“You’re welcome,” he said finally.
“I want you to promise me something,” she said.
“What?”
“I want you to promise me you won’t kill him.”
“Bohler?”
She nodded.
“What if he tries to arrest me?”
“You’re a smart guy. Think of a way to get away without killing him.”
“Because he doesn’t need killing.”
“And because I don’t want to think of you as a cold-blooded killer. I’ve come to terms with what you did to that man at the other house. Glory’s right. You saved our lives back there. You risked your own life to do it. And I never thanked you.”
“Don’t mention it,” Mercer said “He needed…”
“Will you stop saying that!?” she hissed.
“Sharon,” Mercer said. “You’re trying not to think of me as a killer. But that’s what I am. It’s what I’ve been since I was old enough to hold a knife. It’s what I do.”
“But you’re also a nice guy who pulls a cat out of the water and chews out the kid who threw him there. You’re also a nice guy who gives a total stranger and her daughter a ride and spends his evening talking with people that, let’s face it, neither of us can stand, and then doesn’t expect anything for it. You’re a guy who saw me and Glory in trouble and did something about it.” She took a drag off her cigarette and looked him in the eyes for the first time. “I think you’re a better man than you let yourself admit, Max…I mean, Kyle.”
His voice felt rough, scratchy. “That’s because you’re a damn fool.”
She laughed softly. He liked that laugh. “Oh, I’ll admit that’s possible. Lord knows I’ve been a piss-poor judge when it comes to the men in my life.” She looked away, then looked back. “Will you do something else for me?”
He couldn’t take his eyes off hers. “What?”
“Will you put your arms round me?”
He hesitated.
“Look,” she aid, her voice close to breaking. “I don’t want to make out, and I don’t want to fuck, especially with my daughter in the next room. I’ve just been totally goddamn terrified for what seems like a goddamn year and for some fucked up reason I feel safe with you, and I know it’s stupid and crazy but I think it’ll make me feel a little better, so will you please stop looking at me like I just landed here from the moon and put your arms around me before I go out of my fucking mind?!”
“Sure,” he said. He sat up next to her on the bed and put his arm left arm awkwardly across her shoulder. She sank into him, her head against his chest. She was trembling like someone in the grip of a fever.
“I can’t start crying,” she mumbled. “Glory will notice if my eyes are all red and puffy. She’ll only get more scared.”
He stroked her hair gently. “I know,” he said.
“Ummm…she whispered. “This would work better if you weren’t holding a gun in your other hand.”
He realized that his right hand had instinctively reached out to grip the machine gun lying on the bed beside him. He laughed once, sharply, and took his hand away, running it through her hair again.
“We’re going to have to work on that,” she whispered to him.
“We?”
She sighed. “God help me, I’m falling for you, Mercer. Can’t you tell?”
Don’t do it, he wanted to tell her. “Yeah,” he said.
She pulled away and looked at him. “This is the part where you say you’re falling for me, too.”
“Listen,” he said.
“What?”
“Listen,” he insisted.
She pulled away. “The wind’s not as loud.”
“It’s the eye,” he said. “It’s coming. They’ll be moving.” He stood up and picked up the machine gun.
“Kyle,” Sharon said.
He looked at her. “I’ll keep you safe,” he said, “And I won’t kill him. Unless he tries to kill me.”
“Is that a promise?”
He nodded. “And I always keep my word. Always.”
“Okay,” she said. Her shoulders slumped a bit. She had the look of someone who wasn’t expecting bad news, but who had seen so much she wasn’t surprised by it. “I guess that’s all…”
“Sharon,” he interrupted. “I fell for you a long time ago.”
Her mouth quirked. “Is that Kyle Mercer or Max Chase talking?”
“For once,” Mercer said, “they’re the same guy.”
Bohler entered the room. “Mercer…”
“I know,” Mercer said. “Any idea how long we can expect this to last?”
“Maybe a half hour. Maybe a couple of hours. It’s always different. But Mercer, when it comes back, the wind will be blowing the other way.”
Mercer grimaced. “Which means we’re not on the sheltered side any more.”
Glory came into the room, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “What’s going on?” she said.
“We need to move,” Mercer said.
“Where?” Sharon asked.
Mercer didn’t answer. He put the headphones back on and touched the earpiece. “You there?”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
“I’m here,” Blake replied. He was seated where Montrose had been before, his feet up on the desk as her had been. “I assume you can hear what’s going on as well as I can.”
“Yeah. Okay, I’m willing to deal.”
“Excellent,” Blake said. “You know where to find us.”
“Where’s the boat?”
“It’ll be waiting. We already set it up. Oh, and in addition to the sparkplugs, I’ll want my colleague’s radio back.”
“I don’t know about that,” Mercer said. “I think I want to be able to keep tabs on you people.”
“You drive a hard bargain, Mercer,” Blake said.
“But all right.”
“I’ll be there in a few minutes. I’ll be alone.”
“What about your friends?”
“They’ll be in a safe place where you can’t get to them.”
Doubtful, Blake thought. “Okay. See you in a bit.” He took the headset off and picked up the satellite phone from the desk. He wasn’t looking forward to the call he was about to make. He dialed the number.
