Going Dark(75)

“Later today I’ll lay out the plan,” she said. “Right now we all need some rest. We’ve been up all night. We need to be fresh for what’s coming.”

She turned to Thorn and motioned for him to lead on. “The gun, Thorn. And any other weapons.”

With Prince hobbling beside him, Thorn led them through the house to the guest room, took down the wooden box, and presented Leslie with the .357. She opened the cylinder, cleared the six rounds, and dumped them in her pocket. She handed the pistol to Pauly and told him to take it out to the dock and pitch it into the lagoon.

“Knives in the kitchen, a meat cleaver, a rolling pin. Better toss them overboard while you’re at it.”

“We’ll take our chances with the cutlery,” Leslie said.

She and the Chee brothers went wandering through the house, checking the layout. Flynn stayed put, staring at the floor, lost in a dark mood.

Beside him Cameron studied a photograph on the wall. A black-and-white shot of a teenage Thorn holding up a giant tarpon and grinning for the camera. So young, so full of resolve. Sweat gleamed on his bare chest, muscles roping his arms.

“What a strapping lad,” Cameron said. “That smile, I’ve seen Flynn with the same one, though not lately.”

“Catching a tarpon that size might get it back,” Thorn said.

Flynn huffed, dismissive. More important things to do than fish.

Prince said, “Be thankful, Flynn, you have someone who can teach you such things.”

“Unlike your father?” Thorn said.

“Fifty years in Miami, the man didn’t know a tarpon from a polar bear.”

“He’s the Prince who bribed politicians, got thrown in jail.”

“And died there,” Cameron said. “Good riddance.”

“So you, you’ve skipped a generation.”

“What?”

“Your granddad Reginald, the newspaperman, the idealist who battled corruption, he’s your hero.”

“Ah, Thorn the historian.”

“I’m trying to get a feel for you people. Why you’re doing this.”

“We people, as you say, all have quite different reasons for being here, but we’re unified in our desire to bring a halt to the menace of nuclear power.”

“Is that it? Or is it something simpler?”

Flynn stepped closer to Thorn, eyes slitted in disdain. “You’re losing it, Thorn. This is about nukes. Simple as that. The fuel rods that stay radioactive for centuries. The impact on the aquifer, the wetlands. It’s about the earth, the future.” Flynn shook his head and turned his back on both of them.

“Oh, sure, that’s part of it. Nuclear power.”

“And the other part?” said Cameron. “Please enlighten us.”

“Your family,” Thorn said. “The Princes were a big deal once. But your father pissed it all away.”

“You should ask for a refund on that psychology degree.”

“I think Flynn’s heart is in this, but you, you don’t strike me as a man worried about spent fuel rods. This is your come-from-behind finish, a farewell gesture to Miami. You pull this off, you’re as big a deal as old Granddad. At least to a certain crowd you’ll be a folk hero.”

“You’re dead wrong. I have no ambition to become a celebrity.”

Leslie and the Chee brothers returned. The green python was slung over Pauly’s shoulders like a stole, its tail trailing behind him along the floor. The snake observed Thorn briefly, flicked its tongue, then twisted its head back and forth, surveying the hallway. One long, heaving strand of muscle.

Leslie made the room assignments. Thorn and Pauly would bunk in the twin beds of the guest room. Cameron and Wally were to share the master suite where Thorn’s parents, Dr. Bill and Kate, had spent their married life. Which left Leslie and Flynn in the small bedroom across the hall where Ricki, Thorn’s adoptive sister, had endured her gloomy high school years.

“Everybody get some sleep. We gather at noon, I’ll go over the plan.”

A moment after they parted in the hall, Thorn took a backward glance and saw Leslie brush her fingertips across Flynn’s lower back, a gesture so intimate and natural Thorn felt a whirl of recognition. Flynn and Leslie. A tenderness and familiarity between them Thorn hadn’t noticed or accounted for.

Sure, Leslie’s bond with Cameron Prince had a certain sad logic, a man who’d bulked up to bulletproof himself against a hostile world had partnered with a woman whose gift was seeing past the armored plating to the secret heart within. But Leslie and Flynn were a more natural match. Both had suffered agonizing losses, wounded in ways only one similarly damaged might fully grasp. In that simple consoling touch, Thorn glimpsed the strength of their connection.