“What about her? She’s not part of this.”
“Oh, but she will be. Imagine how it will be for her, with her husband in prison. Her husband, who’d been profiled in all the news coverage of the Mister Twister case. Her husband the celebrity. What kind of job does she have, anyway?”
“What goddamn difference does it make?”
“Social worker? Parole officer?”
“She’s an administrator at a public TV affiliate-”
“Well, in that case I’m sure her business associates will be very understanding of her plight. No doubt they know lots of people whose spouses are doing time as accessories to murder. Then again, maybe not.”
“I don’t care what her colleagues at the TV station think, for Christ’s sake.” Steve heard ragged panic in his voice.
“But she may. She may not appreciate the fact that you’ve made her a pariah among her coworkers-and her neighbors. You said your marriage is already in trouble. How strong will it be after you’ve been arrested? Convicted? Put away?”
Steve drew a breath. “She’ll stand by me.”
“So much the worse for her, if she does. For her sake, you should hope she divorces you. It’ll look better for her.”
“Look better? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Only that there are plenty of people who’ll assume she helped you keep your secret all these years. And the longer she sticks with you, the more certain of it they’ll be.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“It is pretty hard to believe you could have kept her in the dark about something so important, something that was eating you up inside for so long.”
“She doesn’t know anything.”
“I’m not sure the tabloids will see it that way. I mean those supermarket newspapers and syndicated TV shows. They’re not known for giving people the benefit of the doubt.”
“Nobody pays any attention to that trash.”
“You might be surprised. Honestly, Stevie, she’ll be better off if she divorces you. It’s just about her only hope of salvaging her reputation.”
“Maybe… maybe that’s what she’ll do.”
“Either way, you’ve got a lot to look forward to. Your future looks very bright.”
Steve shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. He remembered that error in Jack’s logic he’d found, the one Jack had never satisfactorily addressed.
“You might be right,” he said slowly. “About all of it. Even… even Kirstie. But nothing I do now is going to change it.”
“Wrong. There is one way out. For you-and her.”
Steve was silent, almost afraid to ask the obvious question. Jack waited, volunteering nothing, forcing him to make the next move.
“All right,” he said at last. “Tell me. What’s the way out?”
Jack spread his hands. “Simple. Fly away from all this. And start over-with me.”
A long moment passed. Steve felt a bead of sweat course slowly down his cheek to dangle pendulously on his chin.
“What are you talking about?” he asked finally.
“I’ve got an escape plan. Two men can execute it as easily as one. More easily, in fact.”
“Escape with you? Go on the run? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Being on the run is better than being in the joint. I’ve done both. I know.”
“Sure. So we’ll run from state to state till our money is gone, then get nabbed anyway. No, thanks.”
“You’ve got it completely wrong. I told you, I’ve got a plan. We …”
Jack paused, listening.
Steve frowned, hearing the drone of a motor. Drawing nearer. He shaded his eyes from the sun and gazed across the shimmering water.
A gray runabout was speeding directly toward them.
“What the hell is that?” he whispered. “The police?”
Jack shook his head. “It’s my boat.” His eyes narrowed. “Your wife is piloting it.”
Steve’s heart kicked. “Why would she be coming out here?”
“Maybe she got worried about you. She doesn’t trust me, you know.”
“I can’t imagine why.”
Jack turned to him. “Look, Stevie, if she sees you holding that gun on me, it’s all over. She’ll radio the Coast Guard as soon as she gets back to the island.”
“That’s what I was planning to do, anyway.”
“Is it? Then why didn’t you reject my deal outright? You questioned the practicality of it. You wanted more details. But you didn’t say no.”
“I’m saying it now.”
“Don’t be a hero. Give me a chance to explain how we can get away. If you don’t buy it, then you can still turn me in-and yourself along with me. Maybe you’ll want to do that. But maybe you won’t.”
Steve hesitated. The boat raced closer. Through a rainbowed mist of spray, Kirstie came into clear view riding in the stern, her hand on the outboard’s throttle stick, blond hair unraveling in the wind.
“Stow the gun,” Jack said. “And the knife. Come on, do it.”
Steve knew he shouldn’t. He had kept too many secrets from his wife. It was time to come clean-with her and with the world.
But the price would be high. Perhaps too high.
If Jack really did have a workable plan… if they could escape together…
Crazy thought. Of course it was.
Still, there was no harm-was there? — in hearing the rest of what Jack had to say.
And the alternative was the world Pete Creston had described in vivid word pictures that still haunted Steve’s bad dreams.
Slowly he placed the Beretta inside the waterproof case, then dropped Jack’s knife in with it.
“I’m not agreeing to anything,” he said, his voice unexpectedly throaty.
“Of course not, Stevie. Of course not.”
As Jack turned away, Steve caught the glint of gleeful malice in his eyes.
22
Kirstie killed the outboard and let the dinghy drift in languid slow motion a few yards from the anchored motorboat.
Steve stood and hailed her. “What brings you out here?”
She rose also, planting her sandals wide apart on the wooden floorboards to maintain her balance. “Got a little worried. You two have been gone awhile.”
“Not that long.” Jack, still seated, trailed a lazy hand in the water. “You’re turning paranoid, Mrs. G.”
She met his smile with a frozen grin of her own. “Maybe I am.”
Relief and anxiety competed for priority in her mind. Steve was unharmed, the gun and knife nowhere in view. Yet she sensed tension between the two men, a false calm ready to explode into violence.
And there was something odd, unsettling, in the way each of them was looking at her-Jack with his vaguely saturnine smirk, Steve with an expression of puzzlement and pain, eyes narrowed in a strangely searching gaze. He seemed to be studying the familiar contours of her face for the answer to some unvoiced question.
“I see you found my inflatable.” Jack was still smiling, his eyes dark.
She nodded. “At the cove. Funny thing, though. The boat was all covered with palm fronds.”
“Camouflage.”
She was surprised to hear him admit it so promptly. “What made you think camouflage was necessary on Pelican Key?”
“You said yourself that the island is private property. I didn’t want to get chased off by the owners.”
“But you thought Pelican Key was deserted.”
“I assumed it was. I wasn’t sure. Besides, someone could always come along. I was planning to stay a couple of days-as I guess you’ve figured out.”
He inclined his head at the trio of grocery bags in the runabout’s bow.
Kirstie didn’t know whether his ingenuousness was authentic or merely the studied technique of a skilled liar. She suspected the latter.
“You did bring a lot of stuff with you,” she said carefully. “Canned goods, mostly.”
“Nonperishable supplies. I had this notion of camping out. For old times’ sake.”
“But you didn’t have a sleeping bag, a camp stove-”
“No, it was a last-minute thing. Sort of half-assed, admittedly. I had no time to get all the items I needed.”