CHAPTER 63

“Park,” she’d said.

From the road the park appears to be one wide open field but as I charge through the long blades of grass and thick mud I realize that the rear portion of the park is pure forest. The rain continues to drop from the sky like nails. Tree branches take swipes at my cheeks but I barely feel them. I lower my head and hasten through the muck like a crazed Doberman, searching the pitch for the kid.

I resist calling out for fear that I may expose Josh’s location, just as I exposed Erin Simms on Hidden Beach with my electric-orange Jeep.

The blow to the dead center of my back feels as though it were delivered by sledgehammer. I’m paralyzed, facedown in the mud before I even see my attacker.

Then a body lands on top of me, straddles my lower back, a rigid hand holding my face down in the pungent, putrid earth.

“I’ll fucking kill him, Josh,” Sebastian shouts from a few inches above me.

Mud flooding my open mouth, I can’t speak, can’t warn Josh to run like hell, never mind me.

“I’ll fucking kill him, Josh,” Sebastian shouts again. “Come out now or your lawyer friend is dead!”

No sound but the teeming rain as it slices through trees and angrily pounds the earth’s surface. Even though I know I’m about to go, a wave of perfect relief washes over me.

But suddenly the silence is broken by a child’s scream—“Please, no!”—coming from behind the broad trunk of a nearby tree.

The grip on the back of my head loosens and I lift my eyes enough to see the kid step through the downpour like a dream.

“Leave him alone,” the kid cries.

“Get over here, Josh,” Sebastion demands as he continues to straddle me. “Get over here and I’ll let him go.”

The kid takes two quick steps before I’m able to shout, “No!”

I get a swift punch to the back of my head for my troubles.

And the kid’s still coming.

“I have to, Kevin,” Josh says, resignation washing over his face. “I have to and I will. You saved my life. Now I have to save yours.”

“Run, kid,” I shout. “Run, goddamnit! He’s gonna kill me anyway.”

Then my face is buried in the mud again and I can’t breathe, the weight of the bastard on top of me sinking me deeper and deeper into my wet grassy grave.

“Come here,” Sebastian shouts at the kid.

With all the strength I can muster, I force my head up. “You fucking coward,” I spit out, choking on soil as I try again to scream.

“Coward?” Sebastian says in my ear as I drown. “You’re calling me a coward? Let me tell you something, Corvelli. It’s easy dying to protect someone else. It’s fucking hard to kill to protect yourself. Especially your own boy.”

I can almost feel the blood spilling out of my gut, mixing with the rain and mud. I twist my head to the side. “You killed the kid’s mother,” I say with quiet rage.

“That’s right, Corvelli. Know why? ’Cause Katie and I were trying to set things right, trying to make things work. Then the filthy cunt started fucking that goddamn pussy-boy prosecutor.”

Josh is stepping this way, his footfalls coming closer.

“And the kid saw you,” I say softly with a faceful of pain.

“Right again, Counselor. I saw him up in that window with his goddamn bird binoculars. I would’ve done him right then and there but some fuck neighbor turned his lights on.”

“The kid didn’t say anything, ya know,” I mutter through clenched teeth.

“I know.” A hint of sorrow permeates his voice for the first time. “He’s been a good boy. But, with all your fucking digging, that secret was only gonna stay inside of him for so long, Corvelli, and you know it.” Sebastian presses my face into the mud again. “That’s it, Josh. Come here and I’ll let your friend go.”

The kid cries, harder even than he did on the stand.

This is how I’m going to die, I finally realize. Drowned facedown in the mud.

Everything glows as I fall deeper and deeper into the abyss.

And then instantly it is as though Kevin Corvelli doesn’t exist, as though I’m ten feet below the surface of the Pacific, eyes open, pushing water past me like the fins of a big fish, detached wholly from every worldly thought, every worry, every other human being who has ever lived. I’m underwater yet filled with fire, drowning in blue-hot flames. I’m reaching with my outstretched arm for the rocks, straining my body toward the bottom, extended fingers grazing it just barely, just briefly, and then I am determined to rise, rise, rise again, using a reserve of strength I never knew I possessed, launching myself to the surface so that I can breathe in that tropical air again, steal one long last look at that horizon.

Without thought my fingers clench into fists, scraping up two handfuls of mud, then I am pushing myself up on my knuckles, my entire body rising on the strength of two tired, rarely-used biceps, and I can feel my rider cling tighter to the torn jacket of my suit.

I’ve got one shot at this, I think. One chance to throw this fuck off me like a mad bull.

Just as the kid pauses about five feet away from us, I heave myself and Sebastian’s 180 pounds up with all my might. It’s not enough to buck the killer off me, but it’s enough for me to angle my body and ultimately twist around so that I’m facing him. He immediately presses his weight against my bleeding gut and before I can scream his hands close tight around my throat.

He’s choking the life out of me. Instead of drowning I’ll be strangled—if I don’t bleed out first.

Dr. Noonan’s going to have his work cut out for him, I muse.

Suddenly the kid runs at him, head down, screaming like a rock star in the throes of his final set.

Sebastian glances up and it’s all the help I need. I shove one of my two fistfuls of mud in his face and say, “Choke on this, you psychotic fuck.”

I follow with a second fistful of mud to his mouth, then I reach for his eyes, press my muddy thumbs in on the lids as he screams, something black oozing from the corners of each eye.

Finally I’m able to throw him off me, his body rolling a few yards before coming to a halt at the base of a tree.

Painfully I push myself to my feet and hobble toward him.

I hover over Sebastian Haslett as he lies on his back fumbling for his eyes with his hands. Then I’m straddling him as he straddled me, striking his face with my closed right fist again and again and again and again.

“Stop!” Josh screams.

I ignore the kid.

“Kevin, please! You’re gonna kill him!”

“He has it coming,” I shout as my fist comes down on the raw flesh of Sebastian’s face again.

It’s then I realize I intend to murder the kid’s father with my bare hands.