Everlasting (26 page)

“There are probably a lot of them roaming the East Coast,” Tristan pointed out calmly.

“Of course,” Ivy said, but she shifted in her seat, unable to shake an uncomfortable feeling.

“Tired?”

“Yeah.” She turned off the AC, opened the window, and let the fresh air blow through the car. The road was mostly straight and flat, edged with sandy stretches of grass and scrub pine. They drove for miles in silence, then Tristan suddenly turned in his seat.

“Where’d that car come from?” he asked sharply.

“The shoulder of the road, I think. There’s no exit along here.”

“If so, he was sitting with his lights off.”

Something most people don’t do
, Ivy thought. She picked up speed. A half second later, the car behind them picked up speed. Ivy slowed. The car behind them slowed. “I don’t like this.”

“The headlights are low to the road,” he observed.

“Like a sports car’s.”

“Drive steady,” he said. “The other guy could be zoning out, or drunk, or simply entertaining us with a little game.”

“Or it could be Corinne’s killer.” She said it like a joke, but she was getting scared.

The car behind them began to close the gap between, creeping closer and closer. Ivy’s heart beat fast.

Suddenly the sports car accelerated, bumped the rear of Ivy’s car, then pulled back. Ivy swore. “What’s he doing?”

“Keep going!”

“Here he comes again!” Ivy exclaimed and stepped on the gas, barely escaping a second bump from behind.

“He might be trying to create an accident, just enough to make you pull over. Keep your eyes on the road and keep moving.”

Ivy tried, but it was impossible not to glance in the mirror and watch the car behind her shifting back and forth, moving dangerously close to her left side, then dangerously close to the right.

In the final stretch of road to the canal, there were no highway lights. Only the high beams of the two cars marked their path through the night. For a moment, Ivy flashed back to the night of her collision on Morris Island, when she was floating high above her wrecked car, looking down on the lights of another car racing away.

The car pursuing them jolted her out of the memory, locking on her left side, chafing the metal, then disengaging again.

“You’re a pro!” Tristan praised her, his hand lightly covering her whitened knuckles as she gripped the wheel. “One mile to Bourne Bridge,” he read. “It’s lit—and probably has security cameras. Maybe he’ll back off.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Ivy asked.

As Tristan predicted, the car hung back while crossing the bridge, but as soon as they cleared it, he was on their tail.

“Rotary coming,” Tristan warned.

“Hold on!” Ivy made a quick right off the traffic circle. The car behind them kept going.

“Well done!”

“Except I have no idea where I’m going.”

“Safety in numbers. Go wherever you see a bunch of lights.”

On a straight road now, Ivy accelerated, her eyes darting between the pavement ahead and her rearview mirror. Moments later, when she saw a car behind them picking up speed, her stomach tightened. “Someone’s back there.” She took another quick right, then hooked left. The road grew bumpy.

Tristan leaned forward. “I see a tower with a light on top. We may be headed back to the canal.”

She made another turn.

Tristan turned around in his seat. “I think we’ve lost him.”

Ivy continued along the narrow road, then began to slow. Black pines crowded the margins of the route. “This looks like a service road.”

“There are some lights ahead.”

She drove a little further. “Dead end!”

A one-story building, well lit by security lights, faced an empty parking lot. The road continued on only as an unpaved path, barely wide enough for a car. In the distance, from beyond the trees that lined the path, she heard a soft
clang-clang
. “A train.”

“We must be near the railroad bridge,” Tristan replied. “I bet that was the tower I saw.”

“Listen—”

They strained to hear the whining of another motor above the idle of theirs.

Suddenly a car gunned its engine. With lights off, it shot out from an entrance they hadn’t seen and came barreling down the road toward them.

“FLOOR IT!” TRISTAN SHOUTED.

They sped toward the unpaved path, then flew down it, bumping over potholes, taking a sharp curve, scraping against pine branches. Tristan saw a clearing ahead. Then he saw the train. “Stop! Stop!”

Ivy slammed on the brakes. The car that was chasing them braked as well and spun next to them, kicking up sand and dirt, coming within an inch of slamming into their car and flinging them into the train. The driver punched on his headlights, momentarily freezing the scene in halogen
brightness. Tristan wrenched around and saw that they were trapped between their pursuer and the slow-moving train.

