The Wild Zone (31 page)

“Go to hell.” What exactly had Jeff told this cretin?
Jeff isn’t exactly Mr. Discreet,
he heard Kristin say.

“What was her name again? The one who got you thrown out of Princeton?”

“Okay, that’s enough.” Surely his brother hadn’t told Tom about Amy.

“Abigail? Annie? Oh, I know. Amy!”

He should have known better than to confide in his brother.

“You can bet Jeff wouldn’t have let somebody else walk off with his girl,” Tom taunted. “He’d have fucked her front, back, and sideways, and trust me, when Jeff fucks a girl, she stays fucked.”

“Like Lainey?” Will said, striking back without thinking.

“What?”

“Did Jeff fuck your wife front, back, and sideways? Did she stay fucked?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about Jeff and Lainey,” Will shouted, the words pouring from his mouth like water from a busted tap. He wanted to stop them but he couldn’t. They just kept coming. “What’s the matter, Tom? You had no idea your best friend was screwing your wife?”

“You lying piece of shit.”

“You asked what she was doing here the other day. What do you think she was doing here?”

The words hit Tom right between the eyes and he spun around, almost as if he’d been shot, before bursting into tears and collapsing to the floor.

Will stared at the crumpled heap in front of him, knowing this time he’d gone too far. “Go home, Tom,” he said, his head pounding. “You look exhausted. Get some sleep. You’re right. I’m full of shit. There’s nothing going on with Lainey and Jeff. I made it up. I swear. . . .”

But Tom was already clambering to his feet and vaulting toward the door, his gun out and in his hand. “Son of a bitch,” he was crying. “I’ll kill you, you miserable son of a bitch.”

“Tom, put the gun away,” Will yelled after him.

Tom stopped abruptly. Then he turned and pointed the Glock .23 directly at Will’s head. “Stay right where you are, little brother,” he said. “You aren’t invited to this party.”

Then he was gone.

THIRTY-ONE

“W
ILL
,
CALM DOWN,” KRISTIN
was saying. “I can’t make out a thing you’re saying.” She cast a wary glance at her boss, who was monitoring her conversation from down the hall and was noticeably unhappy with all the “emergency” calls she’d been receiving tonight. First, Jeff had phoned with an update—Suzy was still sleeping; everything was under control; he’d managed to get ahold of Tom. Now Will was on the line, babbling incoherently about Tom and Lainey and God only knew what else. “Will,” she said again. “You have to slow down, tell me exactly what happened.” She listened incredulously as Will repeated the particulars of his altercation with Tom. Shit, she thought, leaning her forehead against the wall, feeling it cool against her skin. Trust men to make everything so bloody complicated. “No. Don’t call the police,” she whispered, covering her mouth with her hand so that her boss wouldn’t hear. “You’ll only get Jeff in trouble. I’ll call him and tell him what happened. He knows how to handle Tom. No. Stay where you are. Don’t do anything. Please, let me deal with this. Okay? Promise me you’ll stay put.”

Kristin hung up the phone, then turned to smile sweetly at her boss. “Just one more call, Joe. Then I’m done.” She stopped short of promising, leaving the broken promises to the men of this world. Men like Will, who promised he’d stay put when they both knew he wouldn’t. Men like Jeff, who promised everything was under control when it was anything but. Men like Norman, who’d promised she’d like the taste of his huge, unwieldy tongue inside her small, vulnerable mouth. Men like Ron, who’d told her she’d enjoy it as he tore away her virginity. So much for promises, Kristin thought, pulling a crumpled business card out of her bra and checking the number. Good thing she hadn’t thrown it away, she decided as she stabbed at the numbers with her long burgundy fingernails.

The phone was picked up in the middle of the first ring. “This is Dr. Bigelow,” the voice barked, impatient already.

“Dave?” Kristin asked, surprised by the quiver in her voice. Can I really do this? she was thinking.

“Who is this?”

“It’s Kristin, the bartender from the Wild Zone.”

“Is my wife there?” Dave asked without further preamble, clearly not in the mood for games.

“No.” Kristin took a deep breath, steadying herself against the wall with the palm of her hand. “But I know where she is.”

Silence.

“She’s at the Southern Comfort Motel, up by the airport,” Kristin continued unprompted, her voice gaining strength as the words tumbled from her mouth. “Room 119.”

WILL STOOD IN
the middle of the living room, not moving, Kristin’s heartfelt pleas ringing in his ear.
Stay where you are. Don’t do anything. Promise me you’ll stay put.

Except how could he just stay in the apartment and do nothing? His careless lies had put a match to Tom’s notoriously short fuse, and now Tom was on his way to the motel, not to help Jeff with his plan but to carry out a murderous plan of his own. So how could he just stay there and do nothing?

