Tango Key (46 page)

Hay tickled her nose. Dust swirled into it. She could barely breathe. Hay clung to her damp cheeks. The shrieks went on, and then they were louder and Aline knew Eve had popped through the hole.

The shrieks stopped.

"Daddy?" Eve sobbed. "Daddy, help me."

"Over here, Evie honey," called Kincaid.

Silence.

Aline's heart thundered in her chest. She dug her hands through the hay in front of her, clearing a hole so she could see. But it was too dark. She heard Kincaid call for Eve again, but couldn't tell where his voice was coming from.

"That'th a mean game, Daddy. You aren't my friend," she sobbed, and slammed the meat cleaver against something.

The boat. The cleaver hit the boat.

Suddenly, the barn doors flew open and Aline saw the flicker of a lantern and a figure in the doorway, and then Murphy shouted, "Eve? Are you in here? Jesus, Eve? Answer me!"

"No, Murphy!" Aline screamed, jumping up, hay falling away from her. "Watch out!"

But it was too late. Eve had spun around, and for one long and interminable instant she and Murphy were frozen in the lambent light from the lantern, and then she screamed, "Nonono!" and let the cleaver fly.

It struck Murphy in the chest, and it seemed to Aline that she heard the blade crunch against muscle, bone. His hand flew up, trying to pull the cleaver out even as he was falling, as the lantern slipped from his hand, as blood spread across his shirt. Kincaid barreled out of the shadows toward Eve, knocking her to the ground, silencing her. Flames burst from the hay. Aline heard a scream and realized it was her own and that now she was stumbling toward Murphy.

Kincaid was already pulling Murphy by the arms toward the door and shouted for her to get Eve. She grabbed hold of Eve's hands and stumbled backward toward the open barn doors.

Tongues of fire leaped from the hay to the old barn walls.

Plumes of smoke became clouds, stinging her eyes, filling her lungs. Now the flames zipped along the floor of the barn toward the sloop. She pulled harder and stumbled into the night air. She fell to her knees, coughing, her eyes tearing so much she couldn't see. She grasped Eve's wrists again and pulled her to the driveway where Murphy lay, Kincaid crouched beside him.

She sank to the ground, knuckling her eyes, dimly aware of Kincaid's hand on her arm, of his voice saying, "Allie, are you all right?"

"Yes. Okay. I'm okay."

"Murphy's still alive. I'm going for the car. Leave the cleaver in. It'll stem the bleeding. And take this." He pressed a .38 into her hand. "It was on Murphy."

And then she blinked and blinked again, her eyes clearing, and she saw Kincaid sprint off through the trees, and then she looked down at Murphy and nearly passed out from the sight of blood. So much blood, oh God, blood bubbling from the corners of his mouth and spreading across his shirt and oozing from his nostrils. His eyes fluttered open. He gazed at her, and she heard herself telling him that he was going to be okay, to just hang on, they were going to get him to a hospital. Lies, all of it just lies, but she kept talking to him, touching his face. Behind her, the windows in the barn blew out. Murphy turned his head to the side, opened his mouth when he saw Eve, but the only thing that came out was blood.

Aline sobbed and set the gun on the ground. She removed her windbreaker and covered him with it. "Al . . ." He coughed, and she slid her hand under his head and lifted it. His face blurred. He kept trying to speak to her.

A screech shredded the air. Before Aline could spin round, Eve was on her, pounding her fists against Aline's back, clawing at her forehead, her eyes. A flood of adrenaline poured into her, pounded through her, and she brought her arms back hard, her elbows slamming into Eve's ribs, throwing her off. Eve yelled something, she didn't know what, and she whirled. Her clenched fist rammed the side of Eve's face, knocking her out and to the ground. Aline swung her foot back, prepared to kick Eve to death. She wanted to do it. She wanted her to pay for this, for all of it; she had caused it. But headlights swam into the clearing.

Kincaid. He'd found the car.

The car screeched into the driveway. She waved her arms frantically. Behind her, the roof of the barn went up like tinder. Embers lit the dark like fat lightning bugs and showered into the clearing. But it didn't matter now. Kincaid was here. They would get Murphy to a hospital, and the thing coiled in the back of her mind, something about a book and about Monica, would go away.

But the car wasn't a Saab. It was a Firebird.

Dobbs leaped out and ran toward her. "Al, my God, what . . ."

"Jack," she cried, scrambling to her feet.

He looked at Murphy, at Eve, than at her again. "I saw the smoke. Jesus, let's get them into the car, to the hospital." He reached for Eve, and something snapped in Aline's head.

