When the red and gold lights of Gloucester Harbor lit my face, I turned and saw Nick sitting at the back of the boat with his head in his hands.
“You almost killed that guy,” I said. It was perhaps cold and unnecessary, but I wasn’t just talking to Nick. I was talking to myself too.
“I did bad things over there, in the war,” Nick said. He heaved a heavy, shuddering breath. “They won’t go away.”
CHAPTER SIXTY
SUSAN SNAPPED AWAKE at the sound of the gunshot from the front of the house; she rolled off the bed and into a crouch in the corner of the room, out of view of the window, before she was even fully awake. For a moment her mind reeled, struggling to locate herself in time and space. Arkansas, 2012. Daseri’s men had made her and were on their way up the dingy hotel stairs. No, wait. Gloucester, 2018. Cline’s people, the Inn in the woods. She took her gun from the desk and crept to the door. Across the hall she spotted Malone, his high cheekbones and wild eyes illuminated by a silent television screen behind him. They locked eyes wordlessly and slipped out into the dimly lit hall.
A howl of pain from the front porch. Someone swearing, begging. Malone and Susan moved into the dining room, eased their way to the bullet holes in the wall.
“Stop your whining, you little pussy,” Vinny growled as he wheeled slowly past. There was a man on the driveway clutching his knee, curled up in a ball in pain. Ten feet away from the man, probably flung there in the blast, a pistol lay on the pale gravel.
When Susan turned, Malone was gone, and there was a gun in her face.
“On your knees,” the man said.
Susan put her hands up slowly, keeping her face neutral. She started to go down, waiting until she could see the tension in his body shift as he anticipated her surrender. That’s when she struck, batting the gun aside, punching out as hard as she could. She was aiming for his balls but went a little high; her knuckles collided with a belt worn low, but the force was enough to shock him, double him over. She turned and felt his arms come around her and now the gun was in both their hands, the aim wavering over the walls, the ceiling. Malone slammed into them, wrenching the man’s head back so that Susan could grab the weapon. Her mind was a constant hammering of half-formed thoughts, panic she had once been taught to keep at bay now unleashed as soon as it was triggered.
How many are there?
Is anyone in the house already dead?
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
SUSAN SWUNG THE pistol, tried to pick out the shape of the balaclava she had glimpsed in the dark, but before her was a tangle of shapes as Malone and the intruder wrestled. They crashed into the dining-room table, crushing a book-shelf, spilling books and ornaments. Someone got free—she heard the crunch of bones and a gasp of pain, and her heart sank as a silhouette appeared in the doorway, not Malone but a bigger, stronger man who glanced back as he headed down the hall.
“Stop!” Susan pointed the gun, but he was already gone. “Stop right now!”
He was in the kitchen. Susan ran and pushed the swinging door open, and almost immediately it swung back and hit her awkwardly, the shock enough to jolt the gun from her hands. His hands were on her wrists as he dragged her into the dark, and she twisted, planted a foot in his gut, and wrenched herself free. The knife block tumbled under her hands, spilling blades, but there was no time to get them. She grabbed a pot on the stove, turned, swung, and landed a solid blow to the side of a face. She heard what sounded like a tooth rattling as it hit the floor.
He was outnumbered and outmaneuvered and he knew it. Before Malone was fully through the door, Susan saw the shape of the intruder skirting past him. Susan and Malone rushed to the doorway in time to see the man run up the stairs, a desperate move, the intruder trying to hide in the house in the dark. He reached the second floor, and Susan’s eyes were flooded with visions of who lay there sleeping and what he could do to them—stab them in their beds, bash their heads in, take them hostage. For a split second she could see all the atrocities she had witnessed over the course of her career, the howling mouths of the dead frozen, protesting their last violent seconds, in beds, in doorways, hanging over banisters, trying to claw their way out to escape.
Susan didn’t make it to the second step. As the man reached the top of the staircase, Neddy Ives’s door slammed open with tremendous force and smacked the intruder with as much power and desperation as he was using to get away. The collision seemed to shake the house.
