The Dark Tide Free for a Limited Time (20 page)

His side was on fire.

His neck was swollen twice its size. He could barely swallow.

Every time he breathed, his ribs ached like he’d been through ten rounds with a heavy weight. His chest was covered with a bright red welt.

He didn’t know what he had done.

He’d gone back in and grabbed the papers he’d copied out of the copier. Then he headed to his car.

As he drove back, Hauck’s first thoughts centered on Jessica—how lucky he was just to be alive.

Stupid, Ty, just plain stupid.
He tried to size up the situation. Everything he’d done had been outside his jurisdiction. Breaking into Dietz’s house. Taking in his gun. Not informing the local authorities. And Hodges…he would live. But, Hauck realized, that wouldn’t be the half of it. Dietz would know—and so would whoever he worked for. This thing could explode. Of course, they had no way to know he was doing this on his own. Or, the thought calmed him slightly, that Karen was in any way involved.

That was the only fucking thing about any of this that was good.

It took him over three hours to drive back home. He got back in the early afternoon. He threw himself on his couch in exhaustion and examined his side, his head rolled back, trying to make sense of what he had done. He had broken laws. A shitload of them. He had put Karen in danger. The oaths he had taken in his life, to uphold the law, to do the right thing, they were all pretty much shattered now.

Hauck peeled off his bloodstained clothes and tossed them in a ball in the pantry. Just lifting his arms made him feel incredibly sore. The gash on his side had caked with blood, the skin torn where Hodges had slashed him. Bright red welts were all over his neck and chest. He looked in the mirror and winced. He didn’t know if he needed medical attention. His head was heavy. He just wanted to sleep. He felt alone. For the first time in his life, he didn’t know what to do.

He eased himself back onto the couch. There was just one person he could think of to call.

“Ty…?”

“Karen, listen, I need you,” he huffed. “Up here.” It was more of a plea than a statement. He caught his breath and sucked in air.

“Ty, are you all right?”
Karen’s voice was alarmed. “I was worried. I tried calling you. You didn’t answer.”

“Karen, something happened…. Just come on up. Please.” In close to a daze, he told her where he lived.

“I’m on my way. You don’t sound good, Ty. You’re scaring me. Just tell me, is there anything you need?”

“Yeah.” He exhaled, his head falling back. “Disinfectant. And a whole lot of gauze.”

H
AUCK STAGGERED TO
the door when he heard her knock. In a pair of gym shorts and a robe to conceal his wounds. He grinned,
pale, his expression saying something like,
I’m really sorry for getting you into this.
Then he sort of leaned into her.

She looked at him, horrified. “What the hell’s happened, Ty?”

“I found Dietz’s place. I staked it out all night. I didn’t think anyone was there. This morning I went in.”

“He was there?”

“No.” Hauck took the bag of medical supplies he’d requested out of her hands—disinfectant, tape, and gauze. He stepped back over to the couch with a bit of a limp, eased himself down. “Hodges was, though.”

Her eyes screwed up. “Hodges?”

“He was the other witness at AJ Raymond’s hit-and-run. I guess they were in this together. Partners.”

“Together in what?”

That was when Karen’s gaze focused on the welts on Hauck’s neck, and she gasped. “
My God, Ty, what have you done?
” She drew back the collar of his terry robe, eyes wide, gently running her fingers across the bruised skin, inspecting the torn knuckles, aghast, carefully taking his hands in hers.

“This side’s worse.” Hauck shrugged, guiltily, letting his robe fall open to reveal the matted blood and tracks of torn flesh underneath his arm.

“Oh, my God!
”

“It was all set up,” he said, trying to explain. “Abel Raymond. Lauer. Those accidents, they were hits. Dietz and Hodges killed them both. To cover it all up.”

“What!?”
There was a pall of confusion on Karen’s face, but also something deeper—
fear
, knowing that somehow what he wasn’t totally divulging related back to her. That Charlie was involved.

“What happened to Hodges?” she asked, grabbing the disinfectant and ripping open the box of gauze.

His expression was stonelike. “Hodges was shot, Karen.”

“Shot?
” She put the things back down, the color draining from her face. “Dead…?”

