“They’re looking for you.”
“I know.”
“A great many people. There’s no escape from this, Morgan.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
“What’re you planning to do, shoot me?”
“I left something in the attic I needed to get. And I wanted to see you one more time. That’s all.”
“I’m sorry, Morgan. I wish I could say something, make it all better.”
She shook her head. She was feeling fine. Amazingly clearheaded. Seeing her father for the first time. A man who had been unprepared for the cruelty that befell him. Just like everyone else. No one was ready. Even though they had to know it was coming. It was always coming.
“You can’t fix this, Dad. Maybe you could have fixed it back then, but you didn’t and now it’s too late. The family is finished. We’re all gone now. Andy, Mom, Johnny. Now you and me. We’re gone, too.”
“Do you need anything, Morgan? Money? Food?”
She smiled.
“I needed something once,” she said. “But not now. I’ve learned to do without it.”
She heard the truck rumbling around the corner, headed down the alley.
“Andy’s death, you know, that wasn’t an accident.”
“What?”
“You were going to split us up. Mother told him you were going to send me away to school.”
Her father absorbed her words slowly.
“We talked about it. I remember that.”
“Ship me away and keep Andy at home. Like I was some spider-woman. Some pet you could discard.”
“What do you mean, it wasn’t an accident?”
“Andy and I,” she said. “We loved each other.”
Her father peered at her.
“We loved each other in every way.”
Her father lowered his eyes and studied the floor at her feet.
“It was beautiful, joyous. I didn’t feel guilty about it.”
He looked up, shaking his head. His eyes shining.
“Andy’s death was an accident, Morgan. A terrible accident.”
“No, it wasn’t. Andy was smarter than that. He never made mistakes. He took an extra wrap on purpose. He wanted to die.”
“No,” her father said. “No.”
“That’s what he did,” she said. “A grand exit. Such a romantic.”
Out in the alley the garbage truck’s brakes squealed. She heard one of the men whoop at the driver, then the clatter of cans on the pavement.
“But that’s not why I’m here, Dad. All that’s over and done.”
The color had drained from his face.
“You invited those men aboard our boat, Dad. Why did you do that?”
He wiped the dampness from his eyes.
“Morgan,” he said as if trying to stir her awake. “Morgan.”
“That wasn’t right, Dad. We were still a family. We were damaged, we had our faults, sure, but we were still a family. A unit. And you violated that, Dad. You invited that asshole aboard. He was there to destroy us and you fell for it and let him onto our boat. And look what he did, he killed Johnny. He killed my brother.”
She aimed the pistol at her father’s chest.
Her father stood up and raised his right hand toward her as if he meant to touch her cheek, wipe away her tears, wrap her in his arms, give her the hug he’d neglected to give her before. But the bullet knocked him back into his chair. Outside in the alley, the garbage truck was compressing its rubbish. She shot him a second time. Two in the heart. The second slug swiveled him around until he was half facing his computer screen again.
She stood there for a moment watching his last moments leak out of him. On the screen, the blue ping was blinking. Big Mother was on the move.
Twenty-Nine
Thorn went to the Yellow Bait House, bought three dozen live shrimp. Now Lawton was using them to catch mangrove snappers. The fish were only eight, nine inches long, not keepers, but Lawton didn’t mind. He’d catch one, hold it up for Alex and Thorn to admire, then gently release it. He wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, something Casey had left behind, with a yellow-and-pink ribbon that dangled down his back. He cast like a pro, sending out his baited hook with an easy flick. Thorn was impressed. Excellent motor skills.
It was nearly noon and Alexandra stood at the bedroom door giving Thorn a look. She’d peeled off her shorts and unbuttoned her blue workshirt, showing a few inches of white skin from her navel to her throat. She still wore her black bikini panties. He finished washing the last breakfast plate, put it in the rack, and went over to her.
“He’ll be okay?”
“He’s fishing,” she said. “He’s in heaven.”
She took his hand and guided him into the bedroom and shut the door. She took off the workshirt and lay down on the sheets and watched him undress. When he was naked he came over to the bed and slid in beside her. She looked into his eyes for a few seconds, then took hold of his chin and guided his lips to hers. They found the fit, relaxing, opening to each other. Going away, the border between them melting. The kiss lasting for minutes, a delicate give-and-take. Alex now the aggressor, easing up on an elbow, pressing down on him, then lifting up and straddling his waist, sliding down till she was flat against him, beginning a slow grind. Thorn cooperating, bending his injured leg out of the way, giving her a better angle as she worked against him, raising him until he fit between the V of her legs, sliding up and down against her silk panties. No hurry to tug them off, to fit him inside. No hurry to end this teasing warm-up. They both knew it was going further than that. It already had and it would again and it would again after that. No need to say it out loud, no need to do anything but lie there and kiss her hungry mouth and lift his hips and press and stroke.
After a while, she broke the hold, slid away to his side, ran her hand across his stomach, around the tender perimeter of the bandage where Johnny had sliced him. A pause. Both of them had been on the verge of the wild part, losing control. But she wanted a break, wanted to draw back, say something. He could feel it coming as she coiled the hair around his navel.
“Yes?”