Susan and Malone parted as the unconscious man tumbled down the stairs between them, a rag doll who came to a twisted stop at their feet.
Neddy Ives surveyed his work for a moment, gripping the door, his eyes hollow in the dim moonlight spilling in the second-floor window.
“Would you mind keeping it down?” he said quietly. “It’s late.”
Malone and Susan watched as he went back inside his room and closed his door.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
I SAW THE flashing red ambulance lights from a long way off, and I slammed my foot down on the accelerator even before I could tell they were at the Inn. Having dozed off almost as soon as we left Gloucester’s harbor, Effie jerked awake in her seat, like a robot suddenly switched to standby mode.
Almost all of the crew was on the porch in the eerie blue predawn, coats or blankets pulled around their shoulders, watching as two men were loaded into ambulances. Doc Simeon was briefing two paramedics, his hands covered to the wrists in blood. I leaped out of the car and silently counted my people like a parent counting kids, my heart hammering in my chest.
On the stretcher, a man I recognized from Cline’s house was sucking oxygen and howling with pain, one knee swathed in thick bandages already soaked through with blood. Another man was cuffed and sitting up on a stretcher, looking mildly dazed as he was wheeled toward the vehicle. Blood dripped from his nose and mouth.
“You didn’t tell me it was this serious,” Malone said as I got to the porch. “Vinny stopped the first guy but the other one got inside.”
“Vinny didn’t just stop the guy,” Doc Simeon said, walking past us toward the house. “That man will never walk properly again. His kneecap was shattered. Felt like eggshells in there.”
Everyone looked at Vinny, who had a blanket with a large hole on it on his knees. His old hands were clasped on the fabric and his eyes were on the trees; he looked like a man watching a football game, half listening to us.
“I don’t know what everybody’s complaining about.” He shrugged. “Guy’s got another one.”
Susan explained what had happened as the ambulances rolled on into the night. Angelica was leaning against a porch column, one hand on the back of Vinny’s wheelchair.
“Maybe Doc doesn’t approve of Vinny’s violent approach,” Angelica said. “But I think it was warranted. We’ve shown them that they can’t come at us with force. They’ve shot at us. We’ve, uh … done some things to them too. Now I think the only course of action is to invite this Mr. Cline over here to discuss the issue of his leaving town. We could put together a nice lunch.”
Vinny started laughing, a gravelly, hacking sound.
“What?” Angelica stroked the sling on her arm consolingly. “People of your ilk have them all the time in the movies. Sit-downs, you call them. With the, uh … the consiglieri?”
“All that time you spend making shit up in books has given you a real interesting perspective on life, Ange.” Vinny nodded appreciatively.
“This whole event is like an allegory.” Angelica looked around, her voice wistful. “The gunmen in the night. The porch here is like a theater stage, the silent trees beyond an army of judgmental yet silent souls.”
“Dear God.” I massaged my brow.
“Hey, innkeeper,” Vinny said as I turned to go inside. “You want a real laugh, go talk to the sheriff. He’s in the kitchen.”
Susan followed me through the dining room and across a scattering of broken glass and splintered wood it seemed we had cleared away only a day earlier. I sto
pped in the hall and put my hands on her shoulders.
“I’m so lucky that you were here,” I said. A stirring deep in my chest had begun, terror at the reality of the situation, the danger my guests had been in, the awful possibilities. “I might have come back and found them all dead in their beds.”
“The people here can take care of themselves,” she said. “It was actually Mr. Ives who dealt the finishing blow.”
I didn’t know what to make of that. The man with no past who dwelled in the room next to Marni’s was emerging, and I had to admit I was feeling a shift in my perception of him. He’d always made me uneasy, like a monster that lives under the stairs, a shadow I crept past like a child. But I was starting to appreciate the guy who lingered in the dark, who could take out a fleeing suspect with a rickety old door and go back to sleep like nothing had happened.