“No. At least I don’t think so.”

He told her everything. How he had gone inside the house figuring it was safe, and how Hodges came in, surprising him, in Dietz’s office. How they’d struggled, Hodges slashing him with the horn, clamping the iron poker across his neck, how Hauck thought he was dying. How he’d shot Hodges.

“Oh, my God, Ty…”
Karen’s eyes were wide and empathetic. The consternation on her face had turned to real fear. “What did the police say? It has to be self-defense, right? He was trying to kill you, Ty.”

Hauck kept his gaze trained on her. “I didn’t call in the police, Karen.”

She blinked.
“What…?”

“I had no right to be there, Karen. The whole thing was illegal from the start. I didn’t have a warrant. There isn’t an open case against them. I’m not even on goddamn duty, Karen.”

“Ty…”
Karen’s hand shot to her mouth as she started to realize the situation. “You can’t just pretend this didn’t happen. You shot someone.”

“This man tried to kill me, Karen! You want me to call the police? Don’t you understand? Your husband was in bed with these people, Karen. Dietz, Hodges. When Charlie left Grand Central that morning, he made his way up to Greenwich. He stole the credit card off of someone who died on the tracks. There was a call to AJ Raymond, Karen, from the diner across the street. Charlie made that call, Karen. Your husband. Either he was directly involved in the murder of AJ Raymond or he damn well helped set it up.”

“Charlie…?”
Karen shook her head. “You can’t think Charlie’s some kind of killer, Ty. No.
Why?
”

“To cover up what Raymond’s father stumbled onto in Pensacola. That they were falsifying shipments of oil in one of the companies Charlie controlled.”

Karen shook her head again defiantly.

“It’s true. Have you ever heard of Dolphin Oil, Karen? Or something called Falcon Partners?”

“No.”

“They’re subsidiaries, owned by his company. Harbor. Offshore. You want me to call in the police, Karen? If I do, they’re going to issue an immediate warrant for his arrest. There are ample grounds—fraud, money laundering, conspiracy to commit murder. Is that what you want me to do, Karen? To you
and
your family? Call in the police? Because that’s what’s going to happen.”

Karen put a hand to her forehead and shook her head reflexively. “I don’t know.”

“Charlie was tied to them. Through the investment companies he controlled. Through Dietz. He’s tied in to both murders, Karen—”

“I don’t believe it! You can’t expect me to believe my husband’s a murderer, Ty!”

“Look!”
Hauck reached over and grabbed the papers he had taken from Dietz’s office and put them in front of her face. “His name is all over the place. Two people are dead, Karen. And now you have to listen to me and make a decision, because there may be more. This guy Dietz, he’s looking for Charlie, too. I don’t know who the hell he is or who he’s working for, but he’s out there, Karen, and somehow he knows Charlie’s alive, just like we do, and he’s searching for him, too—I found the trail! Maybe they’re trying to shut him up, I don’t know. But I guarantee you if he finds him, Karen, before we do, it won’t be to tearfully look him in the eyes and ask how he could’ve possibly done this to you.”

Karen nodded haltingly, a tremor of confusion rattling her. Hauck reached over and took her hand. He wrapped his fingers around her tightened fist.

“So you tell me, Karen, is that what you really want me to do? Call in the police? Because the police
are
involved.
I’m
involved.
And after today, with what’s happened, I can’t just reverse the clock and go back empty-handed anymore.”

Her eyes were filled, tears reflecting in them. “He’s the father of my kids. You don’t know how many times I’ve wanted to kill him myself, but what you’re telling me…a murderer? No, I won’t believe it till I hear it from him.”

“I’ll find him for you, Karen. I promise I will. But just be sure that with what’s happened now, these people know I’m onto them. We’re in it now. If that’s something you don’t think you can face—and I’d understand it if it was—now’s the time to say so.”

Karen looked down. Hauck felt a finger wrap around his hand, her pinkie, cautious and tremulous. It squeezed. There was a frightened look in her eyes, but behind it something deeper, a twinkling of resolve. She looked at him and shook her head again.

“I want you to find him, Ty.”

