Die a Stranger: An Alex McKnight Novel Read online

  No, stay positive, I thought. You’re gonna find a way out of this. Even if you have to do something stupid, all by yourself. You’re certainly good at being stupid.

  There was another trail branching off to the right. It was even rougher and narrower, if that was even possible. Sugarpie took the turn and kept going, the branches slapping at both sides of the car.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Dumpling said. “We’ll never get out of here.”

  “I know what I’m doing. I’ve been down this trail before.”

  “What, do you have a meth lab out here or something?”

  They both laughed at that. A little too hard. They were whooping it up and in another minute they’d be shooting me and watching my body disappear into the swamp.

  The ground rose slightly and Sugarpie gunned the engine. The tires spun for a moment and I thought the vehicle would be stuck for sure, but then it found purchase and we rocketed up to the top of the mound. He left the engine running, opening the driver’s door and getting out. Then he opened my door and pulled me out. I was just about to take my shot at him, but then I realized that would never work. I had to get Dumpling first, as long as he had the gun.

  As I stood there waiting for him to come around from the other side of the vehicle, the mosquitoes were already buzzing around my head and landing on my neck. Officially not my biggest problem at the moment, but it was annoying as hell not to be able to slap them away.

  “God damn,” Sugarpie said. “Where’s the bug spray?”

  “Never mind that,” Dumpling said. “Let’s take care of this so we can get the hell out of here.”

  Sugarpie grabbed my arm and pulled me over toward the front of the vehicle. The edge of the swamp was about ten feet away.

  “Start walking,” he said. “Straight ahead.”

  “So you can shoot me in the back?” I said. “I thought you guys had some guts.”

  He grabbed me again and spun me around so that I was facing the swamp.

  “Walk,” he said. “Right now.”

  I turned around so that I was facing them again.

  “I’m not making it easy,” I said. “If you’re gonna kill me, you’ll have to look me in the eye when you do it.”

  “I’m pretty sure I can manage,” Dumpling said from behind him. “Especially now that you’re being such a pain in the ass.”

  “Come do it then. Come shoot me like a man.”

  “Let me do it,” Sugarpie said. He tried to take the gun from the other man, but Dumpling slapped his hand away.

  This is good, I thought. I want the slower man. Now I have a two percent chance of making this work, instead of one percent.

  “Right here,” I said. “Step up and do it.”

  Another mosquito landed on my neck. I could feel its needle breaking through my skin.

  “Don’t get any closer,” Sugarpie said. “Come on, man, give me the gun. You’ve never done this before.”

  “Get away from me,” he said. “I’m not afraid of him.”

  As Dumpling came closer, Sugarpie tried to pull him away. He shook him off and came even closer to me, as if to make a point.

  That’s it, I thought. That’s exactly what you want to do. I’m not even going to move. Just come right up to me and prove what a big badass you are.

  He took a step closer. He was holding the gun in both hands now. He was looking me in the eye.

  “Shoot you like a man?” he said. “I’m gonna show my friend here how a real man does it.”

  “Will you just shut up and do it?” Sugarpie said, slapping at his arm. “I’m getting eaten alive here.”

  He was four feet away. I wished it were two. Hell, would have settled for three. I stood there and I watched him raise the gun slowly. I felt another mosquito on my neck. I looked at him and I saw him sweating and I thought, come on mosquitoes, why are you bothering with me? Somebody go take some blood from that big boy.

  Everything was coming into sharp relief. I saw every detail, every pore in his skin, every color and contour of every visible tattoo. The face on the Jack of Hearts, watching me with its one eye from his right shoulder. I smelled the fetid half-decomposed smells from the swamp. I heard the insects buzzing and crawling and mating and dying.

  And eating.

  Right there, on his neck. Go for it, mosquito. Do your thing.

  He flinched and tried to rub it away by shrugging his shoulder. That was my chance. That was my last chance to stay alive on this horrible blue earth. I threw my body back like I was doing the limbo, brought my right foot up toward the gun. There was a deafening blast as it went off. I didn’t even know if the bullet had hit me. I was still frozen in time, everything moving in slow motion. My foot coming up, my leg extended as far as I could make it go. I’d never played much football, being a baseball man. I’d never played soccer at all. So I never really had to kick anything. Never in life until this very moment. My desperate last-chance gamble as I felt my center of gravity going back farther and farther and I am absolutely going to fall flat on my back but if I can just manage to kick that goddamned gun out of his goddamned hand.

  Impact.

  First my foot.

  Then my head hitting the ground. My back immediately after, knocking the wind right out of me.

  I saw the gun flying in the air. Into the woods.

  Dumpling was already stumbling after it. I swept at his leg and felt him falling.

  The other man was coming to jump on top of me now. I rolled over just in time and I was halfway up as he climbed onto my back. I went all the way down to my knees and let his momentum take him right over me. My hands were still tied together, so I couldn’t punch him in the face. But I could take both hands together and make one big fist and try to drive his head right into the ground. I felt the bones snap as I hit him square in the nose.

