by Sandra Brown
Parker shrugged goofily. “Just goes to show how wrong a person can be. Here I was thinking that maybe, after all these years, you’d be ready to relieve your conscience.”
“Cut the bullshit, Parker.” Noah’s voice cracked across the stillness like a whip. “I assume this Envy is the manuscript that Maris has been raving about?”
“The very one. She’s read every word. Several times. Likes the story. Loves the concept, the dynamic of the competitive friends. Says the characters are vividly drawn. Thinks Roark is a prince and Todd is… well, not a prince.”
“She’s easily impressed by melodrama.”
“Wrong. She’s a good editor.”
“A schoolgirl playing dress-up.”
“She’s a classy lady.”
“Jesus.” Noah snickered. “You’ve fucked her, haven’t you?”
Parker clenched his jaw and refused to answer, which caused Noah to laugh.
“Ah, Parker, Parker. Your hair is graying and your face has more lines than a road map. But some things haven’t changed. You’re still the chivalrous lover who never kisses and tells.”
He shook his head with amusement. “You always did have a soft spot for the ladies. Of course, I know why you had a burning desire to get Maris in bed. You wanted to cuckold me. You went to a hell of a lot of trouble to do it, so I hope you weren’t too disappointed. She’s not exactly a firecracker in the sack, is she?”
He looked pointedly at Parker’s lap. “Or maybe you’re pitifully grateful for any kind of sexual activity. Even Maris’s stilted efforts.” Thoughtfully, he scratched the side of his nose. “She does have that luxuriant bush, though. If you left the lights on, I’m sure you noticed.”
Parker wished very badly to kill him then. He wanted to watch him die, slowly and in agony and feeling the flames of hell licking at his ankles.
Seemingly oblivious to the murderous impulses he was fostering, Noah continued nonchalantly. “Not that I’m complaining about Maris, you understand. She’s certainly proved herself useful.”
“In the furtherance of your career.”
“That’s right.” He took a step closer. “And you must know, Parker, that I won’t let anything or anyone rob me of all that I’ve achieved. This book of yours will never be published.”
“Actually, Noah, I didn’t write it for publication. I wrote it for myself.”
“As a cathartic autobiography?”
“No.”
“As a ticket to fuck my wife?”
“No.”
“You’re stretching my patience, Parker.”
“I wrote it to get you here, on my turf, so that I could be watching your face when you die, just like you were watching me from the pilot’s wheel of the boat that night.”
Noah snorted. “What? You’re going to run me down with your wheelchair?”
Parker merely smiled and withdrew a small transistor from his shirt pocket.
“Oh, I see, you’re going to beat me to death with a remote control.”
“I own this building,” Parker said conversationally. “I like it. Good atmosphere. But some folks think it’s a hazard to kids who might wander in here. That abandoned well and all.” He hitched his thumb in that direction. “So I’ve decided to do my fellow islanders a favor and destroy it.”
He depressed one of the rubberized buttons on the transistor. Out of the shadows in a far corner came a loud pop followed by a spark. Startled, Noah spun around and watched as a flame leaped up against the weathered wood.
Parker gave his chair a hard push toward him. Noah, sensing the motion, turned and lunged at him. Noah’s daily workouts in the gym had kept him trim. His reflexes were good. He landed a couple of good punches.
But Parker’s arm and chest muscles were exceptionally well developed from years of having to rely on them. He staved off many of Noah’s slugs and had enough upper body strength to keep himself in his chair. His real advantage, however, was in knowing how Noah fought. Noah fought dirty. Noah fought to win. And he didn’t care how he won.
When Noah began pushing him backward toward the open well, Parker wasn’t surprised. His efforts became defensive. He took reckless swings that Noah easily dodged. Sensing that Parker was weakening, Noah fought even harder. Parker’s frantic struggling only increased Noah’s determination to defeat him. He came on more ferociously, blindly, the predator moving in for the kill.
