The storm raged.
He was alone in the middle of the lake.
55
Blue Dog staggered back two steps, colliding into the opposite wall. A set of metal shelves collapsed under his weight, and debris clattered to the floor around him. Someone else climbed inside the shanty with them and shut the door. For an instant, the darkness was so complete again that Serena felt as if she were wearing a mask, but then the overhead bulb lit up, and even the pale light was enough to make her close her eyes and turn away.
When she blinked, she saw Lauren Erickson with a shotgun nestled against her right shoulder, pointed at Blue Dog's head. The gun looked oversized in her small arms, but she held the barrel steady and straight.
Lauren's eyes flicked to Serena and lingered. Her mouth was tight with anger and something that might have been guilt or regret. She turned back to Blue Dog, who was clenching his wrecked shoulder with his other hand. His wound was a mess of bone, muscle, and blood.
"You stupid son of a bitch," Lauren snapped. "You had the money. You could have left the city, and everything would have been perfect."
"It was never about money." He nodded his head at Serena. "Me and her, we have a history together."
Serena interrupted them, her voice calm and firm. "Lauren, cut me loose."
Blue Dog jabbed a finger at Lauren's face. "You know you can't do that. If she walks out the door, everything comes out."
"Lauren, I don't care what you've done," Serena told her. "Look at me. Look at me. You could never be a part of something like this."
Lauren stared at Serena tied to the cot. Naked. Her body streaked with blood. "I'm sorry you're in the middle of this," she told her.
"It's not worth it, Lauren," Serena said. "It doesn't matter what you did. We can work it out."
Lauren shook her head. "We're way beyond that."
She shoved the twin barrels of the shotgun into the skin of Blue Dog's forehead.
"Lauren, do not pull that trigger," Serena insisted. "Don't do it. Once you do that, you can't go back. Just call the police. He's the one they want. You can work out a deal."
Lauren took a half-step backward.
Blue Dog's lungs rattled as he laughed. "A deal? You think you can cut a deal? Not after you killed Tanjy."
Serena closed her eyes and swore silently to herself.
"Shut up," Lauren hissed.
"Don't you want Serena to know what an ice-cold bitch you are?" Blue Dog said. He grinned at Serena. "I told Lauren all about Dan's affair. All about Tanjy's rape fantasies. All the sick things they did together. I even had the photos. I just wanted money to keep it quiet, but Lauren here had a better idea."
"Shut up," Lauren repeated.
"She paid me to keep Dan's ass out of the papers, and then she paid me even more. She hired me."
Serena saw a primal horror in Lauren's eyes. The small space swayed as the gales outside pounded the walls. It got even colder.
"To do what?" Serena asked, but she had begun to put it all together.
"To rape Tanjy Powell," Blue Dog said. "She didn't just want to break up Tanjy and Dan. She wanted this bitch destroyed. So that's what I did."
"Oh, my God," Serena murmured.
"She was a twisted little whore," Lauren said, spitting out the words.
"Yeah, and Dan couldn't get enough of her wet, wild pussy, could he? But you fixed that." Blue Dog's grin came back. "Then Tanjy called and said she knew who raped her. That scared the shit out of you, didn't it? If Tanjy knew about me, then she'd find out about you, too."
"Stop it!" Lauren shouted.
"But you knew what to do, didn't you? I bet when you swung that flashlight into the back of her head, you fucking well had the biggest orgasm of your life."
Lauren was lost in what she had done, trembling, furious. The shotgun sagged in her hands. She didn't see Blue Dog moving on the floor, his right hand reaching and scrabbling on the ground behind him. Serena shouted a warning, but Lauren didn't understand and didn't see Blue Dog as his hand emerged from behind his back with Serena's gun. He grinned and fired, grinned and fired, two shots in two seconds, both in and out, one that drilled a tunnel through the flesh of Lauren's elegant neck and one that broke through her collarbone with an audible crack.
Blue Dog came off the floor, his left arm frozen, his movements slow. Lauren turned to run, but her feet were clumsy, like a clown's. He towered over her from behind. Blue Dog wrapped his forearm around Lauren's neck and lifted her bodily off the ground. She flapped like a doll, and she swung the shotgun up as she struggled to free herself. Her eyes bulged out, and she formed an O with her mouth in a silent scream of agony. Blue Dog held Lauren in an iron grip, squeezing the life out of her.
Her finger was on the trigger. Serena followed the wild gyrations of the barrel with horror and found it pointed directly at her chest. She cringed and tried to twist away, but there was nowhere to go, no way to escape. She watched Lauren's finger, which was in near constant spasm, and she could actually see the trigger begin to move. She sucked in a breath but didn't close her eyes. Then the gun was gone, pointed at the ceiling, at the walls, at the door. Lauren kicked and flailed. Blue Dog spun her around, and the gun came up again, aimed at the rear wall now, away from Serena. This time the barrel coughed up a second shell. The recoil jolted them both backward, and Lauren fell from Blue Dog's grasp. The thunder of the explosion made the cot rise up off the floor.
The shell rocketed through the space.
It blew a hole through the metal siding.
With a sharp and terrible ping, like a note played on a badly tuned piano, it punctured the tank of propane gas mounted behind the shanty.
Stride held up his gloved hands in front of his face but could barely see them. He was a yeti, matted with heavy snow, slogging through the drifts on the lake, fighting the headwind that bit at his skin. His long gray scarf was wrapped around his head and ears and then tied around his face and neck. Snow crusted over it and froze. Ice balls dangled from his eyelids. His leather jacket hung stiffly, like cardboard. When he stopped and listened, he heard only the incessant roar of the white banshee and wondered who she was saying would die tonight, whether it would be Serena, or himself, or both of them.
He squinted at the horizon. Once, he thought he saw the tree-lined shore as the storm briefly lifted, but since then, he could have been walking in circles. His footsteps disappeared almost as soon as he made them. He could have been crossing the same tracks, marching himself into the ground in a kind of Möbius strip that went around and around without ever ending.
He almost collided with the shanty before he saw it. When the invading snow soared upward again, he realized he was in the midst of a community towed out to the middle of the inlet, within spitting distance of the forest. He looked for light and didn't see any. He wondered where Maggie was and how close she was to this spot and what she thought when she kept dialing his number and he didn't answer. His phone was at the bottom of the lake.
A rumble of thunder washed over him like a wave. But not thunder. It was a shotgun blast. He spun around, trying to ascertain where the shot originated. He looked for vehicles but made out only ivory mountains.
One hundred yards away, a fish house exploded. The night turned to day, and a willowy cloud of fire roared fifty feet into the air.
Stride ran.
56
An instant later, the tin shack became a holocaust.