Michael Prescott - Deadly Pursuit

Steve returned the stare complacently. “Always am.” He settled into the stern and fumbled with the starter cord, smiling at Jack. “Great day, isn’t it? Just like summertime when we were seventeen.”

Jack looked at the blue sweep of sky, the turquoise water, the dancing spangles of sun. His answer, low and bitter, was swallowed by a ripping cough of sound as the outboard motor revved to life.

“Yeah, Steve-o. It’s a perfect day.”

He touched his waistband, felt the shape of the knife.

Throttling back, Steve guided the boat away from the dock, heading east, toward the reef.

Jack looked back once and saw Kirstie still standing at the end of the dock, her hair blown in the wind, her arm cutting the sky in a long, sweeping wave.

Anastasia was waiting by the front door when Kirstie stepped back inside the house. The dog whined.

“You miss your buddy Jack?” Kirstie snapped. “Well, I don’t.”

Then she sighed. Kneeling, she stroked Ana’s silky coat. “Sorry, girl. Mommy’s a little worked up right now. And the thing of it is, she’s not even sure why.”

Steve was probably right: she was being irrational. She’d taken an instant, visceral dislike to Jack Dance and had allowed it to color all her subsequent impressions.

Most likely he really was nothing worse than a creep. Not the devil incarnate, just your garden-variety… snake.

“But how come he had to spoil our paradise?” she wondered aloud.

Ana had no answer.

The house seemed disturbingly empty with Steve gone. Empty and quiet. Unwanted phrases slipped through Kirstie’s mind: quiet as the dead, lonely as a cemetery, silent as a grave.

She wandered the rooms restlessly, finding no joy in the bars of sun slanting through the arched windows in the living room or the French doors of the loggia. The cheery tinkle of the fountain in the patio seemed irritating, extraneous, an artificial merriment, like a music box’s tinny rhapsody or the rippling chatter of wind chimes.

She looked for more dishes to wash, but there were none in the kitchen sink. She poured a glass of water and left the water running, pointlessly, wastefully, until she realized she had left it on, just to hear the noise it made. Then with a jerk of her wrist she closed the tap.

Back in the living room she confronted the television set, which had remained off throughout the past two weeks. She had considered it a victory of sorts not to have turned on the set even once, to have lived for half a month without the canned idiocy that was too much a part of modern life.

But now she needed it. The TV was company, and a distraction; she wanted both.

She found the remote control, figured out how to work it. The TV popped on with a buzz and crackle. She flipped through channels, passing game shows and soap operas, before settling on a noontime Miami newscast.

Ana stretched out before the flickering picture tube as if lying by a fire. Kirstie was too fidgety to relax. She circled the room, idly rearranging things-the schooner on the mantel, the potted fern in a corner, the globe near the couch-while the newscasters alternated glibly between happy talk and sober seriousness.

The world, it appeared, had survived her two weeks of neglect. Nothing had changed. The same dreary procession of disasters and senseless tragedies still filled the airwaves.

On the screen, a video graphic read fire; cut to a burned-out housing project on Tenth Street, someone’s mother shrieking in Spanish as a small body was wrapped in sheets and carted away.

Back to the news desk. Another graphic: carjacking. Cut to the scene of a fatal struggle over an automobile, the victim’s remains already gone by the time cameras arrived, the lenses focusing greedily on a smear of blood discoloring the curb.

The news desk again. Graphic: murder.

“Nationally,” the female anchor said, “the manhunt continues for a serial killer now officially linked to the deaths of seven women in six western and southwestern states-”

This wasn’t helping at all.

Kirstie clicked the remote, and the TV shut off.

“I guess listening to the news isn’t exactly the best way to calm your nerves,” she remarked to the room.

Ana cocked her head and panted.

The heat was starting to get to her, or maybe it was tension. Either way she was sweating too much; she felt sticky, grimy. A shower would cool her off.

She went down the loggia, into the bathroom, and found Jack’s clothes neatly folded on the rim of the tub. Lifting them in her arms, she carried them into the master bedroom. As she laid them on the bed, something small and green slipped out of the back pocket of the jeans and fluttered to the floor.

She picked it up. A folded bill-no, many bills. Five twenties, four fifties, four hundreds. Seven hundred and twenty dollars in all. A fair amount of cash to be toting around. It struck her as vaguely suspicious.

Oh, come on. Plenty of people carried more money than this, even when they weren’t on vacation.

Still, she couldn’t help wondering what else Jack had in his pockets. Something incriminating? Proof that her distrust of him was justified? Vindication of her warnings to Steve?

Doubtful. But not entirely impossible.

The only way to find out, of course, was to look and see.

She recoiled from the thought. Search his clothes like a thief? She wasn’t some crooked chambermaid. She was Jack’s hostess. He was her guest.

But an uninvited guest. An unwelcome guest.

Even so, Miss Manners definitely would not approve.

Well… fuck her.

Harassed by guilt, yet feeling a certain sneaking pleasure despite herself, Kirstie unfolded Jack’s blue jeans, then emptied the pockets one at a time.

In the other back pocket, a wallet. She examined its contents. California driver’s license. An additional $213 in bills of various denominations. Three major credit cards, all in Jack’s name.

Nothing dramatic there. She replaced the wallet and inspected his side pockets. Car and house keys. Antacid tablets in a blister pack. Folded tissues. Loose change.

That was all.

Kirstie released a breath. Disappointment competed with relief. His belongings were thoroughly dull. Not much different from what Steve would carry in his own pockets. No cocaine, no amphetamines, no phony ID or stolen credit cards, no straight razor crusted with blood She blinked.

And no knife.

But Jack had carried a knife. She’d seen it. He’d removed it from his pants pocket, stripped a blackberry-bush cane of its thorns, stems, and leaves to make a stick for Ana to fetch.

She checked all the pants pockets again, then searched Jack’s shirt.

Nothing.

He must have taken it-taken it with him-on the boat.

She hadn’t seen the knife when Jack left. And Steve’s bathing suit, the one Jack borrowed, had no pockets.

He’d hidden it somehow. Hidden it on his person.

And now he was out there with Steve, the two of them alone together.

She heard a sudden rapid clacking noise and realized it was her teeth, chattering idiotically.

“Jesus, why didn’t you take the gun? Why were you so stubborn?”

She was addressing her husband, who was not here, who might never be here again.

The room was hot. Of course it was. This was Florida. Everything was hot. But the heat seemed suddenly more intense, stifling, overwhelming-she pressed her hand to her forehead, felt a rush of lightheadedness, a curious weakness in her knees.

Your head. Lower your head.

She leaned over the bed, her head down, until the faintness passed and her heart was not racing in her chest. With effort she cleared her mind of panic and forced herself to think, to be calm and reasonable.