Deception Cove

by Owen Laukkanen

  It was a beast of a wave, and it was fixing to kill them. Harwood watched it rise, a thick black wall of water, saw the lip curling over high above the stern, and he knew they were finished just as soon as it came crashing down.

  “Hold on,” he told Sweeney and Joy in the split second before impact. “This here’s going to suck.”

  * * *

  She’d fucked up.

  Jess watched the wave build behind Harwood’s boat, and she swore to herself and wished she’d been smarter.

  As soon as Kirby had decided to make a run for shore, she’d have been better off letting him through those rocks unmolested, she thought now. Let him have the little bay, the calmer water, and then open up on him and his boys, put them down without risking the boat.

  She needed the boat to get Burke and Lucy off the island.

  But she’d had a clear shot at Dale Whitmer, and she’d taken it and hadn’t missed, popped him center mass and sent him into the drink. One down—two, if she was lucky, though she didn’t think she’d hit Kirby’s friend with enough to put him out of the fight permanently. Mind you, it would be a miracle if any of them survived what was about to happen, that monster wave breaking over the stern, picking up the Grady-White and surfing it out of control toward mountains of sharp rock. It would be a miracle if the boat survived too.

  Jess watched from the southern edge of the bay as Kirby tried to outrun that wave, as he couldn’t do it, as it spun the Grady-White sideways and nearly tipped it full over, hurtling it toward the reefs on the bay’s opposite shore. The boat rode the wave up and onto the shoals, ten or fifteen feet across the rocks before the wave ran out of steam and the boat went aground.

  She could hear the hull rip and tear from across the water, watched the little boat shudder violently as the wave’s last momentum dragged it farther into the bay. The boat stayed upright anyway, and when the white water receded, the boat stayed where the wave had left it, marooned in two or three feet of turbulent water, the white hull scratched to shit, the twin engines still roaring.

  There was no movement from within the boat, and for a brief moment Jess wondered if the wave hadn’t killed them all. But then she saw Cole Sweeney poke his head up from the stern and look around, dazed. He seemed to say something toward the cockpit, so she figured Kirby and the other guy were still aboard too.

  So be it, she thought, leveling her rifle again. I was kind of looking forward to messing these guys up anyway.

  * * *

  The bitch was shooting again.

  Harwood stayed as low as possible in the cockpit of the Grady-White. The boat was aground; they’d survived the ride somehow, but he couldn’t imagine how the hull would react if he tried to reverse back into open water.

  Dale was gone too. He’d disappeared over the side and hadn’t come up, and Harwood figured the odds were pretty good he’d drowned.

  At this point he had bigger things to worry about. Like a pissed-off ex-marine putting 5.56 NATO rounds through the hull of his boat.

  “Sweeney,” he called back to the stern, where Cole was ducked low, his rifle lying forgotten on the other side of the deck. The deputy was spitting blood, but he looked okay otherwise. He locked eyes with Harwood, and his vision was clear, if a little bit terrified.

  “Pick up that rifle and give me covering fire,” Harwood told him. “We have to get off this boat.”

  They had to get their asses in gear, is what they had to do. Every second they stayed here was another yard Jess Winslow could close with that rifle of hers, and Harwood didn’t want to be on the beach when she showed up at the tree line. They needed to get to the forest before she cut them off, then find somewhere to hide and regroup, take advantage of their numbers and mount a counterattack.

  Mason Burke was out there somewhere too, Harwood knew. He didn’t know what the ex-con was up to, but he had a hunch the guy would show up at the least opportune time.

  Sweeney crawled across the deck and retrieved his rifle. Crawled back to the starboard side and hesitated there like a private too scared to climb out of his foxhole. Harwood gave him a look, nodded toward the forest, and Sweeney swallowed and looked pale and did as instructed, laid his rifle across the gunwale and began laying down fire.

