Sweet Relief. The hand-painted letters on the side of the boat passed under my fingers as I climbed a rope ladder slung over the side. I helped Effie up and then hurled a rope I found coiled on the deck to Nick to attach to our boat. The thrumming of the engine underfoot and the wash from the stern was a worrying sound screen; it could hide the approach of footsteps or the shouting of men who might have spotted us.
We crouched by a stack of crab cages. Nick had his lips almost at my ear so I could hear him over the sound of the engines. “Recon first,” he said. “Meet back here in five. You take the bridge. Effie and I will take the lower decks.”
I crept along the side of the boat, ducking under the porthole windows. The narrow stairs to the bridge wing were slippery, the rail crusted with salt. I was struck suddenly by the beauty of the silver path the moon was cutting across the sea and I wondered for a moment what the hell I was doing.
There was one man on the bridge. He was bent over the chart table in the red light, marking out his position with a pencil. A cigarette was clamped between his lips.
Effie and Nick were already back when I arrived.
“One man on the bridge,” I said.
“Great.” Nick grinned, his eyes shining with excitement. “There are two contacts in the galley, one asleep on the lower deck. Let’s go down first, Cap.”
He moved, but I grabbed his shoulder.
“Keep your head,” I said. “Tell me if you’re starting to lose it.”
“I’m not gonna lose it.” Nick shrugged me off. I followed Nick and Effie into the bowels of the vessel, my gun in one hand, the other bracing against everything as the world rocked around me. We passed a room lit with huge red lamps, and I glimpsed a big table cluttered with plastic tubs, a big machine with a crank handle, bottles, and buckets. Two figures moved in the eerie light, gloved to the elbows and wearing full-face respirators. I kept watch in the hall, my pulse hammering, as Nick and Effie went into the sleeping quarters. I heard a thump and a yelp.
The need to retreat jabbed at me. I imagined aborting the mission now, dragging my friends back onto the little boat, cutting the rope loose, and letting us drift to safety, the big boat becoming a dark mass on the horizon. It wasn’t too late.
Nick emerged from the sleeping quarters, tucking the duct tape into his jacket pocket.
“He’s down,” he said. “Three to go.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
CLAYTON SPEARS DIDN’T mind the night shift. Once a week he got out into the quiet streets and roamed around Gloucester patrolling, responding to bumps in the night, breaking up drunken parties, and pulling over the occasional drunk driver. He took the night shift at least once a week to remind his team that he wasn’t above them, that he was willing to fight fatigue and boredom and the disappointment of false calls like the rest of them. But the lamplit streets held a kind of security for him. No one stared at him, judged him, whispered about him as he passed by in his cruiser. At night he wasn’t a tubby, shy, failing sheriff elected every year only because he was the devil Gloucester knew. He was a lone wolf protecting his sleeping pack.
The night shift would also keep him out of the office, away from the phone. He knew Marni’s autopsy was being rushed through, and the results would be reported to go into her case file with the department. He didn’t want to be there when the call came through. He wanted to be out, where he could see the stars.
It was one in the morning when Clay came upon the two young women crouched by the deserted roadside. Clay looked at the tire on the asphalt beside their car and tutted as he pulled over. The women, as they fumbled with the tire iron and read instructions from their phones, were a quarter of the way into the lane, and the spare was sitting maybe a third of the way in. He exited his vehicle and pulled up his gun belt.
“Morning, ladies,” he said as he approached.
“Oh, wonderful,” the younger one said, clapping her hands with glee. “Ronnie, it’s the sheriff. Can you help us, sir? We’re in big trouble here. Neither of us has ever changed a tire before. We’re totally stuck!”
“Let’s forget about changing the tire for now and get off the road.” Clay pointed to the roadside and the women went where he instructed. “You’re begging to get hit by someone coming up over the hill.”
Clay bent down, grabbed the spare from the asphalt, and rolled it toward the women. His head was down, hands on the rubber, when at the corner of his vision a boot appeared. Not a woman’s boot; a big, black, decidedly male one.
