I grinned. Kelly must be his daughter. Despite all his tough talk and steroid-fueled size, Tank-Top Ray was a big teddy bear.
I parked fifty yards away, around the corner and out of sight. Then I handed Ray’s driver’s license to Amy. “You didn’t listen to your mother when she asked you to stay off Facebook,” I said. “Make sure you follow
my
instructions to the letter.”
She nodded.
“I love you and your mother very much, Amy.” I kissed her nose. “Never forget that.”
Closing the door, I walked away before I lost it.
I rounded the corner into Ray’s driveway and stopped next to his pickup. Taking a deep breath, I slapped his hood open-handed, making a resounding bang.
Curtains twitched behind the house’s windows.
“Get out here, Ray,” I yelled. “I want to give you your birthday present.”
The screen door banged open and Ray burst out into the yard, baseball bat in hand. His muscles bulged beneath his tank top—a green one this time. He looked scared, but furious, too.
“What do you want, you little motherfucker?” He pointed at the purple and black bruises coloring his face. “Doing
this
to me wasn’t enough for you?”
“I didn’t do that to you,” I said. “A bar top did. Seriously, Ray, take a look at the two of us”—I glanced at the bat in his hand—“and tell me you really need
that
.”
He tossed the bat aside and clenched his fists. “Get out of here right now, before I fuck you up so bad that you can’t even crawl away.”
I raised my guard and stepped closer.
“I didn’t fight fair last time,” I said. “I sucker-punched you. Then I slapped you around like a punk bitch, right in front of”—I grinned—“
everybody
, Ray. They all saw, but the cops wouldn’t do anything about it. Evan Peterson even
laughed
about it with me.”
I watched his face darken further and chuckled. “Guess they don’t like you very much. Must be some history there. But I bet it means you won’t call them, no matter
what
I do to you right now.”
“Are you crazy?” he shouted. “My family’s inside.”
“Your little girl is the reason I’m here,” I said, and that was all it took.
Ray snarled and swung on me like the undisciplined bar brawler he was. His arm came around in a huge, looping blow, aimed at my head—comically easy to step under and circle behind him, driving vicious jabs into both kidneys to drop him. But I didn’t do that. Instead, I brought my arms up in a half-speed, futile block and stepped into his punch.
I caught it with my face.
It sent me down on one knee, darkened my vision for a moment. Shaking my head, I pushed myself back up. My cheek was numb, but I could feel it swelling already. I laughed.
“Would your daughter like to have a playdate?” I asked, raising my fists.
He nailed me on the other side this time. I staggered but didn’t fall.
Ray was squeamish. If he really had wanted to finish me, he should have hit me in the same place again.
I
would have.
I stumbled toward him, throwing a weak cross and missing. He caught me in the nose this time. I felt the crunch of bone as it broke.
“What is
wrong
with you?” His breath sobbed in and out. But I was pleased to see he kept his body between me and the house, protecting his family.
I lunged for him and he hit me again, across the mouth, sending me onto to the ground.
“Stop it, Ray!” A woman’s voice shouted from the doorway. “This time they’ll put you away for sure. You won’t get to watch your daughter grow up. Get away from him
right now,
before you kill him.”
Blinking, lying in the dirt with one swollen eye nearly closed, I turned my head toward the doorway. I watched Ray’s wife hurry across the yard, wrap her arms around him from behind, and drag him away.
They stopped together on their doorstep. She kept a restraining hand on his shoulder while their heads bent together in urgent conversation that I couldn’t hear.
Looking her over, I liked what I saw—she carried herself with the same confidence and inner strength that Jen did. I had figured Ray’s wife would be strong. Someone would have to be, to housebreak a guy like Ray—or like me.
Leaving her husband at the door, she walked over to where I lay flat on my back, spitting bubbles of blood. Frowning, she stared down at me.
“What do you want from us?” she asked.
“I’m really sorry for what I did to him two weeks ago,” I said. “I know I can’t make up for that. But I need your help.”
“Go inside, Ray,” she called over her shoulder. “Bring some ice.”
“My little girl’s name is Amy,” I said. “She’s seven years old, and she’s around the corner, waiting in the car. I can’t let her see her father this way.”
