“That’s probably not a very good idea.”
“No kidding. I don’t suppose you could give me a ride back to shore. Preferably, that way.” She pointed to the north bank, which was at least two hundred feet away.
The man opened his mouth to reply, but at that instant, the sound of a gunshot rolled across the water. He jerked in surprise and tumbled out of the boat.
Jade whipped her head around and saw a figure on the patio she had just fled. It was Roche, and although she couldn’t see him very clearly, she could tell that his arms were extended and holding a small black object. There was a flash of fire from the object and a moment later, another report.
If that’s Roche, where’s the bodyguard?
There was no time to find the answer to that question.
The scull’s owner was swimming away frantically. Jade thought he had merely panicked; at this distance, Roche’s accuracy with the pistol was non-existent, and the only way he could have hit anything was if blind luck was on his side. Still, luck was a funny thing, and Jade thought the rower probably had the right idea.
Still, no sense in letting a perfectly good boat go to waste.
She gripped the end of the scull and tried to heave herself up onto the rapier-thin hull, which proved to be about as easy as climbing onto a greased log. The boat threatened to roll over, forcing her to go slow and move in very slight increments. She had never been on a craft like this, but she had practically grown up on the water, surfing and paddle-boarding and this didn’t seem much different. Straddling the narrow hull, distributing her weight to maintain balance, she inched toward the center seat, and then carefully twisted around until she was set.
So far so good.
The process of getting situated had taken at least thirty seconds, during which time she had not heard another shot. Maybe Roche had come to his senses; not only were his chances of hitting her virtually nil, but in England, where gun laws were considerably more strict than in the United States, shooting up a posh neighborhood was bound to attract attention that Roche probably didn’t want. There also the very real possibility that, if he killed or even injured her, the Shew Stone would be lost in the Thames. She did not allow herself to believe however, that Roche was going to just let her go.
She curled her hands around the oar grips and pushed down, raising the long paddles out of the water. Despite the balance of the rig, the oars felt heavy and unwieldy. She pushed them forward keeping the blades flat and parallel to the water, then twisted them, letting the blades dig into the river. Planting her feet, she pulled on the oars with all her might. The seat rolled back beneath her, allowing her to straighten her bent legs and amplifying the energy of her body as she hauled in the oars.
The scull shot backwards like a rocket.
Unprepared for the success of her first attempt, Jade’s follow-through was sloppy. As she tried to get the oars back to forward position, she dragged one tip through the water, which caused the scull to turn sharply and suddenly, nearly capsizing. She froze, waiting for the craft to settle, and that was when she heard the mosquito-buzz sound of a small outboard.
Roche and his bodyguard had found a boat. It was just a little dory, maybe fifteen feet with a little outboard, but it was more than a match for the scull.
Jade breathed a curse and focused on the task at hand. She had only a few seconds before they caught her, but if she could make the scull do what she wanted, there was a chance she could get to the far shore, and from there escape on foot.
“Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast,” she muttered to herself, like a mantra. It was something Maddock had often said — damn, she didn’t want to think about him right now — but it was sage advice. She exaggerated every movement, making sure that the blades were exactly where she wanted them before trying to move the oars.
Push forward. Dip. Pull back.
After just a couple cycles, she got the hang of it. The only problem was that she was arrowing through the water at an oblique angle; she needed to turn, aim for the shore, or Roche would catch her.
On her next cycle, she held back a little on her right side, and the scull gradually swung in that direction.
Close enough.
She dug in again and again, repeating the mantra like a military cadence. “Slow is—” Lift the oars. “Smooth, and—” Roll forward and recover. “Smooth is—” Drop the oars and pull. “Fast!”
Not fast enough. The dory shot toward her, then veered away, cutting a wide circle around her. She thought she might still be able to reach the shore, but then the boat’s wake hit her and nearly rolled her over. When she finally got the scull on an even keel, the dory was between her and the shore. She felt the scull shudder as someone — Roche’s bodyguard, leaning over the side of the idling motorboat — grabbed hold of it. Roche stood next to him, wearing an exultant grin. He held the pistol in his right hand; his left was extended, palm up.
“Give it back, and I’ll let you walk away.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Maybe I’m not being clear,” Roche continued. “This is a one-time offer. Give me the crystal ball or I will kill you.”
He’s bluffing. But what if he isn’t?
She let go of the oars, raised her hands as if in a show of surrender, and then brought them to rest on her thighs. She could feel the outline of the contents of her pockets through the fabric of her slacks. Slowly, more to avoid further upsetting the boat, she wormed her hand into her left pocket, curling her fingers around something smooth and round. She drew it out and held it out over the water.
“You shoot me and I might drop it,” she retorted.
The gun twitched in Roche’s hand but he did not lower it. “I don’t want that to happen, but if you leave me no choice, I will take that chance. The crystal will be recovered, but you will be dead. Is that what you want?”
Jade looked down into the murky water. “You think you can find it down there? Be my guest.”
She opened her hand and let the orb fall. It hit the water with a loud plop, and vanished.
Roche’s reaction was almost primal. He leaped from the boat, reaching out as if he might somehow be able to catch the transparent globe before the water claimed it. The dory began bobbing violently from the abrupt shift in its mass, and the effect was magnified when Roche hit the water, throwing up a spume of water.
The bodyguard threw up his hands in a reflexive grab for a handhold, releasing the scull, but not before Jade got a hand on the dory. She rolled over the side, dropping into the motor boat, and before the bodyguard could recover his wits, she brought her joined fists down in hammer blow that caught him in the back of the head. The strike didn’t knock him out, but it was enough to daze him. He barely resisted at all as Jade got her arms under his torso and heaved him up and over the side.
Jade scrambled back to the outboard and twisted the throttle to ‘full.’ The boat lurched forward, throwing out a rooster-tail of white water. She glanced back and saw the bodyguard thrashing in the wake but there was no sign of Roche, who had evidently made a deep dive to retrieve the sunken orb.
She turned the boat toward the south shore and ran it up onto a sandbank not far from where she had gone in. She was a little worried that someone might have called the police, so despite her eagerness to be away, she ran back up toward Roche’s flat and skirted along the apartment buildings until she found a narrow alley leading back to the main street. Then with as much nonchalance as possible given her sodden appearance, she stepped onto the sidewalk and began strolling toward the waiting car.