“We were hoping you might have something to say about that,” the skinnier man said.
Drake looked at him for a long time trying to judge the man’s age. Blond hair slicked tight to the edges of his skull, with irritated eyes and a rough unshaven quality to his cheeks and neck. Where his hands rested in his lap Drake could see scars on every one of his knuckles, like he’d spent years punching through glass windows or grinding his fists into cement. The skin strangely pigmented at the back of his hands. Drake kept staring at him, trying to figure it out until the man crossed one hand over the other, then raised his eyes to Drake.
“You do a lot of bare-knuckle boxing when you were a kid?” Drake asked.
“We always heard you were a smart guy,” the skinny blond said.
“You guys work for the DEA, right? You’re Driscoll’s guys?”
“We know Driscoll,” the big man said from behind the counter, taking another bite of cereal and sucking on the spoon.
Drake ran his eyes back and forth between the two men. The clock on the stove said six A.M. When he moved to get up, the blond raised a Walther pistol from where it had rested, out of sight, on the other side of his lap. He was pointing the gun at Drake’s chest.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” the big man said, waving his spoon back and forth in his hand like a finger.
Drake’s eyes were on the gun and then they went searching down the hallway toward his bedroom.
“She’s fine,” the skinnier man said. “She’s asleep. She doesn’t even know we’re here and if you want to keep her safe you’ll be quiet as a mouse. You can do that, can’t you?”
“Who are you guys?”
The big man made a wave of his spoon in the air, taking in the room and speaking through a half-finished mouthful of cereal and milk. “Old friends of your father’s.”
“I see,” Drake said. “You guys were in Monroe.”
The skinny one smiled and looked back at the big man. He never let the gun waver. “Your father was right about you. He always did say you were a smart boy.”
“I didn’t see this one coming,” Drake said.
“Recently, a lot of people have made the same mistake,” the big man said. He put his bowl of cereal down in the sink, watching Drake.
In the background, the eighties TV star was telling the audience he woke up every morning feeling twenty years younger. “You won’t regret it,” the eighties star said, the enthusiasm surging through his voice like an incoming tide as the audience applauded.
“You’ve got to smarten up, Deputy,” the blond man said from the opposite couch. “Was your father wrong about you all these years? I don’t know if you’ve noticed but he left you holding the bag.”
Drake looked away toward the door and the sound of rain beyond. “The bag is empty,” Drake said.
“I hope you give some thought to the situation you’re in. It’s not a good one and it can get a lot worse if it’s ever going to get better.”
“Does it get better?”
“That’s up to you.” With the Walther he motioned toward the door. Drake got up and walked across the living room. He could hear the rain again. Falling heavy on the gravel outside, eating up any sound he might be able to make. Behind him, he heard the big man move out from behind the counter.
Drake walked outside and stood in the gravel at the base of the stairs, his back to the porch as he watched the edge of the forest beyond the drive. The rain falling hard on his bare head and the water running on his face. No idea what would happen to him, or what he could do about it.
Nothing out there in the night and the sound of gravel crunching under the feet of the skinnier man as he trailed Drake out onto the drive. His breath curling past Drake’s left shoulder and the barrel of the gun felt on his spine.
“You have any idea where your father has gotten to?” he heard the skinny man say behind him.
“I don’t have a clue where my father went. I don’t think he planned on telling me, either.”
“That’s too bad,” the skinny man said. “We need your help on this but if you’re not willing, well, we can take this another way.”
“What way is that?”
“Any way we like,” the skinny man said. “But I don’t think your wife would like it very much.”
Drake shivered for a moment with the night air, the tremor going up his back in a wave and shaking his shoulders. Wind was coming off the lake and he smelled the minerals in the water. Cold as an incoming storm, the energy in the air charged with electricity.
The skinny man put the pistol to the nape of Drake’s neck and the barrel felt solid and heavy against the base of his skull.
No one spoke for a long time and Drake listened to the rain. The wind moved in the tops of the pines and the shadows at the edge of the clearing seemed to flutter with darkness.
Drake shuddered with the cold. He heard the big man come down off the porch now and he listened to the shuffle of the man’s weight on the gravel as he drew closer. “You get snow geese on this lake?” the big man asked, only a few feet behind.
Drake stood in the rain, getting soaked, feeling the water seep into his clothes and his skin bristle with the cold. The lake only a hundred yards away. His mind turning thoughts over like stones in an ancient dried-out riverbed, something lost beneath that he couldn’t find.
“Most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen,” the big man went on.
The thoughts in Drake’s head had come to a stop and it seemed there was nothing but silence waiting for him. He moved to turn. The house lights spread out along the gravel, the old glass jam jars Sheri had collected lined along the kitchen window.
“It’s a pity you can’t help us,” the skinnier man said. Drake heard the gravel shift for a second. A blinding pain at the base of his skull. The trees around him falling away, the house, the light, all shattering into pieces before everything went black.
DRAKE WOKE IN darkness, liquid and heavy around him. The cold tingling at his scalp and his whole body feeling weightless as a cloud, something tethered to his shirtfront holding him in stasis.
Fighting the darkness for air, he breathed in only water as his body flared and convulsed, aware finally of what surrounded him. The dull sound of rain above on the surface like hail on a roof fifty feet above.
He came up out of the water a man newly born. The thick hand of the big man held tight to Drake’s shoulder and the other to Drake’s chest. Water splashing the surface of the lake where he struggled and the early morning dark all around them.
There was a pain at the back of his head but he didn’t quite understand it. He felt turned around, beyond himself, not dead, but slowly dying. The big man let him breathe. On shore, standing below the bank of the lake road, he saw the other skinnier man through the rain, watching the two of them. The big man up to his thighs in the water and Drake on his back, his heels touching the silt at the bottom of the lake.
He was breathing hard with the shock of the water. His lungs constricted in his chest from the cold, one hand held to the underside of the big man’s arm, as if clutching a life preserver. “There’s something you’re…,” the skinnier man said from the shore. Drake felt himself pushed under. The big man’s hand pressed to his chest as he went down, fighting for air, his legs kicking at the muddied bottom of the lake, gripping at nothing but the soft detritus below. He came up gasping. “… not understanding, Deputy,” the skinnier man went on. “We’re looking for Patrick.”
“I don’t know anything,” Drake managed to say. He went under again. His eyes open, taking in the murky shape of the big man’s oval face above.