Rebel Island (Tres Navarre #7)(38)

“Well, he vanished,” I said. “He went up in smoke.”

“Secret passage?” Garrett asked.

I stared at him.

“I’m serious, little bro! This was a damn bootlegger’s mansion during Prohibition. Ask Alex. They used to bring up cases of tequila from Mexico.”

“You want to check for secret passages, be my guest.”

Garrett huffed indignantly, rolled over to the closet and started banging on the walls.

I sat down next to Lane. “From what you tell me, you didn’t actually see your ex-husband.”

She took a shaky breath. “No one believes me.”

“I believe your ex is a dangerous guy. But you couldn’t tell if this person…whoever it was…was him.”

“I—I suppose it could’ve been someone else. Another man. But…”

“Let’s get you out of this room,” I said. “For peace of mind.”

Garrett wheeled himself over, having unsuccessfully banged inside the closet looking for a way to China. “For once, my little bro has a good idea. Come on, Lane. I’ll take you—”

“Downstairs,” I interrupted. “We should try to get everyone together. I’ll call the boys.”

Garrett glared at me. “Why? What else is wrong?”

“The kitchen,” Lane remembered. “Mr. Lindy was taking Alex to the kitchen.”

Even in the dim illumination of my flashlight, I could tell her face had gone paler. “It’s Chris, isn’t it?” she said. “You found him.”

I didn’t know any easy way to break the news, so I simply told her.

Lane twisted the sheets in her hands. “I want to see him.”

“Not a good idea.”

“No,” Garrett agreed. “Lane, you don’t need that.”

“Chris didn’t do anything,” she said. “I got him killed. He tried to help me and—”

“Hey, stop that,” Garrett said. “Come here.”

She slipped off the bed and into his lap, pressing her head against his. She let out a sob, and I lowered the flashlight. In the dark, they made a strange silhouette—like one large, misshapen person.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Garrett told her. “What happened to Chris isn’t your fault. Neither is your bastard ex-husband. You did the right thing. You saw an out and you took it.”

“I thought…I thought it was an out.”

The shadows closed around us. The wind battered the window. I didn’t believe in ghosts, but this was a good room for them. If I’d been the first one through the door, I wondered what personal boogie man I might’ve seen vanishing into the closet.

“Come on,” I told Garrett and Lane. “Let’s get out of here.”

22

Ty missed his gun. Markie pushed him onto the bed and said, “Stay,” like he was a dog. Ty wanted to shoot him.

Chase glared down at him. “You’re worthless, man. Fucking worthless.”

Ty’s head still ached from where Markie had sapped him. His vision was blurry and he wasn’t sure exactly what drugs they’d given him. His claustrophobia was still smothering him—hot and heavy like an extra skin—but it was muted now. His nerves felt deadened.

“I’m sorry,” he lied, trying to save himself another beating.

Markie cursed. “You belong in the freezer with Chris, dude.”

“Don’t say that. I panicked, is all.”

“Enough,” Chase said. “This isn’t helping.”

Chase was still dressed in his dark clothes—his night run clothes. He paced at the foot of the bed, rubbing his knuckles.

Ty wished he had his target pistol, and not just because he wanted to shoot them. The gun calmed him down. He only felt truly at peace at the firing range, standing behind the cinder-block partition on a cold winter morning, pistol in his hands. When he fired at targets, he had no anxiety. His hands didn’t shake and his skin didn’t feel too heavy. He didn’t need pills. His fear and anger were compressed into the barrel of the gun and fired right out of him, at least for a while.

If he could just live on the firing range, life would be okay. But he always had to return to the narrow hallways and the cramped dorm rooms of Jester Hall. The crowds pressed in on him. Even the auditorium classes were too small. He couldn’t concentrate on lessons. He watched the ceiling, sure it was going to cave in and bury him alive. He would long for home—the ranch back in Del Rio, where he’d never had any problem with small places and crowds. But he couldn’t go back home. His father would never allow it. And so he’d found other ways to cope. And that had led him to Chase and Markie.

“What do we do now?” Markie asked.

Chase picked up an empty tequila bottle from the dresser. “We try again.”

“Gonna be hard,” Markie said.

“We’ve got no choice. Unless you want to end up like Chris.”

Markie’s face paled. “Bastard deserved it, after the shit he tried to pull.”

On that, at least, Ty agreed. Chris was better off dead. It was his fault they might not make it off the island alive. God, Ty wished he had taken the boat. He should’ve been faster. He shouldn’t have listened to Navarre.