“We’re going to have to delay pickup,” Blake said when a voice answered. He didn’t need to ask if the line was secure. He knew it was. They had paid enough for this gear to make sure of it.
“Our employer isn’t going to be happy,” Storch said on the other end.
“He’s going to have to learn to live with it. We ran into some unexpected resistance.”
“Resistance? How? Everyone’s off the island.”
“Not everyone. A woman and her kid got left behind. And a guy who’s apparently some sort of fugitive. Oh, and the goddamn Coast Guard tried to send a chopper after them.”
“And?”
“Not a problem. But we want to make sure that doesn’t happen again. See if our employer can do something about that.”
“Got it.”
“We’ll have to be picked up after the storm.”
“After the storm, that place is going to have people all over it.”
“See how long our employer can put that off. At least a few hours. Hell, no one expects anything from FEMA these days anyway.”
“He’s really not going to like that,” Storch warned. “The more strings he has to pull, the more likely one of them’s going to get traced back to him.”
“Can’t be helped. We’ll call when ready for pickup.” He shut off the phone as he heard Moon coming up the stairs. He entered the room with Montrose right behind him.
“Okay,” Blake said. “Back to work. Montrose, when we get the generator running, how close are you to getting this thing open?”
She ran a hand through her straw-colored hair, now damp and dark with sweat and grime. “Half hour. Maybe less.”
“Get to it. Moon, our friend is coming to see us. He’s
bringing the plugs he stole. Let’s make sure we thank him properly.”
“What about the women? And the cop?”
Blake rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I doubt he’s bringing Barney Fife with him. When we’re done with Mercer, see if you can find them.”
“That would be easier if we could get their location out of him.”
Blake shook his head. “No. Don’t mess around. Just kill him.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
After the constant noise that had been a part of their lives for so long, the sudden silence outside was unnerving in its own right. They had waded through waist deep water to get outside, then had to pick their way through a tangle of half-submerged fallen limbs and debris. Once on the road, the ground rose steadily. When the water was only ankle deep, they stopped and looked around.
The sky above was as clear as if it had never known rain, the stars points of cold white fire. Off toward shore, however, they saw a curtain wall of towering clouds, illuminated from within by lightning that flickered and pulsated constantly, now blue-white, now angry red, now yellow. The air was very still.
“You think they’ll try to send another helicopter? Or a boat?” Sharon asked.
Bohler shook his head. “They only had the one. They moved the rest of the choppers inland to protect them. They’ll fly them back for relief work afterwards.”
“So,” Glory said, “where are we going?”
“You two are going to another house. Above the waterline. Near the lighthouse.”
“What about you?” Sharon asked.
“Bohler and I are going to take the lighthouse. Then one of us will come back and get you.”
“Take the lighthouse?” Bohler said. “How do you plan to do that?”
Mercer shrugged. “Improvise.”
“Great.”
Mercer handed Bohler a pistol. “You’ll need this,” he said.
“Is it loaded?” Bohler asked as he took it. “Does this mean you trust me now?”
“Not very far. But I figure you know we stand a better chance of getting off this island if we work together.”
“I can get us out of here,” Bohler insisted.
“Not alive.”
“Now listen…”
“Jesus, cut it out,” Sharon snapped. “We don’t have much time. We definitely don’t have time to sit and watch you too snap and snarl about who’s going to be the Alpha dog.”
“She’s right,” Mercer said. “This calm won’t last for long. And they won’t wait long before they figure I’m not coming after all. Then they’ll start hunting. When that happens, I’d rather be nice and snug inside the lighthouse with them outside.”
“We don’t know how many people are in there,” Bohler said. “Or how heavily armed.”
“We’re not going to find out standing around here,” Mercer said. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
“He’s not coming,” Moon said from the darkness.
Blake nearly leapt out of his skin. He had never heard Moon coming.
“Get back in position,” he snapped.
“If he were coming,” Moon insisted, “he’d be here by now.”
Blake ground his teeth in frustration. “Then why did he say he was bringing them? Why not just keep his mouth shut?”
“He knows what we were going to do,” Moon said.
Blake saw it then. “And he knew we’d concentrate our forces to do it.”
“Which means,” Moon said, “that he’s heading somewhere else.”
“The lighthouse,” Blake said. “It’s the only explanation. And we can’t use the radio to warn Phillips. Go,” he said, but Moon was already gone as if he’d never been there.
***
They walked under the deceptive and beautiful sky though a scene of devastation. The water hadn’t risen to cover this part of the island, at least not yet, but the berserker wind had wreaked its own damage. Snarls of vegetation, limbs, even entire trees blocked the road in spots. Here and there were piles of lumber and metal where the storm had clawed away parts of houses. One tree lying in the road was festooned with bits of furry pink insulation and silver foil draped over it like party decorations playfully hung on a passed-out drunk. Something loomed out of the darkness before them.
“Jesus,” Bohler said.
It was an entire roof, miraculously intact, as if it had been part of a dollhouse picked up and set down in the road by a forgetful child. They skirted around the edges of it. “Look,” Sharon said, and pointed at one of the gables.