She nestled closer.
“When you wrapped me in that blanket, Thorn, was that really necessary? Stripping off my clothes like that.”
“I thought it was.”
“You looked at me, didn’t you? Lying there naked, shivering.”
“I might have. Briefly.”
“Nobody’s ever done that before.”
“Looked at you naked?”
She gave the coil of hair a sharp tug.
“You know what I mean. Saved my life.”
“Oh, that,” he said. “Just part of the full-service package.”
“I want to thank you, Thorn.”
“You’ve already done that.”
“I’d like to do it again.”
“Well, if that’s how you feel. Sure, go ahead, thank me.”
She tugged the coil again.
“How do you feel about Lawton?”
“I like him,” Thorn said. “I like him very much.”
“He’s like a child,” she said. “If he makes a new friend and that friend deserts him, it can be crushing.”
“I’m not a deserter.”
“Yes,” she said. “I didn’t think you were.”
“He’s a good man. He’s funny sometimes. All that Houdini stuff.”
“Funny’s only part of it.”
“I know. Funny and sad. But at least the funny is there.”
“It’s not easy, Thorn, watching it happen. It’s not easy at all.”
“You seem to be handling it.”
“He likes you,” she said. “You shouldn’t let it spook you if he starts thinking you’re his son. Something like that.”
“I don’t spook easy.”
“You can be funny, too, Thorn. I lied when I said you weren’t. The way you were when the SWAT team was here. Pretending they were room service.”
�
�My heart was about to explode,” he said.
“How’s it feeling now?”
Thorn smiled.
“Rich and full.”
He rolled onto his right shoulder and kissed her temple. He kissed along her hairline. He brushed his lips against her eyebrows. His hand was touching her breasts and she was making a noise in her throat, like a mourning dove in the late afternoon, settling in for the night. It was one of her noises, one of the early ones. Purr, coo, growl, the bird sounds and the dangerous animal sounds. He liked them all. The entire range from the first huffs to the anguished cries at the end. She reached out for him and gripped him gently and moved her hand up and down his length, then explored with a delicate fingertip the tender rim.
The start of another journey. Heading off along a pleasant winding road that disappeared a little way ahead into the trees. Part of the excitement was not knowing where the road led, how long it was. Maybe to the other side of the earth this time. All the way around the globe. He hoped so. He always hoped so.
“That’s it? Stalling cars? I’m supposed to be impressed with that?”
Roy scowled at her. The aluminum case at his feet bounced against the fiberglass deck.
Morgan kept the skiff moving. Twenty knots, a half mile offshore. The HERF was strapped down on the bow, aimed at US 1, the narrow strip that connected the mainland to Key Largo and points beyond. Water on both sides, nowhere to turn around. Shut down that road, it wouldn’t be long before traffic was backed up for twenty miles in both directions.
She smiled at Roy. He was wearing a black silk shirt and the same tight jeans he always wore. Boat shoes this time, a white cowboy hat with a leather band. He was shaking his head.
“Think about it, Roy. Think about the possibilities.”
“What possibilities? Invest in a wrecker company, get rich towing cars I’ve stalled with a million-dollar gun. Take a long goddamn time to make back my investment towing fucking cars, missy.”
“I hate that missy shit.”
Roy glanced at her, then looked back at the highway. Nothing was moving over there. A few cars had plowed into each other when they lost their power steering, their power brakes, their batteries. Cruising along at seventy and all at once they’ve got nothing. Not as dramatic as airplanes falling from the sky, but it fit her plan. Nothing moving in or out of the Keys. Cell phones fried.
“Is this all you’ve got?” Roy said.
She heard it coming, the whap of its rotors, the growing roar. She looked back to the north and saw it following the curve of the highway, hovering low. The inevitable TV chopper, Channel 7, the sensational station, always first on the scene. The one with the reporters who stooped down over the blood and dabbed a finger in it and held it up still fresh for the folks at home to see.
“Okay,” Roy said. “Now this is better.”
Morgan unlashed the HERF from the bow and turned it on its side so the cone was pointing upward. She waited for the chopper to work its way down the row of stalled cars, all those people standing out on the shoulder waving up as if a rescue basket would lower and take them on their busy way. The chopper was less than five hundred feet as it passed over them. Morgan pressed the two buttons and stepped back behind the console. In the lab she’d almost eliminated the back flash, but there still had to be some. No telling what the long-term medical effects might be, all that electromagnetic energy passing through the body over and over. As if long-term effects still mattered.
The helicopter’s noisy engine shut down and the gawky bird tumbled, nose first, onto the highway. Screams from the people in their stalled cars, then the whoosh of the fireball reached them, rocking the boat and blowing off Roy’s hat. It tumbled overboard and he yelled at her to go fetch it before it sank, it was his goddamn pride and joy, his favorite Stetson. So she turned the Whaler and skimmed over to where the hat floated right side up and Roy bent over the side and scooped it out and turned around, slinging water from the hat and looking for a half second at Morgan before he saw the pistol in her hand.
“You do that and you’re dead, missy. You won’t last till sunset.”
“That’s plenty long enough,” she said.