  Then I was back on my feet. The big man was already crashing into the brush, a good ten feet away. He was looking for the gun and I had to make a choice right then. The key’s still in the ignition, I thought. The engine’s still running. I climbed into the driver’s seat, not bothering to close the door. With both hands tied together it was a clumsy effort to shift the vehicle into Reverse, but I managed it. Through the windshield, I saw Sugarpie up on one knee now. He was doubled over and there was blood running from his nose. Dumpling was still in the brush, looking for the gun.

  I stepped on the gas and felt the wheels spinning under me. Then all of a sudden I was moving backward. Too fast. I tried to steer but it was hard to do with both hands so close together. It was impossible to look behind me at the same time. The door was catching all of the branches and I heard a metallic screech in the hinges as it hit the trunk of a tree.

  I was backing down the trail, doing everything I could to keep it straight. Not far to go, that much I remembered. He made this final right turn so all I have to do is back it right up and get it pointed in the right direction.

  More branches scraped at the open door as the tires were throwing mud, and every other yard they were just spinning and spinning and me not going anywhere at all and then finding hard ground again and almost driving right off into the trees.

  I hit the main trail and I tried to whip it around in a two-point turn but I couldn’t turn the wheel fast enough and both right tires went off the edge of the road. I gunned it and the tires were spinning again and that’s when I heard the gun go off again and this time the back window exploded.

  I snapped back into real time. Everything speeding up from the slow-motion fog I was in. I looked out the open door and saw Dumpling coming down the trail, the gun raised. I reached to close the door and realized that wasn’t going to work. It would have taken several days in the body shop just to get the damned thing to close again. I gunned the engine one more time and that’s when I felt the shot ripping right through the fabric above my head. I rolled over to the other side of the front seat and opened up the far door. I dived out onto the ground.

  Ex
cept there was no ground.

  It was swamp. It was quicksand. I don’t know what the hell it was, but it swallowed me up and held fast as I tried to get to my feet. I tried grabbing on to the side of the car but there was nothing to hold on to. With both my hands together I could barely push myself up. I kicked at the muck and tried to roll myself out and I was counting down the precious seconds because I knew Dumpling was coming up fast on the other side of the car. When I finally managed to push myself forward, I was on both knees, then one knee, and that’s when I finally looked up and saw his shoes and tattoos on his legs. He was standing at the back of the vehicle. The gun was pointed at my head. This time, there would be no chance to knock the gun free. This time, he had me dead.

  “You broke his nose,” he said.

  I didn’t say anything. I was just trying to breathe.

  “Get over here,” he said to Sugarpie. “Come watch this man die.”

  Sugarpie was coming down the trail, holding his nose. There was enough blood to paint his shirt half red. He seemed to be wincing with every step. The blood was still running through his fingers.

  Then blam! the air was torn apart by another gun blast. They both jumped at the noise.

  Nobody moved for a long moment. Then Sugarpie went down. There was a hole in the side of his neck, just under his jawline. He took his hands away from his ruined nose and grasped at his throat. He tried to speak but the only sound that came out was a bloody gurgle.

  “What the…” Dumpling said, looking down at him.

  He looked back at me, like I had done this somehow. Like I had some sort of magic secret gun I could fire from any direction. Then he brought up his own gun again but this time he didn’t even get to aim. The next shot caught him just above the left eye. He went down, dead on the spot, his hand still holding the gun.

  Lou came running down the path, holding that gun we’d taken from Andy Dukes, the gun we had stashed in the glove compartment. The gun that had forced Lou to take the ferry instead of the plane. He had the gun trained on Sugarpie, who was still alive.

  “Don’t shoot him,” I said. I bent down and looked at him closely.

  “Can you talk?”

  He was still clutching at his throat. He was still making the gurgling noises.

  “You have to tell us where they are,” I said. “Where are Vinnie and Buck?”

  He spit blood at me. I felt its spray, all over my face. Whether it was intentional or just a last gasp of air, that’s something I’d never be able to find out for sure. Two seconds later, the lights in his eyes went out for good.

  “Alex,” Lou said, pulling me to my feet and looking me over. “Are you shot? Are you all right?”

  “How did you find me?”

  Lou bent over, trying to catch his breath. After a minute of wheezing, he straightened up and took a folding knife out of his pocket and cut the zip tie. I stood there rubbing my wrists.

  “I went to the post office and asked the lady at the counter,” he said. “She told me you had already been there, looking for the same house. She said there must be quite a party going on.”

  “Yeah, we had a party, all right.”

  I wiped the blood from my face. From the chest down, I was still covered in the thick muck.

  “Just as I got there,” he said, “I saw the vehicle leaving. So I followed you.”

  “Well, I’ll thank you for saving my life later,” I said. “Right now we have to find Vinnie and Buck. They’re out in a boat somewhere.”

  “What? Are you serious?”

  I had to bend over myself for a moment. Not so much to breathe but to fight down the bile rising in my throat. All the stress and adrenaline pulsing through my body.

  “I’ll explain on the way,” I said. “Come on, we’ve got to find a boat of our own. We might not have much time.”

  “Alex, what are you talking about? Where are they?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But we have to find them before Corvo does.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Come on, help me,” Lou said. He took hold of Sugarpie by the arms and started dragging him toward the swamp.

