Lonely Coast

by Jack Hardin

  The song ended, and Kansas started up with “Dust in the Wind” just as Tyler pulled into the Port of Naples marina. He parked in front of the seawall, turned off the truck, and got out. Ellie checked her lipstick in the visor mirror and then flapped it back. She grabbed her clutch, halted, and looked down at it. Deciding that she really didn’t need it, she opened the glove box and was about to insert her clutch when she froze. There were a great many things in this world that Ellie knew nothing about. She didn’t know how to raise a garden without killing most everything she touched. And she didn’t know the first thing about hedge funds, computer programming, or what happened under the hood of a car when you turned the key. But she was expertly proficient in tradecraft, rods and reels, boats, good music, and...guns.

  Sitting eerily in the glovebox, on top of the truck’s user manual, was an FN Five-seveN pistol. She stared it, unblinking. Tyler had a lot of guns—a lot—both personally and those that belonged to the range. She had fired most of them herself at some point. But she didn’t know that he had a Five-seveN. Now here her heart and mind were racing.

  Ellie felt a wave of hot guilt roll over her. This was Tyler, not some anger-prone murderer with a broken moral compass. She quickly shut the glovebox and decided to just take the clutch with her. She swallowed hard, took in a deep breath, and stepped out of the truck. Tyler was waiting at the tailgate for her.

  “Thought you decided to let me go in by myself,” he said and then took her hand and led her around to the front.

  The quaint building was formed of wood siding painted a stark white and had a wrap-around porch and a blue metal roof. They went up the front steps and submitted their tickets inside before being escorted out the back and across a metal gangway where they then boarded the boat.

  The Queen of Naples was a 105-foot luxury yacht with two interior floors and the third an open sundeck where passengers could watch the sunset with no obstruction. Their table was on the second level, positioned against a full window near the stern. Tyler tugged out Ellie’s chair and scooted it toward the table once she was in it. He took his place across from her and looked out onto the marina.

  “Pretty down here,” he said.

  The waiter appeared and took their drink orders. Tyler selected a draft beer and Ellie a martini, although she thought she might want three. The waiter left, and Tyler eyed her.

  “You okay?” Tyler asked. “You seem like maybe you’re still acclimating to the overwhelming manliness of my presence.”

  She didn’t like having to choose her words with him. “I just don’t like not having closure.”

  “About Carl?”

  She nodded.

  “More closure than being dead?”

  “No,” she said, “about who made him dead.”

  Tyler’s jaw tightened. “Well, whoever it was should come forward so I can buy him a beer.”

  Ellie’s fingers found the edge of the tablecloth hovering just above her lap and started fidgeting with it. “Tyler?”

  “Am I in trouble? I know I messed up that song on the way down here, but—”

  “What’s that gun in your truck? In the glove box?”

  “The glove box? Oh, you mean the…” His eyes found hers. His brows lowered as he frowned. “Wait... you think...you think I took care of Carl?”

  “Did you?”

  “Stink. Here we are about to have a nice evening and you have to go ask me something like that?”

  “What’s the gun doing there? It’s not exactly every American’s go-to.”

  Tyler ran a hand through his well-combed hair with an addled expression that would have looked no different had Ellie just said she wanted to break up with him. “I get it. Carl was killed with a five-seven round, a round that is basically fired from just one kind of gun. The kind in my glove box.”

  She shrugged.

  “Damn it, Ellie. I was at Sam Malin’s house the other day. He gave it to me to take to the range so I could try it out. On my way back, I got the notification on my phone that Carl was back at Katie’s and changed course. I put it in the glove box and in all the crazy just forgot about it.”

  “It’s not even in a holster. That’s not like you.”

  It was his turn to shrug. “He didn’t give it to me in a holster. Look. I’m a bury-the-body kind of guy. I mean, if I were to do something like that, then I could see myself feeling a compulsion to at least get rid of the body, you know?”

  “Glad you’ve given it so much thought.”

  “You’re one to talk. How many people have you killed in your career? Has to be dozens, right?”

  At the table across from them, the couple’s conversation suddenly ceased. The lady looked cautiously in their direction.

  Ellie smiled at them mechanically. “I used to oversee crash test dummies,” and then shot Tyler a look.

  “Batting a thousand tonight,” he mumbled. The waiter appeared with their drinks and set them on the table. “Perfect timing,” he said and took a long drink. The waiter took their meal orders and then disappeared again. “I’ll be honest...” Tyler shot a quick glance to the other table and lowered his voice. “I’m a little pissed off that you think I would just go out and kill someone like that.”

  “You didn’t see my sister all bruised and worked over and think about knocking him off?”

  “Well, of course I did. But whoever killed him emptied all twenty rounds of their magazine into him. That’s not just anger. That’s something else altogether. And you know it.”

  She was playing absently with the toothpick in her martini.

  “Ellie. Look at me.” She looked up. “I did not kill Carl. I wanted to. I thought about it. But I didn’t.” He held her gaze.

  Her shoulders slumped a little. “I know you didn’t. I’m sorry. I don’t even know why I asked.”

  “Because you’re angry and the entire thing is pretty messed up. That’s why.”

  “Yeah.” She took another long swallow of her martini. “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, don’t be. But I think we’ll need to make out on the top deck later on for me to put it all behind me.”

  She smiled. “Deal.”

  Their food finally arrived, and they worked through a bottle of cabernet as Tyler inhaled his steak and Ellie worked a little slower at her baked chicken. The awkwardness of the previous conversation finally melted away, and the conversation moved on to more normal topics.

