by Brian Harper
Then a crackle of static and a familiar voice-the last voice he wanted to hear.
“Sorry, Cain. I’m afraid Blair can’t come to the phone right now.”
Robinson.
“Surprised to hear from me” Trish asked the silent radio.
It was a challenge to hold her voice steady. She had never thought of herself as an actress, but if she could sound cool and cocky and defiantly unfazed right now, she would be eligible for an Academy Award.
After a brief pause Cain answered. “Sure am. It’s after ten o’clock, Robinson. Well past your bedtime, I’d think.”
“I get to stay up late on Saturdays. Ally, too. We’re having kind of a slumber party out here on the island.”
“Me and some friends may crash that party.”
“You’re not crashing anything. You know why It’s over. The good guys won.”
Ally blinked at her, baffled.
“Did you, Robinson” She could hear his controlled rage. “I must have missed that part.”
“Yeah, you’ve been missing a lot lately. I’ll fill you in. You can’t get near us without a boat. Even if you could, we’ve got the tactical advantage. You can ask Blair about that.” Another slow comber of dizziness rolled over her. She lowered her head briefly, then rallied. “This message getting through”
A beat. “Loud and clear.”
“We’re dug in where you can’t touch us. So you might as well pack your bags and go home. Or is there something I’ve overlooked”
Cain pursed his lips, fury compressing his mouth into a bloodless line. Then he pushed the talk button.
“No, Officer. There’s nothing you’ve overlooked.”
Lilith grabbed his shoulder. “We can’t let that bitch-“
Cain shook free of her grasp, hushed her with a frown.
He was thinking.
Robinson was right about her tactical position. If she stayed put, he would be helpless to reach her.
But he had not been quite truthful in his reply. There was one small item she’d forgotten.
Still on channel three, he keyed the transmit switch again. “Tyler, you catch that”
“Yeah, boss.”
“She’s got us where she wants us. We’re clearing out. No arguments.” He played his hole card. “But before we leave, we’re taking care of the hostages. All of them. Understood”
A pause as Tyler processed this news. Then, warily: “Understood.”
Cain clicked off. Lilith was staring at him.
“Kill the hostages,” she whispered, sardonic admiration in her gaze.
Smiling, Cain nodded. “That’s what I said.”
“You think he means it”
Ally was shaking all over, and Trish didn’t know how to reply.
“He could,” Trish whispered at last.
“But … why”
“Out of spite. He can’t hurt us directly, so he’ll do it through them.”
She didn’t add that Cain would have a better reason for killing Charles Kent, his employer or partner or whatever he was. With the operation a failure, Charles would be only a liability, a man obviously capable of betrayal, all too likely to use his skills and influence to cut a deal with the D.A.
And if Cain was going to take the time to kill Charles, why not Barbara and the Danforths also
Yes, it was possible. But on the other hand …
“It could be a trap,” Trish said. “A way to lure us off the island.”
Ally nodded. “What do you think the odds are”
Trish honestly couldn’t say. It was a coin toss. “Fifty-fifty, I guess.”
“So what do we do”
Trish didn’t know.
Cain waited a moment, then reset his radio to channel one.
“Tyler, come in.”
“I’m here, boss. Thought you might want to meet on this frequency.”
“More privacy this way.”
“Unless Robinson has picked up Gage’s radio by now.”
“If she had, she would’ve responded when I tried to raise Blair the first time. You still in position”
“Sure am.”
“Stay there-and stay alert.”
Cain clipped the radio to his belt. Beside him, Lilith stared into the night.
“What do we do now” she whispered.
“We wait.” Cain took a slow breath, then another. In, out. In. Out. “But not for long.”
61
Trish clung to Ally, using the girl as a crutch, the two of them elbowing their way through crowds of rushes toward the island’s eastern shore.
The distance was short, no more than forty yards, but the strain of hopping on one leg wearied Trish almost instantly. Ally, struggling to support her, chuffed like a marathon runner in the final grueling mile.
“Even if we make it to the phones,” Ally gasped, “can the police get to the house in time”
“Don’t have to.” Trish had already thought of that. “Cain’s probably still monitoring the police bands. Soon as he hears the units dispatched code three-he’ll run.”
She had no breath to add that Skylark Drive, the only route up the mountain, dead-ended just beyond the Kent estate. Cain was sure to know the risk of being trapped anywhere on that road. He would have to flee.
“But”-Ally blew hard, struggling to clear her lungs of deoxygenated air-“he could be … killing them … right now.”
“Don’t think so.” Trish forced out the words through gritted teeth. “Radio transmission came in so clear, Cain and the others must have been at the picnic area or nearby. How long will it take them to drive around the lake Ten minutes”
“Maybe fifteen. Road’s all curvy. Can’t go … too fast.”
“So we might have time.”
“It’ll be close,” Ally breathed.
Trish couldn’t argue.
Though she winced with every step, the pain was welcome. It meant the feeling in her lower leg had come back. Maybe the leg hadn’t been starved of blood long enough to suffer permanent damage. Maybe she wouldn’t have to wear a prosthetic below her left knee for the rest of her life.
