The Great Escape (Wynette, Texas #7)(24)

A biker sped past. Panda ran faster, wishing he could outrun himself.

Out of nowhere, an explosion ripped through the air. He threw himself off the path and hit the ground. Gravel scraped his chin and dug into his hands. His heart slammed against his ribs, and his ears roared.

Slowly he lifted his head. Looked around.

Not an explosion at all. An old junker of a landscaping truck had backfired.

A dog walker stopped on the path to stare at him. A runner slowed. The truck disappeared, leaving a trail of exhaust hanging over Lake Shore Drive.

Shit. This hadn’t happened to him in years, but two weeks with Lucy Jorik and here he was. Flat on the ground. Dirt in his mouth. Something to remember the next time he tried to forget who he was and where he’d been.



AS THE MILES ROLLED BY, Lucy kept glancing at herself in the mirror, taking in the harsh makeup, dead black hair, and orange dreadlocks. Her mood began to lift. But was she really going to keep going? Even Ted, who was smart about everything, wouldn’t be able to figure this one out. Neither could she, but she loved this feeling of slipping into a new skin.

Before long she left Illinois behind and headed into Michigan. Would Ted ever forgive her? Would her family? Weren’t some things beyond forgiveness?

Near Cadillac, she abandoned the freeway for the secondary roads that led to northwestern Michigan. By evening, she was waiting in line with half a dozen other cars to drive onto the day’s last ferry to Charity Island, a place she’d had difficulty locating on a map. Her muscles were stiff, her eyes scratchy, and her good mood fading. What she was doing was crazy, but if she didn’t follow through, she’d wonder for the rest of her life about Panda and that kiss and why she’d fallen into bed with a virtual stranger two weeks after she’d run out on a man who’d been too good for her. Not an entirely logical reason to make this trip, but she wasn’t exactly in the best shape these days, and it was the best she could do.

The old ferryboat, painted black with highway yellow striping, smelled of mildew, rope, and spent fuel. A dozen passengers boarded with her. One of them, a college kid hauling a backpack, tried to strike up a conversation by asking where she went to school. She told him she’d dropped out of Memphis State and walked away, her heavy combat boots thumping on the deck.

She stayed in the bow for the rest of the trip, watching the island gradually materialize in the fading light. It was shaped like a reclining dog—head at one end, harbor where its belly would be, lighthouse raised like a stubby tail at the other end. The island lay fifteen miles out in Lake Michigan, according to a tourist brochure. It was ten miles long by two miles wide with a year-round population of three hundred, a number that jumped into the thousands during the summer. According to its chamber of commerce, Charity Island offered visitors secluded beaches, pristine woods, fishing and hunting, as well as cross-country skiing and snowmobiling in the winter, but she only cared about finding answers to her questions.

The ferry bumped against the dock. She headed below to get her rental car. She had friends all over the country—all over the world—who would have given her a place to stay. Yet here she was, getting ready to disembark on an island in the Great Lakes on the strength of nothing more than a farewell kiss and a resident ferry pass. She pulled the ignition key from her backpack and told herself she had nothing better to do with her time, which wasn’t quite true. She had amends to make, a life to rebuild, but since she didn’t know how to do either, here she was.

The harbor was filled with charter fishing boats, modest pleasure craft, and an ancient tug anchored near a small barge. She drove down the ramp into a gravel parking lot bordered by a sign reading MUNICIPAL DOCKS. The two-lane main street—optimistically named Beachcomber Boulevard—held an assortment of stores, some weather-beaten, others spruced up with bright colors and kitschy window displays to attract the tourists—Jerry’s Trading Post, McKinley’s Market, some restaurants, a couple of fudge shops, a bank, and a fire station. Sandwich boards propped along the road advertised the services of fishing guides, and Jake’s Dive Shop invited visitors to “Explore Nearby Shipwrecks.”

Now that she was here, she had no idea where to go. She pulled into a parking lot next to a bar named The Sandpiper. Once she got inside, it wasn’t hard to pick out the locals from the sunburned tourists, who had the glazed look of people who’d squeezed too much into one day. While they clustered around the small wooden tables, the locals sat at the bar.

She approached the bartender, who eyed her suspiciously. “We card here.”

If she hadn’t lost her sense of humor, she’d have laughed. “Then how about a Sprite?”

When he brought her drink, she said, “I’m supposed to be staying at this guy’s place, but I lost his address. You know a dude named Panda?”

The locals looked up from their drinks.

“I might,” the bartender said. “How do you know him?”

“He … did some work for this friend of mine.”

“What kind of work?”

That was when she discovered Viper had no manners. “You know him or not?”

The bartender shrugged. “Seen him around sometimes.” He went off to help another customer.

Fortunately a couple of seniors seated at the other end of the bar were more garrulous. “He showed up here a couple of years ago and bought the old Remington place out on Goose Cove,” one said. “He’s not on the island. I know for a fact he didn’t come by plane, and if he’d been on the ferry or a charter, one of us would of heard about it.”