“Lights out, fat boy,” a voice said.
Clay heard a swish, and then there was only blackness.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
NICK AND I sent Effie up to the bridge to take care of the captain and hold a gun on him until we were done downstairs. We stood in the darkened hallway, our guns hanging by our sides, and I watched as that strange light flickered in Nick’s eyes, the same one I’d seen as we launched into an attack on Rick Craft at the Greenfish, the same one that lingered there as he stood in the freezing waters near our home. I wanted to ask if he was okay, but he sprang into the room before I did, his voice booming, the gun swinging between the two bewildered men in full-face respirators.
“On the ground! On the ground! On the ground!”
They didn’t go down easily. Gloved hands went up, and then they reconsidered, perhaps acting on a lesson Cline had drilled into them from the beginning about their fates should they ever let him down. The man nearest me grabbed a canister of red powder and flung it at us; the glass burst against a porthole window. I could taste the dust in the air, burning and metallic. I launched myself at him, and the edge of the table jutted into my hip; a tub of pills tumbled and scattered as we hit the floor together. I clubbed him in the back of the head with my gun and he gave the heavy exhalation of someone losing consciousness. Nick had abandoned his gun and pinned his guy up against the low cupboards on the wall, his arm bent backward.
“You stupid fucks.” The guy’s voice was muffled by the respirator. “You ain’t cops! Get out of here!”
“We’re not cops, but we’re not going anywhere.” I took the duct tape from Nick and began binding the man in front of me. “Not until we’re done.”
Nick’s guy watched me, realizing my mission as I finished binding my guy and then started scooping up the spilled pills from the floor. I stacked a couple of tubs, and his eyes widened behind the cloudy glass of his face mask.
“You don’t want to do this, man,” he said. “I’m telling you. I’m telling you, bro! You’re making a big mistake! Cline will put you in a hole. He will put you in the fucking ground.”
“Shut up, idiot.” Nick forced him to the floor and put his knee into his back, then wound the duct tape tight around his gloved hands. I took three stacked tubs full to the brim with colorful pills and walked back outside.
The pills disappeared into the white moonlit surf as I emptied the tubs one by one.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
DIRT. THE SHERIFF tasted it as he came to consciousness, granular on his lips and strangely reassuring. He had the sense that for some time he’d been lolling around the back of his own squad car, heaped on the seat like a sack of bones, the acrid smell of the men’s cigarettes making him gag. He could hear them now nearby, the small one complaining and the big one barking back at him like a dog.
“If I’d known we was gonna bury this one, we could have come out here earlier, Bonesy. It’s fucking freezing, man! The ground is solid rock.”
“He wants us to be more careful this time,” the one called Bones said. “The Druly woman was fun and games. This is a cop we talkin’ ’bout. Shut up and dig.”
Clay tried to roll onto his back to take the pressure off his ribs, but as he moved, he found his hands were numb, his arms twisted behind him. His own cuffs were on his wrists. His head protested with the movement, pain branching out from the wound at the back of his skull like white-hot fingers running through his hair. He staggered to his knees with difficul
ty and then got to his feet, wobbling and groaning with the pain.
The men stopped digging and assessed him. He recognized them from Cline’s house. Bones and Simbo, two of the sneering henchmen Cline kept ever at his side. It took a lot to make Sheriff Spears angry, but he felt the dull thump of anger hit him now. It crept up through his chest and neck, an old friend returned.
“Sheriff, you could make this easier on yourself by lying the fuck back down,” the big one said, pointing to the soil. Clay looked around him at the forest. Moonlight streaked through the dense trees. For a moment he thought he might be somewhere near the Inn. Then he remembered the Druly woman’s body in the depths of Dogtown, her headless corpse lying on its side, dumped like trash.
“This is not very nice,” Clay said. The anger was taking over. Mean whispers and vicious sneers were flickering through his mind. The bad Clay inside, usually a solid sleeper, was up and knocking at the door of his heart. “I don’t deserve this.”
