Jeff Shelby - Killer Swell

“Yeah, I’m here,” I said, my jaw aching from the clench I’d placed it in since talking to him on the phone.

He made an exaggerated act of looking at his watch. “Well, it’s about time.” He wiggled the vodka bottle in the air. “Can I offer you a drink?”

I kicked the bottle out of his hand, and it went flying down the steep path, shattering somewhere down below. I grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him off the ground and to his feet.

“I don’t want a drink, asshole,” I said, jerking him closer so he could see my face. “And I don’t want to share a needle, either. I want to know what you did to Kate.”

His head lolled to one side, no fear on his face, just drunken, strung-out comfort in his glazed-over eyes. “Come on, man. Noah. Buddy.” He smiled, his eyes half open. “Let’s have one last beer together.”

I spun him away from the stairs and threw him to the ground, his body hitting the dirt in front of the stairs like a bag of rocks.

He looked up at me, surprised, then pointed a finger at me. “You are so strong, man.”

The anger erupted inside my chest, and I jumped on him, driving my fist straight down on his nose. It collapsed like a stepped-on snail, and he screamed, his voice echoing out over the water into the dark.

“Listen to me,” I said, lowering my face next to his, my anger giving my voice an edge I didn’t know it had. “I know you killed Charlotte Truman, and you’re gonna tell me what you did to Kate. Or you are going over the side of this cliff and then I’m gonna come down and break everything that’s not already broken.”

“Charlotte,” he slurred. “I didn’t want to.”

“I wanna know about Kate.”

“You don’t understand,” he mumbled.

The blood from his nose looked purple in the dark. His eyes crossed as he tried to get a look at the damage in the middle of his face. He touched it with his hand, winced, and then clumsily tried to shove me off of him. I moved to the side, but kept a hand in the middle of his chest.

“Make me understand, Randall.”

He knocked my hand away and rolled over awkwardly, and I stood up with him.

He turned around to face me, staggering a bit to his left. The blood leaked down his face onto his shirt. He tried to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, but managed only to smear it onto his cheek.

“She made me do it,” he said, sounding as if his mouth was full of gravel.

The anger surged again in my chest. “What?”

He looked at the blood on the back of his hand, then at me. “She made me do it, you dumbass.”

I grabbed him again, spun him around, and pushed him back toward the top of the stairs and the edge of the cliff. He tried to push me away, but I didn’t let go. He twisted around, trying to look behind him as I marched him toward the edge.

“Don’t!” he said, his eyes moving wildly. “It’s not my fault!”

I stopped about a foot short from where the edge gave way to a long, nasty tumble, the ocean groaning at the bottom. “All of this is your fault. All of it. You let Kate go down for your mistake.” I jerked him toward me so we were chest to chest, my fists full of his shirt, pushed up under his chin. “And now you’re telling me Kate made you do all of it? It was her fault?”

He blinked several times, and the fear that had shaped his face was gone. He looked at me for a moment, his hands dropping to his sides, giving up.

“You still don’t get it,” he said, almost laughing.

Anger streaked through my body, and I shook him hard, our foreheads banging together. “You’re right! I don’t!” I jerked on the oxford again and the buttons that ran down the middle popped loose and I stumbled a couple of steps back, a piece of the cotton fabric clutched in my right hand.

We stood there for a moment, both of us breathing heavily, the wind whistling around us. I looked at him, blood running from his nose onto his now exposed chest.

There was something so familiar about him.

Then I looked at the piece of shirt in my hand.

And that’s when I finally figured it out.

“Don’t move,” a voice whispered in my ear, the cold barrel of a gun pressing into the back of my neck. “Don’t turn around until I tell you to.”

The voice should have startled me, but it didn’t. I knew, staring at Randall, what I had been missing all along. I had been lulled into looking in the other direction, not looking right where I should have been all along. As I stood there, the voice whispering in my ear, my gun pulled from my waistband, I couldn’t believe that I had missed it.

And now, as the ocean roared down below us, I figured I was probably going to miss the rest of my life.

Emily Crier said, “Turn around slowly, Noah.”

I did as she said.

“You two having fun?” she asked, pointing my gun at me. She tucked her gun into the waistband at the front of her jeans. “Looks like it.”

I could only stare at her. Blond hair piled on top of her head. Black sweater and black jeans. Black sandals and black gloves. The blond hair was the only thing that made her stand out against the night.

Randall came up next to me, steadying himself against my shoulder. “I took care of Charlotte, Em. Like you wanted.”

Emily didn’t respond.

“And I didn’t tell Noah anything,” Randall said. “I swear.”

She looked at him. “That’s great to hear.”

She moved the gun from me to him and shot him twice in the chest, the shots echoing like cannon fire in the night.

Randall’s eyes widened, his mouth open in a large, silent circle. He stumbled backward, clutching at his chest.

She fired again, hitting him where his hands were clawing at the first two wounds on his chest.

He looked at her, confused, took two more steps backward, his legs giving way, and tumbled over the ragged edge, disappearing from sight down into the unwelcoming water below.

I stared at the empty spot where Randall had just been.

I turned to Emily.

“You were the other woman,” I said.

She laughed softly. “Brilliant.”

“Randall’s shirt,” I said, holding up the blue fabric in my hand. “That was the same shirt you had on when I came to your place the other night. It wasn’t your ex you were with. It was Randall.”

“I hope my parents weren’t paying you too much,” she said. She motioned with the gun to move. “Nice and easy, okay? Move under the light where I can see you.”

I dropped the piece of cloth and sidestepped slowly about fifteen feet to my right so that I was back under the dim light, next to the warning signs.

“Somebody’s gonna find Randall,” I said.

“I’ll be gone,” she said.

“They’ll find you.”

“No, they’ll think you did it. Came here all pissed off and shot him.” She smiled. “Your bullets, Noah.”

“How long were you with Randall?” I asked, now wondering if there was any way I was going to survive.

“Too long.”

“You love him?”

“Actually, yes, believe it or not. I loved him.”

I processed what I knew. “But he wouldn’t leave Kate.”

She let out an irritated sigh. “That’s right, Noah. He wouldn’t leave her. Little Kate won again.”

“Won again?”

She laughed. “Kate always won. Since we were kids. It got so damn old. Kate got everything she ever wanted.”

“I don’t think she wanted to die,” I said.

She laughed again. “No, you’re right about that.”

“You killed her because Randall wouldn’t leave her?”

She paused for a moment, as if she was considering what she was going to tell me. Then she gave a tiny shrug, like it didn’t matter one way or the other.