When I was off Captiva Pass, I had to begin angling eastward into unprotected water. There was not so much wind now, but it was still gusting briskly out of the northwest. The wind had a bite to it; an Arctic Sea edge. My clothes had the leaden feel of dried salt and dampness. But the sweater and the good S.A.S. field pants were both made of wool, and I had also gotten my foul-weather jacket out of the stern locker and zipped it on. So I was soggy but warm. Surfed along with a following sea, thinking about Tullock, trying to determine the best way to smoke him out. No way was I going to let the bastard remain aloof from all the damage he had done . . . and would continue to do through surrogates. He was one of the behind-the-scenes guys; one of the cool manipulators. Well... I had some experience in that arena myself.
I was his next logical target, of course. Quite literally, he had caught Hannah and me with our pants down. For Tomlinson, Tullock had only required suspicion to act. The question was, how would he come after me?
Tullock wasn't the one-on-one type—he'd had his opportunity that night at the Curlew fish house. And after I told Ron Jackson what I knew, neither the Copper Rim netters nor Kemper Waits would be in a position to do Tullock's dirty work.
That left Tullock powerless against me ... for a while anyway. At least until he found another stooge.
I took some pleasure in that. I'd already stuck Tullock pretty good— the man didn't even know it. Then Hannah would stick him again when she broke the news about her fish farm. But I wanted to nail him in a way that hurt, really hurt, and I needed some time to do that. Time was something I would have. Tullock might be obsessive, but his each and every act was, at least, logical. Again, that was to my advantage. Logic dictated that he wait a good safe period before risking an attack on me. Too many dead men in too short a period and the full mass of state law enforcement would come snooping around his litde island.
I took pleasure in that, too; the pure reasonableness of it.
I was still musing over ways to trap Tullock as I ran through the old Mail Boat Channel—a couple of markers made of broken limbs and Clorox botdes—and happened to notice a fast mullet skiff angling down on me. It was a green plywood boat slapping along, throwing high spray. One person aboard dressed in a full yellow rain suit. Watched the boat jump a sandbar, coming closer. . . saw the driver morion for me to stop. . . and realized it was Hannah.
What the hell was she doing out here?
I levered the throttle back; waited.
Hannah was idling toward me, her skiff rolling and bucking as waves slid beneath the hull. She had to holler to make herself heard. Couldn't understand her, at first. Then: "Ford! Have you been home yet? Don't go home!"
I began to reply, but did not. There was something strange about the look of her face. . . .
"I've been trying to find you all night! I called and kept calling!"
She had the rain hood up. I was squinting, trying to see her clearly. My damn contact lenses. . . .
"They told me at the hospital you didn't come back last night. So then I decided . . . Ford? Ford! Are you hearing me okay?"
She was close enough now. What I was hoping would turn out to be only a shadow or a grease mark was not a shadow or a grease mark. Her left eye was swollen nearly shut, her cheek a blush of eggplant purple.
I whispered a groaning sound before I yelled, "What happened to your face?"
Her boat was alongside mine now; we had to jockey our engines to keep the boats from slamming into each other. She touched her fingers experimentally to her cheek. It was as if she had forgotten that she was injured ... or as if she had not had time to look in the mirror. Said, "It don't even hurt. It's somethin' we don't need to worry about right now—"
"Did somebody hit you?"
"Would you listen for a second—"
"Who hit you?" I shouted. "Was it Raymond? Goddamn it, I warned you about that guy—"
"That's what I'm tryin' to tell you!" There was a frenetic quality to her tone that demanded I shut up and let her speak. I did. She called, "Yesterday I started thinking about Raymond. Went down and talked to Arlis. He agreed. What you said about Raymond started makin' sense once we fit all the little pieces together. Then last night, after I got back from the hospital, it was pretty late and Raymond, he just opened the door and walked right into my house. It made me so mad that I... I probably shouldn't have, but I asked him about it. About what happened to Tommy . . . and Jimmy. Then I told him about my fish farm, too."
I looked at her; could see in her expression—her poor face—that she knew how foolish that had been. I said, "I don't care what you said, he had no right to hit you—"
"That's not why he hit me. He hit me 'cause I refused to stop seeing you. Then he hit me again because I wouldn't take off to Asia with him. He had my ticket, all the papers, everything all set to go. The midnight flight to Los Angeles. It was like he'd gone crazy. Started rummaging around my house, taking photographs of me, stuff off the mantlepiece, jamming it all into a briefcase. Like he was stealin' little pieces of me to take along. But that's not what I'm talking about, Ford."
"You called the police. Tell me you called the police."
"Yeah, but I called them because I was worried. Listen to what I'm telling you! I think Raymond musta knocked me out or something. I woke up on the floor and I had this terrible ... I don't know . . .feeling. It had to do with the last thing I remember him sayin' to me. What he said was something about 'after your boyfriend gets home . . .' Or, 'Don't expect your boyfriend to call after he gets home.' Something like that."
I nodded agreeably. Hannah didn't seem to be tracking well. Tullock had probably given her a slight concussion. Why was that happening lately to all the people I cared about? I wished the wind weren't rolling our boats around so badly. I wanted to take her into my arms and hold her . . . wanted to apologize to her for my suspicions, for my coldness. I wanted to make her believe that not all angry men used their fists.
"Don't you see what I'm saying? By then it was almost three in the morning. I called your house and kept callin'. Called the hospital, and then I finally called the Sanibel police. They didn't want to listen to some hicky-voiced girl like me, but I made one of them drive to your place and have a look. It took him about forever to call back. All he said was your house was fine, and your truck was there, but your boat was gone."
"My place—that's where we're going right now. I'm going to put you in bed and have a doctor buddy of mine—"
"No!" Her tone said: Why are you being so slow? "Listen to me! 'After your boyfriend gets home.' That's what Raymond said. Don't you get it? How did he know you weren't home, Ford?"
I thought about that. For a moment, it threw a chilly little shadow over the shiny-bright chain of logic that I had constructed to predict Raymond Tullock's next move. But it didn't make sense. Moving so quickly against me just wasn't reasonable.
I explained that to Hannah. Added, "I think he was trying to scare you. Or maybe you misunderstood. We've both been up all night." I glanced at my watch: 6:30 a.m. "I want a doctor to look at you, then we'll get some sleep."
For a moment, our boats were close enough, and I reached out and grasped Hannah's extended hand. Felt her long, cool fingers . . . felt the private little squeeze. An apology offered; an apology accepted.