An Adrien English Mystery: The Dark Tide (35 page)

Our agreement, such as it was, was that if Argyle shot Jake—if Jake went down—I would empty my gun into Argyle. I had promised I would not hesitate. I wouldn't. My only hesitation was the terrible temptation to shoot Argyle now—in the back—before he ever had a chance to kill Jake. In one corner of my brain, I was horrified at myself. And in the other, I was judging whether, as easy a target as he made in the moonlight, I was a good-enough shot. The last time I'd been target shooting was with Jake. That had been over two years ago.

Besides, I wasn't sure whether Jake would forgive me.

“So you want me to tell you where the Cross of Rouen is?” Argyle said. “That it?”

“You sound like you think you know.”

“I don't know for sure,” Argyle said. “The tide has probably moved it quite a bit in half a century. I threw it off the edge of the pier.”

Jake had known the truth, had hours to come to terms with it, and yet I could hear in the flatness of his voice that he had still hoped… “You threw it in the ocean.”

“Wasn't any good to me. Near as I could figure, it wasn't any particular good to anyone in five centuries. And my fingerprints were on it. And Jay's blood.”

“You're confessing to killing Jay Stevens?”

“I think you already figured that out, son. You've got your pal hiding in the rocks back there. I guess you know most of it by now.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I couldn't believe how calm Jake sounded. “I don't know why you killed Stevens. It obviously wasn't for the cross.”

“Now that, I think, is the one thing you
do
know absolutely for sure. I think you know exactly why I killed Jay.”

The ocean filled in the silence.

“Because you were—because you loved him.”

“I don't know if I'd call it love,” Argyle said wearily. “Maybe. I wouldn't have called it love back then, that's for damn sure. But I wanted him, all right. I wanted him so bad, I'd have let him go and take the damn cross with him, if he'd just have…”

He stopped.

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177

Jake said, working his way through it, trying to understand, “You couldn't afford for anyone to know.” And then, astonishingly, “Things were different in those days.”

“That's true, but that wasn't why. That was why I couldn't come forward. Not ever. But believe it or not, I didn't intend to kill Jay. He was so…shocked, so…repulsed. I saw myself through his eyes. And what I saw there—” Time had not dulled that anguish, that fury. It still burned bright. “I hated him. Hated what I was. I never hated anything so much. I grabbed the cross off the bed, and I hit him with it. Once. Only once. He folded up like a house of cards. He died right there in my arms.”

Even over the tide I could hear his hard, labored breaths—as though he'd been running all his life to reach this rendezvous.

“Then what?” Jake's voice sounded thick.

It seemed to take Argyle time to find the words. “Then I put him in the floor right where he'd hidden the cross. Him and his clarinet. I nailed it up again. I took the cross. It was wet with his blood. And put it under my jacket, and I walked out of the hotel and drove down to the beach—drove here—walked out on the pier and threw it into the water. And that was that.”

When Jake didn't respond, he said, “No one saw me. No one…questioned it. Until you.

Until you came along asking about Jay. Digging up the past.”

“And Harry Newman?”

“It took fifty years for Harry Newman to figure out what was underneath his nose the whole time. When he did finally figure it out, he thought he'd found a way to fund his retirement.

Don't waste your time feeling bad about Harry Newman.”

“Why kill him if you were just going to turn around and confess?” Jake's voice was hard, but I heard the undernote of pain.

“Because I didn't plan on confessing.”

I stared at the tense outline of Jake's silhouette. He
had
to know. Even I knew.

I saw Argyle shake his head. “I'm seventy-nine years old. I can't go to prison. I didn't stay silent fifty years to blab my story in a court of law now. I thought if I got rid of Newman, that would be the end of it. It was already too late. He'd already told you too much, and you were connecting the dots to the rest. You're good, Jake. You remind me of myself at your age.”

I saw his shoulders move, saw him reach up to his shoulder holster. Jake drew his pistol, stepped into firing stance, and shot him in the chest. The blast echoed off the sandstone cliffs, seemed to reverberate forever.

Argyle stood there, weaving. He dropped the pistol. His knees gave, and he crashed to the sand.

Jake was beside him in three long strides. He turned him over gently. I scrambled out of my hiding place in the rocks and knelt beside them.

“Nick?”

Argyle's eyes showed white. His bloody mouth moved. He stopped breathing.

“Oh Christ,” Jake whispered. He looked at me.

“Don't, Jake.” I gripped his arm. “Don't you see? He planned this.”

