They both needed a break. He rolled up his waders and tucked them under his arm. He didn’t say anything to her. Stuff was mounting up, the sense of threat. As much as he needed an ally, there was nothing they could do now about the phone and there was no point in adding to her burden.
She wanted to swim in the pool and take a sauna and relax, and he badly wanted to just sit in the cane rocker on his little cabin porch and let everything sift. Read a chapter of his latest Murakami novel, or Li Xue’s poems from The Orchard. They would reconvene at 3:30 and fish the late afternoon until dinner.
But first he had to play ball. Play ball with Kurt and the lodge enough to get through the next few days. Jensen already wanted to stomp him into jelly, Jack could see it in his eyes plain as day. Fair enough, the feeling was now mutual. Was it Wednesday? He checked his watch. Yes. Alison was scheduled to leave after fishing Monday morning. If he could just maintain. If they could. Fish and share meals and keep their cool and get her out of here. He could do the rest, whatever it was. The lodge knew he knew something, but not what, he was certain. They were worried, but not sure, which is why they were just trying to get him off the property. Den hires people no one would believe…Otherwise he, too, would be half buried by now, like Ken the Hen, right where he tried to flee.
Ken had been dispatched hurriedly, Jack was sure. Probably right where he had been apprehended after seeing whatever he had seen—running down the creek, down the only route he knew well. Because he was just a fishing guide like Jack, who could read a river but was maybe not so good at reading men. And Jack bet it had happened just the night before he had arrived, and they’d covered Ken fast in the spruce duff against the smell, and had meant to deal with him properly on Jack’s first night but something had come up. It was Alison! He remembered now how she had said that she truly liked to walk in the middle of the night and listen and look for night birds, and had done so on her first night there. She had probably almost walked right into them.
He thought of the Takagis. They had not been in the spa house or the massage cabin; they had been coming from upstream and they did not look at all happy.
He walked back up to his cabin slowly. Play ball. He’d go retrieve his .30-.30 from behind the tree where he’d hidden it and bring it up now to the main house and let them lock it in the safe or whatever. He put on baggy shorts and a T-shirt and found his flip-flops in a side pocket of his duffel bag and wriggled his feet into them. It was the first really hot afternoon and he might as well go casual. Look relaxed. Look the opposite of a guy who had just decided he had hardly anything to lose.