Deception Cove

by Owen Laukkanen

  He couldn’t run forever. Hell, he wouldn’t last another five minutes, not at this pace. He stopped. Leaned against a tall fir. Touched the gunshot wound at his side, cautiously, winced as his fingers came back bloody.

  The gunfire had stopped on the other side of the island. Mason didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. He couldn’t just lie down and die, though, not until he knew that Jess and Lucy were safe. He had to get up and go find them.

  Mason steadied himself. Wiped his bloody hand clean on his shirt and forced that hand to grip the shotgun. Then he started back toward Jess, straining to listen for any sound from Kirby’s accomplice. He couldn’t hear much but the wind in the trees and the waves breaking offshore. Even Jess’s gun stayed silent.

  He climbed over a fallen tree, slid down the other side. Tried not to cry out from how the movement burned at his rib cage. He was still bleeding, and the blood was coming out dark. He was exhausted, stumbling through the trees, propping himself up on whatever he could find. It was still a long way to where Jess was.

  Then he heard something. A grunt, a man in similar distress. A patch of ferns shook fifteen feet away. A branch snapped. And then the other guy stepped out into the open.

  The man looked plenty messed up himself. He’d been shot in the shoulder, that Mason already knew, but there were two or three fresh holes in the side of his jacket, and he was fighting to stand upright just as much as Mason was. The man’s dark eyes were ashen; he breathed ragged through his mouth. But he still carried that M4, and he still scanned the trees like he was hunting to kill.

  The men saw each other at about the same time. For a long moment neither did anything, and time seemed to slow to an endless, surreal pause.

  Then the other man raised his rifle, and the world moved in fast-forward. Mason swung up with the shotgun and pulled on the trigger, and both guns let off simultaneously. The other man staggered backward. Mason slumped to the ground. The forest went quiet again.

  Sixty-Three

  He’d wanted to play football. He’d wanted to raise a family. He’d wanted to move out of Deception Cove with Terri-Lee and live the kind of life they were meant for, the all-state-quarterback and head-cheerleader life, the sweethearts-in-the-city life, a beautiful, successful life. He’d wanted to be envied by every sad, failed motherfucker who stayed stuck in Deception Cove, nothing to live for but reality TV.

  He’d wanted Ateke Okafor to make him rich. He’d wanted Kirk Wheeler to retire and make him sheriff.

  He’d wanted Ty Winslow to not fuck with his package. He’d wanted Jess Winslow to do the same.

  He’d wanted Mason Burke to mind his own business and fuck back off to wherever he’d come from.

  He wanted his package. He wanted Joy to go home. He didn’t want Bryce Whitmer and Dale Whitmer and Cole Sweeney to be dead. He didn’t want to leave this island in handcuffs.

  Hell, Kirby Harwood just wanted to go home to Terri-Lee and forget this had ever happened. Sell the house for whatever they could get, the truck and what was left of the boat, too, resign his position and catch a bus somewhere else, forget about Deception Cove and every miserable person in it.

  He wanted this to end. But it hadn’t ended. And deep down Harwood knew it wasn’t ever going to end, not the way he wanted.

  Harwood didn’t want to be here, but here he was, and he took out his anger and his frustration and, damn it, his fear on Jess Winslow beneath him, beating her blindly as she fought to get free, as she grabbed weakly for his hands and his throat.

  She couldn’t escape. She couldn’t fight back. No matter what she did, Harwood knew he was going to kill her before he stood again.

  Some marine you turned out to be, Jess.

  He could feel her strength draining. Her body relaxed some, and her hand swiped at him, feeble. He swatted it away and stared down at her.

  “You should never have tested me, Jess,” he said, panting. “I told you I’d win.”

  She spat blood. “Fuck you.”

  “I’m going to kill you,” he said. “I’m going to bash your head in right here, and then I’m going to find your boyfriend, and I’m going to drag him up here to see what he did. And then I’m going to kill him, and I’ll find your dog, and I’ll kill her, too. What do you think about that?”