Or maybe she was headed straight into a trap, and the rest of her life would prove too short to matter.
She and Ally had reached the decision together, with no discussion, only a meeting of eyes. Trish had seen the stark terror in the girl’s face, the awful fear for her parents, the desperate plea-and in her own mind she had heard the damnably persistent Mrs. Wilkes saying, No medals for quitters.
Trish meant to have a few words with that woman when this was all over.
Beside her, Ally moaned.
“You okay” Trish asked.
“Just thinking. I … did a stupid thing at this cocktail party … last Christmas.”
“And”
“Never told my mom and dad … I was sorry. That’s all.”
They went on, Ally staring blankly ahead, Trish thinking of Mr. Charles Kent.
His daughter wanted to apologize to him. The ugly irony of it was amusing somehow, or would have been if she could have obtained the appropriately distanced perspective.
Saving Charles hadn’t been a factor in Trish’s decision. She would risk nothing for that man.
But Barbara Kent and Philip and Judy Danforth … they were innocent. They were worth the risk.
Worth dying for She couldn’t say, almost didn’t care. Her own survival seemed somehow trivial, a mere luxury unworthy of serious consideration with so many other lives at stake.
She wondered if this was some sort of depersonalized reaction to shock or if it was what people called courage-or if there was any difference.
The soil grew spongier. Wet sand sucked at her shoes and Ally’s bare feet like a succession of hungry mouths. Rushes yielded to sedges, then to bristling ranks of cattails waist-deep in water.
The FireStar floated close to shore. In his haste the killer named Blair had simply abandoned the boat in a shallow cove, trusting to a semicircle of moss
y boulders to prevent it from drifting far.
The port seat was still occupied by the slumped masculine figure Trish had seen earlier. His left arm trailed limply, and his chin rested on his chest.
Dead like his partner.
Probably.
But she wasn’t making any assumptions.
“Quiet now,” she whispered.
Screened from the boat by cattails, she and Ally waded in together, algae swirling around them in lacy ribbons of green.
Where the cattails thinned, Trish halted. “Okay. Let me go.”
Ally released her hold. Trish submerged up to her neck. A water bug as large as her thumb skittered away, its carapace shiny in the starlight.
Crammed under her belt was Blair’s Glock. She withdrew the gun and held it above the water as she slipped forward.
Waterlilies papered the shallows, prolific as weeds. She maneuvered among them, the agony in her leg partially relieved by the water’s soothing buoyancy.
She reached the FireStar’s stem. Hugging the hull, she circled around to starboard.
A breath of courage, and she grasped the gunwale with her left hand and hoisted herself up, aiming the Glock with her right.
“Freeze.”
Caution was unnecessary. She knew it as soon as she saw him at close range.
A bullet-one of her bullets-had opened his neck and the side of his face, exposing a red waste of bone. Blood soaked his jump suit and lacquered the molded seat.
Most of his face was intact. His mouth hung open. His eyes gazed unblinking at his lap.
At least he wasn’t looking at her. She didn’t think she could stand it if he’d been looking at her.
If anything, he was younger than his companion. Sixteen She had been a high school sophomore at sixteen. Staying out late on a Friday night had been the limit of her daring.
Finally she turned toward shore and found her voice. “It’s safe.”
Ally swam to the boat, climbed aboard, and helped Trish get settled on the bench seat at the rear of the cockpit.
“Try not to look at him,” Trish said.
Ally shrugged, nonchalant. “He doesn’t scare me. It’s the ones who are still alive that I’m worried about.”
Spoken like a battle-hardened warrior. Well, wasn’t she
Even so, Trish noticed that the girl did her best to avert her face as she slipped behind the wheel.
“Hey,” Ally said, “how do we start this thing”
“No key”
Ally shook her head. “He hotwired it, I guess.”
“Can you figure out what he did”
“You mean you don’t know I thought cops knew all this stuff.”
Not rookie cops, Trish thought. “Give me a few years.”
Ally hunched close to the control console. “There’s a knife on the floor. It looks like … oh, I get it.”
She inserted the blade in the switch, and the engine started.
“Just have to complete the circuit, see” Ally shrugged. “Easy.”
Trish shook her head. It was easy, absurdly easy. She could have done it herself, had she only known how. She need never have risked a return to the house.
“They should have taught you this stuff in cop school,” Ally said as she guided the boat out of the cove.
Trish felt her mouth slide into a weary smile. “I’m learning a lot of things they didn’t teach at school.”
62
“They’re leaving the island.” Lilith breathed the words above the drone of a distant motor.
Cain nodded slowly, tasting the woody sweetness of the night air. “Now let’s just hope they’re coming our way.”
He stood with Lilith at the trailhead adjacent to the parking lot, the best point from which to view the lake. His binoculars, trained on the dark hump of the island, caught a shimmer of movement near the eastern shore.
The boat. It flashed in a spill of starlight as the prow swung north-toward the picnic area.
“Our two Mouseketeers are taking the cheese,” he said with satisfaction, and Lilith shivered.
He tracked the boat until it vanished behind the treetops. Then he pocketed the binoculars.
“Move out.”
“Wait.” Lilith dialed the volume higher on the police radio.