The men before him pulled enormous knives from their belts. Clay wondered if the plan was for his head to appear separate from his body, maybe dumped out here somewhere, maybe washed ashore weeks from now, covered in crabs and snails. The thought made his jaw lock with fury.
“You go first,” the small one, Simbo, said to his partner. “Dude’s four times my size.”
“Stop,” Clay said, his warning halfhearted, left over from his training. The good Clay calling back as he fled, leaving the bad Clay at the wheel. “Go now, and I won’t hurt you.”
“You …” The big guy grinned at his partner, laughed with surprise. “You won’t hurt us?”
“You’ve got three seconds,” Clay said. His speech was slurred, his head still foggy from the blow. The two killers in the dark considered their options, then advanced toward him.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
CLAY DIDN’T LET them come. The distance between him and the big one was maybe twenty feet, and for every inch of that distance, Clay ground his feet into the dirt and then hurled himself forward with all his might. He slammed into Bones at full speed, his wide shoulder driving into his gut, not slowing until the man’s back connected with a huge tree. Clay felt the breath leave Bones, felt his ribs crunching and muscles collapsing against his shoulder. Clay backed up a couple of steps, ready to kick the man when he hit the ground. But Bones was unconscious immediately, a shattered insect squashed in the dirt.
The smaller one, Simbo, wasted no time. He raised the knife, and Clay took the adrenaline surging through his system and swung his foot up and across Simbo’s arm, knocking the blade away. The move threw him off balance, left him sprawling on the ground on his back. The small, stocky guy was on him, and Clay clenched every muscle in his body and snapped upward suddenly, aiming his head butt as best he could. It was a glancing blow off Simbo’s mouth, but it was enough to shock him. Clay rolled, got up, stomped on the writhing figure in the dark again and again. He heard more bones crunching. Simbo’s forearm snapped like a branch. Clay kept stomping until the man was still.
The sheriff stood in the dark panting. Muscles and tendons that had been inactive for years were now alive; sweat dripped down his neck into the collar of his torn shirt. The last of his courage burned low, the rest of it consumed by the fight. He moaned a couple of times with exhaustion and anger, searched with his trapped fingers on the back of his belt for the key to the cuffs. It was gone. He sighed and began the long trudge toward where he guessed the road might be.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
WHEN I HAD emptied all six tubs of pills into the sea, I started carrying boxes and bottles of ingredients out. I grabbed a barrel and rolled it on its rim toward the door. The guy I had hit was waking slowly, moaning and sighing, trying to turn onto his side. His partner, held still by Nick’s gun, was watching me carefully. Nick had dragged the respirators off both their faces, but they were sweating badly. These men were going to have to run from Cline after this, and Cline seemed like the type who could find a man no matter where he hid.
“Let’s hurry this up, Cap.” Nick’s eyes were funny. Too distant, too wide. “We gotta meet the team at the point in oh-five.”
“What?” I stopped rolling the barrel. “Nick, are you okay?”
He shook his head. “Hmm? Yes. What? I’m fine. Let’s hurry this up.”
“That’s enough.” I let go of the barrel. “We’ve done all we can. Time to go back.”
Nick didn’t hear me. His head was up; he seemed to be listening to some noise coming from the rear of the boat. The minor distraction was all his captive needed. I didn’t see the knife he’d been working against the duct tape on his wrists until the blade cut through the last shred. He turned and jammed the blade into Nick’s calf.
The gunshot was deafening in the tiny space; the bullet pinged off a pipe and shunted into the bulkhead before me. Nick’s bullet hit the cupboards just inches above my head—his finger had jerked on the trigger. The man grabbed for Nick’s gun and the two wrestled while I came around the big table to assist. My guy was more conscious than I’d thought. He kicked at my legs suddenly, tripping me into the cabinets against the wall. Nick’s guy had his gun. He backed into the corner of the room and fired wildly at the two of us. It was only the boat lurching suddenly down a steep wave that saved us. The man slid, fell; the gun was knocked out of his hands as he hit the ground. Nick snatched up the weapon and pointed it at his opponent’s head.
