The speed. Oh, man, the speed. The kid’s hands had moved faster than anybody’s Grady had ever seen, trapped his wrist and rolled it back and the pen was pointing at Grady’s throat in a heartbeat’s time.
Half-assed effort, Frank Temple III had said. Try again. For real this time.
So he’d tried again. And again, and again, and by the end he was working into a sweat and no longer fooling around, was beginning to feel the flush of shame because this was a child, damn it, and Grady had done eight years in the Army and another fifteen in the Bureau and he ran twenty miles a week and lifted weights and he could beat this kid . . .
But he couldn’t. When he finally gave up, the kid had smiled at him, this horribly genuine smile, and said, Want to see me shoot?
Yes, Grady said.
What he saw at the range later that afternoon—a tight and perfect cluster of bullets—no longer surprised him.
Seven years later, he was thinking about that day while he stared out of the window and told himself that it was nothing but a public intox charge, a silly misdemeanor, and that there was nothing to worry about with Frank. Frank was a good kid, always had been, and he’d be absolutely fine as long as he stayed away from a certain kind of trouble.
That was all he needed to do. Stay away from that kind of trouble.
2
__________
Frank woke to the grinding of a big diesel motor pulling away, sat up, and saw gray light filling the sky. When he opened the door and tried to get out of the Jeep his cramped muscles protested, and he felt a quick razor of pain along the left side of his stiff neck. He was hungry now, the alcohol long since vanished from his cells and the Gatorade calories burned up. He took the edge off with a Snickers bar and a bottle of orange juice from the vending machines, ate while he studied the big map on the wall. He’d come closer last night than he’d realized; Tomahawk was only one hundred miles ahead.
The closer he got, the more his resolve wavered. Maybe it would be best to pretend he’d never gotten that message from Ezra, didn’t even know Devin was on his way back. Maybe he’d just spend a little time in the cabin, stay for a weekend, catch some fish. It would be fine as long as he didn’t see Devin Matteson. If he stayed away from Devin, if it was just Frank and Ezra and the woods and the lake, this could end up being a good trip, the sort of trip he’d needed to take for a while now. But if he did see Devin . . .
What are you doing here, then, if it’s not about Devin? he thought. You really think this is some sort of vacation?
Whatever part of his brain was supposed to rise to that argument remained silent. He drove with the windows down as the gray light turned golden and the cold morning air began to warm on his right side. Past Wausau the smell of the place began to change—pine needles and wood smoke and, even though there wasn’t a lake in sight, water. There would be a half-dozen lakes within a mile of the highway by now. He knew that both by the change in the air and from the map in the rest stop, this portion of the state freckled with blue.
The smells were triggering a memory parade, but Frank wasn’t sure if he wanted to sit back and watch. It was that sort of place for him now. The deeper he got into the tall pines, the faster the memories flooded toward him, and he was struck by just how much he’d loved this place. It was one thing to recall it from somewhere hundreds of miles away, and another to really be here, seeing the forests and the sky and smelling the air. Maybe he’d stay for a while. The summer stretched ahead of him, and the money wouldn’t run out. Blood money, sure, and spending it while hating the methods that had earned it made Frank a hypocrite at best and something far darker at worst, but it was there.
The first few times he and his father had made the trip, the highway had been two-lane this far north. Then the tourism dollars began to knock on the right doors down in Madison, and soon the four-lane was extending. Frank’s mind was on the cabin, and he blew right past the Tomahawk exits before remembering that he had nothing in the way of food or supplies. He’d have to come back down after he’d unpacked, grab some lunch and buy groceries and then head back to the lake.
He exited at an intersection with County Y, a narrow road slashing through the pines, and had gone about a mile down it when someone in a silver Lexus SUV appeared behind him. From the way it came on in the rearview mirror Frank knew it was really eating up the road, had to be doing seventy at least. As the car approached, it shifted into the oncoming lane, the driver planning to pass Frank without breaking stride. Had to be a tourist, driving like that. The locals had more class.
It was that thought that made him look at the license plate. He probably wouldn’t have done it otherwise, but now he wanted to prove his theory correct, so his eyes went to the plate.
Florida.
The car was gone in a silver flash then, swerving in ahead of him and pulling away. The muscles at the base of his neck had gone cold and tight and his breath seemed trapped.
Florida.
It didn’t mean anything. A strange little touch of déjà vu, sure, but it didn’t mean anything. Yes, the Willow Flowage was an isolated place and a damn long drive from Florida, but there were several million cars with Florida license plates. There wasn’t even a chance that Devin Matteson was driving that car.
“Not a chance,” Frank said aloud, but then that message from Ezra filled his head again—I got a call from Florida . . . he’s coming back—and he pressed hard on the gas pedal and closed the gap on the silver Lexus. A closer look was all he needed. Just that minor reassurance, enough that he could go on to the cabin laughing at himself for this reaction.
He kept accelerating, closed until he was only a car length behind. Now he was leaning forward, his chest almost against the steering wheel, peering into the tinted rear window of the Lexus as if he’d actually be able to tell who the driver was.
There was only one person in the car, and it was a male. He could tell that much, but nothing else. He pulled a little closer, almost on top of the Lexus now, staring hard at the silhouette of the driver’s head.
“It’s him.” He said it softly, exhaled the words, no justification for them at all but somehow he was positive—
Brake lights. A flash of red, one quick blink that he saw too late because he was too close, and then he hammered the brake pedal and slammed the wheel left and hit the back corner of the Lexus at fifty miles an hour.
“Shit!”
The back of the Jeep swung right with the impact, then came back to the left and sent the front end sliding, a fishtail that was threatening to turn into a full three-sixty. Even as the skid started Frank could hear his father’s voice—turn into it, turn into it, your instinct will tell you to turn away, but you’ve got to turn into it. He heard it, recalled those old lessons in the half second that it took him to lose control of the car, and still he turned away from it. It had happened too fast and the instinct was too strong. He turned away from the skid, the tires shrieked on the pavement, and then any hope of getting the car back was gone.