Keyes said to Kara Lynn, “I had to quit the paper. I’d stepped over the line and there was no going back.”
“At least I hawk the truth,” Wiley cut in. “That’s what this campaign is all about—dramatizing the true consequence of folly.” He struggled wobbly to his feet. He gained balance by clutching a sea-grape limb and shifting all weight to his left side. The other leg hung like a dead and blackening trunk.
“Brian, I don’t know if you’ll ever understand, but try. All that wretched grief the Davenports spent on their little girl is exactly what I feel when I think what’s happened to this place. It’s the same sense of loss, the same fury and primal lust for vengeance. The difference is, I can’t turn my back the way you did. My particular villain is not some tattooed sex pervert, but an entire generation of blow-dried rapists with phones in their Volvos and five-million-dollar lines of credit and secretaries who give head. These are the kind of deviants who dreamed up the Osprey Club, idiots who couldn’t tell an osprey from a fucking parakeet.”
Kara Lynn was amazed at Wiley’s indefatigable fervor. Brian Keyes was not stirred; he’d heard it all before. Overhead the skies were clearing as the last of the rain clouds scudded west. On the horizon shone a tinge of magenta, the first promise of dawn. Time was running out and there was one last chore.
“Skip—”
“Brian, Kara Lynn, can you imagine the Asshole Quotient on this island one year from now? You’ll need the goddamn Census Bureau just to count up all the gold chains—”
Keyes slipped the Browning into his belt. “Where’s the boat, Skip?”
“I changed my mind,” he said peevishly. “You’ll have to find it yourself. If you don’t, we all go boom together. That’s a much better story, don’t you think? Condo Island Blast Claims Three.”
“Try four,” Keyes said.
Wiley fingered his beard. His needle-sharp eyes went from Keyes to Kara Lynn and back. “What are you talking about?”
“She’s here, Skip.”
“Jenna?”
Keyes pointed to the hardwoods.
“Jenna’s on the island?”
“I thought we’d play some bridge,” said Keyes.
“Why’d you bring her!” Wiley demanded angrily.
“So we’d be even.”
Wiley said, “Brian, I had no idea you were such a mean-spirited sonofabitch.” He looked profoundly disappointed.
“Wait here,” Keyes said. Quickly he went into the woods.
“Did you know about this?” Wiley asked Kara Lynn.
“What’re you so upset about?” she said. “It’ll make a better story, right?”
Mulling options, Wiley nibbled his lower lip.
Keyes returned, leading Jenna by the hand. At the sight of her, Wiley’s face drained.
“Oh boy,” he said in a shrunken voice.
“I’m sorry, Skip,” Jenna said. She acted embarrassed, mortified, like a teenager who’d just wrecked her father’s brand-new car.
“She’s a little shy,” Keyes explained. “She didn’t want you to know she was here.”
“I ruined everything,” Jenna said. She gasped when she saw Wiley’s mangled knee but made no move to dress the wound. Florence Nightingale Jenna was not.
Wiley looked at his watch. It said 6:07. Dawn came at 6:27 sharp.
“Skip’s through talking,” Keyes said to Jenna. “He’s said everything he could possibly say. Now all four of us are going to get aboard the boat and get the hell off this island before it blows up.”
Wiley kneaded the calf of his right leg. “I can’t believe you actually shot me,” he said.
“I thought it might shut you up.”
“Just what the hell were you aiming for?”
“What’s the difference?” Keyes said.
Kara Lynn had climbed the old homestead plot. The elevation was scarcely ten feet, but it was high enough to afford a view of the surrounding waters, now calm. A distant wisp of brown diesel smoke attracted her attention.
“I think I see the barge,” she said.
Keyes said, “What’s it going to be, Skip?”
Wiley gazed at Jenna; Keyes figured it was about time for a big sloppy hug. They both looked ten years older than before, yet still not quite like a couple.
“There’s a mooring at the north end, on the lee side, opposite the way you came,” Wiley said tiredly. “That’s where the Mako’s anchored up. You’d best get going.”