“Cell phones probably won’t work down there,” I explained, “but I’ll monitor channel sixty-eight on the VHF if there’s some kind of emergency.” Nate is experienced with boats and water so wouldn’t have found my mention of the radio as comforting as most. Handheld radios transmit at low wattage with a line-of-sight range that’s rarely more than five miles, depending on how many islands block the signal. Even on Sanibel, I sometimes receive Key West weather a hundred miles away. But transmitting a solid signal to even nearby Captiva is considered a lucky day.
Even so, I had taken all the precautions available to me. As a reward, I allowed myself to do something personal. I dialed Marion Ford’s lab, even though I knew he was in South America, just to enjoy the comforting sound of his recording. His was a low voice, so calm and solid that I found myself replying with the same details I’d left on Nathan’s machine, which pretty much guaranteed the biologist would call the moment he got back.
“I’ll tell you the whole story when we fish for tarpon on Friday!” I added with some spunk, then returned my cell phone to its waterproof case.
Reassured by my solid behavior, I stood at the wheel as I neared the channel, feeling some confidence for a change and the first spark of excitement about the trip I was about to take. Within easy reaching distance, I had secured a thermos of cold sweet tea and a Tupperware container that held two blueberry yogurts, a banana, and an orange I’d packed for the ride home after the party. I hooked the ignition safety lanyard to my belt in case I fell overboard, checked around for Coast Guard boats, then shoved the throttle forward-too fast in my eagerness. The rocket sled acceleration caused my cell phone to jump off the console, then skitter overboard despite my desperate lunge to catch it.
Too late. The case was waterproof, not sinkproof, and it was gone.
No reception down there anyway, I told myself, then buried the mistake by opening the throttle wide. Minutes later, after shooting beneath Big Carlos Pass Bridge, I entered the Gulf of Mexico doing fifty-plus according to my gauges, my eyes blurring from speed.
To my left, windows of distant hotels and condos mirrored a brassy westwarding sun. Afternoon storm clouds were building, I noticed, but I ignored them, preferring to concentrate on my destination. A mile offshore, safe from sandbars, I checked my GPS, then the compass switch, just to make sure my electronics were a hundred percent. The compass glowed a mild red for nighttime navigation. The GPS told me that at current speed, estimated arrival time at the sea buoy off Marco was 19:47 hours, which would put me off Cape Romano around eight p.m.
Good! My guess had been right. I would have more than an hour of daylight to search for the Skipjack cruiser and Olivia.
Feeling more confident than ever, I turned south. Checked fuel, oil pressure, and water temp-all fine despite the engine’s blistering fifty-five miles an hour-then sat behind the windshield to dry my eyes and take a swig of tea. Overhead, a jetliner banked to land at Southwest International, and it pleased me to imagine how my fast boat looked to passengers peering down. Like an arrowhead, I hoped, that cut a feathered wake as it cleaved a straight line toward its target. The Seminole shaman, Billie Egret, and Tomlinson would have both liked that.
I finished my tea, tweaked the trim tabs to nudge more speed from the engine, and felt my skiff settle beneath me, a Kevlar hydroplane, only its chines and propeller connected to the water.
Ahead, there was no horizon, no buildings to use as range markers. There was only the emptiness of water and my teenage memory of the wild islands that lay beyond.
TWENTY
IF THE MAKESHIFT MARKERS I REMEMBERED AT THE ENtrance to Drake Keys hadn’t been moved, I never would have spotted the Skipjack cruiser. Instead, a fast loop around the bay would have convinced me the boat wasn’t there before I hurried deeper into the islands toward channels that zigzagged toward Dismal Key.
A thirty-foot boat with Mercruisers required depth for safe anchorage, especially on a falling tide. As I approached the entrance, though, a glance told me there wasn’t enough water inside those islands to float a canoe. Plateaus of turtle grass, blades combed smooth by the tide, leaned toward gutters of deeper bottom, but there wasn’t a boat in sight. There were two navigable cuts, however, that sliced Cape Romano, and the shortest route to the nearest was through the shallow bay. That’s when I began to look seriously for the markers I remembered from my trips to the islands with Uncle Jake.
Normally, I don’t need poles or floating milk bottles to direct me through thin water. Even in unfamiliar regions, I have confidence in my abilities. But visibility had changed during the hour it had taken me to raise the shoals of Cape Romano. Now a flotilla of squall clouds muted the sky above while sunset painted the surface from a low angle, cloaking sandbars and nervous water with a blinding film of gold. I backed the throttle… squinted through my polarized glasses… thumbed the jack plate higher while searching for the best line to run. No matter how hard a boat passenger tries to pay attention, only the driver’s brain is actually branded with the self-taught ranges and contours of bottom required to navigate backcountry. I had run this little cut several times while Jake steered, but the placement of those old markers now refused to take shape in my head.
Twenty yards from the island, I knew I was in trouble. The hull lifted beneath my feet, as it always does in thin water, then my engine’s skeg banged bottom. Rather than kill the motor instantly, I got aggressive because I’d come too far to be stranded here in the middle of nowhere. Not if Ricky Meeks might soon return!
Instead, while my thumb worked the trim button, I steered hard to the right, jamming the throttle forward until the engine kicked and bucked us toward deeper water. By the time we’d broken free, my skiff was heeled precariously on its starboard chine, so I spun the wheel to the left, which caused a turn so sharp, I was nearly thrown from the boat.
Gradually, I got my skiff under control but continued steering hard rights and hard lefts until it was safe to run flat, the foot of my engine tilted deep in water that its cooling system required. For almost a minute, I thought I’d dodged a serious mistake. Then I heard BZZZZZZZZZZZZ! as my motor sputtered, then died, a cloud of exhaust steam floating past me while my skiff drifted to a stop.
I seldom say any profanity worse than shit, but I made an exception now.
This wasn’t the first time I’d been stopped by a warning buzzer and a computer chip that caused overheated outboards to shut down. Summer is the worst time in Florida for fast boats. Lots of dead sea grass adrift on the surface. Chances were good the problem wasn’t serious if I took the right steps to clean the water intake and exhaust vents. Trouble was, the time the task required would ruin my chances of finding Olivia. The sun was setting. Soon the blazing western sky would surrender to slow purple shadows and the pearly glow of twilight. Unless I was willing to poke around after dark, island to island, searching with a spotlight, it was time to turn around and head for home.
That’s exactly what I decided to do. In fact, I whispered it aloud. “Hannah Four, you reckless fool. Get your butt home.”
Part of me was relieved, part of me was disappointed. But there was something more powerful I was feeling-fear. Calm as I pretended to be, the anxiety inside me was a building pressure that required methodical action or I risked panic. My fear wasn’t groundless, the reality of my situation was plain enough that it didn’t need warnings from my imagination. It had been half an hour since I’d seen another boat or even heard a radio transmission on my little VHF. I was alone, no friendly stranger within hailing distance to help. The crunch and scream of a powerboat running aground is distinctive. Over water, an alarm buzzer can be heard for miles. To a man like Ricky Meeks, those sounds might bring him running like a wolf who hears the squeal of injured prey.