Page 3 of Johnny

my duty to keep them in line and Charlotte turned into a wild card once she turned twenty-one.

Always partying and being seen. Always in the tabloids for her outrageous exploits—kind of like

Jesse, now that I think about it.

I don’t know if she’s important in the grand scheme of things, but from my experience with the Way,

when women go missing there’s usually a reason. I don’t like to think about it too much because my

mother was one of those missing people. But we’re long past the point of self-imposed ignorance.

Too much has happened this summer to pretend the endgame isn’t in play. Too many deviations from

the status quo to believe that this is just business as usual.

They are suspicious of me.

They are maybe even tired of me.

The Boston family. Always going off script. Always a problem. I know that’s what they think of us and I can’t help but feel that our time is up. That they have someone else waiting in the wings to come

take my place.

Which would be fine. Great, actually. If I thought I was getting out alive.

But no one gets out alive.

There’s things in play, and plans in motion, and people doing things.

Secret things. Dark things. Evil things.

Secrets, I decide, are the real key, and Charlotte has some. Maybe not the right ones. Maybe not the

exact ones I need. But she has some that I don’t and I want them.

I can accept the idea that I’m doomed. That there’s no future with Johnny Boston in it. But I can’t

take everyone else down with me. I didn’t work this hard fucking up Jesse’s prospects and keeping

Joey away just to let them get swept up into the life I’ve been living.

So I need Charlotte. I’m holding on to that idea with an unreasonable sense of desperation.

I tell myself that I’m not being seduced by her secrets, but that’s just another form of self-imposed

ignorance, I guess.

I’m tired of doing my job. I’m tired of being in the dark.

I want out of this fucking mess and I want to take my brothers with me.

The only way to do that is to answer all the fucking questions by getting all the fucking secrets.

Charlotte has only been missing for ten months so there’s a good chance she’s still here in the

Caribbean and a small chance that she’s actually here on this island.

But as the yacht approaches the dock I spy light gray smoke curling up from the interior forest,