Something powerful is drawing Ward back to Devil's Island. Something he thought he had forgotten. He must evade vicious lighthouse keeper George Jaggles in order to rescue it, but Jaggles will soon be the least of his worries. Because an assassin is...
The man flew through the air like Superman. Unlike Superman, he landed on his back. He coughed, and blood spattered Matt's school pants.
The car that had hit him squealed to a stop down the street. Matt could smell burning rubber and hot asphalt, and something hot and nauseating. It was the smell of death.
The dying man looked up at him. His eyes seemed extraordinarily white in his bloody face. "Take it," he spluttered. There was more blood, and Matt instinctively stepped backwards.
A car door slammed. Matt looked up and saw the man from the car walking towards him. There was nobody else around. The car had been travelling too fast down this narrow street – even Matt knew that – but it hadn't slowed down before it hit the man. The driver hadn't had time. Because the man had come from nowhere.
"Take," the dying man said.
He really was dying. Matt had never seen anyone die before. Two years ago his dog had been put down, but he hadn't been allowed to watch. He had only been ten years old after all. Still, he thought it would have been better if he had been there when it happened. He wouldn't have kept wondering if perhaps they had put down another dog by mistake – that Bessie was still out there alive somewhere, and he would wake one morning to find her curled up at the foot of his bed. He hadn't even seen the body.
"Plee," the man coughed.
(please)
The man from the car was already halfway to them. He didn't run. He didn't call out. He just walked steadily towards them. He was dressed all in black, as if he had already been on the way to a funeral. Matt felt a sudden irrational fear. He forced himself to look away from the man and back at the road.
The dying man groaned heavily. He fumbled at his jeans with a hand that was a bloody claw. Blood was dribbling out of both sides of his mouth now. It reminded Matt of a clown's face-paint. The dying man either gave up trying to get his hand inside his pocket, or else ran out of strength. He just pointed at the pocket and looked beseechingly up at Matt. Then he died. Matt saw him go. He didn't close his eyes, or say something magnificent, or any of those things people did in the movies. He just died.
"Stay right there," said the man from the car.
Strangely it was this order that snapped Matt out of his paralysis. Turning so his body blocked the approaching man's sight, he squatted down, reached into the dead man's pocket, and removed something small and soft. He didn't stop to examine it, but put it straight in the pocket of his school pants.
Had the man seen what he had done? He didn't know. But when he stood up again and turned around the man was standing right behind him.
He was a young man, tall and thin and handsome. He seemed calm for someone who had just killed someone. He glanced down at the body, wrinkled his nose, looked up again. He studied Matt's face. "What's your name?" he said.
"You ran him over," Matt said, ignoring the question. His own voice sounded distant, like it was coming through a telephone. He was surprised he could speak at all.
"Ahuh," the man said. "Ran right out in front of me. Didn't have time to suh-stop."
"He's dead," Matt said.
The man said nothing. He didn't look down at the dead man, only at Matt. There was something disquieting about his eyes.
"Better call an ambulance," Matt said, feeling that if he only kept talking he would not have to look into the man's eyes. He pointed back down the street, past the big black car, to the main road. "There's a payphone there," he went on. He knew this because he passed it every day on the way to school: he always went inside and checked in the change chute in case someone had left a coin. He had once found a fifty cent coin in there, and he had used it to buy a whole bag of sherbet bombs. He fished in his pocket for change.
"You won't need it," the man said, and for a moment Matt thought he meant the thing he had taken from the dead man. But that was in his other pocket. "Triple zero's a free call," the man explained, and smiled.
Of course it was. Matt should have known that. He turned to go, but then the man's hand clamped suddenly over his wrist.
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