"Shut up!" Meg stored the binoculars next to the lure, closed the tackle box with a snap, and picked up he pair of rods. (They'd been rented from Luis for ten bucks each. He hadn't believed Quill when she said she wouldn't drop it over the side. Meg had made Quill pay him - if he hadn't seen her drive, she'd said, they would have gotten the rods for free.) She crossed to the French doors and peered over Quill's shoulder. "Those are plain old cumulus clouds. They've shown up like that every afternoon we've been here."
"There's been a hurricane forecast every afternoon we've been here."
"Let's go fishing." She went to the front door, opened it, and Quill followed her out.
Luis was waiting for them at the kiosk. Meg broke into a flood of voluble, cheerful Spanish, for the benefit of anyone who might be watching.
"Cara Luis! Buenas tardes! Comme ca va!"
"That's French, you dufus," Quill muttered. "It's como 'sta."
Quill could almost feel Jerry Fairchild's furious eyes boring into her back. Her disguise wouldn't have fooled Myles for a minute. She wasn't entirely sure where Jerry and his people had concealed themselves - but she knew they must be allover the complex. She was just as sure that he didn't dare come out and stop the two of them from going out in the boat. The risk to Verger Taylor - if he was still alive - was too great.
Luis - used, perhaps, to the vagaries of the rich - blinked several times at the way they looked, but offered no comment. He hadn't wondered at their interest in the number nine buoy, either, just printed out a channel locater map on his PC. He led them past the pool and down to the breakwater, where his little boat lay gently bobbing in the swells.
"Sixteen feet," he said proudly. "Belonged to my grandfather."
"She's beautiful," Quill said. The name of the craft was printed neatly on the gunwale: The Verity. "Did he name her?"
Luis nodded. "He was an avacato. In Cuba. Pre-Castro. Batista, you understand. He did not survive. What are you fishing for?"
"Mullet," said Meg. "We want mullet. Have you got a mullet net?"
Luis pointed to a pile of green cord folded under the seat in the center of the boat. He seemed slightly reassured when Quill expertly started the little thirty-five horse motor after she hopped into the boat, and waved them genially off the shore.
The Verity took the heavy swells with ease. Quill kept her right hand on the tiller and her left on the throttle. There were three other boats on the water near the number nine and number twelve buoys out in the channel. Quill had seen two of them several times before: the twenty-two-foot Chris-Craft had a solo occupant, a grizzled old man who spat tobacco over the side with stolid regularity; the eighteen-foot Welbilt carried a honeymoon couple who spent a lot of time horizontal under the gunwales. The third was an Osprey day sailer Quill hadn't seen before. She was willing to bet that the Palm Beach County police didn't use blonde, teenaged girls in brief bikinis as undercover agents. Although anything was possible.
She opened the throttle and increased her speed, looking back to the shore. The waves slapped smartly against the bow, and the breeze was cool. From the rapidity with which Luis's figure dwindled in size, she figured she was going about thirty miles an hour.
"Slow down!" Meg shrieked. "I want to fish!" Quill throttled back and looked for a good spot to cut the motor and drift. She look for the dimpled ripples in the water that meant a school of mullet was swimming by. The swells were deeper out here. The boat rose steeply, then slid down the far side of the rising water with an eerie slowness. There was an absence of pelicans.
Quill cut the throttle out and then drifted for a moment. The silence was not complete. From their vantage point - about halfway to the number nine buoy - they could see all the way down the beach. The high-rise condominiums and village mansions on Ocean Boulevard were distant, but noise carried over the water: radios, the shriek and chatter of a party, the thrum of traffic. To her right-or starboard, Quill thought - was the long, pleasant beach of Singer Island with its hotels. Ahead lay the Atlantic. They really were at sea, at the edge of the Atlantic, and beyond that - " Algeria!" Quill shouted. "Whoop! You want to head due east?"
"I want to fish!" Quill looked over the side. The water changed beyond here to a deep, navy blue. If they drifted farther out, it'd be too deep for mullet. She debated about casting the anchor; it would slow their drift and the wind out here was quite brisk. She shaded her eyes against the sun and scanned the water. No evidence of mullet yet. The old man in the Chris-Craft was about three hundred yards to port. He spat once over the side, gave Quill a malevolent look, and opened his throttle. The boat shot away in a curve of spray.
"Follow that guy, Quill."
"Why?"
"Because every time I've seen him bring his boat in, it's been full of fish. He's obviously a pro."
The Chris-Craft slowed, throttled down, and stopped. Quill, squinting against the light despite her sunglasses, saw him cast his net from the boat with an efficient snap of the wrists. The net floated in an arc, then settled into the water. Leaning over the side, the old man pulled, heaved, and brought up a net full of fish.
"Yes!" Meg shouted. Quill pulled the rope start with an sharp tug and, at a sedate pace, edged to about a hundred yards from the Chris-Craft. She throttled down. They were in the middle of a vast school of mullet, racing out to sea. Their silver backs flashed in the water; one or two leaped out of the water in small, swiftly executed arcs.
"They're like little robot soldiers," Meg said. "They all look exactly the same."
Quill touched her hat to the old fisherman, who gazed back at them expressionlessly and shouted, "Hope you don't plan on settling here."
Splat! Another gob of tobacco hit the water.
"The guys are out bowling," Quill improvised. "Told them we'd have a nice fish fry for them when, they got back!"
No answer. He probably couldn't hear her. Although his steady stare was a little unnerving. He undoubtedly' didn't want to share the mullet.
Quill dropped anchor. It was deep here and she failed to hit bottom. The weight would slow the boat, though, and give them a chance to cast the net.
"Okay," she said to Meg.
"Okay what?"
"Okay, we're ready to fish."
Meg bent over and dubiously regarded the net.
"Well?" said Quill. "We're being watched, Meg, I can tell you that right now. And it's not just the old geezer there, either. Jerry and his team undoubtedly have high-powered telescopes or whatever trained allover this coast. Besides, you've been nagging me to fish for the past twenty minutes. So fish."
The pilot of the Chris-Craft threw his net a second time, with what seemed to Quill to be an insultingly easy flick of his wrist. He drew it up full, swung the net into the boat, then deftly emptied most of the net into a large bucket. He disentangled the fish that had failed to escape the net, refolded the net deftly over his right arm, and cast it out again.
"It looks easy," Meg said.
Her first cast was actually quite respectable, although the sinkers attached to the net. collided with the bulwark and the net failed to spread. The second cast was worse. The third was worse than that, and when the man in the Chris-Craft spat.loudly and with obvious contempt, her face turned pink. The fourth cast netted three very small mullet, which Quill insisted on throwing back.