He had wedged them in. To return to the unpaved path, they would have to back up and make a three-point turn. The other option was to drive over the tracks after the train had passed. But it wasn’t a paved crossing and the tracks were high. Ivy would have to ease over them slowly in her little VW—if the car could make it at all.

“Windows up. Doors locked,” Tristan said, hoping the sports car was the pursuer’s only weapon.

The black car’s lights went out. The bridge lights, about fifty feet away, designed to warn airplanes and boats, did little to illuminate the area. Were they dealing with one or two people? Tristan wondered. The Beetle’s taillights picked up a single dark figure moving toward them.

Tristan glanced sideways at Ivy. If they had been followed from Providence, their pursuer was here for “Luke.” Tristan figured there was a way to be sure the pursuer left Ivy alone. After stealing one last look at her, lingering just a second longer, Tristan unlocked his door and got out.

“Tristan!”

“Get ready to go,” he said, closing the door, moving quickly away from the car.

“Tristan, get back in!”

He could hear her screaming at him through the glass.
He moved toward the bridge, but not too fast, wanting to make sure the hooded figure followed him, allowing Ivy to escape.

“Where you going, Luke?”

At the sound of his voice, Tristan’s stomach clenched. Without stopping or glancing over his shoulder he said, “You’re acting like a jerk, Bryan.”

“Playing a little bumper cars, that’s all,” Bryan replied.

Tristan turned to face him.

“Just having some fun. You used to be more fun, Luke.”

“You’re drunk.”

“A little, but I’m careful nowadays,” Bryan replied. “I don’t let myself get out of control. Can’t—not anymore—don’t think I got nine lives, like you.”

Tristan stepped backward onto the bridge. There was a maintenance walkway and handrail on one side.

“I’ll never know how you climbed out of that ocean alive,” Bryan continued, walking toward Tristan. “I dumped you several miles out. Did some fisherman help you?”

The train had disappeared around the bend, but Ivy’s car was still there. Tristan’s heart sank when he saw a shadow separate from the car. She had climbed quietly out of it and was following Bryan. Tristan wanted to shout at her to go back, but he couldn’t give away that she was there.

Continually walking backward, he kept Bryan waiting for a response, drawing him onto the bridge. “Something
like that. How’d you get me out in the boat? You shot me up with something, didn’t you?”

Ivy had stopped at the edge of the bridge. Tristan saw her look quickly toward the base of the tower, which he suspected housed the gears that raised the bridge. She looked back at him and pointed upward with her hand.

Tristan stopped and rocked slightly on his feet, trying to signal to her that he knew the entire span would rise, hoping to keep her from shouting to him.

“What do you want from me?” he asked Bryan, moving more quickly than before.

Bryan, who had kept pace with him, was now twenty feet from Tristan and a hundred feet from Ivy on the canal’s bank. “
You
know. The cufflink. Hand it over.”

Tristan felt a jolt and tremor in the steel bridge. “You’re talking crazy,” he said as the bridge began to rise. “I’ve never owned a cufflink in my life, and far as I know, neither have you.”

“Oh, but I have,” Bryan replied. “They were a gift from my uncle, who knows that money and opportunities come to big college stars. ‘For your sports banquets,’ he told me, ‘and when those rich businessmen take you out on the town.’”

“Tristan!” Ivy shouted.

“Stay there, Ivy!” he yelled back.

Bryan glanced over his shoulder and laughed. “Isn’t
this fun? I took this ride with Alicia, but she was kind of slumped over.”

“Tristan!” she cried out again.

“Who the hell is Tristan?” Bryan asked, suddenly uncertain, turning back toward Ivy as if looking for a third person. “She calling the dead guy?”

“She thinks he’s an angel,” Tristan replied.

Bryan laughed but kept his eyes on Ivy, then took a step toward her.

If Bryan had enough brains, Tristan thought, he’d figure out that he could get “Luke” to do whatever he wanted by threatening Ivy. Needing bait, Tristan dug in his pocket. “Does your cufflink have an arrow on it?”

Bryan spun around, his eyes immediately going to the glint of gold in Tristan’s hand. “A
top
, stupid. You gave me the nickname.”

