She turned right, not taking her eyes off Martin’s car, thinking how he had betrayed her.
About a mile down the shore road, they passed a sign to the Maine Turnpike. Martin’s business with Malenko was over; he was heading back home.
The Maxima growled after him. At about a quarter mile behind him, she began flashing her lights. At about a hundred yards, he slowed down probably thinking it was Malenko in his mirror. When he recognized her car, he pulled over and got out.
“What the hell are you doing?” Then he noticed Brendan in the car. “What’s he doing here?’
She got out. “He’s helping me find Dylan. Where is he?”
“Rachel …” he began.
She lurched at him and grabbed his shirt, ready to claw his face if he resisted her. “Where did they take him?”
“To his clinic.”
“Where? Where is his clinic?”
Martin looked startled by the intensity on her face. “I don’t know. He wouldn’t say.”
“What were you doing in his car?”
“That’s where we met. He called me from the road and said to meet him.”
“You came up here to warn him about me.”
“Yeah, and to give him the rest of the money.”
“Christ! Get in. GET IN.”
“But my car.”
“GET IN!” she screamed.
Brendan jumped into the back seat as Martin got in front. Rachel squealed into a fast U-turn and raced back upshore. The lights of two cars burned in the distance.
Martin had no idea where they were performing the procedure, but it would happen within a few hours. “Rachel, I think we should talk, and talk privately.”
In the back seat Brendan had the map out. “The shore road connects back to 123,” he said to Rachel.
Highway 123. That leads back toward the camp, she thought.
If they didn’t intercept Lucius Malenko there, she’d call the police no matter what.
“Rachel, we’ve been through this. It’s the best thing.”
“Martin, I don’t want them to lay a finger on him, do you understand? It’s bad, it’s wrong, it’s lousy with problems.” Then she reached over and pushed the tape recorder from Vanessa Watts in his hands. “Listen to her. And when you’re through, listen to Brendan.”
Reluctantly Martin raised the tape recorder to his ear. After listening he said, “But she was half-crazed when she made that.”
“Goddamn you, Martin!” Rachel screamed. “She wasn’t crazed. She was pouring her heart out.” She looked into the rearview mirror. “Brendan, tell him what they did to you.”
And while she drove trying to keep from backhanding Martin, Brendan told him about his condition, about the torment of living in his own mind. About wanting to end his life. “Maybe I w-would have been screwed up anyway, m-maybe not. But I think I lost more than I g-gained.”
Martin listened, the skin of his face looking as if it had been stretched. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t know.”
Rachel was too numb to respond. She raced back to Camp Tarabec. At one point, Martin said half to himself, “Maybe we can still get our money back.”
“Is that your only concern?” she asked.
“Of course not, but still …”
Nothing else was said, and twenty minutes later they arrived at the camp. By then, the sky was black.
Rachel stopped at the crossroad where the signs pointed left and right. She turned left toward the lodge. The lights were still on, but in the dark and rain nobody was outside. Slowly, she passed the lodge toward a small service road that led to some rear cabins and to the dead end. No red Porsche in sight. She turned around and headed back, passing the lodge.
Instead of taking a right back onto the entrance road, she continued straight toward the dock. Cabin lights glowed. But nobody was about. And no cars. Rachel continued all the way to the dock, the lightless boathouse on the left.
“There’s nobody here,” Martin said.
But Rachel wasn’t satisfied. She jumped out of the car and ran to the dock. Two small runabout outboards were moored alongside. The boathouse was black, so was the nearby dock shack. But for two exterior lights, the place was dead.
Under an opaque sky, the water spread before her like corrugated lava. In the distance, where the island sat, a dim yellow light glowed. She started back toward the car, when she stopped in her tracks. The large black structure of the boathouse pulled at her. She crossed to the front. The door was locked, but in the headlights from her car she could make out the interior. The red Porsche.
“He’s here,” she said.
“He is?” Martin walked over to her as Brendan headed to the dock. “So what are we going to do? There must be fifty cabins here.”
Rachel’s mind raced. Malenko had warned them that he wouldn’t tolerate any breach of confidentiality—which was probably why his people at the lodge back there denied recognizing his name. And Dylan’s. If they called the local police, what would they say—that their son was being illegally operated on by a neurosurgeon they had hired and paid and with whom they dropped off their son? Or that they changed their mind at the last minute? And what was the crime but their own foolishness? Besides, if the police showed up and word got out to Malenko wherever he was, he might harm Dylan. Or deny he had him?
Besides, the nearest police station could be miles from here. And they had no idea where Malenko had gone or where Dylan was.
“He t-t-took the boat.”
Rachel looked over to Brendan. “What?”
“There was a boat here earlier. A big white p-power boat with twin Mercury engines.”
Rachel glanced out over the water to the yellow light burning in the gloom. She could not hear any sound but the wind.
She moved to the dock. “What about one of those?” Two skiffs with small outboards attached to the transoms.
“We can’t just take it,” Martin said.
She got in and began to feel around the motor. “Does it need a key?”
“N-n-no. It’s got a p-pull cord.”
Martin stood frozen for a moment. “What are you doing? That’s private property.”
“Untie it, goddamn it,” Rachel snapped.
“This is crazy.”
“Then stay here.”
Martin looked at them for a moment, then removed the rope from the dock cleat. Rachel found the cord, hoping to get away before somebody discovered them. At the moment, nobody was around, and the nearest cabin was a hundred yards away.
But in the distance, she heard a car approach.
“Hurry.”
Brendan pumped the fuel bulb on the line a few times then pulled the cord. The engine started up instantly. And Rachel whispered a prayer of thanks and sat beside Brendan at the throttle arm.
From her bag she found her small penlight and gave it to Martin to guide them through to open water. He no longer protested and kept the flash low, as Brendan pulled them away from the dock.
They were maybe a hundred feet into the water, when the headlights of a car flickered through the trees to the dock. Suddenly its lights went out.
Martin killed the flash, though the sound of the motor filled the air. Brendan cut the motor.
But Rachel said, “No,” and took the throttle, pulling them into the black water, guided by the dim yellow light on the island and the pulse of her own heart.