  Harwood was moving as soon as he heard the shots. Grabbed his M4 and some spare ammunition, and then he was crawling to the port side of the Grady-White, away from where Jess’s shots were coming from. He muttered a quick prayer and climbed over the side, threw himself down to the water below, his rifle aloft to keep it out of the spray. He landed hard, wincing and swearing, the rock cutting through his clothes, the water soaking them, waves trying to drag him farther into the bay.

  He circled around to the bow of the boat and aimed his own rifle toward Jess’s patch of forest.

  “Come on,” he told Cole, who dropped back just as soon as he heard Harwood begin shooting. Pretty soon the deputy was crouched in the water beside Harwood, his hands bloody and clothes shredded from another hard landing.

  Harwood locked eyes with Joy, who remained in the cockpit. The Nigerian had been shot, but he wasn’t quitting the fight.

  “Come on if you’re coming,” Harwood told him. “We gotta get off this beach.”

  He set up his rifle and fired again, and Cole did too, and as they fired and Joy made his move, Harwood searched the forest for any sign of the widow and her rifle, but he couldn’t see anything. He hoped they’d hit her with a round or two, neutralized her, but he knew they wouldn’t ever be that lucky. She was probably just taking cover.

  No matter. Three rifles and only fifteen yards to the safety of the forest. Harwood motioned to Joy and Sweeney to make the run for it while he continued to rake the trees with rounds from his rifle. When the two men were safely off the beach, he ducked behind the bow of the boat and found Cole where he’d hidden in the forest, gestured to his deputy to start shooting.

  Cole took a position and aimed across the bay, and when he pulled the trigger, Harwood stood and ran, stumbling on the wet rocks and nearly falling on his face into white water, expecting any minute to catch a round in his back. He covered the last three or four yards in the air, leapt into the forest and landed in a pile of deadfall, came up spitting moss and covered in mud, but hell, he was alive, and he’d made it off the beach.

  “Let’s find her,” he told the others. “Put her down fast, and then we take care of Burke.”

  Joy nodded. Sweeney peered out at the beach, the wrecked Grady-White sitting battered in the swell. He nodded too.

  The men stood in unison. Stayed as low as possible and crept into the woods, rifles at the ready, scanning the forest for any sign of Jess Winslow.

  Fifty-Seven

  Jess had screwed up something bad now, letting Harwood and the others off of the boat and into the woods. She’d hoped the waves would take care of them, or that she could pin them down in the wreck and pick them off, one by one. But someone on the team had a decent sense for tactics and had pretty well kept her ducking while they worked off the boat and across the beachhead. And now they were in the woods, and they were going to spread out, and killing them all had just become a hell of a lot harder.

  For the first time Jess wondered if she might lose this fight.

  She chased the thought. Burke was out there too, somewhere, with a big freaking shotgun. If he could neutralize just one of the surviving attackers—preferably the scary guy—Jess was reasonably certain she could take care of the other two.

  She dropped the empty magazine out of her rifle. Slammed another one in. Whatever happened, she would need to conserve ammunition. She slipped through the trees toward where Harwood and the others had landed, and hoped Burke was at least savvy enough to provide some kind of diversion.

  * * *

  Mason plowed his way through the forest, bullying through the overgrowth with the butt end of his shotgun. He’d heard the shooting, a staccato conversation, and he’d realized very quickly that things weren’t going as pla
nned.

  Jess wasn’t figuring on having any kind of back and forth, he knew. She’d hoped to deliver a sermon from on high, Old Testament style. But Harwood and his boys had clearly interrupted.

  The woods were rough going. Branches tore at his clothes and clawed at his face, left him scraped and bloody, and the rocks ripped at his pants and into his knees as he climbed up and over yet another obstacle. He could hardly be sure he was moving in the right direction. He caught glimpses of the little lagoon and the wrecked troller through the dense brush now and then, but he was more following his ears toward the sound of the gunshots than he was navigating by sight.

  The rifles kept popping off. Mason guessed Jess was the single shots, slow and methodical, and the jackhammer repetition belonged to the deputies. He hoped so, anyway; it meant Jess was still far enough away to be picking her shots.

