The rain had battered the glass as I unfastened the clasp. I pushed the bathroom window open, then climbed outside. Into the dark, into the cold. A gust of wind nearly tore the window from my hand, but I managed to close it quietly behind me, without giving myself away. I stopped for a moment to make sure. Inside the living room, framed by the large picture windows, Ben was pacing, back and forth, panicking, trying to calm himself down after the fight, trying to figure out what to do while I supposedly cleaned myself up. I watched him until I was certain he hadn’t heard anything, then started forward again. The rain pummeled my face and my shoulders, freezing my skin. Wind howled in my ears. Icy water soaked my shoes, swallowing my footsteps on the sharp gravel. I wasn’t shivering anymore, though. My heart was racing. My blood was pumping.
I already knew which way Sammy would walk, so I followed the same path, quickly. It didn’t take long to catch up to them. Not long after I entered the thickest part of the forest, I caught sight of Anthony’s fuzzy form ahead of me as he chased Sammy toward the cove where he’d hidden his dinghy. In the dark, he lost dimension, like a shadow slipping between trees. It was nearly impossible to see. My own hand, shielding my eyes, was no more than a series of shapes. I stumbled over roots, tore my skin against branches, lost my footing as my feet sank into muddy puddles. Pushing myself harder, I struggled to keep up. The forest was deeper than I remembered, and I was making a racket. Thankfully, the storm provided cover, and after a few minutes, I had closed the gap and Anthony was only about twenty feet in front of me.
In a flash of lightning, I caught a clear glimpse of Sammy, like a snapshot, maybe two paces ahead of him. He was doubled over, in the middle of a small clearing, his hands braced on his knees. In between claps of thunder, I thought I could hear him heaving. He wasn’t simply hurting. He was disoriented, nauseous. The blow Anthony had given him to the head had almost killed him, and he was having trouble finding his way back to the boat.
I slowed, taking cover off the path behind a tangle of bushes. Anthony, too, hesitated. Then he made up his mind and pressed forward, raising his voice over the storm, “Sammy!” He caught up to the injured man, reaching him before Sammy realized he was coming. In the far distance, tiny dots of light poked through the trees. The mainland. I slipped back onto the path, edging forward, then slid back into the brush, out of sight again, but now almost within earshot. Whatever Anthony said to Sammy got lost in the wind. I could hear Sammy’s rough response, though: “Don’t touch me, son.” Another flash of lightning bathed him in its phosphorescent silvery light. Blood leaked from the wound. More lightning struck, like a strobe. Ooze stained his forehead and blackened his ear, sliding like oil down his neck and seeping into his shirt. In the black again, these images remained with me like a series of photographs. I crept a little closer.
“You’re hurt, Sammy,” Anthony said, taking stock of the other man’s injuries for the first time, too. His voice reached me like a whimper. He grabbed Sammy again, wrapping a hand around his upper arm, but Sammy jerked away, overcompensating and collapsing, landing heavily on one knee. Even from this distance, I could hear his labored breath. He’s dying, I thought, and a chill ran through me as I gazed at Anthony. His expression was blank, his eyes almost unfocused. I couldn’t see him any better than I could see Sammy, but I knew him so well by then. I knew this expression. He was considering something. Making up his mind. Whether to help Sammy, perhaps as he had set out to do, or just to let him die. The moment passed, though, when Sammy’s other knee buckled, and he pitched forward into the mud, nearly sprawling before catching himself by planting his hands in front of him. Anthony’s face crumpled. He looked like a little boy, ready to cry—not in sympathy, but to protest his innocence. I knew this, too, without having to delineate his features through the rain. “Sammy? Come on, man. You’re really hurt. Let me help you.”
“You did this,” Sammy said through gritted teeth. Then, clenching his jaw, again rebuffing Anthony, he pushed himself back up, onto his feet. “Just wait.” He shook his head, slowly, as though to clear it, but stumbled again. “Just you wait,” he said as he began to fall.
Anthony clutched him reflexively, looping an arm around his waist to hold him upright. “Sammy, please.” His voice had grown desperate. “Come back to the house with me. We’ll clean you up, get you warm.”
I edged forward, transfixed, sinking even lower to the ground, shielding myself in the thick, sopping moss. I hate to admit it, but as I’d followed him into the woods, I had begun to believe that Anthony intended to stop Sammy from getting home. Now, though, I wasn’t so sure. Maybe he did actually mean to help him.
I was close enough now to get a better look at Sammy’s eyes. They were wide, shadowed. Incredulous. “Come back with you?” he echoed, in disbelief. He rolled his shoulders, trying to loosen Anthony’s grip from his torso. “This is it for you. Don’t you understand that? This is round three, and Sammy never loses the final round.”
Anthony let go of him, turning away from him a little. I could read his indecision, and I felt myself shiver. He had reached his crossroads, and he knew it.
Without Anthony’s arm around him, Sammy started to sway. The adrenaline from the struggle was wearing off, and he was fading. The fight was draining from him. Once again, instinctively—because this was his basic impulse, despite what had happened between them years before—Anthony reached out to steady him. Sammy, though, slapped the hand away. “I don’t need your help, son,” he shouted. Then, gathering himself, more quietly, enunciating each syllable through his teeth: “You tried to kill me. You think I’m some kind of fool? That’s what this goddamn thing has been about. Setting Sammy up for a kill.”
The shadows hid Anthony’s face, but I knew he still wasn’t panicking, even as his world was falling into a shambles all around him. Why was he always so calm? Didn’t he realize what was about to happen to him? Sammy would go to the police. This wasn’t some innocent scuffle. Anthony had planned this whole thing. It was premeditated. He could be charged with attempted murder. His life would be ruined. I had started to shiver again, crouching there in the mud, watching. Listening. Waiting. The rain had let up momentarily, into a drizzle, but I was already drenched, and the wind whipped through my clothes as if I wasn’t wearing anything at all. I became aware of the water creeping down my back. My fingers and toes ached. Finally, Anthony seemed to reach a decision. “You do what you have to do,” he said, his voice flat. “My conscience is clear.”
