Die a Stranger (24 page)

Unless …

“We’re close now,” she said. “Slow down.”

Unless he follows the same general plan that I did. Take a look around at the main street, register the fact that everybody seems to know everybody else. Then start fishing. All you have to do is walk into that post office and you’ll be one big step closer.

“I said slow down!”

I hit the brakes, not quite hard enough to send her flying but I heard her give out a little yelp of surprise.

“You want to die right now?” she said. “Turn into this driveway.”

I made the turn. There was an empty driveway leading to a nice little summer house. The trees were thick on either side of the house, but I could see the lake through the branches. I could gun it right now, I thought. Make it through that one gap in the trees and I’d be in the lake before she could even think twice. She’d shoot me for sure, but at least she’d probably drown a few minutes later.

“Right here is fine,” she said. “In case you’re wondering, the houses on either side of us are empty right now. I could shoot this thing as many times as I want and nobody would notice.”

Not exactly true, I thought. If you shoot outside, they’ll hear it halfway around the island. If you shoot it inside, you’ll still get people all up and down the street looking up from their papers and wondering what the hell just happened. Of course, maybe she knows that and she’s just saying it for my benefit. Somehow, I didn’t think it would be worth calling her bluff.

“Take the key out of the ignition and toss it back to me,” she said when we were stopped.

“I assume you want me to put it in Park first.”

“Watch the mouth,” she said. “Yes, put it in Park.”

I took it out of gear, turned the vehicle off, and tossed her the key.

“Now open your door, but stay seated.”

I opened the door. She got out behind me and came up next to the side mirror. My door wasn’t all the way open, so for one instant I thought about kicking it right into her, but she took a step backward before I could even try it. She kept taking quick looks behind her, as if expecting someone to come out of the house.

“Get out and put your hands on your head,” she said. “You leave them there until I say otherwise. You got that?”

I didn’t bother answering. I got out of the car and stood in the sunlight, with my hands on my head like some kind of prisoner of war. In a way, maybe that’s exactly what I was.

“Turn and walk to the house. Nice and easy. You keep cooperating, you stay alive.”

The first positive thing she’d said, I thought. The first ray of hope.

“Harry!” she yelled. “Where the hell are you?”

There was no answer from the house.

“God damn him. Just keep walking. Go all the way onto the back porch.”

There were stairs leading up to the side door, and that same landing wrapped around to the rest of the porch. I went up the stairs, looking for some advantage, something I could use to knock the gun from her hand, or at least to use as a shield. But she was being way too careful.

As we turned the corner, I saw two men sitting there on the porch. They were both in their twenties, one of them long and lean, the other shorter and heavier. They were both wearing long shorts and elaborate tennis shoes and nothing else. The shirtless look did a lot more for the lean guy than the heavy guy, but either way it was like a visual battle of the tattoos. Between the two of them, they must have been carrying around ten square feet of ink.

“Sugarpie and Dumpling,” the woman said. “Get the hell up and take care of this fool for me.”

It took a few seconds for the two men to process what they were seeing. The joint they were sharing probably didn’t help any. When it finally broke through that a stranger was standing on the deck and that Jo was pointing a gun at his back, they jumped up out of the chairs and grabbed me by each arm. The joint got put down in the ashtray and there it lay, still smoking, filling the porch with a dull haze.

“I didn’t say pull him apart,” she said. “Just sit him down there.”

They did as they were told, planting me in the chair and standing over me like they both expected me to try something. Even though one had a few inches on me and the other about eighty pounds.

“Who is he?” the tall guy said, looking down at me with his hands clenched. “What the hell’s he doing here?”

“We’re still trying to figure that out,” she said. “Where the hell is Harry, anyway?”

“He’s not back yet.”

“Not back from where?”

They both sneaked a look at her and then at each other.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “Are you seriously telling me that Harry went out there by himself?”

“He had a lot of money with him,” the heavy one said. “I guess he doesn’t trust us.”

