The Terror of Living (14 page)

    Behind him, the cutter dropped away. There was land coming up at him out of the darkness, and the hull hit and scraped against the pebbled beach, the fiberglass splintering beneath him. He was thrown forward. His head hit the console and he felt blood rise and fall into his eyes. The propellers caught-sound of metal twisting, rock scraping. The boat lay down on its port side, its white belly laid out on the beach with the waves rising toward it. Everything silent but the sound of the waves and the wind as it whistled over the starboard gunwale. He wiped an arm across his head and for a moment sat looking at the dark stain on the sleeve of his shirt.

    On the shore he could see rocks and a few large pieces of driftwood, then farther in how the grass grew and built up toward a street lined at hundred-yard intervals with yellow overhead light. He wiped again at his head with the sleeve of his shirt. The AR-15 lay at his feet, and he picked it up, releasing the stock and laying it along the body of the rifle. He carried his bag and went stumbling up the bank of grass and out onto the street.

    DRAKE WOKE TO THE SOUND OF HIS PHONE VIBRATING on the bedside table. His wife stirred and pulled the hotel bedding over her face. They'd forgotten to close the blinds, and there was a pale moon over downtown. He had fallen asleep immediately. He picked up the phone and went to the window to answer. Below, on the freeway, nothing was left of the accident Sheri and he had watched the night before. For a brief moment he thought of the people involved, of the cars sitting in their driveways, of evidence and things left behind.

    Still half-asleep, he listened to what Driscoll was telling him. He closed the phone and for a half second stood at the window looking out on the city. Late-night traffic, yellow cabs waiting outside the hotel doors twenty-some stories below, the golden beams of their headlights playing on the wet cement. He turned back to the room and found his pants, then checked the time, just a little past midnight, fifteen minutes till Driscoll arrived.

    He took a shower with the door open so that he could hear the phone ring. When he was done, he toweled down, shaved, and combed his hair as best he could to disguise his thinning temples, then dressed and went back out into the room. He walked back to the bed, the bathroom light leaking into the hotel room and outlining the profile of his wife's body under the sheets. He pulled the sheets back and gave Sheri a light kiss, then stood and fixed his holster on his belt.

    Sheri pulled a pillow over her head to block out the light. "You're leaving again?" she said, her voice cracking with sleep, her auburn hair flattened and mussed by the pillow.

    "Sorry."

    "This is some vacation you got me on."

    "I know," he said, "but it'll be over soon."

    "I liked it better when you saved cats from trees and wrote reports on cow tippings."

    "I never saved any cats," he said.

    "I was just doing some cheerful thinking."

    Her bare foot was sticking out of the bottom of the sheets, and he went over and gave her big toe a playful tug. "You going to be okay here?" he said.

    "Just tell me all you're going to do is save a cat from a tree, and I promise not to worry."

    "I'm planning on saving a mess of cats, a whole litter." He bent and kissed her, and he felt her hand come over his neck and linger there for a moment before it dropped away.

    "That's good," she said. "That's just fine."

    HUNT MADE NO EFFORT TO HIDE HIMSELF. THE GIRL sat in the seat beside him. She didn't say a thing, just watched Hunt with her brown eyes. Hunt felt the pain in his calf. He tried to catch his breath, tried to lock the hurt away inside him, thinking the whole time of the distance still to travel.

    His boat lay facing inland with the bow out of the water, the waves rising up and splashing over the aft deck. In the distance he could hear the sound of a helicopter rotor. The boat was useless, rifled through with bullets, the smell of burnt wiring and melted plastic. With his seat swiveled around, he watched the red and white Coast Guard Dolphin fly low over the water toward them, the searchlights scanning the water as it came. Soon the lights would be on them. Hunt held his breath, the girl beside him, watching the helicopter until it curved north, veering away from them on some unseen rail. It hadn't seen them, their bullet-torn boat hidden on the radar by the mass of land they had beached on. Had they stayed out there, at any speed, the helicopter would have found them. They needed to get away from the boat. Hunt watched as the flashing helicopter lights tracked up the coast, passing in the night at a mile's distance.

    A few drops started to fall. He could hear the rain, the small collision of it on the fiberglass deck, something wet across his forehead and then again on his forearm. His senses were coming back to him, taken up by all the adrenaline, covered up, heightened. He wasn't sure. He looked over at the girl. High cheekbones, skinny, with a few wrinkles around the eyes. She was looking at him. Had she said something? A sudden wash of pain as he tried to stand. He sensed everything at once, and none of it felt right.

    He looked down at his leg to where the slim line of blood escaped, and he could feel the pain all through him, shooting up along the nerves like venom in the vein. He tested it, putting more weight than he needed to onto the wound, and he felt the pain come again and something new, almost jellied, slip down his leg. The leg would do for walking, though he did not know for how long or to where.

    He had remembered the slip of land from past runs, the long angle of the island, connected at one end by a small ferry dock. It was an Indian reservation two and a half hours north of Seattle. In the past he'd had a friend here, a man he'd known in Monroe, someone who could put him up, could help him out, but that was years ago now, when Hunt had been a different man altogether. Hunt didn't even know if the man still lived here, if he still existed - it was a lifetime ago - but he hoped if he could find the house, if he could find his friend, it would do for a safe haven.

    The slim line of red trickled down onto the floor, and he could see where the rain was beginning to fall and wipe the color away. Under the silver light of the moon, the deck beneath him was washed with the pink watercolor of his wound. In one of the compartments he found the boat's small orange survival bag. He took from it a roll of gauze, a surgical rag, a pair of scissors, an Ace bandage, the hydrogen peroxide, and the iodine. He placed some of these on the console and the rest he gave to the girl and told her to hold it. He rested in the captain's chair and cut away his pants until he could see the purple hole through his calf, the blood already congealed in sticky red scabs. He let the peroxide fall onto it and felt the coldness of the bubbling liquid as it went down into his shoe. When he thought he could handle it, he rubbed the wound down with the rag and winced and saw white-hot spots appear beneath his eyelids.

