Blake Crouch - Confidence Girl - The Letty Dobesh Chronicles

“Yes.”

“How was it?”

“Self-defense.”

“Kill or be killed?”

She nodded.

“Well, how was it?”

“I think about it every day.”

“Exactly. Because you had a true experience. And that’s all I want. This is how it’ll work. I’m going to wait right here for five minutes. Give you a head start. See, I don’t just want to kill you, Letty. I want to hunt you.”

“You’re as evil as they say.”

“This is not about good and evil. I’ve lived dangerously all of my life. I want to continue to do so on this final night, when it counts the most. My security team is on their way down the dock as we speak. They’re going to anchor my speedboat a quarter mile out. My yacht is staying in the marina in Key West for the night. It’ll just be you and me on the island. I know you can’t swim, Letty. That was one of the requirements that, unfortunately for you, landed you this job. So there are no ways off this little island.”

“I have a son,” she said.

“Haven’t we covered that already?”

“Johnny, please.” Letty stood up slowly and moved forward with her arms outstretched, hands open. “Has it occurred to you you aren’t thinking clearly? That you have all this emotion swarming around inside of you and—”

Fitch pointed the revolver at her face and thumbed back the hammer.

“That’s close enough.” It wasn’t the first or the second, or even the third time she’d had a firearm pointed at her. But she never got used to that gaping black hole. Couldn’t take her eyes off of it. If Fitch chose to pull the trigger in this second, it was the last thing she’d ever see.

“You destroyed thousands of lives,” she said, “but you aren’t a murderer, Johnny.”

“You’re right. Not yet. Now you have four minutes.”

12

Letty raced down the spiral staircase.

Drunk.

Terrified.

Still trying to wrap her head around what had just happened.

Only one conclusion: Javier had played her.

Sold her out.

She passed the second floor and ran down the remaining steps into the living room. Straight to the cordless phone on a bookshelf constructed from pieces of driftwood. She grabbed the handset off its base, punched TALK.

Fitch was already on the other end of the line: “I’m afraid that’s not going to work, Letty. Three minutes, thirty seconds. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight...”

I need a weapon.

She dropped the phone and turned the corner into the kitchen, started yanking drawers open.

As she pulled open the third, she saw it lying on a butcher block cutting board next to a pile of onion and garlic skin. A chef’s knife with a stainless handle and an eight-inch blade.

For ten seconds, she stood in the remnants of Angie’s cooking trying to process her next move. So much fear coursing through her she felt paralyzed.

There were dishes everywhere.

A tart cooling on the granite beside the oven.

Water dripping from the faucet.

Every second slipping by like the prick of a needle.

Fitch expected her to run. To chase her across the island. So should she stay in the house? Hide in a bedroom on the second floor and let him wander around outside in vain?

Decide. You can’t just keep standing here.

Grabbing the knife, she bolted across the room into the foyer. Jerked open the front door. Slammed it shut after her. She shot down the steps, wondering which way to go. The shore seemed like a bad idea. She headed into the interior of the island, staying off the path, fighting through undergrowth. Gnarled branches clawed at her arms. Ripped tears in her Chanel dress. Her bare feet crunched leaves and tracked through patches of dirt. She’d barely made it fifty yards when a blinding pain seared the sole of her right foot.

Letty went down, clutching it.

In the moonlight that filtered through the leaves, she studied the damage. The underside of her foot had been starred with a dozen sandspurs. She began pulling them out one at a time. Wincing. Wondering how many minutes she had left. Less than two? Less than one?

The sound of the front door creaking open on its salt-rusted hinges answered her question.

She looked up.

All she could see was the top half of Fitch standing on the deck. When he reached back to shut the door, she noticed that he wore a strange-looking hat. He lowered out of view, the steps groaning as he descended.

Letty dug the last few spurs out of her foot.

She could hear Fitch approaching.

Footsteps and heavy breathing.

She didn’t move.

Figured Fitch had to be walking up the path. It didn’t sound like he was thrashing through undergrowth.

Letty inched back further under the shadow of the scrub oak. Tucked her chin into her knees and tried to make herself as small as possible.

Fitch passed within twenty feet.

She crouched there listening until his footfalls could no longer be heard.

Letty crawled out from under the oak and came to her feet.

Total silence.

The stars shining.

The moon still climbing in the sky.

She knew what the shore on the dock-side of the island was like from that sunset stroll. A narrow strip of beach lined with vegetation. No place to hide.

She moved slowly through the scrub oak, taking care that her shoulders didn’t brush against the branches. She crested the midpoint. The island sloped gently down to the opposite shore. This side struck her as more wild. There was no beach. Just mangroves all the way down to the water.

She squeezed her way through the slim trunks. The mangroves grew more densely clustered as she neared the shore. Letty crawled on hands and knees now. The foliage above her head so thick it blotted out the sky, only splotches of moonlight scattered across the ground.

She went on until the trees were too close to go any further.

They boxed her in like prison bars.

Lying on the ground, her body twisted between the mangroves, she finally breathed deep and slow.

The temperature hovered in the upper sixties, but she shivered, covered in sweat. Her dress had been shredded climbing through the mangroves. It hung from her shoulders in tatters.

She felt good about this spot. Considering it was night, she was all but invisible. And Fitch would have a hell of a time reaching her. She couldn’t imagine the old man, who had at least ten inches on her, fitting through this grove of tightly-packed trees. How big had he said this island was? Fourteen acres? Best case scenario, she could hole up here for the night. Fitch had to report to prison tomorrow. If she could survive until then…

Letty glanced at her watched. The tips of the hour and minute hand glowed in the dark.

7:30.

She should’ve been meeting Javier at the east end of the island with fifteen million dollars in a plastic tube. This should’ve been the most exhilarating, life-changing score of her life. Instead she was being hunted down like a dog. Because she’d put her faith in a psychopath. Because, again, her judgment had failed.

Something niggled her.

A seemingly small fact she was overlooking.

A rodent scurried through some leaves nearby.

A mosquito whined in her ear.

What was it?

No flashlight.

That was it.

Fitch hadn’t brought a flashlight outside with him. When she’d glimpsed him walking down the steps, she’d expected to see a light wink on. But it never did. And then he’d just strolled up that path in the dark like—

Her breath caught in her chest.

—like he could see.

She sat up.

That wasn’t a strange-looking hat he’d been wearing. Those were night-vision goggles.

Thirty, forty yards way—impossible to know for sure—Letty heard branches rustling.