He’d wanted to play football. He’d wanted to raise a family. He’d wanted to move out of Deception Cove with Terri-Lee and live the kind of life they were meant for, the all-state-quarterback and head-cheerleader life, the sweethearts-in-the-city life, a beautiful, successful life. He’d wanted to be envied by every sad, failed motherfucker who stayed stuck in Deception Cove, nothing to live for but reality TV.
He’d wanted Ateke Okafor to make him rich. He’d wanted Kirk Wheeler to retire and make him sheriff.
He’d wanted Ty Winslow to not fuck with his package. He’d wanted Jess Winslow to do the same.
He’d wanted Mason Burke to mind his own business and fuck back off to wherever he’d come from.
He wanted his package. He wanted Joy to go home. He didn’t want Bryce Whitmer and Dale Whitmer and Cole Sweeney to be dead. He didn’t want to leave this island in handcuffs.
Hell, Kirby Harwood just wanted to go home to Terri-Lee and forget this had ever happened. Sell the house for whatever they could get, the truck and what was left of the boat, too, resign his position and catch a bus somewhere else, forget about Deception Cove and every miserable person in it.
He wanted this to end. But it hadn’t ended. And deep down Harwood knew it wasn’t ever going to end, not the way he wanted.
Harwood didn’t want to be here, but here he was, and he took out his anger and his frustration and, damn it, his fear on Jess Winslow beneath him, beating her blindly as she fought to get free, as she grabbed weakly for his hands and his throat.
She couldn’t escape. She couldn’t fight back. No matter what she did, Harwood knew he was going to kill her before he stood again.
Some marine you turned out to be, Jess.
He could feel her strength draining. Her body relaxed some, and her hand swiped at him, feeble. He swatted it away and stared down at her.
“You should never have tested me, Jess,” he said, panting. “I told you I’d win.”
She spat blood. “Fuck you.”
“I’m going to kill you,” he said. “I’m going to bash your head in right here, and then I’m going to find your boyfriend, and I’m going to drag him up here to see what he did. And then I’m going to kill him, and I’ll find your dog, and I’ll kill her, too. What do you think about that?”
Jess was gasping for breath too. Harwood could feel her chest rising beneath him. Her face was badly bruised, and she was scratched up and bleeding. She was beaten to shit, but apparently, she hadn’t figured that out yet.
“You always did talk a lot, Kirby,” she said. “But you’re the same limp-dick nobody you always were. You’re going to die on this island.” She smiled at him, showed him bloody teeth. “What do you think about that?”
The woman had heart; that was never in doubt. But she was going to die anyway. Harwood felt around on the ground beside Jess. Found a rock big enough for what he planned next.
“Game over, Jess,” he told her. He raised the rock high. Held it over her head so she could see it, and he mustered as much anger and hate and sense of cosmic unfairness as he could, and prepared to slam the rock down and end this whole fiasco.
And then something attacked him from behind.
* * *
Jess didn’t believe she was seconds from dying. Even as she lay there, beat to shit and exhausted, staring up at Harwood and that big fucking rock, Jess couldn’t believe it was ending this way. It just didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel final. She’d always figured she’d know when her last breath was imminent, and this, right here, this wasn’t the time.
Turned out she was right.
Something knocked Harwood forward, and he yelled out in surprise, sprawled on top of her, and rolled back, swinging and kicking. Jess thought it was Burke at first, but then she heard the snarling and she knew Lucy had come.
The dog had her teeth gripping tight into Harwood’s shoulder; she was growling in a way Jess had never heard before, her hackles raised and murder in her eyes. As Jess squirmed free from underneath Harwood, Lucy released the deputy’s shoulder, and Harwood scrambled back, but the relief was just temporary. Lucy regrouped, and this time she came for his throat.
Jess rose to her knees, her head swimming, vision blurred. She watched Harwood swing his arm around, trying to fend Lucy off, but the dog simply bounced back and came at him again, forcing him backward and latching on to his arm, her teeth snapping, tearing flesh.
Harwood screamed and swore and kicked at Lucy. Lucy kept on him, backing him across the clearing toward the edge of the cliff, the elbow of the pass where Jess had hoped to stage her ambush. The dog’s collar was gone; she must have wriggled out of it. Jess wondered how Lucy had known to come up here, how she’d known she was in trouble.
She’s your dog, Jess. She damn well knows.
Harwood fell backward, Lucy on top of him. He kicked at her, and she bounced off and came at him again, and Harwood felt around, his hands reaching for a rock, for some kind of weapon.
Jess crawled across the clearing to where her pistol lay forgotten. She picked it up and looked across at where Lucy and Harwood still wrestled. The dog had him pinned, but Harwood’s fingertips had just brushed another rock, and Jess knew the deputy would stave in her dog’s head if he could just gain one more inch.
She raised the gun before he could get there. Aimed it over Harwood’s head, over Lucy, and fired.
The shot did what she’d hoped it would: it terrified Lucy. The dog forgot about chewing on Harwood and bolted for the woods, leaving Harwood on the ground at the edge of the cliff. He was staring at Jess, trying to get his breath back, and she leveled the pistol at him from her knees.
“Get up.”
Slowly, painfully, Harwood obeyed. He stood twenty feet away from her, hunched over, his clothes torn where Lucy had ripped through them, his face scratched and bloody. He was holding the rock he’d been trying to grab, though she couldn’t tell if he was even aware.
Behind Harwood, the gray sky and the island and the pass, the wind overhead and the sound of the breakers far off. Jess stayed on her knees. She wasn’t sure she could stand.
They looked at each other. The island was quiet, and Jess wondered about Burke. Wondered about Dale Whitmer and the scary guy. Wondered if this was it.
Harwood was watching her, watching the gun. Like he was waiting for her to make up her mind.
“I got your package,” she told him. She nodded across to the little cave where she’d spent the night with Burke. “It’s in there.”
Harwood followed her eyes. He said nothing.
“You know where it came from, that junk you were moving?” she asked. “You ever get the full history of that stuff?”
Harwood shrugged. “Asia, they said.”
“Yeah, Asia,” she replied. “Specifically, my part of Asia: Afghanistan. And you know what they do with the profits?”
He looked at her, blank eyes, hardly paying attention. Like he had no idea why she was giving this lecture.
“Guns, Kirby,” Jess said. “Rocket-propelled grenades. Mortar bombs. IEDs. Any way they can think of to kill a US Marine, those opium-selling motherfuckers are buying it. And you and your homeboys are helping them do it.”
Harwood kind of laughed. “We were just moving the stuff,” he said. “We didn’t hardly do anything.”
Jess shook her head. “You ever see somebody with his legs blown off?” she asked. “Someone shot through the belly and trying to hold their guts in? You ever see a woman get beat up and raped and tortured, get sent back to you to die, just so you could watch?”
Harwood said nothing.
“All that stuff costs money,” she said. “And you helped them get it. While I was over there fighting for this country, you were buying guns for the other guys. You ever stop to think about that, Deputy?”
“Jess,” Harwood said. “Don’t make this more complicated than it actually is, you hear me?”
“I guess that’s a no.” Jess steadied her aim, closed her bad eye, stilled her breathing. Focused on Harwood’s chest as the deputy smirked a little.
“Aw, that’s bullshit,” he said. “You’re not going to shoot an unarmed man, Jess. I know you.”
She gestured to the rock in his hand. “That looks like a weapon to me.”
Harwood went white. He let go of the rock. She’d put three in his chest before the rock hit the ground.