It was the least he could do, Johnny reflected.
Mabel was easy enough to find. She’d made her way home after her encounter with Johnny at the Brewer farm. She was sitting in her living room with Cas’s black water pistol in her lap.
“Ethan’s not taking this well,” Melia told Johnny. She’d had an hour-long chat with the soon-to-be-former deputy sheriff of Deception Cove. “He thinks his mother needs psychiatric help, and I agree. He’s going to let the county sheriff handle the entire matter. A lot of what will happen to her is up to you.”
“Psychiatric help sounds good to me. We’ll call it an isolated act of madness and let it go.”
Melia kissed him. “You’re a one and only, Johnny Hunt. Have you heard from McCabe?”
“While you were talking to Ethan. He wants to meet us tonight.”
“Where? In Deception Cove?”
“Bellwater. Less chance of recognition and questions in a larger town. And there’s an airport.”
Melia nodded. Didn’t say anything else, but she knew. And she knew he knew. The people of Deception Cove would need to find themselves another doctor.
They made a quick stop at the hospital to see Gert and Pappy, and to check on Laidlaw who, despite his objections, had been given a sufficient quantity of medication that he was singing “Yellow Submarine” at the top of his lungs.
“The man has good taste,” Melia remarked as Johnny stashed a bottle of white lightning in the cabinet next to his bed. “Doctors here say he’ll be fine. Gert, too, and Pappy’s being released tomorrow. He’ll be staying at my old place until a new shack can be built on his land. Linda and Carl are looking after Gomer, whose paw is already on the mend, and Pepper’s going to visit Joseph until you and I figure out where we’ll be landing.”
Johnny liked that she said “we.” But he also knew it was only a beginning—a restart, if he was lucky. They needed to talk, and would, just as soon as they found someplace quiet where they could work through any and all issues that still needed to be resolved between them.
They met McCabe in a rocking little roadhouse called Mitzi G’s. It made Johnny think of old Havana with its calypso beat and brightly dressed servers.
“Loud and lively.” McCabe’s voice emerged from the only shadowed booth in the room. It was also the one farthest away from the stage. “Sit, vent, prepare to move on with your lives.”
Johnny ordered two mai tais in honor of Gert and Bette. “Satyr’s dead,” he said immediately. “His body disappeared before our people could get to it.”
“I know.” McCabe drank his beer. “Long as you’re sure you killed him, it’s not a huge deal. It probably just means Mockerie wanted his remains for some reason.”
“Maybe he wants to see if a person can be tortured after death,” Melia said. “He had moments of melancholy, I saw them, but overall, I got the distinct impression he could be that sick and twisted.”
“There are a thousand different facets to James Mockerie’s personality.” McCabe shrugged. “In my years of studying and pursuing him, I’ve probably encountered about a third of them.”
“Think you’ll ever bring him down?” Johnny asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe. With luck. He didn’t get you, Mel. That’s all I care about right now. Also, if you’re interested, AJ, aka Andrew Jubal Bigalow, didn’t kill your caretaker’s son, Harry. He escaped the explosion, dusted himself off, and hitchhiked to Georgia to join his father. So, all’s well on that score.”
Every little bit helped in Johnny’s opinion.
Their mai tais arrived. Johnny took a sip, drew back in disgust, and ordered a beer. Melia merely laughed and munched on a slice of pineapple.
“We’re packed for a long vacation,” she told McCabe. “Destination unknown until we get there. To be safe,” she added with a shrug. “It’ll give us time to make sure we’re still compatible.”
“She means it’ll give us time to make love until our eyes roll back in our heads.”
“Yeah, thanks for that.” McCabe grinned. “Let me know how it goes.”
“You’ll be the first,” Johnny promised. “On that note, relax and enjoy my beer when it arrives. I feel like there’s a plane at the airport waiting for us to board.”
“You know you don’t have to run,” McCabe said. “Mockerie’ll be plenty pissed that you killed one of his best people, but he’s going to be too busy very soon to do anything about it.”
Melia pushed her own drink away. “That remark has an ominous ring to it. Are you going after him?”
“At some point. But I have the power to keep him busy in the meantime.”
“Sounds like a story for a future get-together.” Johnny reached for Melia’s hand. “Last flight to Miami is at 9:40. I’m thinking Tasmania, overall, but that could change, depending on our moods.”
McCabe chuckled, Johnny grinned, and, for a moment, the horror of the past several days and years seemed very far away.
Outside the roadhouse, Melia bumped his uninjured hip and turned to regard him in the silvery pool of moonlight. “Two spirits, one soul. Transform, made whole. Hold fast to my heart as I will to yours. Let our love endure beyond this life and into all the lives that follow. We’ll always be together, Johnny, even when we’re apart. Our time together has only just begun.”
That had been her pledge to him on their wedding day. And he replied as he had then, with a very simple, “I’m no angel, Melia, and I never will be. But I’ll love you for now and forever. No matter what happens, I’ll never leave you.”
Lowering his head, he sealed that promise with a kiss.
Epilogue
Mockerie sat under the stars outside his home in the Mojave Desert. He had his iPad propped against his knees and a glass of bourbon in his hand. Three fingers, straight up. Because he was livid and in desperate need of control.
“You did your job in Deception Cove well,” he said via Skype. “The final payments have been made to your account. I trust you understand that this small portion of your lives never took place. Understand that clearly,” he added from the deep shadows that shielded his face from view, “and all will be well. Forget it, and you’ll learn a whole new meaning of the word ‘pain.’”
The man on the other end looked horrified, which amused him greatly. The woman sat ramrod straight in her chair and stared at her own iPad through thick, pop-bottle lenses.
“We understand completely, Mr. M. And we’re grateful for the generous contribution to our retirement fund. The watching and reporting you requested has allowed us to build up a good nest egg. We both thank you very much.”
“Excellent.” What the hell were their names? The underlings always escaped him. Lucy and Ricky? Something like that. Because it really didn’t matter, he went with what he thought.
The man seemed even more nervous when the woman corrected him. “It’s Linda and Carl, sir. Lucy and Ricky are… Well, never mind. Not us.”
“Whatever.” He’d lost interest in them. He ended the communication with a jab at the screen, watched them vanish, and raised his glass for a long drink. Unfortunately, the more he drank, the more he couldn’t resist temptation.
He brought up Satyr’s image. His right-hand man lay dead and ready for burial in his personal morgue. It was the least he could do for a man so like himself. Disfigured, goal oriented, committed to his cause. No, Satyr deserved a certain amount of respect, and Mockerie was determined to give it to him, whether the act was out of character or not.
Moving on, he traded Satyr’s picture for a far more aggravating one.
Rowena. His late wife. Mother of a child whose whereabouts remained a mystery to him.
Did he care? Some days, he did. Some not. That night, he cared very much. That night, he thought he might want a Mini-Me around, a younger version of himself, one he could mold and shape and form into anything he chose.