A simple finger top
, Tristan thought, studying the shape.

“You’ve called me that since we were eight,” Bryan said. “You
have
lost your memory. Too bad that Ivy talked you into proving your innocence.”

One thing was clear: Bryan wouldn’t end his killing spree with “Luke.” Ivy knew too much.

“When you hit that woman, you should have manned up and gone to the police.”

“I was drunk, coming home from an awards banquet. And anyway, when I left her, she was still breathing.”

“So you call an ambulance.”

“Like I’ve said a million times, you’re naïve. Yeah, they might’ve looked the other way if I was playing in the Stanley Cup, but not for me, a kid from River Gardens who hadn’t yet shown what I can do in real competition. My career would’ve been over before it started.”

“So you took your car to Tony, knowing Tony’s the loyal kind. And Corinne was there.”

“Doing her damn photoshoot. She got there early, while I was sleeping off the banquet in Tony’s house.

“I come out and see that lens pointing like a big nose into my personal business. She was always messing with other people’s things. She found the cufflink in the car.”

Tristan kept moving and kept Bryan talking, all the while drawing him away from the shore and Ivy, and trying to work out a plan in his head. “So she started blackmailing you. You must have paid her a lot—she had her own apartment.”

“It got old. So I offered her a large lump sum for the cufflink.”

“And told her to bring it to Four Winds. But you didn’t really expect her to give back the cufflink. You knew Corinne well enough to know you were safe only if she was dead. And me being your naïve best friend, you couldn’t ask for an easier person to frame for her murder. I’ve got to tell you, that wasn’t a real friendly thing to do.”

“C’mon, Luke, you were wasted,” Bryan replied. “I had worked hard. I had everything to lose—you had nothing. Why should I be the one on the run?”

“So then, why did you help me get away?”

“It seemed a good plan at first,” Bryan said with a shrug. “As long as the police were focused on trying to catch you, they weren’t going to think about searching for anyone else. But I couldn’t trust you to stay out of trouble. You forced my hand, Luke.

“A few drinks and you were out of control. Sooner or later you would get yourself caught. I started thinking: What if the State gave you a decent lawyer, one who realized the police case had holes? That would be just my luck.” Bryan grimaced. “You had to die—and without the police knowing you had, so they would keep looking for you.”

They were more than halfway across the bridge and about twenty feet above the water. Tristan started walking faster. “What about Alicia—did you have to kill her?”

“Once you and Ivy got to her, I did.”

Tristan felt sick to his stomach.

“I followed you to the beach that night and caught up with her after you left. She happily told me that you were innocent, and she was your alibi. I knew it was just a matter of time before they’d be looking for the guy who texted you from Corinne’s phone, asking you to come to Four Winds.”

“The cell phone they found. You took it from me the
night you tried to drown me. Why’d you leave it on the Mass Pike?”

“I know you, Luke—I’d already seen you in love with Corinne. And Ivy is so much nicer. I knew you wouldn’t leave her. I needed to get the police off your back and mine, till I could win Ivy’s trust and finish things off.”

By slowly increasing his pace, Tristan had widened the gap between them. The dark water and confusing reflections made it impossible to tell how far they were above it, but each foot that the bridge rose would make it more dangerous to jump. Tristan figured the center of the canal was deep enough for container ships and would have a strong current between the ocean and bay. He wanted to be close enough to shore to have a chance of swimming. But too close, and he’d crash onto the shoreline.

Tristan took off. Bryan charged after him. Their footsteps banged against the metal walkway. With a quarter of the span left, Tristan looked over his shoulder. Bryan, in excellent shape, was gaining fast. Tristan had just a few seconds left.

He’s a competitor
, Tristan thought. Above all, Bryan was an athletic competitor. Tristan pulled the cufflink from his pocket, held it high for a second, making sure Bryan saw it, then flipped it back over Bryan’s head.

Bryan couldn’t help himself. Gifted with excellent reflexes, he couldn’t keep himself from going after the thing
he had obsessed about. He spun like a top and chased the cufflink.

Tristan quickly climbed down under the bridge. As he hung from the steel fretwork, the wind buffeted his body and sang in the bridge’s cables. For a moment, he heard the voices. Then he said a prayer and jumped.