Clay was in his usual position, leaning into the refrigerator, loading a plate in one hand with sandwich fixings. I saw in the gold light that at the back of his head, a patch the size of a playing card had been shaved and a mean-looking gash stitched closed. When he turned to us, I could see the beginning of two black eyes. He limped to the table and sat down, eased a heavy ice pack onto his crotch.
“Look at this, would you?” He sighed, gestured to his face. “I have to have a meeting with the school-district woman this morning. I’m gonna look like a panda.”
“Christ.” I sat down, put my head in my hands as he made his sandwich. “What happened?”
Clay explained about the abduction, the fight in the woods, half his story muffled by bites of an enormous sandwich and slurps of Miller Lite. Despite everything, a smile played on Susan’s lips as she listened.
“So let me get this straight,” she said. “Two days ago, a housewife nails you in the face with an encyclopedia, and tonight you fight off two guys with your hands cuffed behind your back?”
“It was a dictionary.” Clay held the cool beer bottle to his forehead. “And I wasn’t ready for her. These guys at least gave me a second to get my bearings.”
“He’s the definition of surprise.” I elbowed Susan in the ribs but she just rolled her eyes. “See what I did there?”
“Any permanent damage, Clay?” Susan asked.
“No, they did all the scans at the hospital,” Clay said. “I got to see pictures of my own brain. I’ve never seen it before. It looked good, I thought. The nurse said she had never seen a skull as thick as mine. Said it was like a coconut.”
“You’re amazing.” Susan reached up and slicked down a cowlick on the side of Clay’s big head like she was patting the ear of a St. Bernard. “I’m just so glad you’re home. I can’t imagine dealing with …”
She was going to say “another death.” I could see it in her eyes, the way she lowered them, almost with guilt. We’d lost Marni, and the loss of Siobhan lingered everywhere in the house, like the walls were painted with it. Clay let the pickle-chaser for his beer linger on his tongue a couple of seconds before he swallowed, savoring it like wine.
“So what’s with the ice pack?” I jutted my chin toward the ice the sheriff was shifting carefully between his thighs.
“Weren’t you listening?” Clay winced. “I kicked a knife out of a guy’s hand. Must have been four foot off the ground. My body ain’t built to move that way. I think I’ve strained something in”—he glanced at Susan—“in a man’s most tender region.” I smiled when something passed over his features as he went back to his meal, relief or perhaps some long-awaited, well-earned pride.
Though I might have sat forever watching Clay and Susan reveling in the triumphs of the night, I couldn’t share their feelings of security. As soon as I turned away from them, I heard my phone pealing in the basement and I went to get it. Though the number was blocked, I knew exactly who it was.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
WHEN CLINE SPOKE, there was a new edge in his voice. Though he tried to maintain his usual cool, smooth tone, I could hear the razor in his words.
“I bet you’re celebrating,” he said. “I bet you think you’ve done the right thing.”
“I’ll celebrate when you’re exactly where you belong—behind bars or in the ground.” I did not try to disguise the hatred in my voice. “You know, I met a few people like you when I was a cop. One of them told me that anyone who’s killed will see their victims in their dreams. People who say they don’t are lying. I hope Marni gives you everything she’s got. I hope you wake up screaming for the rest of your life.”
“I’ll let you know.” He laughed.
“You tried to come at my house and my people, and hopefully you realize now that you can’t fuck with us. This is not your town, Cline.”
“What should I do?” he wondered. “Shuffle on to the next little seaside shithole? Shall I tell them who sent me? I’m sure they’d be very grateful.”
Cline had hit me right where it hurt. He knew that an enemy in plain sight was far less frightening than an enemy who suddenly disappeared, maybe taking his evil elsewhere or maybe waiting and biding his time nearby. The people who lived in whatever town Cline went to next wouldn’t be ready for him. I had the measure of him. Or so I thought.