  They finished just as the brilliant rays from a dozing sun caught the loose strands of Ellie’s hair and sent them sparkling like the fine gossamer threads of a spider’s web. Tyler looked deeply into her face, searched her eyes, and a tingle skittered through her stomach. He was the only person in the world who could make her feel self conscious beneath his gaze. Her body started to feel warm in a way that had nothing to do with the wine.

  “What?” she asked timidly and then took a sip of wine to mitigate against she sudden flush of heat.

  “I’m going to marry you one day.”

  She nearly choked and took her time swallowing so she didn’t actually do it. She set her glass down. “Is this how they propose in Texas?”

  “Oh, I’m not proposing. When I do, you’ll know it. Maybe a plane writing it in the sky or the ring on a fish hook routine. I’m just giving you fair warning.”

  “I like fair warning.” She leaned across the table and Tyler met her there. The hum of conversation and laughter and the tinkling of silverware on plates was drowned out by a deep and prolonged kiss.

  “I love you,” she whispered in front of his lips.

  “And I love you. Even though you accused me of killing Carl.” He leaned back up and looked to the wine bottle. He grabbed it up and swirled the liquid inside. “Looks like there’s enough for one more glass. You want to get another bottle?”

  “You can have it.”

  He leaned in and held the bottle’s open mouth to the edge of her glass. He tossed her a wink. “It’s okay,” he said. “Wheelchair.”
<
br />   Epilogue

  The boat’s engine hummed through the choppy water, churning a foamy path across the inky waters of the Gulf. Major cut the engine two miles off the western edge of the barrier islands. The lights of Cayo Costa winked dimly on the horizon.

  He sat quietly on the helm seat as the boat rocked easily on the water and breathed in the briny scent of the ocean as a clean gust of ocean breeze passed across his face. Stars twinkled above his head, a thousand pinpricks of distant light scattered across the dark skin of the universe. Major stood up and reached for the tackle box sitting on the aft seat near the transom. He unsnapped the latches, reached in, and brought it out. It was wrapped in a dishcloth and felt heavy in his hand. He pulled back the loose flap of cloth and the dark polymer curves of the FN Five-seveN looked like satin in the soft light of the waxing moon.

  He had nearly forgotten that he had the unusual weapon. An old friend had gifted to him just before he passed. That was over a decade ago now, and Major had put it up in the closet of an upstairs bedroom. He had other guns, but this one he recalled soon after Tyler had let it slip about Katie.

  It was an easy decision, coming to him clearly, like the cry of a gull gliding just overhead. Something had rekindled within him that night, in those muzzle-lit moments between trigger pulls as he watched Chloe’s deadbeat father convulse on the floor. Something that had lain dormant within him these last six months reappeared; some dark energy that struck his veins and made him feel alive. It was almost as though some unknown and undefined intent had succeeded in wrapping itself around the inside of his chest, turning his fleshy heart to stone and possessing him once again.

  He wasn’t sure Carl would remember him and he had found that he was quite pleased when he did. It had, after all, been nearly seven years since Major paid Carl that unexpected visit. But then it wasn’t exactly the type of meeting that one forgot. Carl had come home from god-knew-where to find Major on his couch, watching a rerun of Mary Tyler Moore on TV Land and eating a bowl of ice cream he had prepared in Carl’s tiny kitchen. Major had told him, in no uncertain terms, that Carl was to leave the state, that if he ever showed up in Katie’s life again, it would be the end of him. Carl finally got the message when Major shoved the barrel of an old Colt revolver so far down his throat that he gagged and threw up the McDonald's he’d just had for dinner all over Major’s loafers.

  Now, Major wiped down the Five-seveN a final time and grabbed it by the muzzle. He flung it sidearm over the gunwale. It skidded once across the surface before the ocean sucked it in, outward ripples quickly thinning before disappearing altogether, as though the ocean were a trusted accomplice pleased to conceal the evidence.

  Major returned the cloth to the tackle box and brought out a cigar, stuck it between his teeth. He struck a match and shielded it from the easy breeze flowing across the open water. Thick shadows danced across the contours of his face like dark spirits celebrating the decision he had been pondering for the last month. He puffed until the flame conceived a furious ember on the tip of the cigar. He flicked the match overboard.

  He hadn’t put the black fedora into the lost and found. He couldn’t, not when it was calling to him in an almost sweet and sultry voice. Now, he lifted it from a hook on the console and fitted it to his head. It felt right. So very right.

  The line from Faulker surfaced in his mind once again. The one Ellie had read to him just days ago. “How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.”

  The words expressed the lonely echo of his soul these last few months, as though it was he who had been sleeping under a strange roof on this lonely coast. More and more, he found his thoughts drifting toward home, toward the life he had tried to leave behind. But, like the fedora, it compelled him, calling him back.

  A moth to the flame.

  Major tugged his phone from the pocket of his shorts, checked the reception: two bars. He dialed a number by memory and set the phone to his ear. The veins in his arms and along the back of his neck began to tingle with a million tiny pinpricks, adrenaline flooding into him and dilating his pupils in a way that had nothing to do with the lack of light.

  The call was answered by a deep, booming voice that sounded like a sleepy bear.

  Major slowly brought his hand up and pulled the cigar from his teeth. His lips carved an easy smile, the kind of smile that manifested dark and sinister intentions bubbling up from deep and hidden caverns within.

  He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply.

  “Hello, Chewy.”

  The End

  Author’s Note

  Note From the Author

  Okay, let’s get it out there right away. No cats were harmed during the writing of this book. None at all. I promise. For all you cat lovers out there, I suppose an apology is in order and I ask for your forgiveness.

  So many of you have been on the journey with me since Ellie started hitting Kindles last summer. I am beyond grateful that you have ridden the boat with me this far. Writing a good book is never easy, and that you poke me and prod me for each new installment is the most humbling thing.

  Thank you.