Her face dipped, ever so slightly, close to his, her hair tumbling against his cheek. Her breath was close and halting. Their knees touched. Hauck felt his blood spark alive as the side of her breast brushed his arm. Their lips could have touched right there. It would have taken only a nudge, and she would have folded into him—and a part of him wanted her to, a strong part, but another part said no. The hair on his arms tingled as he listened to her breathe.

“You knew this all along,” she said to him. “About Charlie. That this led back to him. You held it back from me.”

“I didn’t want you to be any more hurt until I was sure.”

She nodded. She locked her fingers inside his hand. “He wouldn’t kill anyone, Ty. I don’t care how foolish it makes me look. I know him. I lived with him for close to twenty years. He’s the father of my kids. I know.”

“So what do you want to do?”

Karen gently eased open Hauck’s robe. He tensed. She ran her
fingers along his chest. She reached for the bag of liniment she had brought. “I want to take a look at that wound.”

“No,” he said, catching her hand. “You know what I meant.”

She held a moment, their hands still touching.

“I want to hear from his lips what he’s done, why he walked away from us, from almost twenty years of marriage, his family. I want to find him, Ty. Find Charles. Something came up while you were down there.
I think I may know how
.”

It was the car.

She had already been through everything two times over, just as Ty had asked. Still, while he was down in Jersey, she felt she had to do something. To keep from worrying.

So Karen tore through Charlie’s things all over again—the old bills, the stacks of receipts he’d left in his closet, the papers on his desk. Even the sites he’d visited on his computer before he “died.”

A wild-goose chase, she told herself. Just like the one before.

Except this time some things came up. A file buried deep in his desk, hidden under a pile of legal papers. A file Karen had never noticed before. From before Charlie died. Things she didn’t understand.

A small note card still in its envelope—addressed to Charles. The kind that accompanied a gift of flowers. Karen opened it, a little hesitantly, and saw it was written in a hand she didn’t recognize.

It stopped her.

Sorry about the pooch.
Karen saw that her hands were shaking. Whoever wrote it had to be talking about Sasha. And what did that possibly mean, that the kids could be next?

Their kids
…

Suddenly Karen felt a tightness in her chest.
What had these people done?

And then, in that same hidden-away file, she came across one of the holiday cards they’d sent as a family before Charlie had died. The four of them sitting on a wooden fence at a field near their ski house in Vermont. A happy time.

She opened it.

She almost threw up.

The kids’ faces, Samantha and Alexander—
they had both been cut out
.

Karen covered her face with her hands and felt her cheeks flush with blood.

“What the hell is happening here, Charlie?” She stared at the card.
What the hell were you involved in? What were you doing to us, Charlie?
All of a sudden, the incident in Samantha’s car at school came hurtling back to Karen, her heart starting to race. Accusingly. She got up from the desk. She wanted to hit something. She touched her hand to her face. Looked around the room.

His room
.

“Talk to me, Charlie, you bastard, talk to me!”

And then her eyes seemed to fall on it.

Amid the clutter of papers and prospectuses and sports magazines she had still never quite cleared from his office.

The stack. The neatly piled stack Charlie kept on the bookshelf. Every issue. A sure-as-hell fire hazard, Karen always called it. His little dream collection, dating back since he’d first acquired his toy, eight years earlier.

Mustang World.

She went over to it—the stack of magazines piled high. She picked up one or two, the thought now forming in her brain.

This was it!
The one thing about him he could never change. No matter what name he was under. Or who he was now.

Or where.

His stupid car.
Charlie’s Baby
. He read about the damn things in his spare time, checked out the prices, chatted about them online. They always joked how it was a part of him. His mistress that Karen just had to put up with. She called it Camilla, as in Camilla and Charles. Better than Camilla, Charlie always joked. “Better-looking, too.”

Mustang World.

He constantly put the car up for sale, then never sold it. In the summer he drove it in rallies. Monitored the online sites. She didn’t understand what these cards she’d found were about. They scared her. She didn’t know for sure what he’d done.

“But that’s the way,” Karen said to Hauck as she went to dress his wounds now.

She reached into her bag and dropped a copy of the magazine on the table.
Mustang World.

“That’s how we find him, Ty.
Charlie’s Baby
.”