  Jess was gasping for breath too. Harwood could feel her chest rising beneath him. Her face was badly bruised, and she was scratched up and bleeding. She was beaten to shit, but apparently, she hadn’t figured that out yet.

  “You always did talk a lot, Kirby,” she said. “But you’re the same limp-dick nobody you always were. You’re going to die on this island.” She smiled at him, showed him bloody teeth. “What do you think about that?”

  The woman had heart; that was never in doubt. But she was going to die anyway. Harwood felt around on the ground beside Jess. Found a rock big enough for what he planned next.

  “Game over, Jess,” he told her. He raised the rock high. Held it over her head so she could see it, and he mustered as much anger and hate and sense of cosmic unfairness as he could, and prepared to slam the rock down and end this whole fiasco.

  And then something attacked him from behind.

  * * *

  Jess didn’t believe she was seconds from dying. Even as she lay there, beat to shit and exhausted, staring up at Harwood and that big fucking rock, Jess couldn’t believe it was ending this way. It just didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel final. She’d always figured she’d know when her last breath was imminent, and this, right here, this wasn’t the time.

  Turned out she was right.

  Something knocked Harwood forward, and he yelled out in surprise, sprawled on top of her, and rolled back, swinging and kicking. Jess thought it was Burke at first, but then she heard the snarling and she knew Lucy had come.

  The dog had her teeth gripping tight into Harwood’s shoulder; she was growling in a way Jess had never heard before, her hackles raised and murder in her eyes. As Jess squirmed free from underneath Harwood, Lucy released the deputy’s shoulder, and Harwood scrambled back, but the relief was just temporary. Lucy regrouped, and this time she came for his throat.

  Jess rose to her knees, her head swimming, vision blurred. She watched Harwood swing his arm around, trying to fend Lucy off, but the dog simply bounced back and came at him again, forcing him backward and latching on to his arm, her teeth snapping, tearing flesh.

  Harwood screamed and swore and kicked at Lucy. Lucy kept on him, backing him across the clearing toward the edge of the cliff, the elbow of the pass where Jess had hoped to stage her ambush. The dog’s collar was gone; she must have wriggled out of it. Jess wondered how Lucy had known to come up here, how she’d known she was in trouble.

  She’s your dog, Jess. She damn well knows.

  Harwood fell backward, Lucy on top of him. He kicked at her, and she bounced off and came at him again, and Harwood felt around, his hands reaching for a rock, for some kind of weapon.

  Jess crawled across the clearing to where her pistol lay forgotten. She picked it up and looked across at where Lucy and Harwood still wrestled. The dog had him pinned, but Harwood’s fingertips had just brushed another rock, and Jess knew the deputy would stave in her dog’s head if he could just gain one more inch.

  She raised the gun before he could get there. Aimed it over Harwood’s head, over Lucy, and fired.

  The shot did what she’d hoped it would: it terrified Lucy. The dog forgot about chewing on Harwood and bolted for the woods, leaving Harwood on the ground at the edge of the cliff. He was staring at Jess, trying to get his breath back, and she leveled the pistol at him from her knees.

  “Get up.”

  Slowly, painfully, Harwood obeyed. He stood twenty feet away from her, hunched over, his clothes torn where Lucy had ripped through them, his face scratched and bloody. He was holding the rock he’d been trying to grab, though she couldn’t tell if he was even aware.

  Behind Harwood, the gray sky and the island a
nd the pass, the wind overhead and the sound of the breakers far off. Jess stayed on her knees. She wasn’t sure she could stand.

  They looked at each other. The island was quiet, and Jess wondered about Burke. Wondered about Dale Whitmer and the scary guy. Wondered if this was it.

  Harwood was watching her, watching the gun. Like he was waiting for her to make up her mind.

  “I got your package,” she told him. She nodded across to the little cave where she’d spent the night with Burke. “It’s in there.”

  Harwood followed her eyes. He said nothing.

  “You know where it came from, that junk you were moving?” she asked. “You ever get the full history of that stuff?”

  Harwood shrugged. “Asia, they said.”

  “Yeah, Asia,” she replied. “Specifically, my part of Asia: Afghanistan. And you know what they do with the profits?”