I don't know if he even heard me, but I knew I was right. Argyle had seen me in the rocks.

The only reason I wasn't dead was he'd known at that point it was all over. He couldn't have shot 178

Josh Lanyon

me without Jake taking him out, and he was too good an old lawman to kill me if there wasn't a good reason.

But if Jake had come alone?

I said, “He knew exactly how this would play out. He knew you were armed. He knew how you'd react because—he said it—you reminded him of himself.”

He was still shaking his head. For a time we stayed like that, with the distant sigh and rush of the ink black ocean. The surf pounded the shore in its heavy, ceaseless heartbeat.

Argyle's dead, glazed eyes stared up at the moon cresting the billowing white clouds like a silver galleon. I watched Jake and waited.

At last, he said, “I need to call this in.”

We rose and started back across the white wash of sand. Behind us, Argyle's body looked no more substantial than a shadow.

As we reached the rocks, the strength went out of me, and I sat down on the nearest flat-topped boulder, leaning forward, resting my face in my hands.

Chandler said it. “I was as empty and hollow as the spaces between the stars.”

Jake dropped down beside me. He put a hand on my shoulder, and I started to tremble.

“Are you okay?” His voice was gruff.

I nodded.

“What's wrong? Adrien?”

I shook my head. I didn't dare try to speak. The realization of how close Jake and I had come loomed up before me.

For forty years, Jake had tried to force himself into being something he wasn't, and the fact that he wasn't crazy or a murderer was probably a miracle. If things had played out differently a few weeks ago…

I fought it, but the dam was breaking. I could feel the stone and mortar crumbling away and all the emotion, all the grief and fear and anger rushing out in a torrent. Two years, maybe even three years, of trying to hold it back.

I tried. The raw sound tore out of my throat, and even the pain of my healing bones and muscles couldn't stop those ragged sobs. Not for myself really. Or not only for myself. What were those three lonely years compared to the forty Jake had lost? Forty years of believing he wasn't good enough, wasn't worthy, wasn't even normal. Maybe half his life, if he lived to be as old as Nick Argyle. And Nick Argyle? His entire life. And all the other Nick Argyles…past and present?

It could have been us. It nearly was.

“Don't. Don't, baby.”

I nodded. Drew deep, shuddering breaths.

“I want to tell you something,” Jake said against my ear. His face was wet.

I nodded.

“I've always been grateful—even when I was married, even when I thought it was over between us—that it was you I fell in love with.”

An Adrien English Mystery: The Dark Tide

179

His cold face rested against mine as I listened to the echo of his words. Maybe it was true.

Maybe one person could make a difference. Maybe love could make a difference. It had made a difference to me.

Jake kissed my jaw, kissed the corner of my mouth. I pulled away, wiped my face.

“You want to catch your breath while I go call this in?”

“No.” I stood up. Brushed the last of the tears away. “I'll go with you.”

The long and melancholy sigh of the dark tide followed us as we walked up the sandy steps to the car.

Loose Id(R) Titles by Josh Lanyon

I Spy Something Bloody

I Spy Something Wicked

The Dark Horse

The White Knight

The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks

The ADRIEN ENGLISH MYSTERIES Series

Fatal Shadows

A Dangerous Thing

The Hell You Say

Death of a Pirate King

The Dark Tide

The DANGEROUS GROUND Series

Dangerous Ground

Old Poison

“Cards on the Table”

Part of the anthology
Partners in Crime

With Sarah Black

Josh Lanyon

Josh Lanyon is the author of numerous novellas and short stories as well as the critically praised Adrien English mystery series.
The Hell You Say
was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award and is the winner of the 2006 USABookNews awards for GLBT fiction. In 2008, Josh released
Man, Oh Man: Writing M/M/Fiction for Kinks and Ca$h
, the definitive guide to writing for the m/m or gay romance market. Josh lives in Los Angeles, California, and is currently at work on his next manuscript.

• About this Title
  
• Dedication
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Chapter Five
  
• Chapter Six
  
• Chapter Seven
  
• Chapter Eight
  
• Chapter Nine
  
• Chapter Ten
  
• Chapter Eleven
  
• Chapter Twelve
  
• Chapter Thirteen
  
• Chapter Fourteen
  
• Chapter Fifteen
  
• Chapter Sixteen
  
• Chapter Seventeen
  
• Chapter Eighteen
  
• Loose Id(R) Titles by Josh Lanyon
  
• Josh Lanyon