The same throaty voice, the woman named Lou: “Eight-one, you still en route to that ten-thirty-three Eight-one Four-Adam-eight-one”
“It’s taken the unit too long to respond.” Cain frowned. “Dispatcher’s getting worried.”
“Should I answer”
He shook his head. “Even these local yokels may not fall for the same trick twice. And I don’t want them figuring out the last transmission was faked. We told them the car was on Hospers Road. That’s where we want them to be looking. Now let’s go.”
The dirt trail twisted down the hillside, past stands of black oak growing tall and thick-boled in the rich, dry soil.
Cain moved with unaccustomed lightness, his steps muffled though there was as yet no need for stealth. Lilith was a shadow at his side, supple and silent, the contours of her costume flowing like tendrils of ink.
Somewhere near the phones Tyler already was lying in wait. There was a good chance he would get Robinson.
If he didn’t, Lilith would-or Cain himself.
This was it.
Endgame.
From the stowage compartment under the bench seat Trish took out the first-aid kit she’d found earlier.
She considered taking more Advil, but decided against it. Much as she wanted to dull the pain, the risk of an overdose was too great. Putting the pills aside, she examined the remaining items in the waterproof case.
Antibiotic cream.
Band-Aids of various sizes.
Moistened towelettes.
Sterile pads, both nonstick and adhesive.
Rolled gauze.
Digital thermometer, tweezers, mineral oil, and a five-yard spool of rayon tape.
With towelettes and sterile pads she blotted up blood from the ugly gashes in her leg, fighting new waves of vertigo as the damaged nerves screamed.
Next, antibiotic. She used it all.
Then two more sterile pads, the adhesive kind, pressed to the wounds.
Quickly she wrapped her calf in gauze. As she secured the dressing with tape, the boat neared shore.
To her right lay a long stretch of beach. To her left, willows edged the water.
“Go toward the trees,” she told Ally. “And sit lower.”
Approaching the wooded area was a calculated risk. She and Ally would be less exposed there-but their enemies, if any were present, would be better camouflaged.
As the boat drew near shore, Trish leaned forward and rummaged in the dead man’s dump pouch, which contained a single magazine. She inserted it in her own Glock, then holstered the weapon.
The other gun was almost fully loaded: fifteen rounds, plus one in the chamber. Blair must have put in a fresh mag before coming ashore.
Willows eclipsed the stars. A tangle of floating deadwood, branches torn loose in storms and washed into the shallows, scraped the FireStar’s starboard side. Ally eased back on the throttle as the prow nuzzled a bank of crumbly earth.
“Kill the motor,” Trish said.
Ally removed the knife from the ignition switch, opening the circuit, and the engine died.
Silence.
No one shot at them. Nothing stirred in the shadows beyond the trees.
“Okay. This is for you.” Trish gave the second Glock to Ally. “Remember how to use it”
Ally drew a shallow breath. “I remember.”
“Tell me where to find the phones.”
“They’re outside the snack shop in the picnic area. Northeast, maybe five hundred feet. I can take you right to them.”
Trish met her gaze. “I’m going alone.”
“What” Hurt and bafflement welled in Ally’s eyes. “You … you can’t even walk.”
Leaning over the side, T
rish plucked one of the branches from the water. The limb of a ponderosa pine, five feet long, stripped of needles, black as coal.
“I can lean on this.”
“You can lean on me. We’re partners.”
“And we’ve each got a job to do. You keep the boat ready for a quick getaway.”
“It’s my folks who’re in trouble. If just one of us goes, it should be me.”
“You’re not a cop,” Trish snapped, then gentled her voice. “Look, there’s no time for this, all right”
Ally turned in her seat, as stiff and mute as the corpse by her side.
Trish wanted to say more, but a new argument would only waste more seconds, and seconds might cost lives.
Unassisted, she pulled herself upright and struggled over the transom onto the steep bank directly alongside the FireStar.
Her shoes sank into damp earth. She planted the branch. Though her leg seethed, it did not fold.
Propping the crutch under her left armpit, she advanced, moving with an alacrity that surprised her.
“Wait.”
Ally’s voice. Trish turned as the girl scrambled off the boat. Something gleamed in her open palm.
The arrowhead.
She had no pockets. Must have been holding it the whole time. Clutching it in her fist, a talisman.
“For luck,” Ally said.
Trish accepted the minuscule wedge of obsidian, glassy and hard, and slipped it into her pocket.
Though she wanted to say some words of thanks, her voice seemed to have left her.
Instead she simply nodded, a deep nod that left her hair hanging across her face for a long moment, then turned and limped quickly away, deeper into the woods.
The boat had fallen silent by the time Cain and Lilith reached the edge of the beach. Crouching behind a clump of sunflowers, Cain unfolded his binoculars and swept the scene.
Barbecue pits scored the sandy strip in a ragged line.
A volleyball net rippled between two poles.
An upturned lifeguard platform reclined on the beach as if stargazing.
Across a sparkle of placid water lay the dark hump of the island and, farther away, the dim glow of the Kent estate, tiny squares of windows burning pinholes in the black hillside.
