She set the bag down and reached out for the filled tank. “I’ve got that one. Can you get the other one?”
“The other?”
“Yep. Thanks. Oh, I guess I’ll need a manifold, too.”
“Oh, sure thing.” He seemed almost reluctant to turn away, to let go of her stare. Truth be told, she was a little worried about that, too. How long would the spell last?
“I’ll be right here,” she said, with as much innocence as she could muster. “Just grab another bottle and a manifold.”
With an audible sigh, John ducked back through the door. As soon as he was gone, Jenna pitched the cylinder over the side, and then, with the mesh bag in hand, she jumped in after it.
8
NO PERSONS UNDER 21 ALLOWED
Jenna stared at the notice, mounted just to the right of the weather-beaten wooden door. Just below it was another sign that declared: NO SHOES, NO SHIRT, NO SERVICE.
At least I’ve got a shirt, she thought, as she gave the door a push and went inside. The space beyond was dark, or seemed that way after fifteen minutes of walking into the setting sun. She waited until her eyes adjusted.
She had exited the harbor, underwater and undetected, and headed north, staying in the channel that ran along the eastern side of the island until her tank was about half-empty. Then she ditched everything but the mask, snorkel and fins, and paddled up onto shore. With dry land underfoot, she had discarded the rest of the gear and headed west across the island.
A teen-aged girl walking barefoot down the street was not that unusual a sight — not in a place like Key Weird anyway. Once she got her bearings, she had stayed off the main thoroughfares, weaving down cross streets and through neighborhoods of trailer homes. Although she had lived on the island all her life, she had found herself experiencing it from a completely new perspective. Everything seemed different at a walking pace, familiar but at the same time foreign. The strangeness of her surroundings compounded the mental and physical exhaustion she now felt.
She didn’t want to run anymore. She was tired of running. Noah was dead. She hadn’t completely processed what that meant. She knew that eventually she would feel pain and loss, but right now she felt only anger: anger at the men who had blown up their boat and shot Noah, and anger at herself for running when what she really wanted was to fight. And since she couldn’t do that, she just felt tired.
The stuffy air inside the bar smelled of bleach and fry oil, undercut with a hint of stale beer. Country music drifted through the air, but it wasn’t loud enough to drown out the audio from two different television sets mounted to a wall behind the bar, one displaying a baseball game, the other tuned to an all-news network. Jenna studied the latter for a moment, curious to see if the events at the marina had made the news, but the commentators were discussing an international crisis — something about a bio-terrorism attack in China…or had it come from China? On any other day, Jenna would have been fascinated by the subject. While other girls she knew wanted to be famous singers or sports stars — or to just marry rich husbands, she hoped to become an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Today, she scarcely noticed the bio-attack story.
The sunspots in her vision continued to recede, and after a few more seconds, she could make out human shapes. Two men stood over the pool table that dominated one end of the establishment. It took a moment longer for her to realize that they were looking at her. She turned away from their watchful stares, and moved toward the bar. Two of the stools were occupied, the patrons hunched over their drinks, their backs to Jenna.
“Jenna, honey, what are you doing here?”
Jenna felt the last of her weariness slip away at the sound of the voice. “Mercy!”
Thirty-six year old Mercedes Reyes was the sole proprietor of Ex Isle, a not-quite disreputable, out of the way, dive bar, frequented by local regulars and ignored by the island’s transient vacationing population. She was also Noah Flood’s girlfriend, or at least Jenna assumed she was.
The exact nature of the relationship between her father and Mercy was difficult to pin down. They didn’t live together and their very independent lives meant that they didn’t spend much time with each other. Mercy was almost twenty years younger than Noah, making him literally old enough to be her father. She was also more than twenty years Jenna’s senior, old enough to be Jenna’s mother. Given the striking resemblance between them, a similarity which only seemed to increase as Jenna approached maturity, the question of whether they were actually related had come up more than once. Both Noah and Mercy insisted that they met for the first time when Jenna was three years old. The obvious explanation, that Noah was attracted to Mercy for the very reason that she resembled Jenna’s mother, would have made sense if not for the somewhat cool nature of their relationship. They were certainly friends, but they seemed to be in no great hurry to have a more intimate connection. Either that, or they were just very discreet about what they did have.
Jenna had always been of two minds about that. Because he was the most important person in her life, she felt both jealous and protective of her father. Sometimes she wanted him all for herself, and sometimes she wanted him to find someone to make him happy. Jenna thought of Mercy as both mother and big sister, and that, too, was problematic. There was no sense in upsetting the status quo with romance.
Now, all those considerations were moot.
“Mercy, I… Noah…” The words refused to form. If she said it out loud, that would make it all true. She had put her grief into a box and buried it deep. Her sole focus had been getting away, running, reaching Mercy, just like Noah told her to do.
Mercy’s face creased with concern. “Jenna, honey, what’s wrong?”
She tried again. The words didn’t come. The tears did.
Mercy, unbidden, folded her arms around Jenna, hugging her tight.
Stop it!
The thought was so sudden, so violent, that Jenna jerked away from Mercy’s embrace. She blinked furiously at the tears, embarrassed at the display of weakness, but that was not why she had pulled back.
Noah’s instructions to seek out Mercy had been specific: if we get separated… Mercy’s bar was to have been a place to rendezvous, not a refuge. But how was Mercy going to help? She would call 911—what else could she do? — and that would almost certainly bring Cray and his partner right to her doorstep.
She couldn’t put Mercy in danger. She couldn’t let herself be put in danger.
So what am I supposed to do?
What would Noah do?
That was a question she no longer felt she knew the answer to, but she knew one thing: He wouldn’t put Mercy in danger.
“I’m sorry,” she said, blinking away the tears. “I shouldn’t have come here.”
9
As she crossed the parking lot, Jenna quickened her pace, moving with a determined stride that none-too-subtly telegraphed the message: Leave me alone. Mercy, standing at the entrance, called out to her but didn’t follow.
Jenna felt a profound, but short-lived sense of relief. She had protected Mercy and probably herself as well, but in so doing, had wiped clean the slate of options. She was on her own now, and the men who had tried to kill her were still out there. There was nowhere else she could go, no one she could trust to save her…