“Nick, no!” I cried.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
VINNY SAW THEM coming long before they knew he was there. Two tall, thick men jogging quietly through the trees toward the house, guns out. He sat still in his wheelchair at the corner of the porch, his hands beneath the blanket on his lap. He’d never been a good sleeper. More nights than not, he wheeled himself out here to watch the silent forest and think. The journey to the porch had taken longer this time because his left wheel was held in place by an under-sized bolt Doc Simeon had found in a jar in the garage. The ancient gangster smiled as one of the men skirted around the house to check the perimeter while the other walked directly toward him, not seeing him until he was only feet away.
Vinny watched the man assess him in the moonlight. The wheelchair, the newly bandaged leg, the blanket on his lap, and the hat clamped on his withered head. Like people always did these days, the young man underestimated him. The pair were wearing balaclavas, but Vinny could see that there were tattoos on the man’s hands. Some kind of insects—spiders, maybe.
The tattooed man said nothing until his partner returned to his side. The two looked at each other, assessed Vinny again, and then turned to go.
“What?” Vinny smirked. “You’re not gonna kill me? You’re not worried I’ll roll up behind you while you’re inside popping heads in beds?”
The men glanced at him, bewildered.
“Old man, you just sit there and feel lucky,” the tattooed one said. “I ain’t about shootin’ pathetic old cripples in their chairs. You can be the one who tells the story.”
“Pathetic old cripple?” Vinny laughed. “You think so, huh? Boy, I got ten inches of cold hard steel between my legs that might disagree with you.”
The men laughed. Their laughter was drowned out by the roar of the gun from between Vinny’s thighs; the blanket over his knees was shredded as the bullet passed through it. The tattooed man’s kneecap exploded, sending him sprawling on his face on the gravel driveway. The partner fled. Vinny lifted the heavy Desert Eagle pistol and tried to grip the trigger, but his hand was strained from the first shot. He grabbed the knife from his shirt pocket, turned, threw it, felt a rush of satisfaction as it chunked into the partner’s thigh as he made for the porch door. The guy stumbled and then wrenched open the front door and disappeared into the house.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
NICK THOUGHT HE was back there, back inside the night-mare of his war again. That is the only reason I can give for the shot, a merciless blast from only four feet away that should rightfully have taken
the life of the man on the floor in an instant. Whatever Nick was seeing, whatever fantasies he had about the threat to him from the unarmed man, they did not include the respirator still clinging to the back of his head. The bullet glanced off the steel canister on the respirator, deflecting it away from the man.
I lunged at Nick, swept him into a headlock, and pushed the gun away in time to direct the second bullet into the wall. My partner’s strength was furious. He dropped the gun, turned, and palmed me in the face so hard that my head snapped back into the wall.
“What the fuck, Cap!” he said.
“We’ve been ordered back to base!” I yelled, struggling for words. “We gotta go. We’ve been called in. Go! Go! Go!”
Nick seemed to take the bait. We ran for the door, swaying into the wall as the boat lurched again. On the deck outside the galley hatch, I spotted Effie on the bridge holding a gun on someone, presumably the captain, her attention torn between him and us.
“Come on!” I called, my voice almost drowned out by the sound of yelling from inside. “Let’s go!”
Effie dashed down the stairs; a man appeared from behind her and fired a gun. Bullets pinged off the rails and lobster traps as we ran for our boat.
It seemed safe to speak only when the dark shape of Cline’s boat had disappeared into the night. I tried to calm my thundering, sinking heart by telling myself that we had destroyed all of Cline’s product on board. Probably millions of dollars’ worth of stock. But the shaking in my limbs wouldn’t quit, and dark thoughts swirled of Marni on her stretcher, of the man Nick had almost shot dead cowering against the cabinets. We had nearly murdered a stranger in cold blood to avenge Marni. It wasn’t what she would have wanted, not at all.
The Inn Page 14
