Hawley closed the tub faucet. Then he walked over to the toilet, lifted the back lid, reached into the rusted water and stopped it from running. The high-pitched squeal of the pipes eased off and then there was silence. Hawley went to the kitchen, his boots squishing along the carpet, took down the whiskey and drank straight from the bottle, until his nerves started to settle again. Then he went back to the bathroom, checked his shoulder, cleaned out the wound with some hydrogen peroxide and packed it with bandages and tape. He found a bottle of expired Percocet and took two and washed them down with the whiskey. Then he shook Jove.
The man opened his eyes. He took the pills from Hawley’s hand and tossed them down his throat. “You got it?”
“Yeah,” said Hawley.
“Let me see it.”
Hawley reached into his pocket and took out the watch. He pushed the key and showed him the hidden star chart. Jove blinked and leaned in close. He lifted one of his arms out of the cold water and stroked the diamonds with his burnt red finger.
“Hard to believe it’s worth so much.”
They took Talbot’s rifle and their own guns and the whiskey and the cooler of salmon between them and started down the driveway. Jove limped along in some dry clothes taken from the closet, while Hawley tried not to move his shoulder, wrapped up in a wool coat to hide the blood.
When they reached the gate it was just as Hawley had suspected—Talbot had driven right through, ramming their tiny car into a gulley with his truck. The side was crushed in, the axle twisted.
“I think I’m going to need another Percocet,” said Jove.
Hawley handed the bottle over. Then he opened one of the broken doors and rummaged for the map they’d used to get there. When he shut the door again, what was left of the window spiderwebbed and shattered onto the ground.
“Now what?” Jove asked.
“The boat,” said Hawley.
They hustled back to the house, then cut through the trees and down into the ravine, traveling through another carpet of bright-green ferns. Hawley’s legs were heavy. It was getting hard to catch his breath. He found a path and they followed it to the water. There was a ladder and then an old aluminum ramp leading to the beach. The ramp was steep and rattled as they climbed down. Jove went first, sending the plastic cooler of salmon sliding ahead like a giant block of ice. It shot along the ramp and tumbled over the edge to the beach, tossing the fish onto the sand. Hawley felt dizzy and nearly fell, too, catching himself with the rail. His shoulder pulled and it was like knives shooting across his back.
Down on the beach the whole shoreline was full of wreckage—piled with branches and driftwood and enormous, twisted roots that had spent years in salted water. Fallen pine trees lined the base of the cliffs, jumbled together like the giant whitewashed bones of mythical beasts. Hawley climbed over the trunks until he found Talbot’s boat, a dinghy with an outboard motor. It was barely big enough for two people, but it would have to do.
Jove picked up the fish from where they’d fallen in the sand, washed them in the water and lovingly placed them back in the cooler while Hawley finished the last of the whiskey. Between that and the Percocet, the pain in his shoulder was manageable, as long as he didn’t move too much. Hawley glanced up at the cliffs and told Jove to hurry. If Talbot’s wife was dead it wouldn’t take long for Talbot to return, and the old man could pick them off from the top of the cliff if he had a rifle with the proper range.
Hawley reached into his pocket. The watch was warm from his body and heavy against his palm. He looked closer at the etching of the deer. The animal was running. There was an arrow in its side, and one of its horns was broken. Hawley brought the watch to his ear. It was still ticking from when he’d wound it earlier. A beating pulse in an ancient tomb. He heard a gear click into place and then the watch began to chime.
It was more than a simple marking of the hour. The watch was playing a song. Sweet and melancholy, with the tone of a windup music box, as if a miniature orchestra made of tiny bells had been waiting for this exact moment to perform for him. It made Hawley remember something Jove had been saying at the bar, before the bikers knocked him off his stool and tried to take his wallet. Complications. That’s what they were called. Features of these one-of-a-kind pocket watches that went beyond the telling of time—playing music or charting the stars or marking the tide or the weather. The higher the number of complications, the higher the price of the watch. The one in his hand was supposed to be worth eleven million.
“Debussy,” said Jove.
“What?” said Hawley.
“That’s the music that it plays.”
Hawley ran his thumb over the deer again.
“Don’t get any ideas.”
“I’m not,” said Hawley.
“Good,” said Jove. “Because King would send somebody even worse after us.”
He limped over and put the cooler into the boat.
“Just so you know,” he said, “I can’t swim.”
“I thought you grew up on the Hudson.”
“No one swims there. It’s polluted.”
“Well,” said Hawley, “I can’t swim, either.”
Together they slid the dinghy across the crush of dark stones toward the water. It made a terrible noise, like the bottom was being torn out. The men set the guns in the bow and then Jove climbed in and Hawley pushed them out into the open water with his good arm. When they were deep enough he climbed over the stern and lowered the motor. Then he grabbed the starter and pulled and pulled, each movement a shot of fire down his side, until the engine turned, the rumbling noise of metal and gas connecting and echoing off the cliff. The blades began to spin and then they were moving forward, away from the beach. Hawley tried to clear some distance from shore, then steered them to the right, wondering how far the property ran, imagining Talbot chasing alongside.
A series of waves came in from the channel, hit starboard and set them rocking. Jove gripped the sides of the boat with his blistered hands. “I thought your father was a fisherman.”
“He was,” said Hawley.
“Then why the hell didn’t he teach you to swim?”
“He didn’t know how, either.”
“Jesus, doesn’t anybody do their jobs right anymore?”
Hawley didn’t tell Jove the reason his father had never learned to swim. It was so he would drown quickly if his boat went down in a storm. So he wouldn’t flail and suffer for hours alone in the sea.
The dinghy hit the rolling wake of a container ship, the bow rising and falling hard. Hawley kept his eye on Mount Rainier. The snow held the shape of the mountain like a blanket covering a body. Hawley pointed the boat directly into the waves. He felt dizzy again, and couldn’t tell if it was from the whiskey or the drugs or the bullet that had passed through him.