The storm was on temporary hiatus but the wind up here almost knocked the old man down and he stumbled over the backwash threshold and into the water that had built up. Rain was flushing off the roof in great torrents through the downspouts but the old painter had a foot to wade through and the sharp gravel sliced the soles of his feet.

He thought about his son, about how he had driven the boy away. It had been the only thing to do. And now, clambering through the shin-high water on the roof, he wondered if he had saved the boy at all. He was back here in harm’s way and it hit Jacob that all he had done was prolong the consequences for both of them. A deep thud of despair welled up in his chest as he realized that none of it mattered. Not anymore. The damage had been done.

At least it had been spectacular damage.

David Finch had once told him to Go big or go home and in his fractured and terrified mind, Jacob Coleridge felt pride that he had carried that philosophy through to the end.

Even in the lull of the eye, the wind ripped at him, chewed at his robe like an angry dog. He raised his arms and it was gone, pulled off into the night by the hands of the storm. He stumbled on, naked.

Jacob moved cautiously, the good part of his mind knowing that if he fell he would not get up. His feet were bleeding badly and he could feel the warmth seeping from his body.

He was ten feet from the edge of the roof when he heard the door clang open behind him. Flashlight beams shot around. Locked on him. Shouts. He saw his shadow stretch out before him, to the edge of the building, off into the empty darkness beyond.

More shouting.

His name.

He didn’t look back.

Didn’t stop.

His shadow danced. Footsteps sloshed behind. Voices implored him to stop.

Couldn’t they see that he had no choice? That this was what had to be done?

He never doubted his mission, never doubted the reason for this; he knew this was the only way to get away from what was coming. He had lived in fear for too long. No one could save him. Not even Jake. Not anymore.

His progress took all of his strength, all of his concentration, but his mind allowed him one brief image, a picture of Mia sitting on the deck of the sailboat all those years ago. Young, beautiful, when life had been full of potential.

He reached the edge of the roof.

Lifted one bloody foot from the water.

And stepped out into the sky.

79

Jake moved away from Frank’s corpse with slow but fluid movements, as if his bones were not connected to one another. “You want to tell me what’s going on?” he asked.

Hauser stepped down into the sunken living room. “I thought that’s what you did, Mr. Witch-doctor. Figure shit out.” He said it softly, almost kindly, but there was something else, something angry, behind the words. He had his pistol in his hand.

“Where is my wife? My child?”

Hauser moved against the fireplace. The remaining curtains danced like ghosts, tattered and torn. The sheriff looked over at Frank’s misshapen head, disconnected jaw. “I ask the questions, Jake,” he said, bringing up the Sig, and that’s when Jake saw the big trench knife hanging off his belt—a killer’s knife, not a cop’s.

Jake now understood that part of him, the part that knew this was all going to be over relatively soon, had stopped caring. He also realized that back there, in the static of disbelief over how this had unfolded, Kay and Jeremy’s voices had stopped. Along with this came a great weariness. He nodded at the kitchen. “I need a drink.” It was a statement, not a request. He had stopped asking anyone for permission when he had walked out of this place all those years ago and he wasn’t going to start now, not even when he was staring down a nine-millimeter Parabellum.

There was a foot of sand in the kitchen and he had to wrench the door to the cupboard under the sink open. He pulled out a bottle of scotch that had been hiding at the back and poured two fingers into a teacup. His head was buzzing like a shorted bulb and he heard the harsh chirp of electrical circuits simmering. He knew that after the blue-white jolt his heart had taken, he’d need a few minutes to get his think box back on line. Spencer was dead. Frank was dead. While he had been out on the floor, someone had killed them both. No, not someone—the man his father had been terrified of. Jeremy’s man in the floor—Bud man. His father’s faceless portrait. The killer. The Bloodman. All of them. “You want a drink?” he asked Hauser.

Hauser nodded wearily, and came forward, the pistol still up. “Why not?”

“You’re on duty,” Jake said, and poured one for Hauser.

“And you’re a recovering alcoholic.”

“Just a drunk between drinks.” He slid the cup across the counter, then raised his own in a toast. He looked at Frank, dead in the chair over Hauser’s shoulder like the lighthouse behind Rachael Macready in that goddamned photograph in the house of the dead. His eyes filled with clear, bright tears.

All he could wonder was, Why?

He downed the booze and the fire was sweet and familiar. He closed his eyes, took in the heat and the beauty of the flames in his stomach. How long had it been since he had had a drink? But he knew, down to the minute if he really wanted to think about it—a gift from his perfect memory. Except for those four months he had never been able to buy back—those were gone for good.

He opened his eyes and Hauser was still standing there with that unhappy look welded onto his skull, eyes distant, mouth turned down. He looked like the stickers that Kay put on the chemicals under the sink so Jeremy wouldn’t pour himself an afternoon cocktail of bleach and stainless-steel cleaner.

Kay. Jeremy. Where were they?

The living room was full of sand and debris. The portrait of the man in the floor was gone, covered over. Jake swiveled his line of sight to the pool. The storm had emptied the algae and lily pads and the foundation had all but been swept out to sea. It still hung off the deck, tilted into the ocean, the waterline at odds with the angle of the rim. The water was a dirty brown now. Murky. Lifeless.

And he remembered what Frank had said. You’re the guy who thinks like a murderer. You do the math.

And his head lit up like the lightning that had been coming down all night. He knew where the bastard had put them. Somewhere no one would check, not even the cops when they had combed the property. Someplace so fucking close no one would think of looking there.

Jake came out from behind the counter. Fast.

Hauser flinched but Jake was so fast he was past the sheriff before he understood what was happening.

Jake barreled by, jumped through one of the blown-out windows, and dove into the pool.

The underwater world tasted of salt and mud, not chlorine. Jake kicked for the bottom and felt his hand sink into the muck and garbage that had settled after the storm. He palmed through the silt and his fingers brushed aside pebbles and stones and empty beer cans and scotch bottles.

His pulse throbbed in his ears. He slid his hands back and forth over the bottom, searching the debris. The air in his lungs tried to pull him to the surface, back to the world, but he kicked to keep himself down. He felt a hubcap, a broken plate, more empty cans and bottles. Then the rough form of a cinder block. And below it, something soft and rubbery that could only be skin.

Jake ran his hands over it and it rippled, coiled back onto his knuckles like it wanted to touch him, to let him know that it knew he was there. His index finger slid into a slimy depression—like Braille, it was familiar to his touch—a small, perfect belly button. And beneath that he felt the crescent-shaped ridges created by a single-edged knife. Beneath that, the rough concrete bottom of the pool.