Then, at precisely the right instant, Parker jammed down the brake lever of his wheelchair. It bit into the rubber wheel and brought the chair to a jarring stop. Noah hadn’t expected it. Inertia propelled him forward. His Gucci shoes caught the low rim of the well, tripping him. He groped at air. Then he stepped into nothingness.
His startled cry was a hellish echo of Mary Catherine’s scream as she fell backward over the railing of the boat.
Parker’s breathing was harsh and loud. He wiped his bloody nose on his shirtsleeve.
“You son of a bitch!” Noah shouted up at him.
“So the fall didn’t kill you?”
“Motherfucker!”
“You’re a sore loser, Noah. The cripple outsmarted you. Isn’t that what you had in mind for me? To push me down that well? Why do you think I kept referring to it? Foreshadowing, Noah. Any writer worth a damn should have recognized it for what it was.”
“Get me out of here.”
“Ah, don’t be such a crybaby, Noah. It’s not nearly as deep as the Atlantic. To the best of my knowledge there are no saltwater carnivores in there. Don’t know about snakes, though,” he added in an intentional afterthought.
“What are you going to do, flood it with water and let me drown?”
“Give me some credit. All you’d have to do is keep treading water till it got to the top.”
“Then what’s the point?”
Parker set off another of the charges. “There are twelve more like that, Noah. But long before I’ve set all of them off, you’ll already be choking. Smoke inhalation doesn’t have quite the drama of ocean water flooding your lungs, or being eaten by a shark, but it’s pretty damn effective, wouldn’t you say?”
“Ooh, you’re scaring me, Parker. You expect me to believe that you would let me die down here?”
“Why wouldn’t you believe it? I’m a killer. You said so yourself. Remember? Come on, flex the old memory muscles. I’m sure you’ll remember. After all, you must’ve rehearsed that blubbering speech a thousand times. The tears were a convincing touch, I must say. Even I came close to believing you. We were David and Jonathan until that day on the boat. Then I turned devious, lecherous, and murderous. Does that jiggle your memory?”
“I was… I was…”
“You were sentencing me to prison. Since I did the time, I think it’s only fair that I commit the crime.”
Noah was silent for a moment, then said, “I think my ankle’s broken.”
“You’re breaking my heart.”
“Listen, Parker, I’m in pain down here.”
“Don’t even go there, Noah.”
“Okay, what I did… it was wrong. I got scared. Froze up. Ran away. Once I realized what I’d done, there was no way out for me but to do what I did. I can understand your carrying a grudge. But you’ve made your point.”
“Like you could have made yours by leaving me in the ocean to die. Wasn’t that enough? Did you have to let Mary Catherine die, too?”
“You won’t get away with this,” Noah said in a new tone of voice.
“Oh, I think I will. You did.”
“People will see the smoke, call the fire department.”
“It’s on the other side of the island. You’ll suffocate before they get here.”
“And you’ll be blamed.”
“I don’t think so. Everyone inside Terry’s heard your cruel remark. They know your wife’s been living under my roof for a couple weeks. They’ll figure you came down here from Yankeeland to bust my ass. But to them I’m the poor crippled man who lives down the lane. Now, who do you
think they’re going to believe? Who do you think they’ll choose to believe?
“All I have to do is tell them the truth. We had words. You attacked me, and I’ve got the bloody nose to prove it. You lost your balance and fell into the well. Unfortunately, I had already set off the charges and couldn’t stop the inevitable. I tried to save you, but it was no use. I’m a cripple, remember?”
He peered over the rim and smiled down at Noah, whose face was a pale oval looking up at him from the bottom of the dry well. “It’s as plausible as the story you told the Coast Guard, don’t you think?”
“Parker. Parker. Listen to me.”
“Excuse me just a moment.” He depressed a button and another charge sparked. By now flames were eating the wood on the outside walls in two places, working their way up toward the loft.
“Stop this, Parker.” Noah cried.
“No.”
“For God’s sake!”
