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“That’s my hotel stationery. ” Alex looked offended.
“Wait a second,” Garrett said. “So now we’re looking for two people. We got a killer. And we got somebody who wants to find the killer. ”
I nodded. As reluctant as I was to admit my brother was capable of logical thinking, he’d pretty much nailed it.
“So we got two empty chairs,” Garrett said. “Where’s the Mexican kid? What’s his name?”
“Hey, Ty ain’t no killer,” Markie growled. “That’s bullshit. ”
“Well, what about that Chris guy?” As soon as Garrett said that, Lane stiffened next to him. “He ran the hell away as soon as the marshal was shot. Hasn’t been back yet. How much you know about this guy, anyway, Alex?”
“He’s a local,” Alex said. “I’ve known him since he was like six. There’s no way he could kill anybody. ”
Garrett scratched his beard. “Well, then, where the hell is he? And where’s the other dude? Ty?”
Chase shifted uncomfortably. “I tried to say something privately to Navarre. That didn’t work. ”
“It’s all right, Chase,” Maia said. “What did you want to say?” She did a better job sounding soothing than I would have.
Chase scowled. “Ty’s claustrophobic. ”
Garrett snorted.
“This ain’t a joke, man,” Markie piped up. “We brought him here thinking he could get over it, you know? It’s been a nightmare. He’s been drinking for two days just to keep from flipping out. Being on a damn island was bad enough, but now with the boarded-up windows, the storm, being trapped inside…he’s really starting to crack. ”
“Where is he?” Alex asked. He sounded stunned that anybody could be unhappy staying on his island.
“He ran out of the room about half an hour ago,” Chase said. “I thought maybe he just needed to walk the halls or something, get some air. I didn’t want to embarrass him by making a big deal about it, but…”
“But?” I prompted.
“He wants off this island bad,” Chase said. “Bad enough to do something crazy. ”
“There’s no way off,” Maia said.
Jose and Alex exchanged jittery looks.
“What?” I asked.
“There is the fishing boat,” Jose said. “In the boathouse behind the hotel. ”
I stared at Alex. “That’s still there? Why didn’t you mention this before?”
“Ah, hell, Tres. It’s just a little charter fishing boat. It ain’t no good in choppy surf. It hasn’t even got a full tank of gas. ”
“But, señor,” Jose said, “if a man were desperate—”
I cursed, then asked Jose to cover my sausage and bean tacos for later.
“Come on,” I told Chase and Markie. “We’ve got some hiking to do. ”
Outside, the wind and rain had died to almost nothing. The air smelled so clean and charged with electricity it hurt to breathe. The night was unnaturally black—no city glow, no stars. But I could feel the presence of storm all around us, like the walls of a well.
Chase, Markie and I all had flashlights. We wore attractive black plastic garbage bags as rain ponchos. As we trudged around the side of the hotel, the beams of our flashlight snagged weird images—dead shrimp sprinkled in the sea grass, a child’s orange life vest half buried in the sand, an uprooted palmetto, an outboard motor wedged upside down in the dunes, its propeller spinning lazily.
And footprints—fresh footprints sunk deep in the wet sand.
They led toward the west shore of the island, where a covered boathouse extended on pylons over the water.
A faint light flickered in the window.
“Does Ty know how to drive a boat?” I asked.
Chase shook his head. “But that wouldn’t stop him. I mean, the poor guy was freaking. ”
“We gotta yell before we go in,” Markie warned, “so he doesn’t shoot us. ”
“Whoa,” I said. “He has a gun?”
Chase nodded. “A marksman’s pistol. He’s a shooter on the college team. Didn’t I mention that?”
Ty wasn’t making much progress with the boat.
He’d partially wrestled off the tarp, which now hung from the prow like a deflated hot air balloon. He stood in the boat, trying to start the engine, despite the fact that it still sat on rails, five feet above the water.
“Yo, Ty,” Chase said. “Come on down, dude. ”
Ty’s expression wasn’t much different from the many bail jumpers I’d nabbed over the years—cornered, desperate, more than a little dangerous.
“Help me with this,” he pleaded. “I gotta get out of here. ”
“Ty,” I said. “You can’t. You’ll die out there. ”
“The storm’s calming down! I can make it easy. I have to get out of this place. ”
Markie belched, which I guess was meant to be a gesture of sympathy. “Dude. Ty, c’mon. The eye’s passing over us, is all. You’ll never make it. Look at the fricking water under you. ”
Sure enough, in the launching slip, green water was sloshing around, splashing everywhere. The boathouse floor was slick. The supplies strewn about the boathouse were soaked. On a nearby worktable was a red canvas duffel bag.