“You’re a fucking piece of work,” she said. “You
knew
Ray couldn’t have this on his record. He’s
this
close to going away already.”
My whole face throbbed and hurt, filling with pressure as if I had a baseball glove stitched under my skin. Clearing my throat, I rolled onto my side and got up. Blood poured from my nose into the dirt.
“I know Ray’s a good father,” I said. “I won’t say anything to anyone. But my wife’s in the hospital, and I’m in bad trouble. My daughter needs a place to stay.”
“You want us to take care of your little girl?” she asked. “For how long?”
“Just a few days,” I said. “Until her mother is well enough to pick her up.”
• • •
Five minutes later, I sat in the bedroom holding my unused icepack in one hand, waiting out of sight while Ray’s wife, Margot, led my daughter through the house and out into the backyard. I stepped out into the hallway, hanging back to watch through the back door’s mosquito screen as Margot introduced Amy to her 3-year old daughter Kelly. I stayed in the shadowy hallway until Margot came back inside. Glancing at me as she passed, she went out in the driveway and had another stern conversation with Ray there, just outside of my earshot. I could see them through the open front door.
Ray threw a contemptuous glance in my direction, then crossed the yard to his truck and hopped in. Head high, he started the engine and pulled away.
Margot closed the front door and walked over to join me.
“I sent Ray to buy her a few clothes,” she said. “He’s not a bad person, you know. But men like Ray will always be boys. What you did out there…”
“Don’t tell him.”
“For the last two weeks, he’s been almost impossible to live with—moping around here, depressed, not sleeping, not eating. His friends call and he won’t go out with them.” She laid a hand on my arm. “I know you had your own reasons, and I can’t believe I’m saying this now, but… thank you.”
I nodded, returning my gaze to the back door, to watch Amy through the mesh. She was kneeling next to Kelly, sliding her sleeve up to show the younger girl her forearm. Kelly leaned forward eagerly, pointing at one of Amy’s Silly Bandz.
My daughter smiled, slid the charm bracelet off her wrist, and handed it to Kelly.
“Kelly’s three now?” I asked. “She needs a brother or sister, Margot. It would be good for Ray, too.”
I watched Kelly grab Amy’s hand, bouncing with excitement. Amy rose, letting Kelly pull her toward the jumpy house.
I swallowed. “I wish
we
had had another.”
Realizing her hand was still resting on my arm, Margot pulled it away and self-consciously crossed her arms. We stood shoulder to shoulder for a while in silence, watching our daughters play.
“The trouble you’re in?” she said. “It must be bad if doing something as crazy as
this
makes any kind of sense.”
“Tell Amy…” I started, and my throat closed, filling with the taste of blood. Unable to tear my eyes away from my daughter, I swallowed again, and managed a whisper. “Tell her I said to always listen to her mother.”
“Tell her yourself, next time you see her again.” Margot looked at my face, and her voice softened. She laid a reassuring hand on my arm. “Because you will.”
“Oh, I’m pretty hard to kill,” I said. “People have wanted me dead before, Margot. It hasn’t worked out real well for them. But what I’m facing now—it isn’t even
human
.”
I closed my eyes as the enormity of the truth descended on me at last.
“This time,” I said, “I don’t think I’m coming back.”
T
houghts of Jen and Amy filled my mind as I drove the barren, lonely stretch of 445 toward Sutcliffe. My head buzzed with all the things I should have said and done differently. Eight years’ worth of mistakes I would never have a chance to correct. All the moments in the future when I wouldn’t be there for them. The rest of their lives, which I wouldn’t be there with them to share.
My broken nose and battered face looked like hell, but the physical pain felt abstract and removed, the inconsequential buzz of a mosquito. It couldn’t begin to compete with the gaping black hole I felt inside.
I trusted my wife. Jen would always do what was right for Amy. Of all the mistakes I had made, I regretted most the things I had hidden from her—the
lies
I had told her. I should have had more faith in the people I loved. And Cassie, whom I also cared deeply about. But now it was too late.
