Rebel Island (Tres Navarre #7)(6)

“I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Chris, I know you better than that.”

“I would never…I’d never hurt you, Lane.”

She looked down at the drawers she’d pillaged and sobbed in frustration.

Chris wanted to hold her. He wanted to apologize for bringing her here, but he’d needed to see her so badly. And she needed protection. He knew that better than anyone.

“I’ll make it all right,” he promised.

She shook her head miserably. The bruises on her face had faded weeks ago, but he could still imagine their shadows around her eyes.

“How many more people are going to die, Chris? You’ve been saying it’s all right. You’re going to fix it, but—”

“I will. Right now.”

He held Lane’s gaze, trying to make her believe him. Whenever he had trouble sleeping—and that was often—he would imagine her eyes, the way they shone when she was happy. He would remember the times he’d made her laugh when they were younger, in high school, before everything went wrong. Since then, he had messed up over and over. His plans had failed. But tonight it had to end.

“Stay here,” he told Lane. “I’ll be back.”

Without waiting for her answer, he headed down the hallway. He knew where he needed to go. How many more needed to die?

One, he thought. Only one.

5

At least Jesse Longoria was having a worse vacation than I was.

He’d been shot once at close range. There was no visible murder weapon in the room. Longoria’s holster was empty.

“I need to get out of here,” Maia murmured.

I nodded. Pregnancy had made her queasy about things that had never bothered her before—strawberries, hamburger meat, corpses.

“Garrett,” I said, “take her back to the room, please.”

“Jesus,” he said. “That’s like a dead cop.”

“Very much like one.” I looked at the old gentleman in the black suit. “Sir, would you go find the owner, please? Alex Huff. Tell him to call the police.”

After they were gone, I debated the wisdom of walking farther into the room. Glass shards were everywhere. Blood and rain spattered the bed and the carpet. Whatever crime scene integrity there had been, the storm was rapidly blowing it to hell.

I stepped inside. Two beds. There was an outside door. It was closed. I couldn’t tell if it was locked. As I recalled, few rooms in the hotel had private exits. On the second bed were an open suitcase and something else—a small curl of red like a ribbon. I stepped closer. It was a set of plastic handcuffs. They’d been cut.

A cold feeling started in the pit of my stomach.

Alex Huff ran into me from behind. “I heard…Oh, crap.”

He looked only slightly better than the corpse. He had a bruise under his left eye, and superficial cuts on his arms, like he’d been sprayed with glass. His clothes were soaking wet.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

He tore his eyes away from the dead marshal. “The—the windows in the dining room blew out. I was boarding them up, but…Jesus. What happened to him?”

“You mean aside from getting shot dead? I’m not sure. Any idea what he was doing on the island?”

“No, I mean…” He faltered, apparently considering something he didn’t like. “Chris checked him in.”

“When?”

“Yesterday? It’s been so crazy with the storm and…”

“And what?”

“Nothing. Just…Damn it. Why did he have to go and die in my hotel?”

I studied Alex’s battered face and wondered what he wasn’t telling me. “Call the police. Who’s got jurisdiction here? Aransas Sheriff’s Department?”

“I—I can’t call the police.”

“Why not?”

“The phone lines are down.”

“Cell phone?”

“We’ve never had mobile service out here.”

“Email? Smoke signals? Message in a bottle? What do you use for emergencies?”

Alex’s eyes got unfocused, like he was going into shock. I wanted to slap him. He needed to take charge. This was his problem, not mine.

“I don’t…Wait. The radio. It’s in the lighthouse. I was just out there checking the backup generator. I didn’t even think about it—”

“We’re on backup generator?” I interrupted.

“Yeah. Regular power is down. But it’s cool. We got enough juice to get through the night, assuming the house stays in one piece.”

As if on cue, a piece of driftwood flew in the window and slammed against the wall.

“We need to get out of here,” I told Alex. “Radio first. Then we’ll try to seal that window.”

He nodded hazily. I steered him out of the room and made sure he locked the door behind us.

In the hallway, the older gentleman was talking to three college guys, trying to convince them to go away.

“Dude!” one of them said to me. “Is it true?”

He had a mop of red hair, yellow shorts and a white T-shirt, so he was the same colors as a candy corn. His shirt said OU SUCKS, a little diplomatic statement from the University of Texas football department.