Sticking out of the slanted surface was a massive squared off log, like a railroad tie, possibly part of a bulkhead or retaining wall. It must have weighed a hundred pounds or more. The wind had picked it up and driven it through the roof like a spear.
“Is there going to be any place left for us to stay?” Glory wondered.
“No way to tell,” said Bohler. “Next house may not even be touched. That’s how these things work.”
Mercer was standing, looking at the roof and the huge javelin impaling it. “God laughs,” he said.
“What?” Sharon said.
Mercer looked at her. “Something an old lady I once lived with used to say. Some kind of awful random shit would happen to somebody, and she’d just nod like it was something she expected all along and say “Man plans, boy, and God laughs.”
“She sounds like a lot of fun,” Glory said.
Mercer said nothing, just turned away. Glory looked at Sharon, who just shrugged and walked after him.
A little further on, Mercer stopped again. They almost ran into him in the darkness. He was looking up to where the lighthouse rose, darker black against the gloom of the sky. He seemed to be studying it.
“Do you see anything?” Sharon asked.
Mercer shook his head. “But somebody’s up there,” he said. “Doesn’t make any sense any other way. We need to get off the road this close to the lighthouse.”
“He wouldn’t be able to see us,” Bohler said. “Dark as it is.”
“Unless he’s got NVG’s,” Mercer answered. “In which case he may be drawing a bead on us right now.”
Sharon and Glory were already moving toward the right hand side of the road. “Hey,” Glory said. “There’s a driveway here.”
They walked over. There were large chunks of stone scattered in the road where two decorative pillars had stood on either side of the drive, but there was a definite pathway leading through the trees. They clambered over the rocks and then a couple of other fallen branches until the house came into view. It was a massive Spanish style building with a low-pitched, tiled roof. A few of the clay tiles had come loose and shards were scattered over the yard, and the concrete fountain in front yard had toppled over and shattered, but the place seemed mostly intact. “This’ll do for the moment,” he said. They followed him across the yard to the front door. It was an impregnable looking thing of thick boards and iron straps.
“How do you expect to get past that?” Sharon said.
Mercer rubbed his chin. He raised the machine gun and pointed it at the lock.
“Wait,” Glory said. She was over to one side of the arcaded porch, her hand down inside a large concrete planter. After a moment, she came up with a key. “Here you go.” She started towards the door, then stopped at the look on her mother’s face. “This, ah, place, belongs to, ah, a friend of mine,” she said slowly.
“Would this be Graeme?” her mother asked frostily.
“Oh, no,” Glory said. “It’s Jenna’s.”
“And are Jenna’s parents aware that you know where the spare key is?”
“Oh, they haven’t been here in a while,” Glory said.
“She stays here by herself?”
“Mom, can we talk about this some other time?”
Sharon nodded grimly. “Count on it.”
Inside, they were able to use their lights. There didn’t seem to be any damage to the interior until they got to the living room that
faced the ocean. The picture windows had been covered with sheets of plywood nailed to the exterior. Shattered glass glittered on the floor beneath two of the windows where large pieces of driftwood driven by the wind had pierced the plywood. One lay in the middle of the floor; the other hung in the hole it had created.
“Stay out of this room,” Mercer said. He turned to Glory. “I guess you know the layout of the place?”
She nodded. “Jenna’s bedroom’s on the back side of the house. Or wait, maybe that’s the front. Anyway, it’s the side away from the ocean.”
“Okay,” he said. “Hole up there. Don’t use any light that can be seen from the road. They’re going to have someone out looking. We’re going to clear the lighthouse.”
“How will we know whether or not you made it?” Sharon demanded. “Am I just supposed to sit here and worry?”
“No,” Mercer said, “you’re supposed to sit here and look after your daughter.”
“I don’t need you to...” she fell silent. He was right, but she didn’t have to like it.
“I’ll send Bohler back to get you once we’ve cleared the place.”
“You seem pretty confident,” Bohler said.
Mercer grinned. “Hey, like you say, I’m a cold-blooded killer. You’re a highly trained law enforcement officer. How can we fail?”
“Listen,” Glory said.
They all fell silent, straining to hear. In the quiet, they could barely make out a thin wailing, like a baby crying far away.
“Oh my God,” Sharon said, but Mercer was already moving. Bohler fell in behind him. The wailing got louder as they approached the front door. Mercer had the machine gun up and at the ready. There was a bumping and scratching at the door. Mercer relaxed. He walked up and yanked the door open. An orange blur streaked past him at ankle level and into the house. The cat was almost to the hallway when it skidded to a stop on the tile floor of the entryway. It turned, looked at Mercer, then yowled again, an unmistakable note of indignation in its voice.
“Hello to you, too, shithead,” Mercer said.
CHAPTER SIXTY
Phillips was entranced. He had come back up into the lantern room when he heard the wind die, then out onto the catwalk that surrounded the glass cage. From his perch, he could see the towering majesty of the eye wall, the circle of thunderheads seemingly reaching into the stratosphere all around, lit from within by the constant lightning. More bolts of lightning danced below the clouds. But when he looked up, he saw nothing but clear, dry air and the untroubled stars above.
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