“What were you gonna do, Dumpling?” she said, going over to the heavy man and squeezing his cheek. She literally squeezed his cheek like he was five years old, and at the same time she solved forever the mystery of who was Sugarpie and who was Dumpling. “Did he think you were gonna run off with the money or something?”

“Apparently that was the general suspicion, yes.”

“God damn,” she said, turning to the other one. Sugarpie, apparently. “And you just let him go on with this foolishness? You let him go all the way out there by himself? What, like ten miles of open water?”

“What was I supposed to do?” the tall one said. “He had his mind made up. You know how he is.”

“He’s an idiot is how he is. God damn both of you. You should have tied him up right here on this porch, like this guy. Which by the way I notice you haven’t done yet.”

“I’ll go get the zip ties,” Dumpling said. He bounded off the deck and down the stairs. That left me with just Sugarpie hovering over me, balancing on the balls of his feet and extending his hands out in front of him like we were about to wrestle.

The woman went to the railing of the deck and looked out onto the lake. She still had the gun, and she was still too far away for me to make a move for it. Especially with Sugarpie watching me.

I turned my head to look out at the lake. It was a beautiful view, I’ll say that much. There was a path leading down from the house, through the wildflowers surrounding the trees. Out on the water, the sunlight was dancing in every ripple. The shoreline itself was rough and unforgiving, but for me that would have made this place even better. No docks, no boats, no noise beyond the light breeze tickling the wind chimes hanging in the corner. On any other day, this would have been the best place in the world to be.

Today, well, maybe it was just the perfect place to spend my last hours on earth.

“Eyes straight ahead,” she said without looking at me. “Sugarpie, keep a lid on our guest, will you?”

He went to grab my hair, but I dodged my head out of the way. He responded to that by smacking me across the face.

“You don’t have to beat him to death,” she said. “Just keep a lid on him.”

He folded his arms and stared down at me with a sick little smile.

“It’s not like he could have gotten lost,” she said, turning back to the water. “It’s impossible, right? Even for him.”

“That’s right, Jo. I’m sure he’s okay.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he’s okay,” she said, speaking more to herself now than to anyone else. “There’s no way anything could have gone wrong.”

We spent another couple of minutes this way, as she stood there watching the lake, rocking back and forth in her sandals. Finally, the sound of a motor began to cut through the breeze. It was coming from the lake. A boat.

No, not a boat. As it got closer, I could hear that the motor was in a higher register. It was a small craft, probably a jet ski. Which made sense because you sure as hell weren’t about to dock a boat down on that rocky shoreline.

In my peripheral vision, I saw her whole body language change as she watched someone dock whatever it was he was driving or riding, and then she followed his progress up the trail to the house. I was interpreting everything through her face, because it was all happening behind me, but she was obviously relieved and for one quick moment I could almost even see her smiling.

“What the hell were you thinking?” she screamed at him as soon as he was close enough to hear her. So much for smiling.

“That was the worst ride of my life,” the voice said from behind me. “I’d like to see you go try it.”

“You had me worried half to death, you idiot.”

“Hey, I got back here as fast as I could! The currents were a lot stronger than I thought, so just get off my back, okay?”

I heard steps on the stairs and then the man himself, Harry, came around the corner, onto the back deck. He was dressed in a wet suit, and his hair was slicked back against his head. He was bald on top, but he was one of those guys who tries to make up for it by growing it as long as possible on the sides. Whether he tried to comb it over or not, I couldn’t say, because now he just looked like a half-drowned rat.

He might have been older, but he processed the situation a lot quicker than Sugarpie and Dumpling had.

“Who the hell is this?” he said, nodding at me. “What’s going on?”

“He’s been looking for us,” she said calmly. “He was asking about us, all over town.”

“What are you talking about? How was he looking for us? How did he end up here? How did he…”

His brain overloaded about then and he couldn’t speak any more. He just kept looking at his wife, then me, then Sugarpie, then back at his wife. All the while he continued to drip water onto the nice wooden deck.

