Killer Move

Once through, he found himself lurching down in a flat, muddy area between the shells of two five-story condo blocks. He shambled into the middle, stopped, turned around. It was fifty yards square, a few tarp-wrapped pieces of inexpensive machinery parked neatly over to one side. If you listened real hard, you could hear the sound of the ocean.

“You’re kidding me.”

He looked back the way he’d come.

Yeah. Once you were oriented, there was no question. This was the Silver Palms development on Lido Key. Small, by recent standards. Not a career maker, just one of those journeyman projects you’d walk away from with a few million—assuming you hadn’t been shut out of the deal by a trio of ancient assholes who’d decided to turn their backs on you. It was the very resort, in fact, that—when Warner had discovered that the others had edged him out—had caused him to unofficially and covertly resign from their dumb little club and start having some fun with the old fuckers on his own account.

Hunter couldn’t have known this, of course. It was merely life playing itself out like the big cosmic joke it was. Ha ha. Very funny.

Slowly Warner began to make his way up the slope, to try to find a public phone. He could think of one person he could call. Another if it really came down to it—though that would really have to be a very last resort. Neither of these people was Lynn. He was beyond any form of normal life now, and knew it. Lynn was back in the shadows of before-life-in-the-chair.

He knew also that his ghosts were still behind him, Katy closest of all, following him up the slope.

Let them come.

He was screwed, but he wasn’t dead yet.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I was sitting looking at my phone, and no, I was not back at the house. I’d just called Steph’s number again—leaving yet another message, and remotely checking those on the machine (finding none but my own thirty-second slabs of ramping anxiety, a jump-cut graph of my state of mind since midafternoon). I was sick of the sound of my own voice, both inside my head and in messages apparently destined to go unanswered. My phone battery was down to ten percent, and the icon was firehouse red—which meant it could go splat at any moment, probably within seconds of starting to receive an actual phone call.

I knew I should be getting myself the hell back to base. Hallam had told me so (and I did feel a measure of relief, or at least a sense of having done the right thing, having mentioned Stephanie’s not-being-aroundness to him). Karren had told me that was the best place to be, too, if I wanted to get a jump-start on placating my wife. I knew it on every other level, including that it simply wasn’t a great idea to be seen getting drunk on the Circle, one of my key areas of business.

I’d known all these things when I ordered the previous beer, however. I wished I’d simply gone home after the first drink at Krank’s, sat in a chair, and waited for my wife. I would have been in the right place, possessed of righteousness: here I am, ready and willing to sort things out—and where the heck have you been, my love? Now I was in the wrong place, and drunk, and apparently intent on paddling myself further and further up a side creek of wrong action.

“Is that one of those phones where if you stare at it hard enough you can get it to explode? Because that would be cool.”

I looked up, startled.

At first I thought someone at one of the nearby tables must have spoken. Then I saw a slim figure ten feet away, just out of range of the bar’s lights.

“Who’s that?”

She stepped forward. It was Cassandra. She was carrying a paper grocery bag crooked in one arm.

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry. I was miles away.”

“Without a map, by the look of it. May I join you?”

She sat neatly, the bag perched on her lap like a well-behaved little dog. “So what’s up, Mr. Moore?”

“Up?”

“Just wondering why you might be here all by yourself. And glaring at your phone like that. As if it was a really very naughty phone indeed.”

“Battery’s nearly dead,” I said. “And I’m . . . It would just be good if it didn’t run out right now.”

“You want a charge?”

“You can do that?”

“Well, duh. Do I look Amish?”

I stared at her owlishly, wondering how exactly she could achieve this outside a bar. She laughed.

“You would need to take a short walk back to my apartment. Where I have a USB charger cable for a phone such as yours, along with many other technical goodies and gewgaws.”

“Is it far? Actually, I have a car with me.”

“I’m sure you do. But—and please don’t take this personally—I’m thinking some foot-based locomotion would be a smart tactical choice for you right now. Certainly before attempting to steer a large chunk of metal back to the mainland.”

I thought for a moment. Okay, weird idea, but she was right—I was too drunk to drive, however slowly and methodically. Short walk, charge phone, get car, head home. That could work. It even kind of rhymed.

“That would be great,” I said.

I went indoors and found my waitress, paid. I caught a glimpse of the other waitress, the one from our anniversary night, on the other side of the room. She recognized me and gave a small, distracted nod. I thought about making my way over and asking if she’d seen my wife—you know, the woman I had dinner with upstairs the other night—but the room was crowded and I knew it would look drunk and strange, so I did not. I thought I’d got the drunk/strange look nailed pretty well already, without going to any extra effort.

Cassandra was standing on the sidewalk under a streetlight. She looked like the cover from some 1950s novel about an innocent in the big city, or would have if the Circle looked even slightly urban, and if they’d had emo chicks back in those days.

“Follow me, sire,” she said.

We walked up the road onto Lido Key. From there it was a long straight stroll along Ben Franklin Drive, past the car park for the beach and the looming hulks of condo developments. Lido is small, intimate, with a crescent moon of white sand beach about half a mile in length. At the far end, the key abruptly becomes much wilder, acres and acres of trees, bush, and near swamp around a couple of large, natural (and hence flyblown and unattractive) stretches of water. One day the whole key would doubtless be covered in opportunities for fractional ownership, but for now the southern quarter wasn’t that much different from the way it had been when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

It was dark, but the air felt soft and warm. At one point, halfway along the drive, I stopped for a moment, frowning. I turned around. I almost always did this when I came along this way, but had never been able to work it out before.

“Aha,” I said, however, feeling a flip of recognition deep in my gut. “This is it.”

“Yeah, I heard they kept the secret of life along here somewhere. So you found it, huh?”

“The Lido Beach Inn,” I said. “That’s where it was.”

“Excuse me?”

I turned to look at her, feeling old. “We came to Florida a couple times when I was a kid,” I said. “We always used to stay on Lido Beach. Back then this key wasn’t so developed, in fact it was the budget option—though it had been a big deal in the distant past. There was a huge old hotel back on that last corner, where the Sun Palms is now, but it was abandoned all the years we came. And along here . . .”

I indicated the row of finished and nearly finished developments that now lined this stretch. “I think there were already a couple of smaller condos back then, but it was mainly old motels. They’re all gone now, but every time I’ve been along this road since we’ve lived here, I’ve tried to work out where the Lido Beach Inn was. And I’ve finally realized, it’s here. Or it was.”

I pointed into the heart of a small, upscale development, and suddenly I could actually