“For God’s sake? Don’t you mean for your sake, Noah? I think even God would understand and forgive anything I did to you. I thought of shooting you and getting it over with. I’d’ve pled self-defense and would have gotten away with it.
“But then I thought about the hours I flailed about in that fucking ocean before I was rescued. I thought about the hours I spent in excruciating pain in rehab hospitals. Somehow shooting seemed much too good for you. I had to wait fourteen years for this. If you met death quickly, it wouldn’t be nearly as gratifying. I considered cutting off your balls and letting you bleed out, like I nearly did. But that would have been messy and I couldn’t think of a reasonable defense.
“Then one day I was in here plotting a Deck Cayton novel, and I happened to catch myself staring at this well, and just like that,” he said, snapping his fingers, “the idea came to me. I got a mental image of you struggling for air, your eyes streaming tears, your nose running snot. I got so aroused, I nearly came inside my shorts.
“By the way, the equipment works just fine, thank you. And Maris might have been married to you, but she was never your wife. You don’t know her. You never even came close to knowing her.
“Now, where was I? Oh, yeah, I got an ol’ boy who lives on the island to set these charges for me. Simple. Like automatic fireplace starters. I sent out notices that I was going to burn the place down. A controlled fire, you see. Like they once used to burn the sugarcane fields right here on the island. Not much flame. Lots of smoke.”
By now the smell of it was strong.
“Parker, you’ve got to get us out of here.”
Parker laughed. “I won’t have trouble getting out. I’ve got wheels. You, by contrast, are screwed.”
Noah tried another tack. “Okay, you want me to beg. I’m begging. Get me out of here.”
Parker coughed on smoke. “Sorry, Noah. Even if I wanted to, it’s too late. I’ve got to save myself. I’ll be depriving myself the pleasure of watching you die, but—”
“Parker! Don’t do this.” Noah sobbed. “Please. Don’t let me die. What can I say?”
Parker stared down at him, his features turning hard, all traces of humor vanishing. “Say you’re sorry.”
Noah stopped sobbing but remained stubbornly silent.
“Did you even know Mary Catherine’s real name?”
“What difference does it make?”
“It was Sheila. You should’ve at least known the name of the girl who miscarried your baby.”
“It wasn’t a baby. It was a female trick. A trap.”
“So you did know,” Parker murmured. “I wondered.”
“Ancient history, Parker.”
“Wrong. It’s very timely. If you want to get out of here alive, Noah, admit that you knocked Mary Catherine overboard and did nothing, fucking nothing, to try and save her.”
Noah hesitated. Parker placed his hand on the wheels of his chair and started to turn it around. “See ya.”
“Wait! All right! What happened to Mary Catherine—”
“Sheila.”
“Sheila. What happened to Sheila was my fault.”
“And me. You deliberately ran that boat over me.”
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
“I deliberately ran that boat over you.”
“Why?”
“I… I was trying to kill you and make it look like an accident. I wanted you out of the way.”
“Of your career.”
“That’s right.”
“Was that also why you killed Daniel Matherly?”
“Damn you!”
“You did kill him, didn’t you?” Parker shouted down at him. “Admit it or you suffocate, you son of a bitch. If you don’t drown in your own nervous piss first.”
“I… I…”
“How’d you arrange that fall, Noah?”
“I provoked him. About this old friend of his. He got angry, came at me. I deflected—”
“You pushed him.”
“All right.”
“Say it!”
Desperate now, Noah relented. “I pushed him. I didn’t have to, but I did. Just to make sure.”
Parker coughed on smoke. It was stinging his eyes. “You are an abomination, Noah. A miserable human being. A murderer.” He shook his head regretfully. “But you’re not worth killing.”
Parker wheeled his chair backward. Panicked, Noah shouted his name from the bottom of the well. He was out of sight only for the amount of time it took him to retrieve the rope he had stashed earlier in preparation for this moment. He dangled it above the well where Noah could see it. “Are you sure you want me to save you? You’ll go to prison, you know.”
