Brian Freeman - The Bone House

'Harris Bone?'

'It's possible. He's out there somewhere.'

'If I told Bolton what Glory said, maybe he'll realize I'm not the only game in town.'

'I know how you feel, but we can't say anything that might put you at risk. Look, I'll find out whatever I can about the fire. I'll try to get Peter Hoffman to talk to me. Harris Bone was his son-in-law. He may know something that would help us figure out if Bone could have been in Florida. If I find something, I'll give it to Bolton. OK?'

There was no answer from her husband. She realized that his eyes were fixed on the rear-view mirror. Hilary twisted round and realized what Mark had seen behind them. Headlights.

Another vehicle trailed them on the highway.

'That pickup's been back there since we left,' Mark murmured. 'I spotted the lights when we turned at the cemetery.'

'Do you have any idea who it is?'

He shook his head. It was unusual to see other vehicles on the island roads at night during the off season, and there were only a handful of other residents living year-round in the remote lane past Schoolhouse

Beach. He slowed, drawing the truck closer, until the lights were immediately behind them like giant white eyes. The vehicle made no move to pass.

Hilary squinted into the blinding brightness. 'I can't see the driver or the plate.'

Mark tapped the brakes and slowed until the Camry was barely doing twenty miles an hour. The pick-up matched their speed and stayed on their tail, crowding their rear bumper.

'Hold on,' Mark said.

He shoved down the accelerator. The Camry leaped forward, but the engine of the pickup growled too. The road was dead straight in this part of the island, and Mark accelerated to sixty and then seventy miles an hour before the speed felt unsafe. Despite the burst of speed, the pick-up closed on them again, and as it did, the driver switched on his brights, throwing a dazzling light through their rear window. Next to her, Mark blocked his eyes and pushed the mirror aside.

He braked.

The pick-up accelerated. Mark barely had time to shout a warning before Hilary felt a bone-rattling impact as the truck hammered into the rear of the Camry. Her head was thrown back, snapping against the seat. The Camry swerved, fishtailing as Mark struggled to keep control. The car veered from shoulder to shoulder, weaving close to the gullies on both sides. Finally, the Camry slowed, and Mark shunted the car on to the right-side shoulder, kicking up dark clouds of gravel and leaves.

The pickup flew past them. Hilary barely saw the shape of the truck; she couldn't pick out its color or see the driver. Ahead of them, she watched its tail lights grow distant.

Mark breathed fast. His face was beet red, his body knotted up with fury.

'This ends now,' he said.

'Mark, don't.'

— He didn't listen to her. He gunned the engine and chased the pickup. Hilary clung to the door and bit her lip until she thought she tasted blood in her mouth. She saw the red lights of the truck a mile ahead of them, and Mark gained on the other vehicle a tenth of a mile at a time. The chassis of the Camry rattled. The border of the forest was a wavy blur.

'Slow down!' she shouted. 'For God's sake, Mark, you'll get us both killed.'

Mark's hands remained locked around the steering wheel, and his eyes were riveted on the road. The car's engine howled in her ears. Wind sang in the seams of the windows. They were half a mile behind the pickup when the tail lights winked out in a single instant. Mark slowed sharply, but he was still going forty miles an hour as the straightaway ended in a rightward curve. The car yawed left. He yanked down on the wheel. Hilary was afraid they would roll, but the tires grabbed the pavement, and he accelerated safely out of the turn.

That was when she saw a huge dark shape immediately ahead of them. The pickup truck was parked sideways, blocking the road at the end of their headlight beams.

There was no time to stop.

'Oh, no,' she gasped.

Cab drove through the deserted streets of the town of Fish Creek and parked outside the guest house near the harbor. It was a quaint village of candle shops and cafes on the west coast of the peninsula, choked with tourists in August, but quiet on a midweek evening in March. He'd rented a two-story apartment. The smell of the bay was sweet as he got out of his Corvette, but he didn't linger in the freezing air. He let himself inside and climbed the stairs to the main level of the apartment, which had a full kitchen, a fireplace, and a balcony that looked out on the water.

He was paying for it himself. He didn't apologize for the luxuries he'd known his whole life. His money — or his mother's money, to be precise — helped him deal with the ugliness of the world. Sometimes, when he was drunk enough to be honest with himself, he also acknowledged that his money allowed him to build a hiding place wherever he went. A pretty cage.

Cab turned on the oven in the apartment's kitchen. He'd found a restaurant on the north side of town that sold vegetarian quiche, and he'd ordered it to go, along with a bottle of Stags' Leap Chardonnay. He deposited the quiche on foil lining a baking sheet and put it in the oven, then located a corkscrew and opened the wine. He found a glass in a cabinet above the stove and poured the wine almost to the rim. With the Chardonnay in hand, he dimmed the lights in the apartment and switched on the gas fireplace. He settled into the leather sofa, put up his long legs, and drank the wine in gulps as he watched the fire.

He thought about calling his mother. They texted each other several times a month, but he hadn't actually heard her voice in six weeks.

It was the middle of the night in London, so he used his phone to send her a message instead.

Cold as hell here. Lonely but beautiful. See pic. C.

He attached a picture he'd taken with his phone on the crossing from Washington Island, with the angry water against the gray sky and the forested coastline of the peninsula looming ahead of him. His rented Corvette had been the only vehicle on the ferry. Right now, in the empty guest house, he felt like the only man alive in the town of Fish Creek.

He was accustomed to that sense of isolation. He thought of it as being homeless with a roof over his head. If he were back in his condominium in Florida, he would have felt the same way.

His mother had extended an open invitation to join her in London. Neither one of them had anyone else in their lives who really mattered. Even so, he'd resisted moving there, because he didn't know if he was ready to stop running. Whenever he looked back, he saw Vivian Frost chasing him. He still needed to exorcize her ghost. That was something his mother didn't understand, because he'd never told her the truth about Vivian's death.

Cab finished his glass of wine. He got up, checked the quiche in the oven, and poured another glass before sitting down again. He watched the gas fire, which burned in a controlled fashion, never changing. Fire wasn't like that. It was volatile and unpredictable, twisting with the wind, sucking energy out of the air. It was also, he knew, a particularly excruciating way to die. Hilary Bradley may have been blowing smoke his way with her story about Harris Bone, but she was right about one thing. If you were capable of burning up your wife and children, then you were the owner of a cold, dead soul, and you would feel little remorse watching the life flicker out of a girl's eyes on the beach.

Then again, he'd felt no remorse himself watching Vivian die. Not then. Not until later.

Cab got up restlessly and took his wine with him. He walked to the west end of the apartment and pushed open the glass doors that led to the balcony. He went outside, where the wind shrieked and cut at his face. The empty boat docks of the harbor were below him, and street lights glowed in haloes along the waterfront.