Kate Brian - Endless

“No way.” Bea came up behind Fisher and Kevin, pulling her hat on over her hair. “As of now, no one goes anywhere alone anymore.”

I swallowed hard. The girl had a point. After all, we could die now.

“Fine. But when we find him, I get to interrogate him,” I said through my teeth.

Joaquin flipped his hood up. “So where do we start? His place? The Swan?”

“You guys?” Cori cleared her throat meekly. Her face was still streaked with tears, but her chin was set in grim determination. I could only imagine what she was going through, losing one of her best friends and finding out that the other was responsible. The very fact that she was able to stand right now made her worthy of awe. “I think I know where he’s going.”

I glanced around at the others and saw they were just as impressed as I was. I reached for Cori’s hand.

“Show us the way.”

“The Bait and Tackle?” Bea asked as the five of us huddled under a battered and torn awning at the north end of the docks. We were standing across the boardwalk from the business in question. “You think he’s in there?”

“I can’t imagine anyone would dare go in there,” I said with a shiver.

The Bait & Tackle was a square, gray-shingled building built into the center of a wide plank dock that stretched out over the bay. The roof was concave on one side, and the whole thing listed to the left so far I was surprised it hadn’t already toppled over. The hand-painted BAIT & TACKLE sign was cracked in the middle, right over the ampersand, and hung in a V shape over the front door.

“He started hanging out there late at night a while ago,” Cori said with a sniffle, a relentless stream of water pouring off the gutter and onto the shoulder of her black rain jacket. “Tommy told him he couldn’t spin in the house anymore, so he snuck a bunch of equipment out here to keep practicing. Nadia and I are the only people he told.”

“He hid a DJ deck inside a bait-and-tackle shop because his fake dad wouldn’t let him keep it at home?” I asked dubiously.

Fisher sighed. “Tommy runs this place. He’s doesn’t really keep track of anything. I bet he hasn’t even noticed it.”

“Pete keeps his stuff covered with a tarp in the back of the stock room,” Cori said, her teeth chattering. “So are we going to get him or not?”

Joaquin nodded and stepped out from under the awning. “Fish, you, Bea, and Cori get the front door. Rory and I will go around the back. If he’s there, we’ll draw him out. He might bolt around front, so keep your eyes peeled.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

We moved away from the shingled wall, our feet slapping through the shallow puddles that had gathered on the boardwalk’s weathered planks. There was one creaky light hanging from a curved metal post in front of the Bait & Tackle’s front door. It swung like a metronome in the wind, illuminating the words on the sign over the door one by one. BAIT. TACKLE. BAIT. TACKLE. BAIT. TACKLE.

We reached the front door. Fisher and Cori stood off to one side, Bea on the other. Joaquin gave me a nod, and we crept around the short south-facing wall of the building, ducking beneath one window that had the blind drawn anyway and paused at the back. The dock stretched out so far over the water I could barely make out the end of it in the storm. Rod holders were screwed to every other pylon so that fishermen could rest their fishing rods while they spent the day hanging out and hoping for a catch. In the distance, I saw a rocky jetty in the bay parallel to the dock, the churned-up waters of the usually placid surface smashing against the stones.

Joaquin stepped up and pounded on the back door. “Pete!” he shouted. “We know you’re in there. Come out and we promise you won’t get—”

Suddenly the door burst open, swinging outward and hitting Joaquin square in the face. Pete darted out and ran right past me, vaulting over the guardrail on the dock and dropping onto the sand below. Joaquin fell backward, his head knocking against the wood planks. He was out cold. I hesitated a split second, torn between chasing Pete and making sure Joaquin was all right.

“Sonofabitch!” I shouted in frustration.

Then I sprinted as fast as I could along the side of the building, blowing right by Fisher, Bea, and Cori.

“What the hell happened?” Bea shouted.

“Check on Joaquin!” I blurted back. I tore around the corner and up the boardwalk. The stairs down to the beach were yards away, and Pete had a lead on me as he raced along the sand, but in seconds he would hit the jetty. With any luck, he would try to scramble over it, which would be next to impossible with the rocks slicked down by rain and algae. Hopefully it would help me make up time.

Heart pumping, I ran as fast as I could, trying not to think about Joaquin and whether he was okay. Trying not to think about Tristan or Nadia or Darcy or my dad. I had to run the race of my life. Everyone’s existence depended on it.

Down on the sand, Pete came to the side of the rocky jetty. He looked back at me, his eyes wild, and started to climb. Finally I reached the stairs down to the beach. I took the turn at a sprint, and my feet nearly went out from under me, so I jumped down to the sand, vaulting past the eight or ten steps. I landed in a crouch, but thanks to the soft, wet ground, the impact was hardly jarring. From the corner of my eye, I saw Fisher running toward us.

Pete was climbing the rocky slope. His foot slipped and his knee went down hard. I climbed after him, gritting my teeth as my sneakers squeaked against the jagged rocks. Sweat prickled down my back, mixing with the relentless rain.

“Fisher! See if you can get down on the other side!” I shouted. “Cut him off!”

“On it!”

Fisher ran ahead, then disappeared from sight. In seconds I was so close to Pete I could make out the pattern of the treads on the bottom of his shoes. Then he jumped to his feet and started carefully across the expanse of the jetty. Suddenly he froze in his tracks.

“Nowhere to go, dude!” I heard Fisher shout. “Give it up.”

“Yes,” I said under my breath. We had Pete trapped. I climbed to my feet. He turned around, took one look at me, and started to run—toward the ocean.

“What the—”

I took off after him. The terrain was uneven, wet, and pocked with puddles. Dead jellyfish clung to one angled rock, their bulbous bodies torn and limp. I slipped once and my hands came down atop a pile of broken crab shells, pincers, and legs. I gritted my teeth and pushed myself up again. Somehow, I was still gaining on Pete, but it no longer mattered. He’d reached the end of the jetty. His back was to me, and his shoulders rose and fell as he heaved in breath after breath.

“There’s nowhere to go!” I shouted. “You can’t hide from us forever.”

He turned around, his knees like jelly, and looked me in the eye. “I can hide from you long enough.”

I blinked. “Long enough for what?”

“For me to get what I want,” he said, turning his palms out. His eyes flicked past me, and I turned my head just enough to see Fisher clambering up the rocks nearby. “Listen, Rory. In case something happens, I want you to know, it wasn’t my idea.”

“What?” I asked, my heart pounding anew. “What wasn’t your idea?”

“To take your family,” he said quietly. “Or to pin it on you. I was just the muscle.”

My brain felt about as steady as the roiling waves behind him. “I don’t understand. You’re saying you were involved? With Tristan and Nadia? With the ushering?”

He shook his head. “It wasn’t them. It was never them.”

My head went weightless, everything I had believed, obliterated in one breath. If it wasn’t Tristan and Nadia, then who the hell was it? How had they done it? Where had they gotten the tainted coins, and why had they set up Tristan to take the fall?