  Sooner or later the deputies would close in on Jess, though. So Mason kept plowing through the trees. Tried to keep his movements quiet, so the boys wouldn’t hear him approach, but hell, they were shooting real loud and the surf was crashing anyway. With any luck, he’d be able to walk up behind them and near tap them on the shoulder before they knew he was there.

  With better luck, they wouldn’t know at all.

  He kept moving, following the shots. Hoping Jess could fend the men off for as long as it took for him to swing in behind them.

  Deliver me from my enemies, O my God; protect me from those who rise up against me.

  * * *

  Behind Jess, on the southern side of the island, Lucy could hear the shots too. They boomed through the forest around her, resonating through the tall trees and bouncing off the rock faces, filling her ears with apocalyptic noise.

  She whined, paced, tail between her legs, wanting to escape but unsure in which direction, the sound ceaseless and deafening, her panic mounting. She fled to the end of her tether, cowered there, shaking, as the gunfire fell silent. The silence did nothing to calm her; the sound had come before, and it could come again.

  Sure enough, within seconds, the forest exploded in sound again. It was enough to scare her into action. She pulled at her tether, wriggled her collar loose, squirmed her head through it, and pawed it clear with her foreleg. The collar dropped to the ground. She was free.

  Lucy didn’t waste time. She ran.

  Fifty-Eight

  Dale Whitmer washed up, bleeding and spitting seawater, on the north side of the bay. Felt a monster breaker scrape him over a boulder like a bed of nails, then draw back, leaving him high and momentarily dry, confused and in pain and more than half drowned.

  He lay there on the rocks, his clothes torn to shreds, his hands and face, too, and he wanted nothing more than to go back into the water and die peacefully. But it wouldn’t be peaceful, he knew. The sea would batter him against the rocks until he broke, and it wouldn’t be instantaneous, and it sure wouldn’t be pretty. He had to move, quickly, before the next wave pulled him back.

  Whitmer pushed himself up, the rock slicing open his palms where they weren’t already cut. His rifle was gone; it would be useless by now anyway. Kirby’s Grady-White lay aground in the surf a few yards away, beat to shit itself and probably a total loss.

  The boat was upright, though, and Whitmer hoped that meant Joy’s stash of guns in the little cabin was intact. Whatever happened next, he wanted to be armed.

  Christ, but that Winslow bitch was a hell of a shot. Whitmer could feel the welt on his chest where she’d hit him, almost square in the sternum. If she’d aimed a little higher, he’d be dead right now, but that Joy fella had packed body armor for everyone, and Whitmer was glad for it.

  There was no sign of Joy or anyone else, and Whitmer surmised that Harwood and Sweeney had made it into the bush. He’d heard gunfire from somewhere on the island as he lay bleeding, but as he made his way to the wrecked cruiser and climbed over the hull to the cockpit, the shooting stopped and the forest was silent.

  Jess Winslow could still be out in those trees on the south side of the bay, scoping you with her rifle. Any moment she could realize her mistake and blow your head clean off.

  But nobody fired on him, and Whitmer descended into the galley, the boat rocking as another wave hit. He found the plastic cases where Joy and Harwood had stashed them, found a whole squad’s worth of .40-cal Smith & Wesson semiautomatic pistols staring him in the face when he opened the first box. He took two. Scrounged for ammunition, found a stack of spare magazines, and brought a few of those along too.

  In a locker by the stairs he found one of Kirby’s fishing jackets. Whitmer tore off what remained of the body armor and pulled the jacket on, stuffed the spare magazines in his pocket. Then he climbed out of the cabin and back up to the cockpit, and began to devise a strategy.

  Whitmer wasn’t sure he cared anymore whether Jess Winslow and the convict lived or died. He wasn’t even sure he cared about the package Winslow’s husband had stolen. He hadn’t tagged along on this bullshit mission for the sake of a few hundred grand’s worth of heroin.

  Whitmer had other priorities now. And he wasn’t going to leave this island until he’d accomplished what he’d come here to do.