Again Will thought of notifying the police, but Kristin had warned him that calling them would only get Jeff in more trouble, and she was probably right, as she was right about most things. His brother was in enough trouble, thanks to him. He thought of phoning Jeff to warn him about Tom, but how could he ever explain the awful things he’d said, the lies he’d told? No, it was better to let Kristin deal with everything.

Still, he couldn’t just stand there. He couldn’t let his brother pay—yet again—for his thoughtless acts. For once in his life, he had to stop thinking and
do something.

“I’m sorry, Kristin,” Will said as he ran into the bathroom to retrieve Tom’s .22. Stuffing it into the pocket of his khaki pants, he fled the apartment, taking the outside steps to the courtyard two at a time.

Five minutes later, he was in a cab, heading for the Southern Comfort Motel.

“
SUZY, HONEY,” JEFF
whispered, leaning forward on the bed to kiss her cheek. He hated to disturb her. She’d been sleeping so peacefully.

Suzy opened her eyes, as blue as the Intracoastal Waterway. “Hi, you,” she said.

“Sorry to wake you.”

“That’s okay. What time is it?”

“After seven.”

“Oh, my God.” She pushed herself into a sitting position. “I can’t believe I passed out like that.”

“You’ve been through a lot. You were exhausted.”

“I guess. Has anything happened?”

“No. Nothing. Everything’s fine. You hungry?”

Suzy laughed. “Starved.”

“Good,” Jeff said. “There’s something I need you to do.”

TOM WAS STUCK
in traffic only minutes away from the airport. “Let’s get a move on, people,” he shouted out his open window, the hot, humid air slapping against his face in reply. “What the hell . . . ?” He opened the car door and stepped onto the pavement, trying to see around the huge eighteen-wheeler directly in front of him. How had he gotten stuck behind this damn truck anyway? More important, how long was he going to be here? Time is a-wasting, he thought. He was already late, having spent far too long arguing with Will. Jeff wasn’t going to be happy.

Shit, Tom decided with a laugh. Jeff wasn’t going to be happy no matter what.

Maybe he wouldn’t go. Let Jeff deal with everything all by his lonesome. Make him understand what it felt like to be betrayed, make him realize how much he needed Tom, how much he’d always needed him. “I’m not the fuckup in this equation,” Tom growled, catching sight of the flashing lights of an ambulance up ahead. Looks like a pretty bad accident, he thought, hoping whoever had caused it had died in the crash. He returned to his car, lit another cigarette, and turned the radio up to its full volume, listening to some country singer whining in an impossibly high register about her cheating boyfriend, all the while picturing Lainey having sex with his best friend. “That lying bitch,” he cursed. Telling him she’d never understood why women found Jeff so attractive, that she’d never found him particularly appealing herself. While all the time she’d been screwing him behind his back. Tom slammed his fist against the steering wheel, wondering how long their affair had been going on, how long his best friend had been laughing at him behind his back. “Let’s move it, motherfuckers.”

As if scared into action, the long line of cars and trucks began to move, gradually picking up speed as they drove past two badly mangled cars at the side of the road, a uniformed police officer taking statements from several of the people involved. “Learn to drive, assholes,” Tom called out when he was safely out of hearing range.

He transferred into the right lane, took the first exit, then spent the next ten minutes driving around in circles, trying to locate the Southern Comfort Motel. “Couldn’t stay at a Holiday Inn,” he muttered. “Had to stay at some stupid little place nobody’s ever heard of.”

You should get one of those GPS thingies, like I have,
Lainey had once suggested.
I use mine all the time.

“Of course you use it,” Tom said now. “You couldn’t find your ass with both hands.”

Although she’d known how to find Jeff easily enough.

“Where the hell are you?” Tom shouted as, overhead, a plane flew in low for a landing. And then he saw it, the glow of a neon sign halfway down the next block, to his left.
SOUTHERN COMFORT MOTEL
, the sign announced, a smaller sign flashing
VACANCY
directly below.

“No, thank you,” Tom said, glancing lovingly at the guns on the seat beside him as he guided his car into the left lane. “I already have a room.”

JEFF WAS SITTING
in the brown upholstered chair across from the bed when he heard a car pull up outside the door. “Finally,” he said, releasing the air in his lungs and wondering how long he’d been holding his breath. What the hell had taken Tom so long to get here? He walked to the door, catching sight of his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He looked scared, he realized, wondering—not for the first time—whether he could actually go through with his plan. Could he really gun down a man in cold blood?

More important, could he get away with it?

Yes, to both questions, Jeff assured himself. And now that Tom was finally here, everything could proceed according to plan.

