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“Because,” North said, getting to his feet. He held out a hand to help Shaw. “We played by the rules with Welch, and look how well that turned out. If we go in there and tell them what really happened, Shaw, how do you think it’s going to play out? These guys can’t find their ass with both hands. We’ll lose our last lead.”
“But John-Henry—”
“John-Henry isn’t calling the shots anymore.” North tried to soften his voice. “We’ll call him as soon as we’ve got Ezell in a pair of cuffs. Come on.”
“North, he’s trusting us—”
“And no ice cream in my car. Throw that away.”
“North!”
“You know the rules.”
“You literally ate ice cream in it last week. You kept pretending to hump it because you said it was so good.”
“Rules just changed.”
“That’s not fair!”
“My car, my rules.”
19
When the GPS said they were a quarter mile out, North killed the lights and slowed the GTO. The car’s distinctive rumble made him wonder, for a moment, if Jem might have been on to something. But then, he also considered that Jem owned and wore a shocking number of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirts, which yes, was dope, but also made it hard to take him seriously about, well, everything.
According to the Maps app, there was only one Bolmer Lake, and it was a good couple of hours north of Wahredua. North and Shaw had stopped for fuel, and now, with the caffeine from a couple of energy drinks ricocheting along his bloodstream, North felt wide eyed and alert, even though the clock read half-past three. The gravel road led them over and around a string of low hills. And then he saw it below them, a hint of an opening in the graphite landscape revealed by moonlight: the lake. When he cracked the window, he could smell water lapping against the shore.
North parked and turned the car off. When he touched Shaw’s leg, Shaw jerked upright with a drooly “Muh?” and wiped his mouth. He looked blankly at North for a moment, then blinked, glanced around. “What’s that?”
He was pointing at an old building: plywood siding, a flat roof, windows boarded up. A concrete island suggested that at one point, gas pumps had been a feature. “Some kind of convenience store,” North said. “Maybe at some point, enough people were coming here for it to make sense.”
Shaw made a noise like he was considering that. “I don’t see a car.”
“If I were Ezell, I’d park it behind that building.”
“I don’t see any light.”
“If he’s smart,” North said, “he’s camping. If he’s not intellectually gifted, he’s probably holed up in that convenience store.”
“You told me you’d rather be fucked with broken glass than go camping.”
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t on the run and suspected of aiding and abetting a murderer. Besides, the Cardinals were playing. Here we go.”
North was quiet about opening the trunk, unlocking the gun safe, and closing the trunk again. They each carried pepper gel and a flashlight as well, but it was the gun that North wanted. After everything that had happened that day, the weight of the CZ was grounding. No running, this time. No scurrying around inside a metal box, praying they wouldn’t get shot. Shaw touched his arm, and North startled. He couldn’t make out Shaw’s expression in the dark, but the touch came again, rubbing lightly up to the swell of his biceps. North felt, now, the tightness in his own jaw, the way the jet fuel of the energy drinks was making his skin tight, making his head feel like a drum. He let out a breath slowly, took in another, and nodded. He sensed, more than saw, Shaw’s answering nod.
Their first few steps, gravel crunched underfoot. Then they reached the shoulder of the road, moving into the weeds and tall grasses. North went first, breaking trail, trampling thistles with the Red Wings so that Shaw wouldn’t get caught on them. He scanned the area around them, but even with the relative brightness of the moon tonight, he couldn’t make out more than general details. Someone could have been five feet away, lying flat on the ground, and North would have walked right past them. Or someone could be in those trees along the lake. He thought of the hot springs. He thought of night-vision scopes, how he and Shaw would stand out like signal flares.
But he couldn’t see anything, so he listened. Blood hissed in his ears. The lake, the restlessness of the water. Farther off, a branch creaked. And then the snap and rustle of movement through vegetation. His pulse ratcheted up again. Were those normal sounds? Animals moving in the night? Or were those sounds all wrong? He had the sudden, gut-clenching wish that Emery were here, or John-Henry, or Theo, or hell, even the vet. He’d have taken any of them, anybody who hadn’t grown up in a city, spent his whole life in a city, and sure as hell wished he were in a city right then.
No gunshots came. No bear charged at them out of the woods. North had a vague idea about water moccasins dropping out of trees, but so far, he and Shaw were in the clear. Slowly and steadily—and, more importantly, quietly—they made their way down the hill. When they reached the convenience store, they found the lot overgrown with weeds. Close up, North could see that the walls were papered over with old advertisements for beer and cigarettes and Pepsi products. The ads were bleached from the sun, so damaged by water and exposure that in places they had disintegrated. An earthy odor met him, kind of like the smell of button mushrooms before they’d been cleaned. Dry rot. It was a miracle the shack hadn’t collapsed yet.
Behind the store, they found Ezell’s F-150. The license plates didn’t match, but that actually made sense—Ezell worked in law enforcement, and he must have known he could be tracked that way, so he’d switched them. North took a couple of photos.
When he finished, he found Shaw standing by a door at the back of the building. Shaw pointed to the hasp, with padlock still attached, that had been pried away from the doorjamb. When Shaw applied pressure, the door rocked slightly and then stopped. Blocked by something on the other side. Probably Ezell’s security measure while he slept.
North motioned Shaw back, and they moved away from the door. He picked up a handful of gravel and slung it against the side of the building. Stones rattled against plywood, and he shouted, “Ezell, wake the fuck up!”
The sound of wood jarring against wood came from inside the store. Then silence.
