A Stranger on the Beach(71)

“It’s not true. And you shot him. It’s your gun.”

“Nobody knows that. People will believe me. If you don’t want to fry for this crime, you better help me clean up the mess. Help me get him to my truck. We’ll dump him in the ocean. In this storm, he’ll get washed out to sea. They’ll never find him.”

“No!”

My face was wet, with rain, with tears. I started pummeling Aidan with my fists. He laughed and shoved me away again, but I came back at him. His face went dark.

“Enough. Stop it.”

“No!”

He reeled back, raising his hand. I saw the silver flash of the gun coming toward me. Pain exploded in my head. The world went black, and I was in hell.





after the storm





45


Aidan woke with the taste of metal in his mouth and the worst headache he’d had in his life. Flies buzzed around his face, and a bright light shone in his eyes. It was the beam of a flashlight, he realized, used purposely to blind him. What the hell? He squinted and saw that he was in the front seat of his truck. The light felt like it was splitting his head apart, and a bitch of a hangover was making him nauseous. The windows were rolled down, and rain was coming in, but it stank to high heaven in the truck, like something had died in here. The seat was wet and slick. Someone pounded on the driver’s-side door, and he winced at the sound as it reverberated inside his skull. But that made him look out the window, and he was astonished to see two guns pointed at his forehead.

“Put your hands up and get out of the truck.”

He couldn’t see their faces because of the blinding flashlight beam. But from the voice he knew Mike Castro was out there.

“What’s going on?”

“Both hands up or we shoot! Now!”

He raised his other hand.

“You open the door then,” he said.

God, the smell. He looked down at himself, and he was covered in blood. That’s why the seat was wet, not from the rain. Blood, everywhere. What the hell was happening? He started to shake, and his breath came in shallow gasps. Mike popped the door, and Aidan fell over himself trying to get out, to get away from all the blood. Was it his own?

“What happened?” he said, and his bowels felt liquid.

So much blood. Was he shot? He went to touch his stomach to look for the wound, and Mike tackled him to the ground and cuffed his hands behind him.

“Stop it! What the fuck, Mike. I’m hurt.”

Mike patted him down roughly.

“What did you reach for? Where’s the gun? Is it on you?”

“I don’t have a gun. I saw the blood and freaked. Did I get shot?”

There was sand under Aidan’s face and in his mouth. He spit it out. They were on a beach. But which beach, and how the hell did his truck get here? It was daylight, early morning. It rained steadily, and the sand was wet and soggy. The remnants of the hurricane. Was that last night? It felt like a hundred years ago. But what had happened between then and now?

“The weapon isn’t on him. Wayne, search the truck,” Mike said.

Mike’s knee was in Aidan’s back, unrelenting, like he wanted to cause pain.

“Please, can you ease up?” Aidan said. “I think I might be cut or something.”

But Mike pressed harder, which made Aidan panic for real. He couldn’t breathe and thought he might black out. He couldn’t believe this was actually happening. Was this real, or a nightmare?

“Follow protocol,” Mike said, but he wasn’t talking to Aidan. “Wear your gloves. This is a crime scene. The gun could be loaded.”

Crime scene. Weapon. What the fuck? What day was it? What had happened? His mind was a fog. He remembered being at Tommy’s house, boarding up windows, the storm closing in. Kelly making him soup, making up the couch. Then Caroline called. He went to her house, and she let him in. He held her in his arms. They danced to Sinatra, and it was beautiful.

Was that real? Or did he dream it?

“Shouldn’t we call the chief?”

That was Wayne Johnson’s voice. Aidan tried to look up, but Mike shoved his head back down, and he took another mouthful of sand.

“No. He’s not getting away with this, like he did with the Bostick kid.”

Bostick. Matthew. Was Aidan being punished for what happened back then? Mike had always hated him over that. But to the point where he’d frame him? And frame him for what? What gun? Whose blood?

“Not even a courtesy call?” Wayne said.

“I’m the senior officer on the scene, and I say we handle this by the book. Look in the car, use the gloves. Once we know what we have, we’ll call the chief, and if it’s what I think, we’ll call in the staties, too. Chief’s gonna have to recuse himself.”

“All right, but if the boss gets pissed, I’m blaming you. I’m not taking the heat for this.”

“You’re a stand-up guy, Johnson.”

“I’m loyal to the man who hired me. And I don’t have a chip on my shoulder about Junior here the way you do.”

“Do what I say.”

Listening to them talk, Aidan felt bile rise in his throat. He vomited a little into the sand under his face and lay there with his nose in it, his chest constricted with panic. His hands tingled and went numb from the cuffs. He tried desperately to remember how he got here. Bits and pieces came back to him. The pounding on the door as they danced in the storm. The look of fear on Caroline’s face. There was something important there. He followed the train of thought, and then he knew—the husband had shown up to interrupt their beautiful moment. Aidan saw the words scratched into her car. DIE BITCH. He remembered Stark meeting with that thug out in Queens. He’d vowed to protect Caroline from her husband. He remembered a flash of anger like a white heat, the overpowering urge to fight. He was going to come around from behind and jump the guy, beat him bloody. He remembered stumbling out into the storm, the wind and rain on his face. Then his mind went blank. Whose blood was on his hands? Was it Stark’s? What had he done?