Beating it out of him.
Before Skunk’s blow has fully landed, I start to swing my right arm around, using the big muscles near the shoulder, shifting my weight down and to the left, I am able to both neutralize his punch and gain momentum for my counter. I tuck my thumb in the palm and lead with the inner edge of my hand.
The strike lands hard against the side of Skunk’s skull.
I feel a vibration in my hand, something akin to a tuning fork for the hand bones, but there is no time to worry about that. I know that Skunk is ferocious and vicious in a thousand different ways. If I let up, he will kill me. That is true in every fight. Fights should never be something casual. That’s something most people don’t get. Every fight you see — drunks at a bar, idiots at a football game — there is the potential for ending up maimed or dead.
Skunk staggers from the shot to the side of his head. I stick out my foot and spin hard. My instep connects with his lower leg. It doesn’t knock Skunk down, but it keeps him off balance. He tries to stumble back, hoping to put some distance between him and me.
I don’t let him.
I step in and then I jump tackle him. He hits the ground hard, me on top of him.
I flip him onto his back and mount his chest. I make two fists and get ready to start throwing lefts and rights at his face. Soften him up, I figure, before I ask him about Hilde Winslow.
But when I cock my right fist, the doors burst open.
I hear someone shout, “Freeze! Police!”
I turn to see a cop pointing a gun at me. My stomach plummets. Then another cop enters the garage. He is pointing a gun at me too. Then another.
I am debating what to do when a small voice in my head reminds me that I’ve turned my attention away from Skunk.
Doesn’t matter.
Something hard — gun butt, tire iron, I don’t know — whacks me in the side of the head.
My eyes roll back. Someone — one of the cops, I think — delivers a body blow. I slide off Skunk. Another cop jumps on top of me. I try to raise my hands, try to fight back, but I have nothing left.
I’m on my stomach now. Someone pulls my arms back. I hear more than feel the handcuffs.
Another blow lands on the side of my head. Blackness swims in. I take one last gasp.
And then there is nothing.
Rachel had texted David that she had an errand to run.
She didn’t tell him where or why.
She took the train because David had her car and this phone didn’t have a ride-share app. She checked the time. Again. David had been gone almost an hour. There had been no word. She feared the worst — you always fear the worst in situations like this, she thought, as though situations like this were commonplace in her life — but she also knew that she had to compartmentalize and move forward. If this Skunk guy had done something to David, there was nothing she could do about it. If the police had found and arrested David, well, same thing.
Move forward.
When Rachel arrived at Toro, she thought about something frivolous: Her hair. The styling she’d gotten in New York City this morning had been intentionally designed to disguise her. It had been a long time since she’d seen him in person.
Would he recognize her?
That question was quickly answered. As soon as she entered the restaurant, he rose from his table and gave her the warmest smile. She returned it and for the briefest of moments, she fell through some kind of time portal and forgot why she was really here. Suddenly, this seemed like a reunion of sorts, a deep-dive one, nothing superficial when you bond in tragedy. She wondered how they’d let their friendship drift apart. That was life though, wasn’t it? You graduate from college, you move away, you take other jobs, you meet new people, partners, create families, divorce, whatever. Sure, you stay in touch, check social media, exchange the occasional text, promise you’ll get together, and meanwhile the years fly by and now here you are, in need of a favor, and suddenly you’re back together.
They both hesitated for a moment, not sure how to greet the other, but then she hugged him, and he hugged her right back. The years melted away. When you’ve been through a lot together — when your bond is formed in tragedies like theirs — you never really let go.
“It’s so good to see you, Rachel,” he said.
She held on to him another moment. “You too, Hayden.”
Chapter 28
When I wake up, I’m wearing handcuffs.
I’m also seated on a small airplane.
It’s over.
Skunk or the Fishers had sold me out to the cops. I’m an idiot. Truly. What had I expected? They’d set me up to take the fall for the murder of my own son — why would I be dumb enough to think they wouldn’t sell me out to put me back behind bars?
I try to crane my neck to look behind me. It’s hard because I’m also cuffed to an armrest. Two goons — plainclothes cops or federal agents or marshals, I don’t know which — sit in the back and fiddle with their smartphones. Both are bald with black tees and blue jeans.
“When do we land?” I ask.
Without glancing up from his phone, the one sitting in the aisle says, “Shut the fuck up.”
I decide not to antagonize. No point. We land half an hour later. When the plane comes to the proverbial full stop, the two goons unbuckle their seat belts and come toward me. Without warning, one goon throws a black bag over my head while the other snaps off the arm rail restraint.
“What’s with the blindfold?” I ask.
“Shut the fuck up,” Goon One says again.
The plane door opens. I rise. Someone pushes me forward, and I know something is very wrong — even before we reach the tarmac, even with the bag totally blacking out my vision.
We are not at Briggs.
I’m immediately perspiring. It’s hot. It’s humid. I may not be able to see the tropics, but I can smell, taste, and almost touch them. The sun is strong too, slicing through the black bag.
This isn’t Maine.
“Where the hell are we?” I ask.
No answer, so I say, “Aren’t you supposed to tell me to shut the fuck up?”
The two goons push me into the back of a vehicle with the air-conditioning cranked up. The drive is maybe ten minutes, but it is hard to figure out time when you have no watch and are blindfolded and think you may be headed back to prison for the rest of your life. Still, the ride doesn’t feel long. When the vehicle — I’m up high so it must be some kind of SUV — stops, the goons push me out. There is pavement beneath my feet, and it’s so hot I feel the heat coming up through my shoes. Music is playing. Awful music. Some kind of instrumental country-rock mix, like something a Carnival cruise band would play during the poolside “hairiest chest” contest.
I know I seem glib right now. Oddly enough, that is how I feel. Part of me is crushed, of course, because I failed my son again. Part of me is depressed because I seem headed back to prison or worse. Part of me is scared-yet-curious because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing in the tropics.
But part of me, maybe the biggest part, is — just for this moment — letting it all go.
I hopped on this crazy ride when I broke out of prison, and the ride is going to take me where it takes me. Right now, I don’t control it and I’m accepting that.
I wouldn’t say I’m not concerned. I am just doing a major mental suppression. Maybe it’s a survival instinct. The two goons — well, I assume it’s the same two goons, I’m still blindfolded — take my arms and drag-escort me indoors. They throw me onto a chair. Like the vehicle, this room also mercifully has the air-conditioning set on Hi Frost. I almost ask for a sweatshirt.
Someone grabs my wrist. I feel the pinch before the handcuffs slide off me.