    Had anyone passed in that moment, they would have heard the scream carried with the wind and then suddenly ending. Hunt had not passed out, but it was close. He unscrewed the iodine and let it fall freely, feeling the iron-colored liquid enter into the torn flesh. Quick as he could, he wrapped the gauze, then secured it all down with the Ace bandage, his leg swollen with blood and pumping beneath the bandage like some monster trying to break out.

    He felt a moment of nausea pass quickly across him. Then it was gone. Anything of importance he kept in the bright orange survival bag. From the console where he had laid out the medical supplies he selected the iodine, peroxide, bandages, and tape and put them into the bag with the scissors and his lighter. He opened the compartment beneath the console and took out his wallet and cell phone. From a side pocket beneath the throttle he took the flares, cracking open the breech on the flare gun and then snapping it closed again. All of this went into the bright orange bag. He zipped the bag closed and swung it across his back. He searched the floor for the Browning but didn't find it. He took his first painful steps and walked down toward the engines, careful not to slip. He motioned to the girl with his hand. When she came down the deck carrying her bag, he showed her what he wanted her to do.

    With her hands she felt the dark water. On the surface the little discarded things of the boat floated-random pens, a coil of rope- and on the bottom, in the shallow parts where the water dimmed to a black murk, Hunt could see coins, broken glass, all of it fallen to the deck and collected there. He saw now the fuel in the water and smelled where it had coated the rope and the pens. A wave came over and washed along the deck; he felt the cold on his tennis shoes. He told the girl to run her open fingers along the corner of the deck until she felt the barrel of the Browning. "Like this," he said, spreading his fingers wide. She knelt and, after three sweeps of the water, pulled the Browning up. He undid the orange survival bag and let the gun fall in.

    Careful not to bang his calf, he went over the side of the boat, landed with his good leg as support, and hopped forward slowly with his hand on the bulwark. He felt his way along, finding the boat cleats and using these for support.

    He checked his watch but found the face broken and the time stopped a little past eleven. The cell phone lay in his bag, but he did not check it and instead began to walk up the beach, holding his leg stiffly beneath him. The girl followed but did not offer to help. To her, Hunt must have seemed near death, his pants torn and his calf swollen as big as his thigh, the blood beginning to soak through the bandage. And on his back, the bright orange bag, like a warning.

    Hunt estimated there to be eight more hours before the sun came up and the boat would be found.

    DRISCOLL WAS WAITING JUST OUTSIDE THE LOBBY WITH his cruiser door pulled open and his hand up over the roof of the car when Drake saw him. "Hey, I'm sorry to have been so blunt when I called earlier, but I think you're really going to like this."

    "What are we doing?"

    "I think we got your guy."

    Drake opened the car door and stepped in. He wore his hat again. For a brief moment, he'd thought of wearing the full uniform, but then dressed quickly in a pair of worn jeans and a light henley. Driscoll was dressed as he was earlier, in a brown suit, yellow shirt, and maroon tie. The smell of scotch and steak still clung to him, and Drake could feel it heavy in the air when the doors closed.

    "Now you're ready for me to be a detective?" Drake said.

    "No, the world's not ready for that."

    "What, then?"

    "I just think you'll have a good time with this one. Plus we'll need you to identify this guy."

    Drake looked out on the downtown streets, a light rain falling. He took his hat off and laid it on his lap and gazed up at the tops of the buildings as they passed. Driscoll flipped a switch and the grill lights began to flash, and Drake could feel the acceleration take hold.

    "Did you bring your gun?"

    "Am I going to need it?"

    "Do you ever?"

    He was about to say no but then thought of recent days and reconsidered. He slid the weight of it around on his waistband and let it lie against his thigh.

    Seeing it, Driscoll smiled. "Would have thought you'd be more of the six-shooter type."

    "Regulations," Drake joked.

    "Regulations will get you killed," Driscoll said, bringing the flap of his coat open. "You know what that is? Desert Eagle, three fifty-seven Magnum."

    Driscoll said it in such a way and with such pride that Drake had a hard time holding a straight face.

    "You know what that is?" Driscoll said, tapping the closed fabric of his coat. "Stopping power."

    "I'm sure it is."

    The car took an odd bounce, and for a moment Drake could feel the vehicle turning through the air, just enough to notice, and then the tires landed and everything straightened. "What are we doing?" Drake asked. "Flying."

    EDDIE TRIED HUNT'S NUMBER AGAIN, LISTENED TO THE message catch, and then hung up. "You said he was where?"

    Nora looked up at the darkening clouds overhead; a few raindrops had begun to fall, and they could hear them pattering down through the nearby undergrowth. She went back into the stables and grabbed the third saddle. "Didn't say. Just said he'd call when he found somewhere safe."

    "This is crazy, Nora."

    "I don't know what it is, but I don't really think we should hang around here waiting to find out."

    "We don't know that."

    "Do you know something I don't?" Nora threw the saddle over a small bench. She began to fold the horse blankets for the three horses, and after she was done, she lifted the nearest saddle and put the weight down over the blankets.

    "I don't know a thing," Eddie said, raising the cell phone up in the air and showing it to Nora. "I just don't like the idea of running off like this."

    "Look, we need to get the truck, in any case. For now, let's think about that."

    "And then what?"

    "And then we go somewhere and we figure this all out."