“I tell you what, Ty,” I said, “come back into the house for fifteen minutes. Just fifteen minutes. We can sit and talk. If the storm is still dying down when we’re finished, you can come back down here and I’ll help you launch the boat. If the storm gets worse, you’ll stay until the morning. And then we’ll see. ”
Ty’s left eye twitched. I tried to picture him on a firing range, shooting in a competition. It was a troubling image.
“I can’t breathe in there,” he said. “I can’t go back in that house. ”
“Just fifteen minutes,” Markie said. “Come on, dude. That’s fair. I’ll get you a drink. ”
“I’ll need a bottle,” Ty said. His face was beaded with sweat.
“Sure,” Chase agreed. “You can’t start that boat by yourself, anyway. You’re a screwup with engines. ”
Ty took a shaky breath. He started climbing down.
“You can take him inside?” I asked Markie. “I want to look around for a second. ”
“No problem. ” Absolute confidence. I started wondering if maybe there was more to Markie than the ability to belch.
Ty got out of the boat. “Only fifteen minutes,” he reminded me. “Start counting. ”
“I will,” I promised. “And, Ty, if you’ve got your gun…”
He blinked. “My gun? Not with me. It’s…back in my room?”
I didn’t like the way he made it into a question. I looked at Markie. “Find it. ”
“Yeah, sure. ”
“And don’t touch it. Put it in a bag or something. Bring it to me for safekeeping. ”
Markie raised an eyebrow, but then he nodded and led Ty away.
“Hold up,” I told Chase.
I walked him over to the worktable and showed him the canvas bag. “Is this Ty’s?”
“Never seen it before. Why?”
A new red duffel bag in the middle of grimy bait buckets and tackle boxes and mildewed coils of rope. It was packed full, and what bothered me most were the shapes pressed against the canvas, like the bag was filled with bricks.
I unzipped the top. Cash—twenties and fifties, all neatly bundled.
“Whoa,” Chase breathed. “How much—”
“Quick estimate? About twenty thousand. ”
“Dude. What’s it doing sitting out here?”
“Good question. ” I fingered the old airline tag on the shoulder strap. It was an address different from Rebel Island, someplace in Corpus Christi. But I recognized the name. “Christopher Stowall,” I said.
Chase swore. “That little turd. Stowall stashed this cash here? How the hell—”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But twenty thousand…It’s time I searched his room. I should’ve do
ne that before. ”
“Yeah,” Chase said. “If there’s more money in there we can, like, split it fifty-fifty. ”
I stared at him.
“What?” he said defensively.
I turned and studied the fishing boat—the only way off the island. In the choppy water, the reflection from my flashlight beam looked like a fire. Like flames in the window of a burning house.
“Chase,” I said, already regretting what I was about to do. “I need your help with one more thing. ”
14
Lane could still feel the impression of her wedding band, a month after she had thrown it into the sea. She massaged her fingers, trying to get rid of the cold and tightness.
Garrett placed his hand on hers. “Hey, it’s gonna be all right. ”
She studied his face. He was unlike any man she’d ever known, and not just because he was an amputee. She’d gotten over that, because he seemed so completely comfortable without legs. He sat in his wheelchair like it was a throne—a source of power. He wasn’t attractive in any conventional way. His teeth were crooked and his gray-brown hair was a rat’s nest. He had a potbelly and didn’t seem to care much whether or not his Jimmy Buffett T-shirt had margarita stains on it. But he had nice eyes—surf green, full of humor and warmth. He smelled like patchouli and wood smoke. She liked the roughness of his hands and his gravelly voice.
“Things haven’t been all right for me for a long time,” she said.
“Hell, you don’t know my brother,” Garrett told her. “He’s gotten me out of worse shit than this. I’m telling you, if there’s a killer here, Tres’ll find him. ”
If there’s a killer here.
A wave of guilt surged through her. She kept thinking the burden would get easier, but every day, month after month, it just got worse. She couldn’t close her eyes without seeing the dead man’s face. He had smiled as she served him lunch. She remembered the knife, freshly sharpened for cutting apples…
“You know what you need?” Garrett asked.
Lane forced herself back to the present. “What?”
“A tropical vacation in my room. ”
In spite of herself, she smiled. “I’m not sure I know you that well. ”
“Trust me,” Garrett said. “You’ll find out plenty. ”
His room was strangely personal for a hotel room. The walls were decorated with posters of the Caribbean and the Florida Keys. They reminded Lane of Chris and how much he loved beaches, but she kept that to herself. On the dresser, Garrett had set up a full bar—rum, tequila and triple sec, glasses, a blender, a bucket of ice. He’d hung different-colored Hawaiian shirts on the shuttered windows. Music played from a little battery-operated stereo: Jamaican steel drums and guitar. A dozen votive candles flickered on Fiestaware saucers.
“It looks like you live here,” she noticed.