“Throw it down.” He was reaching up in an imploring gesture.
“I know exactly how you feel,” Parker told him. “I knew my legs were shot to hell. I’d have done anything to stop the pain. Anything except die. I thought I wanted to. But when those fishermen reached for me, I grabbed hold for all I was worth.”
He threaded the rope down to Noah, who grasped it frantically. “Make a few loops around your chest and tie it tightly,” Parker instructed.
“Okay,” Noah called when he was done. “Pull me up.”
Parker backed away, pulling the rope taut. “Ready? If you can get some footholds, walk the wall.”
“I can’t. My ankle.”
“Okay, but easy does it. Don’t—”
He was about to say “yank.” But it was too late.
Chapter 36
In his panic to be rescued, Noah had pulled sharply on the rope. Parker wasn’t braced for it. He was jerked forward out of the wheelchair, landing on the packed dirt floor. “Goddammit!”
“What? What’s happening? Parker?”
For several seconds, Parker lay there with his forehead resting on the floor. He took several deep breaths. Then, using his forearms to pull him along, he inched his way over to the rim of the well and peered down into it.
“You pulled me out of my chair.”
“Well, get back in it.”
“I’m open to suggestions on how I should go about it.”
“Well, do something.”
Noah’s voice was now ragged with desperation. Even at the bottom of the well, he must have been able to hear the crackle of old wood burning. The smoke grew thicker by the second.
“Parker, you’ve got to get me out of here!”
“Can’t help you, buddy. I’m a cripple, remember?” He shook his head ruefully. “I’ll admit this isn’t the way I had the ending plotted. I never intended for you to die. I wanted to give you a taste of what it’s like to face your mortality. To experience that all-encompassing terror. I wanted to scare you into confessing your sins. I wanted you to grovel and beg me for your life. And you did. It was supposed to end there.”
He laughed. “I realize that you’re panicked, Noah, and that your mind is preoccupied with surviving. But I hope you’re thinking clearly enough to grasp the irony of this situation.
“Think about it. I’m your only hope of
salvation. But I’m powerless to save you because of the injuries you inflicted on me. That’s rich, isn’t it? It’s a shame that neither of us will have the opportunity to use it in a book. It’s the kind of built-in irony that Professor Mike Strother loved.”
At the mention of their mentor’s name, the distance between them seemed to shrink. Their eyes made a connection that was almost audible. Parker spoke softly. “You have one more sin to confess, don’t you, Noah?”
“I had to be first, Parker. I had to be.”
“Professor Strother hadn’t heard from either of us for more than a year. All his correspondence had been returned unopened, addressees unknown, no forwarding addresses. He was puzzled and slightly offended by our sudden and inexplicable disappearance.
“He didn’t realize you’d sold The Vanquished until he saw it in his local bookstore. He recognized the title and your name immediately, of course. He purchased a copy. He was curious to read how you had finalized your manuscript. He wanted to see if you had incorporated any of his suggestions. Naturally, he was proud that one of his students had written the novel that was all the rage, the topic of conversation at cocktail parties and beauty shops and office commissaries, the book that was on every bestseller list.”
“Parker—”
“Now imagine Professor Strother’s surprise when he settled into his reading chair, adjusted his lamp, opened his copy of The Vanquished by Noah Reed. And read the first page of my book. My book, Noah!”
“It was that letter,” Noah shouted back at him. “Strother always favoring you. Always thinking you were the one with the most talent. He thought your manuscript was so fucking fine. I thought I’d test it, get a second opinion. One day while you were out, I went into your computer and printed out a copy. I put my title on it and submitted it under my name.”
“And when it sold, you had to get rid of me. Immediately. That day.”
“That was the plan.”
“Bet you shit when I turned up alive.”
“It gave me pause, but I didn’t panic. I hurriedly put your book into my computer, and mine into yours. You couldn’t have proven your claims to the authorities because by then I had painted you as unstable and violent.”
“Strother always gave you credit for clever plotting.”