  “What are you doing?”

  “We can’t leave them here. Somebody will find them. Maybe today.”

  “Lou, we don’t have time for this.”

  “It’ll go a lot faster if you help me, God damn it! I’m not leaving dead bodies on the ground and walking away!”

  The day was already turned inside out. I had come two inches from being in the swamp myself, so what the hell. I grabbed Sugarpie’s legs and helped Lou heave him into the swamp. Then we went back and gave ourselves hernias doing the same for Dumpling. The green slime on the water parted for both bodies, then closed back up as if it had been undisturbed for the past hundred years.

  “Someone will find their vehicle,” I said. “It’s stuck, so we can’t move it.”

  “Let them find it. By the time they figure out these boys are in the swamp, we’ll be long gone.”

  Lou’s face was flushed and he looked like he was going to pass out, but it was all I could do to keep up with him as we ran back up the trail to the rental car. We got in and I promptly destroyed the front seat with all of the mud I was wearing. I had to move a bottle of wine to sit down.

  “Throw that out the window,” Lou said. “It was just a prop.”

  “Let me guess, you took it with you to the post office and told the lady you were looking for the party at Harry and Jo’s house.”

  “Of course I did.” He kept talking while he put the car in gear and hit the road. “Who else is gonna know where everybody lives? Even the renters?”

  “So it took you two minutes, is what you’re saying. It took me almost two hours.”

  “Whatever,” he said, gritting his teeth as he made a hard turn. “I’m just a better con man, I guess.”

  “You think that ferry’s left yet?” I said, wiping mud off my watch. I wanted to go straight to the dock and grab Harry and Jo, or hell, maybe even try Jo’s own little trick. Stick the gun in her ribs and tell her to start talking. Make them tell us exactly where Vinnie and Buck were so we could go out and get them. Maybe even take Harry and Jo out there and leave them in their place. I couldn’t remember ever wishing harm on a woman, but today Jo was begging to be an exception.

  “I’m sure it’s gone by now,” Lou said.

  “I can’t get over how sick it is, the way Jo got those guys to do anything she wanted. She even made sure she and Harry were off the island when they took me out here. They were obviously just giving themselves alibis, and yet…”

  I ran out of words. I just shook my head.

  “Who were those guys, anyway?” Lou said.

  “A couple of losers? No family life? That’s my guess. She had them wrapped around her little finger.”

  “Yeah, it sounds kinda sick to me, too.”

  I looked over at him as he drove. He’d just killed two men. No matter how justified it may have been, he’d done it and now he was back on the trail. His jaw was clenched tight but otherwise he looked perfectly composed.

  We made our way back out to the shore, then north until he pulled into the empty driveway. I got out and went up the steps to the back porch. The breeze had swept away the last trace of marijuana smoke. Down on the water, I saw the jet ski Harry had been riding. Drifting with the current, it was pulling the anchor rope tight.

  “What’s the plan?” Lou said as he came up behind me. “Where are they?”

  “They’re out there.” I pointed toward the water.

  “Out there where?”

  “I don’t know exactly. I’m trying to remember everything Harry said. He came in on the jet ski and he said it was a rough trip. I think he said it was ten miles. Whether that’s true or not…”

  “He may have been exaggerating, you mean.”

  “We need a map.” I slid open the glass door and stepped inside, something I hadn’t had the chance to do on my first visit. It was a b
eautiful house inside, I suppose, simple and elegant, but I didn’t have the time to appreciate it. I went over to the far wall where there were stacks of paper on the shelves. I was looking for a map.

  “Right here,” Lou said. He was standing by the coffee table I had walked by on my way in. There was an ashtray on the table, along with a lighter and some magazines, but then as I got closer I saw what he was talking about. I swept everything onto the floor and there, under the glass surface of the table, was a detailed nautical map of Beaver Island and the surrounding islands, complete with water depths.

  “Okay, so we’re about here,” I said, pointing to the shoreline on the northwest corner of the island. There were seven smaller islands arranged to the north and the west.

  “The scale’s down there in the corner. How far is ten miles?”

  It looked like the length of my hand corresponded to around ten miles, so I put my hand on the map, with the base of my palm at our starting point, then turned it in a half-circle to approximate the ten-mile arc.

  “Which way did he come in?” Lou said.

  “I couldn’t see him at that point. But I don’t think it would have mattered. You’d be coming in pretty straight no matter what, just to avoid the rocks out there. That water goes out pretty shallow for a while.”

  He stood there watching me, waiting for me to think it through. The seconds ticked by.

  “I’m trying to remember,” I said, playing it all back through my head. “He’s standing there and he’s telling Jo what a rough trip it was, and yeah, he’s pointing right out that way. To that big island right there.”

  We could see it through the window, dominating the horizon. I looked back at the map.

  “High Island,” I said. “It’s five miles away.”

  “As big as it is, I still don’t see any roads on the map. I bet the far side of that thing is totally deserted.”

  I stood up and went out onto the deck.

  “Yes, it’s right there,” I said. “That’s the direction he was pointing in. It’s right there.”