Jeff pulled open the door. “About time you got here,” he said.

He didn’t even feel the punch until he was on the floor, didn’t know what hit him until he saw Dave’s fist coming at him again. “Where is she, you son of a bitch?” Dave was hollering, his knees straddling Jeff’s chest. “Suzy, get out here, unless you want to see your boyfriend beaten to a bloody pulp.”

“She’s not here,” Jeff sputtered, trying to regain his equilibrium. What the hell had happened? Where was Tom?

“The hell she isn’t. Suzy, I’m warning you. Don’t make me come looking for you.”

“I’m telling you,” Jeff cried. “She isn’t here.”

“You’re lying.”

Jeff couldn’t remember the last time he’d been sucker-punched, and he fought to clear his head as the room gradually came back into focus, although it continued to spin. It isn’t supposed to be going down like this, he was thinking. What the hell was happening?

Dragging Jeff by the throat, Dave lifted the bedspread and peered under the bed. “Where the hell is she?”

“I have no idea.”

“You might want to rethink that answer.” Dave hit him again, this time a powerful blow to the stomach that left Jeff gasping for air. “Now where is she? And please don’t tell me you don’t know. I’m a doctor, remember? I know just where to make it hurt.” He dug his fingers between two of Jeff’s ribs to illustrate his point.

“She left. About half an hour ago.”

“Where’d she go?”

“I don’t know.” Jeff screamed in pain as Dave Bigelow’s fingers dug deeper into his flesh. “She said she couldn’t go through with it, said she was going back home.”

“How convenient,” Dave said. “Why is it I don’t believe you?” Once again, his clenched fist connected with Jeff’s jaw. “Now I’m going to count to three,” he continued, as behind him the motel door swung quietly open, “and then I’m going to start breaking every bone in your body.”

Jeff’s head was spinning as he felt his jawbone shatter. His vision blurred; unconsciousness threatened. Where the hell is Tom? he wondered as darkness began filling the room a slow step at a time, the shadow moving ever closer.

“One . . . two . . .”

A shot rang out.

Dave’s back arched, his shoulders stiffening, his eyes widening in a combination of shock and disbelief, then clouding over, freezing in place as he lurched forward, then crumpled like a rag doll on top of Jeff.

“Three,” a voice said from the shadows.

It took all Jeff’s strength to push Dave off his chest. He knew Dave was dead even before he saw the blood seeping into the front of his shirt, creating a widening circle around his heart. Jeff’s eyes shot toward the figure standing in the doorway as he leaned his back against the bed and fought to catch his breath. “Tom! Jesus. What happened? Where the hell have you been?”

“You complaining?” Tom kicked the door closed behind him with the heel of his black leather boot.

“Shit, man, no way.”

“Where’s Suzy?”

“I sent her out for something to eat, told her to take her time, that I had a few things to take care of and I’d meet her back here in a couple of hours. I wanted her to have an alibi. She has no idea what’s going down.”

“Ever the gentleman.”

Jeff thought he detected a note of sarcasm in Tom’s voice but dismissed it as just a ringing in his ears.

“So what happens now?” Tom asked.

Jeff took several deep breaths before responding. It hurt to talk. His head was pounding, his jaw throbbing. He needed to think things through very carefully. The original plan had been to lure Dave to the motel by telling him that Suzy was there, something Kristin had pulled off with her usual skill and aplomb. Except instead of Suzy, Dave would find Jeff and Tom waiting when he arrived. They’d then force him to drive to the Everglades, where they’d shoot him and dump his body in some alligator-riddled swamp. But Dave had shown up early and Tom late, which had thrown everything off-kilter. “Everything’s changed,” Jeff said out loud, each word sending fresh spasms through his jaw.

“Meaning?”

“Well, for starters, we no longer have to dispose of Dave’s body.”

“How do you figure?”

“It was obviously self-defense.”

“You didn’t kill the prick,” Tom reminded Jeff. “I did.”

“It’s still a legitimate defense. You killed him to save me.”

“Except the bastard doesn’t have a gun,” Tom said, frisking Dave to make sure. “Police are gonna say I used undue force.”

“You’ve been watching too much television,” Jeff said, the words sliding from his drooping mouth.

“Don’t have a TV anymore, remember? I shot it.”

“But you have more than one gun,” Jeff reminded him, “and none of them is registered. Who’s to prove one of those guns didn’t belong to Dave? That he didn’t come here to kill me?”

Tom sneered. It was just like Jeff to make everything all about him. Jeff’s problem had been taken care of after all, felled by a bullet from Tom’s .23. And now Tom was expected to deal with the repercussions while Jeff rode off into the sunset with the girl of his dreams.