“You don’t want me to go anywhere,” Cline continued. “Face it, Robinson. This is the most alive you’ve felt since someone painted the road with your wife’s entrails. I’m your purpose now.”
I steeled myself against the guilty thoughts. No, Cline was not my purpose. My people, my house, my town—they were my purpose, and Cline was threatening them.
“You have a very inflated sense of your role in my life, Cline,” I said. “You need to think less ‘God walking the earth’ and more ‘Indistinct mass of crud in someone’s boot tread.’”
“That sounds like a thing someone who’s won would say,” Cline said. “But I’ve got to remind you—you haven’t won here tonight.”
“You don’t think?” I scoffed. “Your product is at the bottom of the ocean. Your guys are in the hospital.”
“Yeah,” he said. I could hear a mean smile in his words. “So what does a guy do when all his men have proved to be useless to him?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but the line went dead. I jumped at Susan’s hand on my shoulder. She had crept down the basement stairs without my hearing her.
“Was that him?” She must have been able to tell it was from the look on my face. “What did he say?”
“I …” I drew a deep breath. “I think he’s bringing in reinforcements.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
THERE WERE THINGS to do. There are always things to do when you have seven people under your roof and a rickety old house. But the events of the evening sent me into a kind of mental paralysis, and I could only wander around, looking out the windows, half expecting to see more of Cline’s guys on their way to slaughter the people I loved. In time I managed to throw together one of my characteristically terrible breakfasts, this one watery scrambled eggs, deflated roasted tomatoes, and burned toast. I cleaned up the mess in the dining room and sat through the brief and uncomfortable interviews of all my residents with a couple of Clay’s trusted officers, gold columns of morning light streaming through the bullet holes in the dining-room wall.
Clayton called at midday to tell me what I already knew: Marni’s tox screen showed she’d had enough fentanyl in her system to kill a horse.
When the sun was just climbing over the tops of the pines guarding the sea, I went to my car, which was parked at the edge of the woods. I figured I’d drive into town and run some errands, try to take my mind off things. I slid behind the wheel, looked over, and saw a backpack I didn’t recognize on the seat beside me.
Thinking it must belong to one of the members of the house, I grabbed the bag to move it to the footwell so it didn’t slide as I drove. The zipper wasn’t closed, and thick stacks of cash spilled onto the floor of the car.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
THE HOUSE HAD fallen quiet again. I went to my bedroom in t
he basement and emptied the contents of the backpack onto my bed, stood staring at the heap of cash for a minute. I jogged up the stairs and shut the basement door, then pulled the small blind down over the window to the backyard.
I counted the cash. Eight hundred thousand dollars. There was a short note written on a piece of fine cream stationery. Cline didn’t do anything cheaply. The note read simply: Think carefully.
I sat on the bed beside the cash. There was no need to think carefully. My whole body shook with fury. Cline thought he could buy me off after he had killed Marni, destroyed my house, threatened my friends. I began snatching up the bills and throwing them back into the bag.
I stopped to look at the cash in my hands, wondering what my next move should be. The only course of action, I supposed, was to give the money to Clay. There would be no proving Cline sent it to me. It would sit in an evidence locker until the State of Massachusetts claimed it as proceeds of crime. I fanned the bills with my thumb. The cash remaining on the bedspread was more than I had ever seen in one place in my life. This was what Cline paid in shut-up money. There would probably be more cash, keep-shutting-up money, if I accepted it and backed off. How many people was he paying to look the other way, surrender their turf to him? For the first time, the magnitude of his operation hit me.
A brief fantasy, like a flash across my eyes: A car. A house. Booze, parties, beautiful women. Sure, I wasn’t the booze-parties-and-beautiful-women type, but money could make me that way. Fat stacks of money could do anything. Change my life. Change my mind. The guilt rippled through me as the seconds ticked by and the money stayed in my hands. No bad fortune immediately came crashing down on me. The money made me feel strangely good, even though it was just sitting here, stacks of paper sizzling with power and potential.
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