He dragged the rowboat into the water, splashing out in a hurry, thinking that they’d been here for far too long already, and then he rowed out to the fishing boat and climbed aboard. Empty. Before he left he took the two rifles from the gun rack and tossed them down into the boat. They were loaded, but he didn’t see any additional shells and couldn’t take the time for a thorough search. When he reached the beach again, he carried a rifle in each hand as he jogged up the path to the Cypress House. Even the gulls were gone now; nothing could be heard but the waves. Any trace of that clear sky had vanished.
When he got back to the porch, he saw she was standing and was glad of that until she turned to him and said, “Why didn’t you know?”
“What?”
“You’re supposed to know!” she shouted, her face streaked with tears but her blue eyes alight with anger. “You’re supposed to see it coming! To be able to warn, to be able to stop it, why couldn’t you stop it!”
She’d rushed toward him with her hands raised as if she were going to strike him but fell into him instead and began to sob.
“Why couldn’t you stop it?”
“I didn’t see anything,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Rebecca. There was nothing there this morning. Something changed. Whatever happened… whoever came for him… they weren’t coming when we left this morning. Death wasn’t close to him then.”
The truth of that caught him, and he realized what it meant.
Someone had told Wade recently. Had they been coming to kill this morning, he should have been able to look into Owen’s eyes and see the promise of death there. But he hadn’t, and he thought now of the long delay Barrett’s federal contact had put them through, all of them sitting around the garage waiting for an arrival that never came, and understood the source of the leak. It wasn’t Barrett; it was someone in Tampa or Miami. The man who’d sent them back. What was his name? Cooper.
Rebecca was still crying against his chest and he wanted to hold her, but he had a rifle in each hand.
“Find out who did it,” she said.
For a moment he didn’t respond, just stood there numbly. Then he dropped the rifles and wrapped his arms around her and said, “I will. I promise. But right now we need to—”
“No,” she said, her lips moving against his neck, which was now wet with her tears, “find out now. Talk to him.”
“Rebecca… what are you—”
“You can speak to him,” she cried, pushing away from Arlen to look into his eyes. “You know you can, you can do it just like your father did.”
He shook his head, reaching for her again, but she stepped away.
“That’s not real,” he said. “I’m sorry, but that isn’t real, it can’t be done.”
“Yes, it can!” she shouted.
He wanted to argue, but those two words—There’s time—were trapped in his brain and with them the certainty that it was true, always had been true, his father’s gift was real and it was also his own.
“Owen’s dead,” he said in an unsteady voice. “He’s gone.”
“I know that. But you can hear him.”
She began to cry again then, and he held her for a while. He did not let her go on long, though. There wasn’t time. He pushed her back from him and said, “Come on.”
“What about Owen?”
“There’s nothing to be done.”
“We can’t just leave him here. We can’t—”
“I’ll see to him,” he said. “But you’re leaving.”
She shook her head, and he said, “Yes. You’re leaving. You have to.”
He took her unresponsive fingers and tugged her down off the porch and into the inn, retrieved the bag of money from where it lay on the floor, and then led her all the way up to the truck. She wore a face he’d seen often during the war after the shells had stopped, and he knew that her mind was not entirely her own anymore. That would pass, and when it did the real agony would sink its teeth into her. For now, though, it was better that she be this way.
He opened the door to the truck and helped her inside. She didn’t say a word, just followed his guidance, and then, when she was behind the wheel, turned and looked at him with questioning eyes, as if she didn’t understand.
“I’ve got to go for him,” Arlen said. “For Paul. I can’t leave him behind.”
“Don’t make me go on alone,” she said, and for a moment his resolve nearly evaporated. He looked back at the house and the dark clouds blowing in off the sea and thought of Paul Brickhill and shook his head.