Rebel Island (Tres Navarre #7)(8)

He sounded as if he was coming toward the door. I decided to take my chances with the giant animal upstairs.

I took the metal steps as quietly as I could, but my own heartbeat sounded like a bass drum. The limestone blocks were carved with graffiti. One said, W. Dawes, 1898.

I smelled sweet, acrid smoke and the scent of fresh-cut wood. I didn’t realize the scratching sounds had stopped until I reached the top of the stairs and found a knife pointed at my nose.

A seventeen-year-old Alex Huff glared at me. “What the hell are you doing here, runt?”

I was too scared to speak. I was already terrified of Alex, a delinquent who hung out with Garrett every time we came to Rebel Island. I knew that Alex lived on the island. He made amazing fireworks displays every Fourth of July. I was vaguely aware that his dad worked for the owner, though I’d rarely seen his dad. I knew Alex hated me for some inexplicable reason, and Garrett treated me worse whenever Alex was around.

Behind him, the floor of the lantern gallery was covered in wood shavings. There was a two-foot-tall figurine standing on a stool, a half-carved woman. A hand-rolled cigarette was smoldering in an ashtray on the windowsill.

“You’re smoking pot,” I said stupidly.

Alex sneered. “Yeah, and if you tell anyone, I’ll gut you. Now what are you—” He tensed as if he’d heard something.

Somewhere below us, outside the tower, my father’s voice, heavy with anger and remorse, rang out: “Tres! Tres, goddamn it!”

Alex and I waited, still as death. My father called again, but this time he sounded farther away.

Alex locked eyes with me. “You’re hiding from him?”

I nodded. I was determined not to let Alex see me cry.

Alex didn’t speak for a full minute. He studied me, as if deciding how to kill me.

“You can’t hide on this island, runt.” He said it bitterly. “Come on. The boathouse is out back.”

“Where are we going?” The last time Alex and Garrett had taken me out on a boat, Alex had threatened to pour cement in my shoes and drop me overboard.

But for once, Alex’s expression didn’t look mean. His eyes were filled with something else—pity, perhaps?

“We’re going fishing,” he said, as if fishing were something grim, possibly fatal. “Trust me.”

Now, twenty-five years later, Alex and I climbed back up those steps together. The tower groaned in the storm. In the yellow beam of Alex’s flashlight, the limestone walls glistened with moisture.

At last we reached the lantern room—a circular platform surrounding the huge golden chrysalis that was the Fresnel lens. There were no wood shavings on the floor this time, nothing but a couple of crushed beer cans. The gallery’s outer walls were storm-proof glass, but I could see nothing through them. With the rain slamming against them, they looked more like marble.

The radio sat on the table in front of us.

I knew almost nothing about shortwave radios, but I did know how to tell when one had been smashed to pieces. This one had been.

I started to say, “Don’t touch—”

But Alex picked up the ball-peen hammer. “How…what the hell—”

“Who else knew about this radio, Alex?”

“Nobody! I mean, just me and the staff.”

I thought about that. I thought about fingerprints. Whoever had shattered the radio had left the hammer behind, which meant he was either sloppy and rushed or unconcerned about being identified. Either way, I didn’t like it.

“Alex, when Longoria arrived on the island, did he come alone?”

“I—I don’t know. I told you, Chris checked him in.”

“It’s your hotel. A small hotel. But you don’t know?”

Alex stared at the window. Outside the storm was a blur of gray and black, like ink coming to a boil. “Look…Longoria wanted a first-floor room, away from the other guests. He wanted a private exit. That’s what Chris said.”

“There were handcuffs on the bed.”

“Tres—”

“Longoria was a U.S. Marshal. Was he, by chance, transporting a fugitive?”

Alex stared miserably at the radio. It was hard to believe he was the same person I used to be afraid of as a kid—the same Alex Huff who had pointed a knife at my face.

“Longoria came in late last night,” he said. “A charter boat brought him in from Rockport. Chris arranged it. I had nothing to do with it.”

“And?”

“And I didn’t see him come in. I don’t know if he was alone, Tres. I didn’t want to know.”

Lightning gilded the windows silver. The whole tower seemed to sway beneath me.

“We need to find Chris,” I said. “We’ll talk in the parlor.”

“You’re not going to tell the other guests?” Alex looked horrified.

“That we might be stuck on this island with a fugitive who just murdered a U.S. Marshal? Yeah, Alex, I kind of think they need to know that.”

6

To get away from the old man, Chase pulled his friends into an unused bedroom.

“Well?” he said. “What the hell do we do now?”

Markie rubbed his chin. He was a big guy, usually good in bad situations, but even he looked shaken. “That was a cop. Did you know he was a cop?”