Out this week – Exclusive Excerpt from Fair Play by Josh Lanyon

Fair Play by Josh Lanyon

Excerpt:

They walked the three-mile loop called Old Road, crossing Little Bridge and then Big Bridge, moving deeper into the wilderness at the center of the ten-mile-long island, not talking much except to point out the occasional rabbit or fox.

“Any word from the arson inspector?” Elliot asked after a time.

“Nah.” Roland sounded untroubled. And maybe that was good. If Roland really could take a philosophical attitude about this catastrophe, more power to him. Elliot was probably worried enough for both of them.

Birdsong filled in the comfortable silences. Bees hummed in the liquid gold of the closing day, and clouds of gnats drifted over the long sun-tipped meadow.

“‘In wilderness is the preservation of the world,’” Roland observed, when they stopped to study a distant blacktail doe urging her fawn into the safe shadows of the woodline.

“Thoreau.”

Roland smiled. “Very good.”

“See. Even storm troopers can appreciate a nice turn of phrase. And a pretty day.”

Roland chuckled.

Of course, Thoreau had also said, Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. Elliot glanced at his father’s profile. Roland was still smiling, but it was clear his thoughts were miles away.

It was tempting to view your family as an extension of yourself, but it was a mistake. And no one knew that better than Elliot, having had the clearest possible illustration when he’d been accepted into the FBI and his father had effectively disowned him for betraying the values he’d been raised with. Roland had backed down from that stance, but by then Elliot had been wounded and furious over his own sense of betrayal.

That was all in the past now. All but forgotten.

“Your mother would have liked this place,” Roland said suddenly.

Elliot nodded.

His mother had been killed in a hit-and-run several years earlier. In fact, it was his mother’s death that had brought about his reconciliation with his father. It was hard to say how long he might have hung on to his hurt and anger. Tucker had occasionally accused him of being intractable, and he was probably right.

Elliot said, mostly thinking aloud, “I don’t know how you do that. Stay friends with someone you used to be in love with.”

“I can’t think of a better reason to stay friends than that this is someone you’ve loved.” Roland eyed him consideringly. “You don’t stay friends with your ex-lovers?”

“I never have. It’s too awkward. Most people don’t fall out of love at the same time. One person always wants more than the other person can give them. And that ends in bitterness.”

“You wouldn’t want to stay friends with Tucker if things didn’t work out between you?”

Elliot was silent for a moment, absorbing the pain the idea brought him. “Honestly? I don’t want to think about that.”

“Of course. No reason you should think about it,” Roland turned away from the green, sunlit sea of the meadow.

“Do you think you’ll ever marry again?”

Roland laughed shortly. “I don’t think so. I’m pretty old and pretty set in my ways now to try to set up house with someone new.”

And the person he would most likely want to set up house with was married to his best friend.

They continued on their way in silence, walking toward home now. Roland suddenly chuckled.

“What?” Elliot glanced over at him.

“I just remembered something. When you were about seven you used to sing along with ‘Purple Haze.’” Roland sang in his raspy baritone, “‘Actin’ funny but I don’t know why. Excuse me while I kiss this guy.’”

Elliot laughed.

There was a hard, dull thunk to his right. He glanced over, but it took his eyes a moment to pick out the shining slender shaft protruding from the trunk of a towering Douglas fir. And then another second to make sense of the red-and-yellow fletching, the red nock…

An arrow.

An arrow lodged in a tree. Not two arms’ lengths away from where they stood.

“Christ.” Elliot rushed at Roland, hustling him off the sandy road into the trees, yelling over his shoulder, “There are people here, you asshole!”

“What’s the matter with you?” Roland sounded astonished, trying to free himself and face Elliot.

Elliot was already second-guessing his instinctive dive for cover. Tree foliage was a mistake if they were dealing with a hunter having trouble telling humans from deer. But no. That couldn’t be. Not a hunter. There were no hunters on this island. Hunting was prohibited by law. Besides, Elliot’s T-shirt was red. Roland’s denim shirt was blue. They had been walking in the middle of a road. In full view. Their voices would have carried.

Not a mistake then. Not a hunting accident. Not an accident at all. Someone had tried to kill them. Or, more likely, tried to kill Roland.

“Don’t stop!” Elliot kept pushing his father toward the shelter of thick trees. Another gleaming missile whistled past, this time to their left. Elliot veered sharply, feeling the ominous twinge in his bad knee as he tried to drag Roland the other way. “Christ almighty, Dad. Didn’t you see that? Didn’t you hear that?”

Another arrow cut through the air—to the right again. Elliot jerked away from the thin, tight-pitched hum it made, his heart jumping. The hum was followed by another heavy, dead thud as the arrow penetrated a tree trunk a few feet beyond the bigleaf maple they landed behind.

The sick knowledge of what that missile could do to flesh and bone…

It was impossible to know how far away their attacker was. There were too many variables. The design of both the bow—draw weight of the bow and the shooter’s draw length—the design of the arrow, as well as weather conditions, particularly wind, were always going to be factors. The shooter could be a thousand yards away, for all he knew.

Or he could be moving up on them right now.

 

Buy link:

http://www.amazon.com/Fair-Play-Alls-...

http://www.joshlanyon.com/
http://joshlanyon.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @JoshLanyon