I could barely hear Sammy through the wind, over the rush of waves on the shore, somewhere behind the curtain of those trees. “Don’t kid yourself,” he said. “You don’t have no conscience. You never did.”
Anthony’s mouth twisted, but he didn’t try to defend himself. He peered through the forest. Then he nodded. “Will you make it home okay?” His voice was despondent. He had given up so easily.
Sammy pointed a finger in his face. “You don’t have to worry about Sammy,” he said. “You just worry about yourself.”
Anthony opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again. After another tortured few seconds, he repeated what he’d already said. “You do what you have to do.” Then, with a jerky shrug, he started back down the path, directly toward me, retracing his way to the house. You do what you have to do. My limbs were frozen. My breath was caught in my throat. I couldn’t have called out for him even if I had wanted to. And then he was gone.
As his footsteps faded into the drips of rain off leaves behind me, Sammy squared his shoulders, straightening himself back up. Then, with a remnant of his athletic grace, he managed to swivel around and continue down the path. He had to catch his balance on tree branches, but he was moving more steadily now. I heard him mutter, Son of a fucking bitch, to himself as he slipped and righted himself clumsily.
Before I knew what I intended, I followed him, racing as fast as my icy, numb legs could carry me, sliding on leaves. But he was fast, even injured, even dying. Faster than me. I only caught up to him at the rocky beach, after we cleared the trees, where the moss gave way to sand. The sound of the surf overwhelmed me. He was already at his boat, leaning into it. Not dragging it into the water or trying to board it, but removing something from it. I couldn’t see what it was. I figured, though, it was his phone, stowed in the waterproof hold.
“Sammy!” I shouted. My voice was hoarse. “Wait!”
He snapped upright, then turned to face me, his expression registering his surprise.
I took advantage of his hesitation, and closed the distance between us. “Please,” I begged him. “Please don’t do this.”
He didn’t speak, but just stared at me. Blankly. As if I no longer mattered to him. As if he couldn’t see me anymore.
I persevered. “You can’t turn Anthony in,” I told him. “Please. Don’t call the police.” As I spoke the words aloud, another shiver passed through me. I couldn’t bear what was about to happen to Anthony. To all of us. Because we were all involved. Me, too. We would lose everything. I would lose everything. My life would be ruined, too, just now, when it’s finally beginning to start. “Please,” I repeated. “Don’t call the police.” Don’t do this to me.
Sammy shook his head, slowly. “Don’t worry,” he told me. He was so close to me, but he sounded so far away. “I’m not going to call the police.”
My relief was physical. I could feel my spine give way, and if it weren’t for my frozen muscles, I might have fallen to my knees. All I could do was drop my head into the palm of my hand, staring blindly down at the shore. Everything was going to be okay.
“I’m not going to call the police,” Sammy said again. Then he lifted a hand, as if to show me why.
It took me a long moment to understand what I was seeing. The object in his hand, which he had been retrieving from the hold, wasn’t a phone, but something else. It seemed to absorb light, like a heavy chunk of coal. Of course I knew instantly what it was, but I still had difficulty articulating it. I had never seen one in person before, not so close. Not held by someone other than a policeman. It sucked the air out of my lungs. And then, as comprehension dawned, I understood what Sammy was saying. He wasn’t going to call the police, because he was going to take care of Anthony himself. With a gun.
And then it happened, almost too fast for me to assimilate. I had seen a branch, waterlogged, dragged by the surf onto the rocky beach by my feet. I had nearly tripped on its long, thick, craggy fingers as I’d chased Sammy to his boat. And now, though I don’t know how, this branch—this heavy, sopping, leaden branch—was in my hands. I wasn’t holding it. I wasn’t considering it as a weapon. It was just there in my hands, and I was watching as it swung through the air in a blur toward this man’s wretched, ugly, evil face. I watched it as it connected with his skull. I felt the reverberation vibrate through my arms, my skeleton. I saw him reel, then stumble, then fall backward, into the side of the boat, then farther down, into the water. I let go of the branch and followed him. He rolled, gasping for air, while I clawed at his shirt to get a better grip. I felt his gaze on me as the struggle left his body, as he finally understood.
It was surprisingly gentle in the end. He had already lost a lot of blood, and the blow from the branch had done the rest. I simply gave him one massive heave, like I was launching a small ship—as I would do only a moment later, to his boat—and watched as he floated away. He had been so strong, even injured. He could have killed Anthony easily. And he would have. Me, too. All of us. I was only doing what had to be done. Defending Anthony. Defending myself. And Mads and Ben, as well. That’s what I told myself, as I fed the gun and the branch into the water, as I stood back and watched the current draw the body away. He would have been impossible to stop, otherwise.
Maybe it was just the movement of the surf, because the waves were violent in the wake of the storm and the surface of the water was churning, but the body seemed to writhe and buck at first. Its limbs reached into the air, searching for purchase. There was a moment when I even thought it might start swimming. But then it began at last to surrender, and I could see the very instant when it lost its will, just a few seconds before it started to sink, drawn out to sea in the unrelenting current.
And then Sammy was gone. Nevertheless, I waited. I knew it was over, but I didn’t believe it yet. I counted to thirty. My hands were numb. I had no more feeling, not anywhere in my body. Nowhere except in my eyes, which were burning. Nothing happened. I took a breath, and the air surged down my throat with the searing heat of a flame.
He was dead. We were safe.