Never Far Away

by Michael Koryta

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2021 by Michael Koryta

  Cover design by Kirin Diemont

  Cover art by Peter Paterson / Arcangel (landscape) and Laura Kate Ranftler / Arcangel (running girl)

  Cover © 2021 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

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  First ebook edition: February 2021

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  ISBN 978-0-316-53591-5

  LCCN 2020941165

  E3-20210104-DA-NF-ORI

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part One: The End 1

  Part Two: Guardians 2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  Part Three: Where the Mountains Meet the Sea 15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  Part Four: Follow the River 32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  Part Five: Cold Stars 50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  Discover More

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Michael Koryta

  For Ben and Jenn Strawn,

  this story of an unorthodox but deeply appreciated family

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  Tap here to learn more.

  Part One

  The End

  1

  They circled her car with guns in hand, orbiting but never intersecting, like twin satellites of death.

  Nina sat with her hands on the steering wheel and her eyes straight ahead. The tears had dried on her face. The shakes had stopped but her jaw ached from clenching her teeth. She watched them move and listened to them talk and she didn’t say a word. There was no point, and she understood this. They would make their decisions and then she would die.

  They all understood this.

  “Use the rifle and make it one shot,” the taller man said. He was lean and had long blond hair that fell nearly to his shoulders. He carried an AR-15 loosely in his right hand. Behind him, the headlights showed the lonely bridge and the river beyond. The wind was still and there was no sound but their voices and Nina’s rapid breathing.

  “One shot?” the other man replied. He was a few inches shorter and layered with muscle, his hair cropped as tight as a military cadet’s, but he might have been the taller one’s brother. They looked eerily similar, in fact, as if superficial differences had been created simply to avoid confusion. They moved as one, spoke as one, breathed as one. “Why not open up, leave nothing but broken glass and shell casings behind?”

  “Carnage,” the long-haired one said with a sigh. “You always favor chaos where cleanliness would work.”

  They passed each other then, going in opposite directions, neither pausing to look at the other. Their eyes never left Nina. When their paths crossed, they seemed to quicken by a blink. You could never see them together for long. You had to turn left or right to track them, which meant you had to turn your back on one or the other. It all played out like a choreographed dance.

  Nina stared at the road in front of her.

  “It’s not chaos,” the clean-cut one said. “It’s a statement. That’s the idea.”

  The headlights threw their shadows long across the cracked asphalt, turned them into supernatural figures that capered across the bridge and the surface of the water.

  Nina wet her lips. Clenched and unclenched her hands on the steering wheel. Waited for them to choose.

  “We weren’t asked to make a statement; we were asked to make her dead,” the long-haired one said. He had a nearly musical cadence to his voice, light and almost amused. Even as he circled, he watched Nina. She could feel his eyes on her, and she wanted to look away but refused to. Just look straight. If he passes, look him dead in the eye and let him carry on.

  Until he was done carrying on. Until it was over.

  “Single shot to the brain, then?”

  Their shadows overlapped again. Nina could smell the river, the only cool thing in the stagnant Florida night. It was the loneliest road she had ever seen. A mile behind her was a sign that said the road was closed and the bridge was out. That sign was lying facedown now, sawed off at the base.

  “It would be my preference,” the long-haired man said. He paused, stood dead center between the headlights, and stared at Nina. His right hand lifted and the gun muzzle rose with it and centered on her and held. His gloved finger stroked the trigger. He studied her for a long moment and then nodded. “Clean,” he said. “It would be clean and quick.”

  “There will need to be blood,” the other one said, and Nina closed her eyes despite herself.

  “Correct. Rather a lot of it too.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Nina forced her eyes open. Beads of sweat rose on her forehead, too cool, like the sweat when a fever broke.

  They were standing as close together as she’d ever seen them. Not shoulder to shoulder, but aligned, at least temporarily, no more than a single pace apart. The river ran through their shadows. Neither of them moved and neither of them spoke. The sound of the river was a distant thing. Cicadas trilled and somewhere in the far distance there was a soft splash. An alligator, maybe.

  “Your knife?” the long-haired man said.

  His companion withdrew a knife from his pocket and flicked the blade open and passed it over. The long-haired man let the AR-15 muzzle drop again and walked toward the car at a leisurely pace. All the time in the world. He stopped beside the driver’s door and reached out and took the handle and pulled it open. Knelt. Looked at her.