  He looked at her, blank eyes, hardly paying attention. Like he had no idea why she was giving this lecture.

  “Guns, Kirby,” Jess said. “Rocket-propelled grenades. Mortar bombs. IEDs. Any way they can think of to kill a US Marine, those opium-selling motherfuckers are buying it. And you and your homeboys are helping them do it.”

  Harwood kind of laughed. “We were just moving the stuff,” he said. “We didn’t hardly do anything.”

  Jess shook her head. “You ever see somebody with his legs blown off?” she asked. “Someone shot through the belly and trying to hold their guts in? You ever see a woman get beat up and raped and tortured, get sent back to you to die, just so you could watch?”

  Harwood said nothing.

  “All that stuff costs money,” she said. “And you helped them get it. While I was over there fighting for this country, you were buying guns for the other guys. You ever stop to think about that, Deputy?”

  “Jess,” Harwood said. “Don’t make this more complicated than it actually is, you hear me?”

  “I guess that’s a no.” Jess steadied her aim, closed her bad eye, stilled her breathing. Focused on Harwood’s chest as the deputy smirked a little.

  “Aw, that’s bullshit,” he said. “You’re not going to shoot an unarmed man, Jess. I know you.”

  She gestured to the rock in his hand. “That looks like a weapon to me.”

  Harwood went white. He let go of the rock. She’d put three in his chest before the rock hit the ground.

  Sixty-Four

  The shots didn’t kill Harwood. Didn’t penetrate his body armor.

  They weren’t meant to.

  Each round slammed the deputy like a freight train, staggered him, sent him reeling backward across the empty rock. By the third shot he was teetering on the cliff edge, struggling for balance and not finding it. He grabbed at air and it didn’t save him; he opened his mouth to scream, and then he was gone.

  Jess heard him fall, heard the grunt of expelled air as Harwood bounced off rock, heard a splash as he finally found water. She crawled to the edge of the cliff and looked over, saw him thirty feet down on her side of the pass, lying in the water with his ass to the sky.

  He wasn’t moving.

  She watched him for a while. The tide caught hold of him a little, started tugging him out to sea. But Harwood didn’t move, didn’t look up and breathe, didn’t paddle his arms and try to swim for shore. He just lay there, facedown, bobbing in the little waves, and Jess watched him and knew she should feel bad, but she didn’t.

  She didn’t feel bad at all.

  After a fair while, after Harwood’s body had drifted down the pass a ways and nobody had come out into the clearing behind Jess to shoot her dead, Jess figured she ought to get up off her knees and go back into the woods and try to ascertain what had happened to Burke. She stood, though it hurt, and rested hunched over and blinking back tears, feeling every one of Harwood’s sucker punches.

  Every part of her ached. But the island was quiet, and that probably wasn’t good. She stood straighter and wiped the blood from her face, started into the trees. Kept the pistol drawn and moved as cautiously as she could.

  The forest was mainly silent, just the wind through the branches high above. Nothing moving at ground level, no sign of human life. The silence was eerie, and Jess didn’t like it. She didn’t like knowing that she might well be prey.

  She happened upon Cole Sweeney first. The young deputy was lying where she’d shot him, leaned up against a tree with his head back and his eyes closed, and for a split second she thought he might be dead. But Cole heard her coming, and his eyes snapped open and he reached for the rifle beside him, but she was quicker with the pistol.

  “Don’t,” she said, leveling the gun at his head. “Don’t get stupid, now.”

  Sweeney glared at her. His leg was all bloody where she’d shot through his knee, and he winced every time he moved.

  “You shot me,” he said.

  Jess scoffed. “In the leg, dumb-ass. I could have put one through your head if I wanted, you ever consider that?”

  The young deputy did consider it. “Why didn’t you?”

  “I thought you might be worth saving,” she said. “You could have killed Burke when you had the chance, and you didn’t. I thought that maybe meant something.”

  Sweeney left the rifle where it lay. He rested his head back again and looked up at the treetops and let out a long sigh.