“I thought he must be working for Corvo,” she said. “I thought maybe we were getting double-crossed or something.”

“What, you mean sending one of his men out here? Are you serious?”

He came closer to me, bending down a bit to look closer at me like I was some kind of exotic animal.

“Is that what this is?” he said to me. “Is this the old double-cross, Corvo-style?”

He straightened up and looked at his wife before I could answer. Then he bent down again. He was dripping water on my shoes now.

“I did everything he told us to do,” the man said. “The Indians are out in the boat, along with the money.”

That got me to the edge of my chair. Sugarpie knocked me back with one long arm and then he put his hands on my shoulders. If the railing hadn’t been behind me, he would have turned the chair over with me in it.

“Stay right there,” Jo said, pointing the gun at my head. “You try that again and I’ll kill you.”

“Are you talking about Vinnie and Buck?” I said. “God damn it, where are they?”

“He doesn’t work for Corvo,” she said to her husband. “There’s no way.”

“I don’t know,” Harry said. “Why else would he be here?”

“Look at him. He’s too old, for one thing. And he’s not all pumped up on steroids.”

“I don’t care who sent him,” Harry said. “He’s still trouble. He could have messed up everything.”

“Relax,” she said. “We’ll be out of here on the next ferry, remember? We’ll be long gone by tonight.”

“What, you mean just leave the boat out there?”

“It’s a piece of crap,” she said. “And it’s not even ours.”

“Vinnie LeBlanc and Buck Carrick,” I said, my head still pushed back onto the rough wood of the railing. “They came to the island with you, right?”

She looked at me, deep in thought.

“Who are you, really?” she said. “Tell me the truth.”

“My name is Alex. I’m a friend of Vinnie’s. I came here looking for Vinnie and his cousin. I swear to God, if you’ve done anything to them…”

She didn’t bother to laugh at that. She gave Sugarpie a little nod and he pulled the chair back up. He kept one hand on my shoulder, just in case.

“Did you come alone?” she said. “No, wait, that person who called you…”

I hesitated over that one, trying to decide which was better, the truth or a lie. I settled on a little of both.

“I’m not alone,” I said. “I’ve got five other people on the island with me. You’ll never get away, believe me.”

“Where were all of your friends when I found you at the dock?”

“They were on the ferry. I flew over separately and I was waiting for them. By now, they’re all over the island. Five men, all looking for me. And for you. They know everything about you.”

“That’s a lie.”

“All we want is Vinnie and Buck,” I said. “You give them to us and you walk away.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry to tell you,” Harry said, “but you’re a little too late for that.”

“Harry, shut up,” the woman said.

“I’m not shutting up, Jo. Don’t tell me to shut up.”

“Just be quiet for one second so we can think this through.”

“There’s nothing to think about. We made our deal and now we can get the hell out of here.”

A phone rang. They looked at each other until finally she remembered my cell phone in her pocket. She took it out and opened it.

“This time it’s a 313 number,” she said. “That’s Detroit.”

It took me a second to figure it out. Then it came to me. It was Janet Long, returning my call from this morning. An actual FBI agent on the phone, but a hell of a lot of good it would do me now.

“Now I
know
he doesn’t work for Corvo,” Harry said, taking the cell phone from her. “I mean, look at this thing.”

He tossed it to Sugarpie, who looked at it with wonder, like an archaeologist examining a dinosaur bone. When he was done, he dropped it onto the table, next to the ashtray.

“That’s one more of my friends,” I said, trying to put a little edge into it now, like this was just an inconvenience to me, something that happened all the time. “They must be all over the place by now. Maybe even right outside. I tell you, all you gotta do is give us Vinnie and Buck. We have no interest in you at all.”

“And I told you it’s too late,” Harry said.

His wife reached over and gave him a little cuff on the cheek. Not quite a slap, but a hell of a lot stronger than a love tap.

“Ow,” he said. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

“Take off those wet clothes,” she said. “Then get your ass into the house. We have to talk about this.”

“What about him?” the man said, nodding at me.