  He stashed the pistols in his waistband. Dropped over the side of the Grady-White and into knee-deep water, waded in toward the beach and the tree line beyond, stealthy as he could. Then he disappeared into the forest and began to stalk his prey.

  Fifty-Nine

  Bad things were going to happen on this island.

  Kirby Harwood gripped his rifle tighter and pushed through the low branches. Ten yards to his left, Cole Sweeney was fighting through trees of his own, matching Harwood’s pace, step for step. Another ten yards or so away was Joy, and the men walked in unison, slowly and cautiously, circling around the edge of the bay to the south side of the island, where somewhere Jess waited.

  Her rifle had gone silent, and that wasn’t at all comforting. She wasn’t dead; it wasn’t going to be that easy. For all Harwood knew, she was watching them now through the scope of her rifle, waiting for the perfect kill shot.

  Go ahead, he thought. Shoot. Give away your position.

  He searched the forest ahead of him, ears pricked for any sound, eyes alert for any movement. Kept his finger on the trigger and swung the rifle around as he moved, knowing if he saw Jess, she’d probably see him, too, and then it’d be a race to who could shoot the other first.

  Damn it, he hated the bitch.

  He hated her for making him follow her to this island, for shooting at him and ruining his boat. He hated her because Bryce Whitmer was dead, and Dale probably too, and he and Cole were at the very least going to get fired over this shit, if they didn’t wind up in jail.

  He hated her for marrying Ty Winslow, whose stupidity was matched only by his greed, and he hated her for going over to fight the towelheads and coming back so fucked in the brain that she needed a goddamn support dog who’d been trained by a fucking convicted killer.

  He hated her for not rolling over like she was supposed to, for ruining his life and the only good thing he had going for it.

  Fuck, he hated her bad, and he was going to make sure she paid for it, no matter what it cost him.

  He wanted her to start shooting. He wanted to know where she was hiding. She was one woman, after all, and they were three men.

  They would take her. They would take that rifle from her. And then they would make sure she hurt.

  A noise behind Harwood scared him out of his thoughts. He spun, ready to open fire, wondering how Jess had outflanked them, but Jess wasn’t there.

  Nobody was there.

  He realized the sound had come from deeper in the forest on the north side of the island, a branch falling over, a loud report like gunfire as a piece of wood must have cracked. Harwood met Sweeney’s eyes, but Sweeney, as usual, was no help at all. The kid looked thirty seconds from pissing his pants, or not even.

  “Burke,” Harwood whispered. “Must be coming around behind us
.”

  “Should we go back?” Sweeney replied.

  “I’ll do it.” This was Joy. He’d closed the distance faster than Harwood had registered, and now he stood beside Sweeney, his busted shoulder packed tight with bandage and bloody fabric, a look of calm determination on his face. “You two find the widow. I will take care of her friend.”

  The look in the Nigerian’s eyes was enough to keep Harwood from arguing, even as his mind hollered that the plan didn’t make any sense. Joy was the most capable of the men; Mason Burke was a nobody. Surely, even Sweeney could handle the criminal, leaving Joy and Harwood to flush out Jess with their carbines.

  But Joy was already gone, slipping back through the trees, and Harwood couldn’t call out to him, for fear of alerting Jess, and so instead he locked eyes with Sweeney again and gestured him onward, toward the south side of the island.

  Shit, he hated that woman.

  * * *

  Joy made his way north to where the island narrowed between the western bay and the little lagoon. He moved quickly and quietly through the forest, listening closely for any sound he might hear over the roar of the surf.

  He wasn’t listening for Mason Burke.

  Joy wasn’t concerned about the murderer. He hadn’t seen any sign of him since he watched the troller leave the dock, back in the little shit town Kirby Harwood purported to rule. There had been only one person shooting at the helicopter; Kirby’s boat the same story. For all Joy knew, Mason Burke had died on board the troller from one of Joy’s grenades. Or maybe he was curled up in a ball somewhere, terrified.

  Or maybe he was still out there, plotting his ambush. But he hadn’t showed up yet, and Joy was still hunting Jess Winslow.