Roy took two shots in the stomach and was still standing. Tough old Texan. A third shot took off the top left quadrant of his skull and sent him sprawling backwards over the side.
A minute or two later, she was reloading when the second chopper came, this one from Metro-Dade police. She set the loaded pistol on the console and went over to the HERF to wait for the chopper to move into range.
“Something’s wrong.”
Lawton was standing in the doorway of the bedroom.
Thorn opened his eyes and lifted his head off the pillow.
“What is it, Dad?”
Alex held the sheet over her breasts. Her father turned his eyes to the living room.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But something’s wrong. Something changed.”
“He’s right,” Thorn said. “I hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“There’s no hum.”
“What?”
“It’s quiet out there. Saturday, there’s always a ton of traffic. Half of Miami down here getting drunk. But not today, the highway’s quiet.”
“I don’t hear anything different,” she said.
Thorn sat up. He walked naked over to his shorts, picked them off the floor, and stepped into them. He grabbed his white T-shirt and he and Lawton went out on the porch. Alex joined them a minute later, carrying her cell phone.
“Nothing,” Thorn said. “Everything’s shut down.”
While Thorn pulled on his T-shirt, Alexandra went to the railing that faced Blackwater Sound. She dialed a number and listened for a few moments, then said, “Dan, hey, it’s Alex.”
She listened for several minutes, then said, “Yeah, I will. Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry. Thorn’s here. We’re safe. Everything’s quiet.”
She hung up and set the phone on the picnic table.
“Two helicopters shot down over the eighteen-mile strip. US 1 backed up from Homestead to Islamorada. A forty-mile-long parking lot. We’re cut off, Thorn. Stranded. They’re keeping the choppers grounded. Too risky. Boats, that’s all they’re using. Coast Guard, Marine patrol, they’re out looking for her. She shot her father early this morning. Braswell’s dead.”
“She’s coming here,” said Thorn.
Alexandra lifted her eyes and looked out at the shimmer of the bay.
“I know,” she said. “We should get ready.”
Thorn went back inside for his shoes. Alex joined him a minute later.
“Just that one gun?”
“I didn’t want that one, but Sugar insisted.”
“We should call him. He could help.”
“He’s up in Miami, visiting his daughters.”
She nodded. Slipping into her sandals. While Thorn searched for his boat shoes, she went out on the porch. A second later she yelped.
He hustled outside, a shoe on his right foot, his left bare.
“Dad,” she said. “I told him to wait right here.”
Thorn leaned over the rail, peered down at the shoreline.
“He’s fishing. He’s working his way down the rocks, behind those mangroves. It’s okay. I’ll get him.”
Then he saw the Boston Whaler idling along the coastline, a blond woman at the wheel.
“Get the gun,” he said. “I’ll get Lawton.”
Morgan had to stop a couple of times before she found anyone who knew where Thorn lived. Finally a guy at the gas docks at Jewfish Creek pointed out the spot on her chart.
“Wood house, up on stilts, shingle roof, all surrounded by woods.”
“Thanks,” she said.
He leaned against the gas pump, smiling at her.
“Thorn’s always had good taste in broads.”
If she hadn’t wanted to save her ammunition, she would have left the asshole in flames.
Now, as she approac
hed the house from the north, easing past a jet ski rental place, a waterfront restaurant, she saw the house in its own little cove. Rustic as hell. A jungle on either side of it, nice cushion between it and the three-story mansion to its south and the condos to its north.
Morgan felt fine. Never better. The slate clean, starting fresh. New lungs, new eyes, heart full of promise. She had a half million dollars at her feet. Endless possibilities. Just this one chore before she headed off across the water, found a new place. Gave herself a new name, a new beginning. It felt damn good. Killing her father. Killing Roy. Free of all that. It felt wonderful. She knew it wasn’t supposed to. She wasn’t so out of touch that she didn’t realize that. But there it was. She felt so free, so light. That must be what salvation was. Grace. You broke loose of your sins, you transcended. You shattered the bonds. That’s how she felt. Liberated, emancipated. Fantastic.
Just this one last little task and she was gone.
“I got something,” Lawton said. “I thought I was just hooked on the bottom but this is a fish. This is a big damn fish.”
Thorn cut his bare foot on one of the jagged limestone chunks. He sucked down a breath and hobbled over to Lawton. The old man was leaning his weight against the tug on his line.
Twenty yards out the Whaler was still idling. The girl with blond hair was smiling at him. He saw the glint of the pistol lying on the console.
“It’s a grouper,” Lawton said. “Or maybe a nurse shark. I don’t know. It hasn’t shown itself. Doesn’t feel much like a shark though.”
“Yeah,” Thorn said. “There’s a grouper hole right there. Right where you are. She took your bait and went back inside. She’s going to try to break the line against the limestone.”
“Devious goddamn fish,” Lawton said. “I’m going to give her some slack, see what she does.”
“Good plan,” Thorn said.
He cut a look back at the house, but didn’t see Alexandra anywhere.
Thirty feet down the shore, Morgan eased her bow up to the rocky bank, gave it some throttle and ran aground. Blocking his way back to the house. Nowhere to run in the other direction, with a thick stand of mangroves running all the way to the waterline.
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