  “It must be done,” he said.

  Nina nodded. She couldn’t speak.

  He sighed and leaned his rifle against the back door of the car. Then, holding only the knife, he used his free hand to swee
p his hair back from his face and looked up at her with what could almost pass for tenderness.

  “I can do it,” he said. “Or—”

  “Me.” The word left her lips in a gasp. She breathed and blinked and said it again, firmer this time. “Me.”

  The long-haired man nodded. The other one had moved out of the headlights and stood watching from the shadows.

  “I respect that,” the long-haired man said, then he rotated the knife so he was gripping it by the blade and passed it forward. Nina finally released the steering wheel and took the textured black rubber grip of the knife in her right hand.

  The long-haired man leaned forward and reached for Nina’s hand. Instinctively, she jerked it back. He waited, patient. She extended her left hand to him, trying to will the shaking away.

  It didn’t work.

  He took her bare hand in his gloved hand, turned her palm up, and traced the fine blue vein that ran from the top of the wrist to the base of her middle finger.

  “Cut deep, and across the track, not with it,” he said. “The blade is sharp. It won’t take much. Just remember to get to the headrest in a hurry. We wouldn’t want to create confusion.”

  Nina’s heart rate was triple-timing and her breasts rose and fell with shallow breaths. She felt a wave of dizziness and for a moment thought she might drop the knife. She looked away from him and out toward the river and spoke aloud but to herself.

  “Hailey,” she said. Then, after wetting her lips: “Nick.”

  No one said a word when she brought the gleaming, angled blade to the inside of her left wrist and cut a furrow through the skin and deep into the vein.

  She cried out then despite herself, the pain rising behind the blood, and the long-haired man said, “Hurry, now, hurry,” and she turned in the seat and reached for the headrest and held out her hand so her palm was open and skyward, like a desperate prayer.

  The blood ran free over the tan leather and formed reservoirs and tributaries as it tracked down the headrest and chased the grooves of the leather back south. The dizziness returned and she started to pull away but he caught her by the elbow.

  “More,” he said softly. “It has to be enough. You know this.”

  She knew this. Hailey. Nick. Doug. She closed her eyes and let the blood run. Hailey and Nick, Nick and Hailey, and Doug was there, Doug was still there, Doug would always be there. She curled her hand into a fist and the open skin pulled farther apart and the blood ran faster.

  “Good,” he said, and then her hand was back in his and a bandage was closed over the wound. He moved swiftly but gently, with the seasoned touch of a nurse. She felt her pulse against his thumb as he applied pressure to the wound.

  “Up now,” he said, and he guided her out of the car. She opened her eyes just as the clean-cut man lifted a small flashlight and thumbed the back and a brilliant beam pierced the blackness and illuminated the tan leather.

  Ribbons of blood gleamed jewel-like in the light. It was darkest on the headrest where the flow had begun but the tendrils snaked down and out and found their own routes. There was more blood than she’d imagined was possible from a single cut vein.

  The light went off.

  The long-haired man’s voice came from the blackness. “I don’t think that’s enough.” He said it with sorrow.

  “No?” The light returned, capturing the scene once more.

  “No. The blood is there. The blood is fine. But I’m thinking of him…the man has seen many killings. Executions. You know this.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Think blood will be enough for him?”

  “Perhaps not.”

  Nina breathed through her nose and felt her pulse throbbing in the cut and looked from one of them to the other, her heart rate spiking again.

  “Hair,” the one who looked like a soldier said.

  “A touch more than that,” the long-haired man answered.

  Nina’s legs quivered, but she stood tall. Tried to betray no fear as she said, “What touch?”

  The long-haired man sighed. “It would be most compelling—”

  “And realistic,” his partner put in.

  “If there was a hank of hair that also seemed to have…”

  “An attachment point,” his partner finished for him.

  Nina blinked. “What?”

  “Flesh,” the long-haired man told her, his blue eyes looking black with the light hidden behind him.

  Nina tried to lock her knees, but the dizziness came on fast then, and she shifted and parted her lips and sucked in the humid night air.

  “Think of a bullet,” he told her.

  “Of what it would do,” his partner said.

  “Even if you’re gone, there’s a bit more than blood left behind.”

  “Bone would be nice.”

  “Bone would be ideal, but under the circumstances…”

  “It’s a tough get.”

