“Oh, after we take Alex back and let him go,” Cap said. “I almost forgot that part.”
“Are you trying to ruin everything here? Because you’re doing a great job.”
She looked at me, just as I was starting to lean forward. I stopped.
“I’m just getting it clear in my head,” Cap said. “We’re not going to shoot Alex and dump his body in the lake.”
“Of course not.” She looked at me again. I wasn’t going to get my chance if she kept doing that.
“And you weren’t thinking of shooting me and dumping me in the lake, either,” Cap said. “I mean, once you have the guns and you don’t need me anymore.”
“What are you talking about?
“I’m just saying, you went along with this pretty quickly. This whole crazy boat trip.”
Yes, I thought. Keep fighting with each other. I can use this.
“Stop it,” she said. “We’re partners now.”
“So I thought.”
“We are. And this is just the first deal, remember? We took care of business and now we’re running the show.”
Think, Alex. There’s a little fire here. How can you pour on some gasoline?
“Yeah,” Cap said. “I guess we did. We killed the bosses and took over.”
Wait a minute, I thought. Something’s not right here. What did Natalie say about that meeting in the hotel room? Rhapsody and Laraque together, the way she described them…
“We did it,” Rhapsody said. “We can own the world now. Both of us.”
Every word coming back to me now. How scared Rhapsody had seemed, until he touched her. The power dynamic that only Natalie could see.
“Yeah,” Cap said, his eyes narrowed now. He was thinking hard. “Both of us.”
There’s no way, I thought. I knew it was a lie. She couldn’t have killed him. She couldn’t do any of this on her own, without him. It felt like Natalie was right there next to me now, giving me this one last card to play.
“How did you kill him?” I said.
They both looked at me.
“I’m talking to you, Rhapsody. How did you kill Laraque?”
“Shut up.”
“Just tell me. I’m sure Cap wants to know, too. How did you kill him?”
“I said shut the fuck up.”
“Tell him how you did it,” Cap said. “Go ahead.”
“Knock it off. I’m serious.”
“Tell him,” he said. He was with me now. I had him on the hook. “Tell the man how you killed Antoine.”
“I shot him. You know that.”
“Where did you shoot him?” Cap said.
“In the head.”
“No, where was he when you shot him?”
She let out a long breath. “In the tub.”
“In the tub, right. In the bathroom.”
“No, his tub’s actually in the kitchen.”
“Did he see it coming?”
“I’m not going to do this now,” she said. “I told you to knock it off.”
“That’s a pretty hardcore thing to do, Rhapsody. I’m impressed. It must have made a real mess. His brains all over the bathroom tiles?”
“Stop it.”
“But that’s what it takes, right? That’s what you have to do to get to the top.”
She didn’t answer him.
“You know what would be a real shame?” he said. “If you didn’t actually kill him. If you just said you did.”
“Don’t do this.”
“Because that would mean, what, that the two of you are already thinking about double-crossing me? Cutting me out of the deal and finding a new American partner? Now that Gray is gone?”
“Cap, I mean it.”
“After all, who wants a partner who’s unstable?”
“That was Alex’s word, not mine.”
She looked at me one more time. I saw her right hand tighten on the gun. Cap saw it, too.
He shot her in the stomach. Shoomp, the same muffled noise.
Rhapsody let out a low moan, dropped her shoulder bag to the deck, brought one hand to her stomach and leaned over like she was going to be sick. “Cap,” she said. “Cap, God damn. What are you doing?”
“I’ll tell Laraque you had a little accident on the boat. I’m sure he’ll get over it. Especially if he hasn’t gotten his delivery yet.”
She wobbled like she was about to go down. Then she raised her gun. Cap shot her again, shoomp, this time in the chest. She stumbled backward and collapsed against the gunwale, her gun falling overboard into the water. The blood soaked her blouse, turning it an even darker shade of black.
I slipped my right hand down, against my left knee. Lift the pant leg, remove the gun, fire. Just like that.
He turned to me. I froze.
“Okay, now you,” he said. His eyes were wide open and he was looking at me like I was the one who just shot her. “It’s your turn. You are going to tell me where the guns are.”
“If I don’t?”
It was all so simple now. All that was left was me and the man who killed Natalie, alone on a boat, in the middle of the lake.
“You even have to ask that question?”
Just turn away one more time, I thought. Give me two seconds.
“You kill me,” I said. “I get it. So what if I don’t care?”
I honestly didn’t. Forget the gun on my leg now. If I had a bomb, I’d blow the boat up right there, without hesitation. Take him down with me.
“I’ve got a new deal for you,” Cap said. “Something else for you to think about. If you don’t tell me where the guns are, not only do I kill you, I go right back to shore, get in my car, and I go kill everybody else you care about. Your Indian friend. Your other friends, on the lake…What were their names, Tyler and Liz? That fat guy, Leon. Hell, might as well take out his fat wife while I’m at it. That old guy at the bar. Am I leaving anybody out?”
A bomb, I thought. Blow the boat up right now. I’d take that deal in a second.
“I’ll do them all tonight,” he said. “Do you doubt me anymore? You don’t think I’ll do it? By the time the sun comes up, every single one of them will be dead. You’ve got three seconds.”
A bomb.
“You want to know where the guns are?” I said. I slowly got to my feet.
“What, are you deaf and dumb? Yes, McKnight. Yes, I want to know where the guns are.”
“I think we’re above them,” I said. “Right about now.”
“What are you saying? Are you saying they’re in the lake?”
“Yes.”
“Are you saying that the fucking guns are in the fucking lake?”
“Yes, they’re in the fucking lake. About a hundred fucking feet down.”
He stood there for a moment. If nothing else, I got the man to finally stop talking.
“Of course, it doesn’t matter anymore,” I said. “Because the bomb will go off in about one minute.”
I took a quick glance at my watch. Somewhere, Leon was smiling.
“What are you talking about?”
