“No. It was accidental.”
He was trying to get to his feet, but he was off balance and easy to push back to the ground. “You’ll be fine. It’s nothing serious. Relax, you idiot.”
A lie. Death adders and Calcutta scorpions were poisonous from birth. On their first trip to West Australia, she’d seen a professional snake handler die from a death adder’s bite. They were in the bush, too far to go for help. The man had sat in the shade of a tree, resigned, and told them what was going to happen before it happened.
Without antivenin, even healthy adults die.
Seeing how the snake handler’s body had reacted is what had given Dasha the idea. Put the fantasy in her mind, where she played it over and over until she knew she had to find a way to live it. Coincidentally, she read about what happens to a man if he’s stung in a certain place by a Calcutta scorpion. Now here it was, happening. No one around to disapprove.
Aleski would be outside dealing with the Chinaman’s body.
Three shots to the head. POP-POP-POP.
They were done doing business in Cuba. Maybe would soon even have to flee the Bahamas, all because of Jobe Applebee.
“Are you really my friend?” the strange little biologist had once asked her.
“Yes! I’ll become more than your friend if you do the things I tell you to do.”
Somehow, though, the weird bastard had figured out what was going on.
Idiot!
Ruined everything. Maybe.
For now, though, Dasha would enjoy the moment, by God.
Solaris was moaning. “My eyes-everything’s getting blurry. I feel so odd. Like I’m floating. Why do I hurt so bad? Was there glass in the balloon?”
“Yes. An accident. There was glass, and it cut you.”
He’d already forgotten about the scorpion.
She was kneeling over her canvas purse, searching for another condom as she continued to check off the symptoms: Mental confusion. Slurred speech. Paralysis of all muscles-she could see his biceps and abdominals twitching-as his eyes turned a glassy blue.
“But him-he’s still hard and strong!” Solaris was gasping, but managed a final little joke.
As she pulled his hands away to look, Dasha felt a charge she’d never experienced. Had never felt so eager, her body ready.
Total control-a feeling like that.
She placed the condom on him, like a cap, then unrolled it, stroking him, as she said, “Yes. And he will be alive and standing long after you’re dead.”
By the time she’d lowered herself onto him, Solaris was.
12
Sanibel and Captiva are exclusive, amiably reclusive islands with shops, shaded neighborhoods, and seaside mansions, but they’re also a favorite vacation destination. Publicity about a recent hurricane had frightened off one variety of vacationer while attracting more adventurous types who were more interesting, and a lot more fun.
It’d been a busy year. Especially now. This was Christmas, near peak tourist season, so traffic was heavy even on this Monday evening as I approached the Sanibel Causeway. I crawled across the bridge in my old pickup, ignoring the tailgating BMWs, Mustangs, and eager rental cars, peeved because I’d missed yet another sunset cocktail hour with the live-aboards, fishing guides, and other locals who make up the peculiar family of Dinkin’s Bay Marina.
There are reasons I don’t like being away from home at sunset, some personal, most social. On the islands, sunset is ceremonial. It’s the convivial, kicked-back, communal time when even strangers become a little friendlier, and the world shifts collective gears, slowing its orbit in the growing, slow dusk.
But missing sunset wasn’t my biggest upset that Monday night. During the drive, I’d spent twenty minutes on the phone with Dewey. She was still irritable, quick to take offense.
To get her to talk, I had to ask questions. It’s one of her gambits when she’s in a certain kind of mood. Silence is a way of controlling. Her responses terse, she told me, Yes, Iowa was cold. Iowa’s always cold in December. Yes, there was snow. There’s always snow in winter. She’d been stacking her own firewood, shoveling her own path to the barn.
“I guess that’s what I should expect, huh? Because I’m carrying a baby and living alone.”
Same complaint, different conversation.
I’d replied, “Then come home. We’ll live in your Captiva house. I’ll take great care of you. It’s warm here. Get on a plane tomorrow.”
“I am home. Why can’t I get it through your thick head? I’m where I want to be, and you’re where you want to be. Just admit it. Even when you’re here, you’re gone. I’ve seen that look in your eyes. Those times when you disappear and I know you’re down by the river, probably thinking about fish, water, currents.”
She wasn’t being fair. But she also happened to be right, which made me feel like hell.
A bad beginning to a Monday night that was about to get worse.
In the mangrove gloom, sky darkening, I parked my truck outside the marina gate, shouldered my bag-several live guinea worms secured in a jar therein-and walked the wobbly boardwalk that connects my home to shore. I’m a guy of habit. The first thing I do when back from a trip is check the wooden cistern-sized fish tank on the lower deck.
Usually, I’m holding my breath as I approach the thing, expecting the worst. Pumps fail, filters clog. A decomposing soup of carefully selected marine specimens makes for an unpleasant homecoming.
But my son, Laken, had been taking care of the lab. He was on holiday from school in Central America, and enjoyed the work. So I wasn’t surprised to find that this wooden aquarium had been meticulously maintained. The sides of the tank were algae-free, the water so clear that it didn’t slow my vision even in the weak yellow glow of the deck lights that I’d installed at intervals around the railing.
Everything in the tank-immature snook, tarpon, bandit-masked snappers, horseshoe crabs, spider crabs, blooming anemones, and bivalves-looked healthy and active beneath the crystal water lens.
The boy continued to impress.
Because my place is small, the living area minimal, with one bed, Laken had been bunking at the marina in the guest room of Jeth Nicholes’s upstairs apartment. The lights of my laboratory were on, though. On the chance my son might still be up there hanging out at the computer, doing research on the Internet, or writing e-mails to his Latin American pals, I jogged up the steps and pushed open the lab’s screen door.
Odd. He’d left the lights on, but the room was empty.
Not like him.
I stood in the doorway a moment, seeing the rows of aquaria-each glass tank lighted in blue, aerators pumping-and noted that my dissecting instruments, jars of chemicals, test tubes, and flasks were all in their place on or above the stainless steel table and sink. Saw that my microscopes were covered; that the Bunsen burner, my centrifuge, my goggles, and white laboratory smock were at the epoxy workstation as I’d left them.
Yet, something felt different.
What?
It was a sensory impression, instinctual; nothing reasonable about it. Something was amiss.
My instincts were right.
I heard a noise off to my left. It was a stealthy, creaking sound well known to me. It was the sound of a big man trying to move quietly.
Before I could whirl to look, I felt a stinging impact on my shoulders as someone grabbed me. I dropped my bag as a big man turned me… swung me out into the roofed breezeway that connects house and lab… then slammed me hard, face first, against the outside wall.
He was a tall guy; hands with the sort of hydraulic strength that’s daunting-and distressing. He’d locked his fingers around my left wrist and managed to leverage my arm up behind my back; had me pinned there in a hammer-lock so painful that I was up on my tippy-toes, trying to reduce pressure on my shoulder.