Where Read Free

What, exactly, is driving Rawson Steele?
    It’s so early that no birds fly. The only sign of life in the sky above the Inland Waterway is a transport plane taking off from the base at North Island. Even the bugs seething in the marsh grass along the causeways are still. He should have but didn’t leave some kind of note for Merrill, she won’t mind, they don’t take each other for granted, they’re not on that kind of footing, but after last night … At the end it got ugly, both of them hurt and angry, tearing up the night.
    Oh shit. Oh, shit.
    Anger twists in his belly like a mess of gators seething in the marsh. He wrenches the car off the road at the Overlook and pulls into the parking lot. Four A.M. Good. He’s first. Fine. Go out on the breakwater and watch the morning come up. Make the bastard wait. From the breakwater, he’ll see Steele’s car coming before the fool figures out where to park. Given the lay of the land, he’ll have to stand up with a big, hick wave before Steele even knows that his mark or his quarry, nemesis or whatever, got here first.
    Davy will write his first line based on the look of Steele as he approaches, gauge his intentions by the way he walks. See if he gassed up that Lexus or hotwired another car. Make him wait until he’s gnawed his fingers raw, and make him wait some more. If he so much as looks like he’s fixing to leave, keep him in place with one phone call: “Bridge is up, be there soon.” String it out, Ribault. String it out. Eventually his mark will get sick of pacing and sit down under the famous Charlton Oak. Being as he’s not from around here, he’ll lean against that big, speckled trunk and start messing with his smartphone, Davy thinks, everybody does.
    That’s when I drop down to the fisherman’s ledge and come back around on him, so it looks like I just drove in. He’ll give Steele his patented sweet, apologetic grin, show his empty hands and go, “Hey. Don’t get up.” By that time the Northerner’s pants will be alive with redbugs: chiggers gnawing through his thong or burrowing deep inside the butt-crack of those high-end jeans. At this or any other hour the little fuckers snap to and swarm out of the bark or up from the Spanish moss the second they smell fresh meat.
    It’s a pleasure to think about them having whatever urgent conversation Steele planned while he’s all distracted and crazy because he can’t let Merrill Poulnot’s lover, her partner see him scratching his butt.
    There is a shift in the air— an atmospheric tremor, as though something tremendous just stirred and came to life, but he is too angry to mark the difference.
    Whatever was about to happen just happened, but Davy doesn’t know it yet.
    Instead, his heart is running on ahead. He has to get done here and rush home before Merrill even thinks about waking up. He has to make things right. The more Davy mulls it, the more he thinks her ultimatum is directly caused by this fucking Steele, an observation he is too messed up to parse. Where is the fucker, anyway? If it gets to be five A.M. and he hasn’t showed, the hell with him. They’re done. He’ll wait until the last trawler passes, guys he knew in high school fixing to cast their nets out there just like their fathers did. When he studied architecture and set up shop on Charlton Street, he had great dreams. Instead it’s a constant tug-of-war between his vision and predators like Steele, and if he envies the shrimpers a little bit? Well, yeah. So cool, spending your days out on the open water, nothing to think about; cast the nets and drift until sunset, haul in your catch.
    Fuck Steele, with his “I’ll explain later.” The light is changing and he has things to do. Get home, take Merrill by the hands and not let go until they’ve ended this, he tells himself, without knowing what this is.
    Then