The light of day was fading. The valley walls widened and fell away on each side. The time for regrets had passed. The cobalt expanse of Pyramid Lake spread in front of me, engulfing the horizon ahead in darkness.
To stand any chance of beating the inhuman monster waiting for me at the far side of the lake, I now needed to shed what little humanity I had.
Ignoring the small voice in my head that continued to bay in wordless grief, I dismissed the painful thoughts of my family, and found instead a cold, stinging numbness to enfold myself in.
As long as Frankenstein didn’t realize that I had rescued Amy, she and Jen were safe. And he would count on knowing I was hiding something from him, the moment he saw my face.
I glanced in the mirror and grinned, pleased with the swollen, unrecognizable Halloween mask that stared back. Ray had done the job perfectly. He couldn’t have done it better even if I had explained to him in detail exactly what I needed him to do for me.
Frankenstein wanted to interpret my microexpressions
now
? Good luck with that.
Looking at myself in the mirror now, I couldn’t even tell I was grinning.
• • •
Jay looked up as I burst through the glass doors of the Marina shop. “Trev, my broth—” His eyes widened. “Holy shit, bro.”
“My FZR key,” I barked. “
Now
.”
Jay’s gaze flicked to the Heckler & Koch AR-15 rifle slung across my back. His face fell, and my heart fell with it.
I liked Jay a lot. He and I had spent long hours on the water, him fishing for Lahontan cutthroats while I fed the regal pelicans. Seeing the unhappiness in his expression now, I felt another chunk of regret accumulate.
He shook his head. “You can’t come in here with a gun, looking all messed up like that, and ask me—”
Grabbing his ponytail, I yanked him forward and down, shoving his cheek against the counter hard enough to rattle the displays of fishing lures. I held him there with my elbow pressed against his broad shoulder, and felt another small bit of myself harden and die.
Leaning down kissing-close, I directed my words into his ear, speaking clearly and precisely so there could be no mistake.
“I. Wasn’t.
Asking.
”
• • •
Standing on the footboards, knees half bent to absorb the bounces, I faced into the wind as the Yamaha’s four-hundred-horsepower engine rocketed me at a hundred miles per hour across the silent, white-capped lake. The straps of the H & K’s sling were as tight as I could get them. They yanked against my shoulder and ribs as the wind fought to rip the rifle from my back. The steady pressure of air made my squinting eyes water and hurt my injured face. I wasn’t wearing a helmet. I hadn’t been able to fit it over my swollen cheekbones.
At the terminus of the lake, far ahead in the darkness, waited an opponent more terrible than any I had ever faced: a monster version of myself. Frankenstein was smarter, stronger, and crueler. More brutal, more imaginative, and infinitely more remorseless than I could ever be. I was facing my own darkened mirror image. He was Trevor 2.0, upgraded in infallible silicon and unbreakable steel, possessed of all the characteristics that made
me
such a dangerous opponent, but having none of my human weaknesses to exploit.
My heart was filled with dread at the prospect of facing my own monstrous creation, but I had no choice. Frankenstein wanted something from me, and until he broke me he would never stop going after my family. My daughter and wife would never be safe.
To imagine I could defeat Frankenstein—my better in every way—was an insane delusion. Only a psychopath could believe otherwise. But I felt no real fear, because I knew I couldn’t lose.
Maybe destroying the monster I had created
was
impossible. I didn’t hold out much hope of accomplishing it, but that was okay. To protect my family, I didn’t actually have to
beat
Frankenstein.
All I had to do was die.
The dark bulk of Anaho Island loomed ahead. The few stolen hours of happiness I had spent there with Cassie were a distant memory, vestiges of a life I had already left behind forever. But I had failed Jen by being unfaithful—failed my family yet again. I would not fail them now.
As I passed the island, a vast flock of big, ghostly winged shapes flapped into the air on all sides, rising from water and land alike with slow-motion grace. Disturbed by the roar of my Waverunner’s engine, North America’s largest colony of white pelicans filled the sky around me. I felt my heart lift as they wheeled above me to follow. Nature’s own grim white squadron, the descendants of dinosaurs, escorting me into battle now to match themselves against the cloud of black, razor-edged OctoRotors that Frankenstein would command.