The Inn - James Patterson Page 0,22

of the house and then burst through the door. Effie. She stopped at the sight of us, pointed at my face, and made a sign I recognized: her hand above her head, indicating a tall person.

Nick.

She put her index finger out, thumb extended, her eyes wide with alarm. I recognized that sign too.

Gun.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I LEFT CLAY to guard the house and followed Effie into the night. The sea beyond the trees was illuminated by a nearly full moon, but she led me into the forest where she must have seen Nick disappear, the pine needles silencing our footsteps. In the blackness, we stood together, holding our breath, listening. Somewhere, an owl moaned and took flight, startled by our presence.

I took Effie’s bony wrist and led her to a slice of light between the trees.

“What did you see?” I asked. “Is he hurt?”

She put both hands up, fingers out like pistols aligned. A rifle. She ducked her head and I made out her features becoming pinched, the eyes narrowed and mouth hard.

Nick was stalking someone out here with a gun.

I felt the air leave my lungs in a heavy rush. A collection of horrible possibilities flashed before me: Nick hunting down and shooting someone out here, Effie or a stranger or himself. My thoughts tumbled into one another. Nick coming to himself, realizing what he had done, what the trauma of his past had bred in him. A distressed, tormented beast pushed down too long. I had to find my friend. I called his name, and my voice seemed closed in by the dark, hardly reaching.

Nick was suddenly upon us, a hot, heavy presence. I could feel he had been running; his sweat-slick hand brushed mine. I grabbed him, tried to draw him to me, but his body was hard, tensed with energy.

“Nick!” I said. “What the hell is going on? Are you okay?”

“I’m glad you’re here, Cap.” He dragged me into a crouch, seeming to miss Effie’s presence altogether. “I tracked the target from the northeast. We’ve got him pinned in a dead end between the cliffs.”

He pointed. There was, of course, no dead end to speak of, no cliffs anywhere near where Nick was pointing. Beyond where his finger stabbed into the dark, there was more pine forest, the distant road, the curve of uninhabited beach. The rifle was slung over his shoulder, the barrel pointing up toward the sky. My heart ached as I realized he was not with me. His eyes were blind to the trees around us, to the night.

“Nick,” I said. “It’s me. It’s Bill. We’re home. There’s no one out here—”

Effie’s approach to Nick’s fantasy wasn’t as calm and collected as mine. She grabbed the rifle, underestimating his whip-fast reflexes in his heightened state of fear. Nick reached out and shoved Effie away like she was a child, sending her sprawling on her back.

“Nick, buddy,” I said, grabbing at his sweat-soaked shirt. “Look at me. Listen—”

He held up the gun, aimed into the distance. I braced for a shot, my hands against my ears, my stomach dropping as I imagined who he might be targeting out there in the wild. Instead of firing, though, he shouldered the gun and ran off. Effie, who’d struck her head on the back of a rock, touched her scalp and checked her hand for blood in the light. We ran after Nick, now only a shadow among thousands of shadows, dissolving in the dark ahead of us. Branches whipped at my arms and face. All my senses were waiting for that terrible sound—the gunshot in the night.

Please, please, please, I prayed to whoever might be listening. Bring my friend back safely.

In my search for Nick, I lost Effie briefly. I saw her silhouette against the sea and followed.

We stopped short on the smooth gray stones before the sand. Nick was waist-deep in the water, standing rigid, his hands on the gun and his back to us. I approached, not completely certain it was him, his unnatural stillness making him seem like a man-shaped tree standing sentinel in the glassy water.

“Nick?” I called. He didn’t move. I sighed, exasperated, and walked into the water.

Cold needles pierced my calves, thighs, buttocks, crotch. The icy water crawled into my boots and around my feet. I could feel the edges of my bones grinding together in the painful cold as I waded out. I huffed and tried to steel myself against the freezing water, but my upper half was shaking furiously by