He'd packed the same gym bag for this trip as the last. As soon as he'd debarked at Fort Lauderdale airport—officially Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International—he combed through the bag and found the front-gate passkey Anya had given him when he'd visited his father.
So instead of a local motel, he'd rented a car and headed south and inland toward the Everglades and Gateways.
He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. The shades were drawn and a wave of sadness eddied around him as he stood in the cool darkness. His father had left here figuring he'd be back to finalize its sale and pack up to move back north. His first try at selling the place had fallen through when the buyer died. He'd found another buyer, but this time it was the seller who hadn't made it to the closing.
As he moved through the front room he decided to leave the shades drawn. He was going to be here maybe twelve hours, most of them dark. No point in raising them—especially since he wasn't supposed to be here.
He went to the kitchen, opened the fridge, and smiled at the sight of four bottles of Ybor Gold. He'd discovered the brand on his previous trip and it looked like he'd made Dad a convert.
He popped a top and wandered back through the living room/dining room area. He noticed that the paintings had been stripped from the walls and the trophy shelves were empty.
Readying to leave.
He stopped at the door to Dad's bedroom. All the family photos had been removed from the walls. The only ones left sat on his dresser: Tom's three kids, Kate's two, and an old family photo of Mom, Dad, Tom, Kate, and eight-year-old Jack—or "Jackie," as they'd all called him.
His throat tightened as he stared at those smiling faces.
I'm the only one left.
He went to the closet and found the ugly Hawaiian shirts still present. Leaning in the rear corner was the MIC sniper rifle he and Dad had bought last trip to lake care of a little business. But he was more interested in the old gray metal box on the shelf above. It had been locked the first time he'd found it. Not now.
He flipped it open, sorted through the photos of Dad's old army buddies from Korea until he reached the small jewelry box. He popped the lid to reveal the Purple Heart and Silver Star. Jack stared at them a moment, then snapped the lid shut. The photos and the medals would mean nothing to Ron, and even less to Tom's Skanks from Hell. They'd probably put them up on eBay first chance they had.
But they meant something to Jack—meant a lot. They were all he had left of his father, reminders of the part of his life Dad had hidden from his family, the war he'd tried to put behind him.
Jack closed the case and carried it to the kitchen as he went for another beer. But as he opened the door he spotted a green bottle sitting atop the fridge. He pulled it down. The label read THE SCOTCH MALT WHISKEY SOCIETY, CASK 12.6. A gift to Dad from Uncle Stu. Jack remembered Dad's toast when they'd shared a glass.
To the best day of my life in the last fifteen years.
Jack recalled the burn in his throat, but now the burn was in his eyes.
He poured himself a shot and sipped. Just as good as he remembered. No, good didn't quite do it. Exquisite was more like it.
He placed the bottle atop the metal box. No way the Skanks from Hell were going to get their hands on this either.
He felt too melancholy to watch TV. He'd sit and drink a little, then hit the sack early. He had to get back to Fort Lauderdale and find that boat slip by six a.m.
TUESDAY
1
Jack awoke with a start and looked at the red LED on his father's clock radio: 3:15. Had he been dreaming? Or had something else pulled him out of a sound sleep?
And then he heard it: a faint scratching from the living room. He slipped out of bed and padded to the bedroom door. The sound came from his right—from the front door.
The top half of the door was glass, divided into nine panes. He saw the silhouette of a man crouched on the far side. The scratching sound continued.
Some son of a bitch was trying to pick the lock.
A slew of thoughts raced through Jack's brain. First off, what was he after? He was making no attempt at discretion, so obviously he expected the place to be empty. A little homework and he'd know that Gateways was a gated community with regular security patrols, and so only the most paranoid residents had alarm systems. But if he knew Dad's place was empty, why was he picking the lock? Much easier to cut a hole in one of the panes, reach through, and unlock the door. Jack kept a glass cutter and a suction cup in his bag of tricks for just that purpose.
The only benefit to picking the lock was to hide the fact that the place had been broken into.
And why would he want to do that?
Jack turned and started toward the night table for a pistol—then realized he wasn't home. No weapon.
No, wait. The MIC.
He stepped to the closet and pulled out the sniper rifle. He didn't know if it was loaded and didn't much care. The WWII-vintage piece had a walnut stock and a steel butt plate. Why wake up the neighborhood with a shot when you have a ten-pound club?
He padded back to the living room, positioned himself so he'd be behind the door when it opened, and raised the rifle.
He waited.
Took a while—the guy wasn't adept—but he finally turned the cylinder and pushed open the door. When he stepped inside, Jack rammed the rifle's butt plate against the back of his head. Not too hard—didn't want to crack his skull or put him into a coma—but hard enough to subtract a hand-to-hand confrontation from the equation. Wasn't in the mood for any rough and tumble.
The guy gave a soft uUhn!" as his legs gave out. He dropped his little gym bag—very much like Jack's—and went to his knees. He knelt, swaying, looking like a churchgoer with vertigo. Jack was pondering whether or not to administer another tap when the guy fell forward and landed face first on the carpet.
Okay. Next step?
Duct tape. Dad always had been a firm believer in the wonders of the stuff and Jack was sure he'd seen a roll of it somewhere during his last trip. The porch—that was where he kept his tools.
Jack slammed his hip against the kitchen counter on his way to the rear of the house. Wouldn't have happened if he'd had the lights on, but he didn't want the security patrol to wonder why a supposedly empty house was lit up at three in the morning.
The light in the parking area behind the house pushed enough illumination through the porch jalousies for him to locate his father's toolbox. In the bottom compartment he found a roll and hurried back to the living room.
2
Jack sat on the toilet-seat cover and watched the guy in the bathtub stir and blink his eyes. He was young—maybe late twenties—and dressed in khaki shorts, a burgundy golf shirt, and Topsiders. He'd gelled his dark brown hair into little spikes—a style Jack had always found baffling—and had grown his somethings in South Florida. He lay on his back, his wrists duct-taped in front of him, with more tape around his ankles and knees. Not a foolproof taping job by a long shot, but Jack wasn't worried about that.
He was holding the guy's pistol.
After finishing the taping, Jack had hung a towel over the bathroom window and turned on the light. Then he'd dragged the guy in and rolled him into the tub. That done, he'd opened the gym bag—a High Sierra model with an empty water-bottle sleeve—and the first thing he'd found was a Luger.
Okay, a guy sneaking into his father's supposedly empty house was a deal, though not a terribly big one. But finding a pistol, even if he wasn't wearing it at the time, changed the picture and upped the threat level a few notches—maybe to orange. But then Jack noticed that the front sight had been filed off and the end of the barrel threaded. And when he discovered a dark blue MX Minireflex moderator in the bag, the situation went deep into the red, sending one thought clanging through his head like a gong.