She got out and came around to his side. The rain was thin but steady.
Brendan pointed in the direction of the red car.
Rachel raised the glasses to her eyes, having to adjust one lens then the next. Rain had smudged the front piece, but through the dimming light she could make out the red car. There were two men, shaking hands. One with white hair. Lucius Malenko.
The other was Martin.
While the last of the three boats drifted through the channel, Rachel watched in disbelief as Martin waved good-bye to Malenko and headed for his Miata. Then Malenko took off toward the shore road with Martin behind him. They came to the stop sign at the end, the beach and the ocean spreading beyond them. The Porsche turned left, and the Miata turned right.
Shortly, the bells began to ring and the lights flashed as the gate was raised. Rachel and Brendan shot across the bridge and down the strip to the shore road. In the distance to the right, she saw the taillights of Martin’s car. To the left and rapidly disappearing was the Porsche’s lights.
For a frozen moment, she didn’t know which way to turn. Martin had probably tried to call Malenko to alert him that she was heading up here for Dylan. When that failed, he drove up here following the directions she’d left on the answering machine. Maybe by the time he arrived, Malenko had gotten his message and called him back. And this was their rendezvous. But she didn’t care about that. Malenko may or may not lead her to Dylan, and if she caught up to him he could stonewall her.
She turned right, not taking her eyes off Martin’s car, thinking how he had betrayed her.
About a mile down the shore road, they passed a sign to the Maine Turnpike. Martin’s business with Malenko was over; he was heading back home.
The Maxima growled after him. At about a quarter mile behind him, she began flashing her lights. At about a hundred yards, he slowed down probably thinking it was Malenko in his mirror. When he recognized her car, he pulled over and got out.
“What the hell are you doing?” Then he noticed Brendan in the car. “What’s he doing here?’
She got out. “He’s helping me find Dylan. Where is he?”
“Rachel …” he began.
She lurched at him and grabbed his shirt, ready to claw his face if he resisted her. “Where did they take him?”
“To his clinic.”
“Where? Where is his clinic?”
Martin looked startled by the intensity on her face. “I don’t know. He wouldn’t say.”
“What were you doing in his car?”
“That’s where we met. He called me from the road and said to meet him.”
“You came up here to warn him about me.”
“Yeah, and to give him the rest of the money.”
“But my car.”
“GET IN!” she screamed.
Brendan jumped into the back seat as Martin got in front. Rachel squealed into a fast U-turn and raced back upshore. The lights of two cars burned in the distance.
Martin had no idea where they were performing the procedure, but it would happen within a few hours. “Rachel, I think we should talk, and talk privately.”
In the back seat Brendan had the map out. “The shore road connects back to 123,” he said to Rachel.
If they didn’t intercept Lucius Malenko there, she’d call the police no matter what.
“Rachel, we’ve been through this. It’s the best thing.”
“Martin, I don’t want them to lay a finger on him, do you understand? It’s bad, it’s wrong, it’s lousy with problems.” Then she reached over and pushed the tape recorder from Vanessa Watts in his hands. “Listen to her. And when you’re through, listen to Brendan.”
Reluctantly Martin raised the tape recorder to his ear. After listening he said, “But she was half-crazed when she made that.”
“Goddamn you, Martin!” Rachel screamed. “She wasn’t crazed. She was pouring her heart out.” She looked into the rearview mirror. “Brendan, tell him what they did to you.”
And while she drove trying to keep from backhanding Martin, Brendan told him about his condition, about the torment of living in his own mind. About wanting to end his life. “Maybe I w-would have been screwed up anyway, m-maybe not. But I think I lost more than I g-gained.”
Martin listened, the skin of his face looking as if it had been stretched. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t know.”
Rachel was too numb to respond. She raced back to Camp Tarabec. At one point, Martin said half to himself, “Maybe we can still get our money back.”
“Is that your only concern?” she asked.
“Of course not, but still …”
Nothing else was said, and twenty minutes later they arrived at the camp. By then, the sky was black.
Rachel stopped at the crossroad where the signs pointed left and right. She turned left toward the lodge. The lights were still on, but in the dark and rain nobody was outside. Slowly, she passed the lodge toward a small service road that led to some rear cabins and to the dead end. No red Porsche in sight. She turned around and headed back, passing the lodge.
Instead of taking a right back onto the entrance road, she continued straight toward the dock. Cabin lights glowed. But nobody was about. And no cars. Rachel continued all the way to the dock, the lightless boathouse on the left.
“There’s nobody here,” Martin said.
But Rachel wasn’t satisfied. She jumped out of the car and ran to the dock. Two small runabout outboards were moored alongside. The boathouse was black, so was the nearby dock shack. But for two exterior lights, the place was dead.
Under an opaque sky, the water spread before her like corrugated lava. In the distance, where the island sat, a dim yellow light glowed. She started back toward the car, when she stopped in her tracks. The large black structure of the boathouse pulled at her. She crossed to the front. The door was locked, but in the headlights from her car she could make out the interior. The red Porsche.
“He’s here,” she said.
“He is?” Martin walked over to her as Brendan headed to the dock. “So what are we going to do? There must be fifty cabins here.”
Rachel’s mind raced. Malenko had warned them that he wouldn’t tolerate any breach of confidentiality— which was probably why his people at the lodge back there denied recognizing his name. And Dylan’s. If they called the local police, what would they say—that their son was being illegally operated on by a neurosurgeon they had hired and paid and with whom they dropped off their son? Or that they changed their mind at the last minute? And what was the crime but their own foolishness? Besides, if the police showed up and word got out to Malenko wherever he was, he might harm Dylan. Or deny he had him?
Besides, the nearest police station could be miles from here. And they had no idea where Malenko had gone or where Dylan was.
“He t-t-took the boat.”
Rachel looked over to Brendan. “What?”
“There was a boat here earlier. A big white p-power boat with twin Mercury engines.”
Rachel glanced out over the water to the yellow light burning in the gloom. She could not hear any sound but the wind.
She moved to the dock. “What about one of those?” Two skiffs with small outboards attached to the