  “Exactly,” the long-haired man agreed. “So we make do with what we have.”

  The whole time speaking as if they were alone on the road, as if Nina weren’t listening to each terrible word. She stared at them, her eyes going from one to the other.

  “May I?” the long-haired man said, and he lifted his hand. When she didn’t react, he reached out and traced a small circle on the back of her head, his fingertip barely grazing her skin. “It would go like that. I know you’re willing to go it alone, and as I said, I respect that, but it would be easier in this circumstance if—”

  She handed him the knife. Said, “Hailey and Nick and Doug.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Sure. Embrace whatever thoughts you need to have for your courage.”

  “Hailey and Nick and Doug,” she repeated. The bandage on the back of her hand was already sticky. She lowered herself shakily to her knees, the pebbled asphalt biting through her jeans, and tried to draw up the images she needed. Her daughter’s face, her son’s, her husband’s.

  “I’m ready,” she whispered, and bowed her head.

  He cut so quickly that she scarcely felt it. For an instant, she thought that it was done and that it had not been so bad at all.

  Then he yanked her hair.

  It was a single, swift tug, and only as her flesh separated did she realize that he still had the blade to her head, was cutting and lifting even as he jerked.

  Nina fell forward onto her hands and opened her mouth to let out a howl of pain and then a gloved hand clamped over her mouth and the long-haired man’s voice was in her ear.

  “Shh, shh,” he cooed. “Can’t be too loud. Just in case.”

  She saw red and black and a rotating world and sagged in his arms as he passed a hank of her hair and flesh back to his partner in exchange for an unwrapped bandage. He pressed it to Nina’s head and held it there as she rode the current of pain.

  The second man stepped up and leaned past them and Nina saw the nickel-size layer of her flesh swinging from her own hair like a miniature scalp as he draped it judiciously into the blood she had already shed.

  “Do it quickly,” the long-haired man said.

  His partner drew a pistol from his belt and took aim and fired. The sound should have been loud but no sound could be loud against her pain. She sat on the pavement holding the bandage to her head and she smelled the cordite from the gunshot and blinked and refocused and saw the hole punched through the headrest.

  The clean-cut man holstered the pistol and stepped back, tilting his head. Then he leaned forward again and nudged the small piece of Nina’s scalp with his index finger, tapping it into a position that pleased him. “It’s not great,” he said.

  “Less than ideal circumstances,” the long-haired one said. “A bit of a time crunch.”

  “Indeed. Still, the man has resources. What would convince a local lab might not be enough. He can fact-check if he wishes.”

  “That’s what we’re here for. To discourage second opinions.”

  His partner smiled, and Nina watched him and sh
ivered despite herself.

  They were empty men.

  She had needed two like them, though. Yes, she had.

  The long-haired man released her and stepped back. “I’d wear a baseball cap for a time if I were you,” he told her.

  She put her palms against the pavement and pressed herself up, first into a sitting position, then all the way to her feet. The world spun. She waited. The world steadied. “Keys are in the car?” she said.

  He smiled. The wind fanned his pale blond hair back over his shoulders. “Yes.” He nodded at the river. “Right over the old bridge. You couldn’t drive across it, but you can still walk it. Step carefully, though. I know he’s supposed to think you’re in the river, but it would be a shame if you actually ended up there.”

  Nina nodded. Looked at the two men with their knives and their guns and her blood on their hands. “Thank you,” she said.

  “Our pleasure.”

  “Happy to help.”

  Nina looked one last time at the blood-soaked headrest where her hair hung, then turned and walked into the night.

  They watched her go. Only when she was across the bridge and the sound of an engine growled in the darkness did either speak.

  “We would get more money if we told him the truth,” the long-haired man said finally.

  “His money and hers.”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s of little use to us alive.”

  “None whatsoever.”

  They turned in unison and looked at the car. The shorter one thumbed the flashlight on again. The blood gleamed. The hank of hair with the circle of Nina Morgan’s scalp dangled beside the gunshot hole.

  “I’m curious, though,” he said.

  “Can we sell it. That’s what you’re wondering.”

  “Exactly.”

  “It was rushed work, yet…”

  “Not bad.”

  “No. Not terrible.”

  “I can’t say I ever liked the man either.”

  “The job in Mazatlán, for example.”

  “We weren’t put in a position to succeed on that one, no.”

  “There’s being considered expendable, and then there’s being sacrificed.”