  “I wish you had killed me,” he said. “There’s nothing waiting for me if I make it off this island anyway.”

  She shrugged. “You want, I can still shoot you,” she said. “But I think you’re giving up too easy. Burke served his hard time, and look at him now.”

  Sweeney opened his eyes, arched an eyebrow like he wasn’t sure if she was joking or not. “The guy’s a freaking murderer.”

  “Burke?” She shook her head. “He’d never even fired a gun before he came to this island. If he’s killed anyone, it’s since he ran into you.”

  Sweeney stared at her.

  “The guy just loves his dog,” she said. “He loves that damn dog enough to risk his life and his freedom over our stupid shit. You want a role model, Sweeney, you could do worse.”

  Sweeney let that sit for a beat. “So what are you suggesting I do?”

  “I’m suggesting you stop trying to kill me,” she said. “I’m going to take a look around and try to figure out what happened to Burke and your buddies, and if it all goes to plan, I’ll make sure the Feds know you’re not completely bad, if we ever get off of this island.”

  “What about Kirby? Dale?”

  “Kirby’s swimming home. And I don’t know about Dale, but I’d assume the worst. I don’t feel quite so charitable toward any Whitmers.”

  Sweeney stared up at the trees some more. Then he reached out with his arm and shoved the rifle away. “I’ll probably bleed out before you get back anyway.”

  “You’re not going to bleed out, you pansy,” she scoffed. “I’ve seen guys walk miles on wounds worse than that one. You just stay comfortable, and I’ll let you know when we’re leaving.”

  “Shit,” Sweeney said. “All right.”

  “All right.” She picked up the rifle and slung it over her shoulder. Started off down the hill toward the isthmus. Then stopped. “Hey, where the hell’s Bryce?”

  Sweeney met her eyes, and his expression was flat. “Bryce is dead,” he replied. “Joy blew his brains out.”

  “And who’s Joy again?”

  “Joy’s the guy with the grenade launcher who fucked up your boat. He killed Bryce in his own goddamn kitchen about five minutes after he’d introduced himself to us. Said he’d help us get the package back, but one of us had to pay.”

  Jess thought about this. Wondered if maybe she was jumping the gun a little bit, expecting Burke to have handled Joy by himself. “Shit.”

  “Yeah, well,” Sweeney said. “I never really did like Bryce anyway.”

  She left the deputy there and continued down through the forest, feeling every step and every time the rifle swung around a
nd nudged her, wondered if she’d broken a rib or she was just getting soft. There was no sign of Burke or Dale Whitmer or Joy, and no sign of Lucy, either, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to call out for any of them. She continued, her pistol ready, and tried to stay quiet as she descended through the trees.

  She found Dale’s body next. The deputy was lying just off the trail between Dixie Lagoon and the beach, still wearing that orange slicker he’d pulled from Kirby’s boat, though Jess could see there were a fair sight more holes in it now than when he’d found it.

  There was a pistol lying on the ground near Dale, and she kicked it away, but Dale had been shot more than a few times, and in bad places besides. He’d fired his last round.

  She stood over him and looked down into his lifeless eyes and felt something come back to her, some kind of humanity she’d scared off when Kirby was kicking her ass. Dale, dead. Bryce, too. The Whitmers were mean as shit, but they were dumb; they hadn’t come into this mess thinking it would end with the both of them shot. Hell, they’d probably bought every word of Kirby’s big talk, believed they’d get rich, as they were supposed to, and nothing bad would ever happen.

  And look at you now, she thought. The end of the Whitmer lineage, shot all to shit in a dirty orange slicker.

  It was sad, and it was sad because she’d grown up with the Whitmers, and even if she hadn’t much liked them, they’d always been a part of her town. She’d grown up with Kirby, too; hell, she’d almost been proud when she heard he’d made deputy, before all the shit with Ty had gone down. She’d been rooting for him to take over Kirk Wheeler’s position as sheriff, just so she could say something actually good had come out of Deception Cove, just once.

  But this was Deception Cove in a nutshell, right here. Big dreams dashed, and people dying young.