“He’s alive, and he’s there,” she said. “He’s not in good shape, but he’s alive. Vaughn shot him.”
Renee let go of her hair. Her mouth was parted slightly, her eyes distant. “Vaughn shot him?”
“That’s what Devin said.” Nora watched the other woman’s face, then added, “That’s what Devin said while he put me and Frank into a van at gunpoint and came out here and had an FBI agent murdered at the cabin. The one named AJ killed him with a knife.”
The words slid by Renee without any apparent effect. She said, “Vaughn shot Devin. I’ve been up here with him, and he’s the one who shot Devin. He tried to kill Devin.”
“Yes,” Nora said.
Renee was looking at the lake without seeming to see anything. She said it again. “Vaughn shot him.”
Nora was shivering violently now, the wind and her drenched clothing combining to drop her body temperature.
“Can we start the motor?” Renee said.
Nora turned and looked at it. The thing had been upside down for a while, but it still looked in place, everything as it should be.
“Probably.”
“Try to start it, please.”
“Where are we going?” Nora asked as she moved for the stern.
“To my husband. But first we’re going to stop at that island. I left a gun there.”
When he heard the first shot, Frank was down in the hole with AJ, relieving the body of its gun and the boat key. The sound almost dropped him to his knees, overwhelming him with a sense of defeat. He was too late. Ten minutes had gone by and Nora Stafford was dead. He’d let her die.
Then there was another shot, and a third, and it was this last one that got him moving again, because it hadn’t come from a handgun. He recognized it as a rifle shot, and King didn’t have a rifle.
He was running toward the shots but angled too far to the left and ran into a tangle of undergrowth that he and AJ had not encountered on their walk into the woods. At first he tried to push through it, but that was a bad idea, and he fought his way back out of it and ran parallel to the lake, looking for a gap in the brush that would let him get back down to the shore and to the boat.
He heard voices—it sounded like Ezra—and then there was another volley of shots, three in succession. Who was shooting? He slapped branches aside and cleared the trees, found himself at the top of a muddy bluff, Ezra’s boat screened from sight. Out on the water, the smaller boat, where Nora and King should be waiting, seemed to have overturned and was now floating upside down in the lake. He could see people in the water.
The bluff was steep and slick with wet mud, but he fought his way down it, turning his feet sideways to limit his momentum, his shoes plowing furrows in the soggy earth, and then he was in the water up to his knees, splashing down the shore toward the collection of stumps and trees where he’d left Ezra’s boat.
As he stumbled through the water, something began to happen with the boat out in the lake. It rose in the air once, then twice, and finally it flipped back over, resting upright again. Two people climbed onto it, and even from out here Frank could see that neither one was tall enough to be King. What the hell had happened? Was Ezra out there with Nora somehow? Or Renee?
When he came around the bluff, Ezra’s boat appeared, and he saw Vaughn on board, standing in the stern, using the trolling motor to pull away from the island.
“Hey!” Frank shouted. “Hey!”
Vaughn turned at the sound, lifted a gun, and fired two wild shots that hit in the water some twenty feet to Frank’s right.
“Stop shooting, you idiot! It’s me! It’s Frank!”
Vaughn was still holding the gun, but he stopped firing, hesitating, and Frank yelled, “Bring it over here! I’ve got the key!”
Vaughn looked down at the big, silent engine on the stern and then lowered his gun. He was struggling with the trolling motor, didn’t seem to understand how to use it, and Frank, trying to go out to meet the boat, was now in water up to his chest, holding the gun high to keep it from going under.
Vaughn finally got the boat pointed in the right direction, and when it reached him Frank caught the side, took one deep breath, and heaved up, got his knee on the side, and used that leverage to force his way onto the boat.
He was collapsed on the starboard seat, fighting for breath, when Vaughn let go of the trolling motor and turned to him with the gun held out in a shaking hand.
“Give me the key.”
Frank stared at him. “What? Get that gun out of my face, asshole.”
“Give me the key!”
Out on the lake a motor coughed several times and then caught, and both Frank and Vaughn looked toward the sound and saw that the aluminum boat was in motion again, headed toward another island, away from them. Vaughn kept staring after it, and Frank planted his feet on the floor, then rose and swept Vaughn’s gun down and away, hit him once in the chest with a closed fist. It knocked Vaughn back against the steering console, and Frank locked his left hand around Vaughn’s wrist and twisted until the fingers opened up and the gun fell to the bottom of the boat.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” he said, his face close to Vaughn’s, whose entire body seemed to be shaking. “You could have killed me, you stupid bastard.”
Frank knelt and picked up the gun, wedged it beneath the seat, out of the way, and then put the key in the ignition and twisted. As the motor came to life, Vaughn moved away, and Frank straightened and stared out at the departing aluminum boat. It looked like Nora was at the motor. There was no way she’d hear him, so he lifted his arm and waved it in a slow arc. Finally she saw him and lifted her own hand, but kept taking the boat away, toward the other island.
“What’s she doing?” Frank said, dropping to the seat and moving his hand to the throttle.
“Renee was on that island,” Vaughn said.
“I think she’s on the boat now. What happened to the one who was with Nora on the boat, though?”
Vaughn didn’t answer.
“What about Ezra?” Frank twisted the wheel and turned the boat to go in pursuit of Nora and Renee.
“They shot him,” Vaughn said.
Frank spun to face him. “What?”
Vaughn nodded, his jaw trembling. “Somebody shot him. He’s dead.”
“Who shot him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, where is he?”
Vaughn lifted an unsteady hand and pointed at the water.
36
__________
The sickness that had come and gone during those first few shots returned to Frank as he drove Ezra’s boat away from the island where his father’s old friend had been killed, was somewhere in the water now, joining Atkins, their blood spilling into the lake.
He imagined the bodies down there among the weeds and the stumps, fish swimming past, crimson clouds rising from the wounds and dissipating into the gray water, water that slapped gently against the log wall back at the cabin where Devin Matteson waited. It was on Devin, all that blood in the water, two more lives taken, adding to that total that included everyone Frank’s father had killed, included Frank’s father, who’d fired a bullet into his own mouth with the very gun Frank now held in his hand. All of this was on Devin, Atkins and Ezra and even the two thugs Devin had brought with him, the body count rising at his whim while he sat removed from it all, untouched.
That would end today. Frank was going back to that cabin and he was going to kill him. That would be the last of it. He’d kill Devin, and the others could call the police, and then let it end however it would end. He couldn’t think about that, didn’t care about it, nothing mattering anymore but getting back across this damn lake to put a bullet into Devin Matteson’s heart.