“Don’t play dumb. I can put two and two together.”

It was perhaps a mistake that Morgan now decided to be creative.

“Jakes.” Morgan was appalled at the sound of his own voice, a hoarse croak. Fear. It was a start at least. He was trying. He would rage against the dying of his own, sad, little light.

“What? Jakes?” Stubbs’s voice took a rough edge. “What the hell does that mean?”

“The guy I came with,” Morgan said. “He’s the one. He’s got the drugs in his hotel room.”

“Let’s go get him.”

“What are you going to do?” Morgan’s voice was better. Still scared but no longer jelly.

“Don’t worry about it,” Stubbs said. “All you need to know is that I’m desperate and committed and if I don’t get what I want, there’ll be hurt and pain and bad times forever.”

Not an eloquent threat but convincing.

“Okay,” Morgan said. “Just take it easy.”

“Don’t tell me to take it easy. You take it easy.”

“Right.” Morgan’s hands shook. He breathed deep, made himself calm. “What do you want me to do?”

Stubbs let him up. “Get behind the wheel.”

Morgan reached for the door.

“Not that way.” Stubbs jerked him by the shirt. “Over the seat. I don’t want you making a run for it.”

Morgan crawled into the front seat, sat behind the wheel. He was breathing better. In the rearview mirror he saw Stubbs move, felt the cold metal behind his ear. Morgan didn’t need to be told it was a gun.

“I’ll stay back here,” Stubbs said. “You can guess what’ll happen if you pull something screwy. Don’t fuck with me.”

“I’ve had a lot to drink.”

“Don’t give me your mothers against drunk drivers bullshit.” Stubbs pressed the gun barrel harder against Morgan’s ear. “This should keep you plenty alert.”

Deke handed Morgan the keys and Morgan cranked the engine. “You’re going to hold that gun against my head all the way to Houston?”

“Yep.”

Morgan pulled out of the titty-bar parking lot, turned vaguely toward the highway.

At the light he made a decision. He barely knew he was doing it. Instead of taking the highway on-ramp, he turned toward the water, the Gulf of Mexico.

“What are you doing?” Stubbs pushed the gun barrel into Morgan’s neck.

“I missed it.”

“I can fucking see that. Don’t make this hard.”

“I can get on at the next intersection.”

Morgan drove along the water, the Gulf glittered in moonlight. Although he knew the risk, Morgan felt strangely calm. There was a certain freedom in doom. He flashed back to his dream, how he’d felt turning the car into the headlights. A giddy liberty in surrendering to oblivion.

Which was maybe why he laughed a little when he jerked the wheel and turned onto the fishing pier.

“Goddammit!” Stubbs’s face flushed. He spit when he yelled. “You think I’m kidding? You don’t think I’ll blow your fucking head off?”

The pier hadn’t been built for cars. The boards rattled, creaked. The Mercedes bounced violently. Morgan sideswiped a trash can, debris exploding upward, drifting down again on the Gulf breeze. Morgan hit the accelerator.

Stubbs reached over Morgan, tried to grab the wheel. Morgan pushed him away, steered one-handed. Stubbs went for the keys, and Morgan punched over his shoulder, tried to get Stubbs in the face. They picked up speed.

“Are you crazy?” Stubbs had gone back to waving the gun. He still leaned into the front seat, tried to threaten Morgan with the.45 and grab the wheel at the same time. “I swear to God I’m going to do it. I’ll blast a hole in your face. Hit the brakes.”

“You’re all talk.” Morgan swerved between the guardrails, clipped one on the left with a sharp crack, splintered wood. The left headlight winked out. The end of the pier sped toward them in near darkness. Stubbs was tossed around in the backseat, but righted himself quickly, shoved the gun against Morgan’s neck. He kept with the threats, shouted himself hoarse.

Morgan didn’t care. He half expected-half wanted-the bullet. Let it come. Bring on the hot flash of blood, fragmented skull. He could pitch forward into sweet, eternal nothingness.

The Mercedes exploded through the wooden railings at the end, slipped the surly bonds of earth, pier, and reality. They seemed to hover. Stubbs screamed something, the pistol gone from Morgan’s neck. Neither wore a seat belt. Morgan felt himself float up and away, weightless, breathless.

Then gravity.

The long, awkward plummet.

It wasn’t more than twelve feet down to the water, but the Mercedes in freefall took a lifetime to plunge the distance. It smacked the water, the impact throwing Morgan against the windshield. He bounced back into the seat. A blur of water and darkness and dashboard lights. The windshield looked down into the depths, the remaining headlight flailing against the black of the Gulf.

Chilling panic. Morgan saw himself going down with the car, pictured the salty water rising over his head, his lungs burning for air. A strangled cry of fear, desperate. It had come out of his own mouth.

He clawed at the automatic windows, lowered the one on the driver’s side. The Gulf poured in. But the water came slowly. The Mercedes floated near the level of the lapping waves. The hood of the car tilted down into the water, but the rear remained above the surface.

Morgan scrambled through the window.

“Morgan!” Anger, panic, rage mixed in Stubbs’s voice. “God-damn you. Come back here, Morgan. I’m stuck. Morgan!”

Morgan paid no attention. Stubbs continued to scream after him.

Morgan squirmed through the window, bobbed on the freezing water. Went under, swallowed water, kicked to the surface, and coughed. Gulped for air. The shore was a smear of fuzzy light. It seemed about two hundred miles away. Muffled screams still came out of the Mercedes.

Morgan kicked toward shore. He wasn’t a strong swimmer. Water smacked his face, stung his eyes. He sputtered, stroked. His arms ached with exertion and cold. He was going numb, shivering.

Morgan felt the bottom sooner than he’d expected, stood in the waist-deep water, and trudged to land. Waves pushed him in the right direction. He made it to the beach, collapsed into the sand, chest heaving with burning breaths.

He propped himself up on an elbow, looked back toward the end of the pier. For a second he thought the Mercedes had gone down, the black against the night made it hard to spot. But there it was, the back end still visible, taillights like the eyes of a demon.

Morgan watched. The Mercedes bobbed. It looked to Morgan like the front bumper was bouncing against the sandy bottom. It was pretty shallow, even that far out. Each time it bobbed, more water poured through the open front window, the tide inching it farther out and away from the pier. The car was sinking slowly, and he hadn’t seen Deke get out.

Morgan watched, still gasping breath, as the Gulf of Mexico slowly ate Dirk Jakes’s new Mercedes.

The son of a bitch had left him. Stubbs had threatened, begged, screamed his throat raw, but Morgan didn’t come back.

When Morgan had taken the Mercedes airborne, Stubbs had lost himself. He’d floated, turned, the night sky a tumbling blur. The whole car had shuddered with the impact of water. Stubbs had hit the floor, his hands flying out to protect him.

His left hand had slid under the car seat in front of him. He heard a crack. Something had come apart under the seat. His fingers had wedged between the metal tracks just as the seat had suddenly shifted backward. His four fingers had been crushed, trapped, pain lancing past his elbow, up to the shoulder.

He’d screamed for Morgan to come back.

Now he pulled hard on his hand. If he could, he’d yank the fingers out of their sockets. He couldn’t see the hand, but he knew it was ruined. The water was up to his neck. The pain was nothing compared to the water’s relentless rise. Stubbs did not want to drown helpless in the dark. He gritted his teeth, pulled, grunted. He felt the skin of his fingers rip and pull away along the bone.