Then she was gone, splashing out of the mangroves and into the swift creek.
The Indian started to chase her but Perry Skinner caught him by the belt. Skinner pointed up at the helicopter, which already had begun lowering a rescue basket over the flipped kayak. A full-suited Coast Guard diver was poised on one of the aircraft’s skids.
“You think those guys’re gonna let that pretty girl drown?” Skinner said. “Lester’s the one who ought to be worried. He’ll be lucky if they save him a towel.”
Sammy Tigertail watched Gillian scissor through the rotor-blown chop and latch onto the wallowing white man. “She’s a good swimmer, for sure,” the Seminole said. “And pretty, like you say.”
“Save it for a valentine, Sammy. Right now I need you to help me find my son and my wife.”
“You mean your ex.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Sure, Mr. Skinner.” Sammy Tigertail stooped to put on his shoes.
When Fry awoke, he was weak but no longer dizzy. His lower lip stung where he’d chomped it when he fell.
Eugenie Fonda was elated that the boy hadn’t croaked in her arms. She pecked him on the forehead and said, “You got a concussion, bucko. We’re stayin’ right here until your old man tracks us down.”
Fry didn’t argue. He had no strength for another hike. The sun on his legs felt good; so did lying on Eugenie’s lap. Were it not for the football helmet, he would have been basking in the warmth of her outstanding breasts. He tried not to dwell on that.
“Hey, check out the chameleons,” he said.
There were two of them, as bright as emeralds, sharing a bough in the strangler fig. One of the lizards inflated its wine-red dewlap and began pumping its featherweight body, as if it was doing push-ups.
“That’s the male,” Fry explained. “He’s showin’ off.”
“Go figure,” said Eugenie.
She opened the Halliburton and removed the video camera. After rewinding the tape, she touched the play button. The young Seminole’s girlfriend appeared on the display screen, auditioning with the shotgun as a prop.
Good morning, this is Gillian St. Croix bringing you the weather! A winter storm rumbled through the Rockies last night, dumping snow from Montana to New Mexico. The ski resorts in Vail are reporting three feet of fresh powder, and it’s even deeper in Aspen and Telluride. Meanwhile, waaaaaaay down in sunny southern Florida, daytime temps are expected to reach the low seventies by noon. It’s ideal conditions for being held hostage by a stud-hunk Native American on a deserted tropical isle. We’re talkin’ about a serious blue-eyed Bone Machine-
Eugenie Fonda hastily shut off the tape.
“Who was that?” Fry asked.
“Just a girl gone wild.” Eugenie rewound the cassette and activated the record button.
“Where are those lizards?” She pointed the camera toward the fig tree.
“Little higher.” Fry twisted around to show her.
“They’re cute little buggers, aren’t they?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The boy’s neck ached, so he turned back the other way.
“And real fond of each other.” Genie toggled the zoom.
“Do you have any kids?” Fry asked.
She thought: One of the few mistakes I haven’t made. “I never grew up enough to be a mom. That’s a serious gig,” she said.
“Nah, you could do it.”
“I was wondering-do lizards make noise?”
“Geckos, yeah. Not chameleons,” he said.
“Too bad.” Genie fiddled with the focus control.
“What kind of job do you have?” the boy asked.
She chuckled dryly. “I sell an incredible amount of crap to people over the phone. But once upon a time I had a book published.”
“Sweet.”
“The phony true-life story of a doomed romance,” she said, “but don’t be too impressed. I didn’t write a damn word of it.”
“What’s the book called?”
Genie said, “Never mind. It’s not in your school library, I promise. Aren’t chameleons the ones with the big buggy eyes and the superlong tongues? Like that guy in Kiss.”
“Those are old-world chameleons. The species here in the Everglades is called the American anole.”
Eugenie was enjoying herself; the kid was an encyclopedia. She said, “Maybe I can sell this tape to the National Geographic. You could help me with the script.”
Fry cocked his head and listened. “You might want to wrap it up,” he said.
“In a minute.”
He sat up. “Hear that? It’s a chopper!”
“How can you tell from so far off?”
The boy raised one arm to block out the sun. “They’re headin’ our way.”
Eugenie switched off the camera. Honey’s kid was right-it sounded like a helicopter, not a plane. She remembered the man called Lester bragging of secret arrangements to leave the island; possibly she’d underestimated him. Although Gillian’s young Seminole had promised to provide a boat and a map for returning to the mainland, air travel was much more appealing to Genie.
“I need to ask you somethin’ important,” she said to Fry. “Say I caught a ride outta here-would you be all right until your old man shows up?”
With a whoosh the helicopter passed over the treetops.
“Coast Guard. They’re circling.” Fry craned for a better view. “You get going. I’ll be okay,” he said.
Genie helped the boy to his feet. “Or how about you and me leave together? They’ll send somebody back to find your folks, for sure.”
“No, ma’am, you go.”
Hurriedly she packed the video gear. “Promise you’ll wait right here for your dad? Don’t be a typical dumbass male and get yourself lost in the woods.”
“Promise.”
“Hey, I know you’re quite the jock. I saw all those track trophies at your mom’s place.”
Fry said, “I’m not goin’ anywhere. I feel like crap.”
Genie shielded her eyes and pivoted on one heel, following the hum of the chopper. “How they gonna land with all these damn trees?”
“They’re not. You’ve gotta get in the creek or they won’t see you.” Fry pointed. “Try that way-the kayaks are stashed in the mangroves. Dad and I found ’em last night.”
She squeezed the boy and thumped the side of his helmet. “If you were ten years older, bucko, you’d be in serious trouble.”
Fry squirmed and said, “Better hurry.”
Eugenie Fonda snatched up the camera case and took off. She laughed when she heard him call out: “Wait! Are you sure you don’t want your pearl?”
Priceless, she thought. One in a million.
Shortly before sunrise, the U.S. Coast Guard station in Fort Myers Beach had received a call from Fort Worth, Texas. A woman who gave her name as Lily Shreave reported that a cousin named Dealey had contacted her by cellular phone to say he was stranded without provisions on an unknown island near the town of Everglades City. The woman said her cousin was a well-known nature photographer working on a documentary about orphaned pelicans. She said he suffered from a rare condition known as aphenphosmphobia, of which the petty officer taking the report had never heard and didn’t even attempt to spell. Ms. Shreave went on to say that her cousin was in dire need of his anti-aphenphosmphobia medication, which he’d forgotten on the front seat of a rental car parked at his motel.
When the petty officer inquired how Mr. Dealey had come to be marooned, his cousin said he’d blacked out in a small boat while photographing a rookery. She said the battery in her cousin’s phone had gone dead during his call, so she had no other information to help pinpoint the location. She provided a thorough description of the missing man-fifty-seven years old, brown eyes, balding, five ten, 215 pounds. Ms. Shreave also said he was wearing a slate-gray Brooks Brothers suit. When the Coast Guard officer remarked that such attire seemed strange for a field trip to the Ten Thousand Islands, Ms. Shreave explained that her cousin, like many artistic types, was an eccentric.
At 0700 hours, an HH60 Jayhawk helicopter carrying a search-and-rescue crew lifted off and headed south along the coast, passing directly over Naples, Marco Island and then Cape Romano Shoals. The chopper angled slightly toward the mainland and dropped altitude before looping around the fishing village of Chokoloskee. The pilot then banked westward to place the rising sun behind the spotters who would be searching the green tapestry of mangroves and hammocks for Mr. Dealey. It was a limpid morning, and visibility was superb.