Eve. Whom he barely knows. Eve rather than Murphy who has a cleaver embedded in his chest, Murphy whom he's known fifteen years.

And the thing in the back of her mind sprang loose, and the knowledge slammed into her. Monica was having an affair. Her hand twitched toward the .38 as he knelt by Eve's side. Eve looks like Monica. The fire roared behind her. That book on the table:
Welcome, Chaos
. Her fingers brushed the cool metal. He's in vice. He has connections in customs. He's Cracker. Her fingers closed around the .38. He's the bad man.

"Jack."

He didn't hear her.

"Jack!" She shouted his name, and now he was getting to his feet, Eve in his arms, and he turned slowly, like a man in a dream, frowning when he saw the .38 aimed at him. "Put her down."

"Allie, what . . .?"

"Now! Put her down."

"Be careful with that gun, Al."

"You. It was you all along. You killed Cooper. Waite. The Colombian. You hid the frog on the sloop. You sent the note to Murphy from Eve. You sent the note to Ortiz and Alan Cooper. You. You were having an affair with Monica. Now put her down. I mean it. Put her down."

He lowered Eve slowly to the ground. The firelight distorted his features, turned his khaki hair a burnt orange. "Al, Listen to me."

"Don't say anything. Put your hands on top of your head.
Now!
C'mon, do it!"

Fear shuddered through her as Dobbs locked his hands on top of his head. She moved toward him to take his weapon, but saw he didn't have one. "Your gun, where's your gun, Jack?"

"Al, it was Murphy. You've got it all wrong. It was Murphy. Not me. Jesus, not me. Murphy."

He was moving toward her, inching toward her. She stepped back. "Stay where you are, Jack." Her finger pulled back on the trigger.

Now he was smiling. "You wouldn't shoot me, Al. It's me. Jack." He tapped his chest. "My gun's in the car. I'm not even armed, Al. Monica wanted to leave Murphy." That smile remained on his face, growing more grotesque by the second; a smile that seemed to almost touch his ears. "She just couldn't muster the courage to do it. Instead, she told him she was having an affair. I told her not to do that. I did. But she didn't listen to me. I had to teach her a lesson. I had to show her who was boss. And then . . ."

"That's Eve on the ground, not Monica."

Something flickered in his eyes, fear, comprehension, horror, she didn't know. He inched closer, his frown deepening, and she cried, "Don't, Jack, don't make me do it!"

But he didn't stop. He lunged at her.

And she blew him away.

August 1

"I
really hate good-byes, Kincaid."

"Me too."

"Then why're we sitting here?"

They were in her Honda out in front of the Ladeco terminal of the Miami Airport. It was the first time they'd been off Tango Key together, and there was a kind of twisted irony that it should be now, the day he was leaving for Chile. This was when she was supposed to say,
Have a nice trip, Ryan. Write when you can. Stay clear of coups and revolutions.
This was when it would've helped to be gorgeous.

"You want to sit inside?" he asked.

"No."

He reached into the knapsack between them and pulled out a ticket. He handed it to her. "For Christmas. Just so you can't back out."

She looked down at the ticket. The dates were open, but it was a round-trip, all right, Tango to Miami to Santiago and back. She thought about Eve, locked up in an institution. She thought about Murphy, who had died en route to the hospital. She thought about Dobbs. She shook her head and passed it back to him. "Maybe we won't feel the same at Christmas."

"I will," he said, and folded the ticket and slipped it inside her purse and opened the door. "I'll feel the same."

She got out and walked around to the hatchback and unlocked it. He pulled his suitcase out. One suitcase, that was all. She walked with him as far as the door. He kissed her good-bye and whispered that he loved her. Then he strolled through the electronic doors and they sighed shut behind him

Aline just stood there, watching him through the glass until the crowd sucked him in. Her heart burst. Finally, she turned away and hurried back toward her car, and when she looked up, there was Bernie leaning against the Honda. "Hi, Al. You got a ticket." She waved it. "They don't mess around up here in the big city, you know. Five minutes in a No Parking zone and they get you for fifty bucks."

"What're you doing here?"

She shrugged. "Oh, your little pal Ferret told me what time Kincaid's plane was leaving, and I figured you might want to head over to Miami Beach and do the town or something."

Aline laughed. Bernie grinned mischievously as she ripped the parking ticket in two and tossed the pieces over her shoulder. The hot breeze caught them and lifted them up, up over the black asphalt, the traffic, into the blue South Florida sky.