried to kill Devin.”
“Yes,” Nora said.
Renee was looking at the lake without seeming to see anything. She said it again. “Vaughn shot him.”
Nora was shivering violently now, the wind and her drenched clothing combining to drop her body temperature.
“Can we start the motor?” Renee said.
Nora turned and looked at it. The thing had been upside down for a while, but it still looked in place, everything as it should be.
“Probably.”
“Try to start it, please.”
“Where are we going?” Nora asked as she moved for the stern.
“To my husband. But first we’re going to stop at that island. I left a gun there.”
When he heard the first shot, Frank was down in the hole with AJ, relieving the body of its gun and the boat key. The sound almost dropped him to his knees, overwhelming him with a sense of defeat. He was too late. Ten minutes had gone by and Nora Stafford was dead. He’d let her die.
Then there was another shot, and a third, and it was this last one that got him moving again, because it hadn’t come from a handgun. He recognized it as a rifle shot, and King didn’t have a rifle.
He was running toward the shots but angled too far to the left and ran into a tangle of undergrowth that he and AJ had not encountered on their walk into the woods. At first he tried to push through it, but that was a bad idea, and he fought his way back out of it and ran parallel to the lake, looking for a gap in the brush that would let him get back down to the shore and to the boat.
He heard voices—it sounded like Ezra—and then there was another volley of shots, three in succession. Who was shooting? He slapped branches aside and cleared the trees, found himself at the top of a muddy bluff, Ezra’s boat screened from sight. Out on the water, the smaller boat, where Nora and King should be waiting, seemed to have overturned and was now floating upside down in the lake. He could see people in the water.
The bluff was steep and slick with wet mud, but he fought his way down it, turning his feet sideways to limit his momentum, his shoes plowing furrows in the soggy earth, and then he was in the water up to his knees, splashing down the shore toward the collection of stumps and trees where he’d left Ezra’s boat.
As he stumbled through the water, something began to happen with the boat out in the lake. It rose in the air once, then twice, and finally it flipped back over, resting upright again. Two people climbed onto it, and even from out here Frank could see that neither one was tall enough to be King. What the hell had happened? Was Ezra out there with Nora somehow? Or Renee?
When he came around the bluff, Ezra’s boat appeared, and he saw Vaughn on board, standing in the stern, using the trolling motor to pull away from the island.
“Hey!” Frank shouted.
