He flipped open the phone and began to dial.
“He took Gorda and went out there over an hour ago. I was going to go out in my Whaler and stop him, but since you’ve been playing games and telling us your life story, he’s probably had time to grab it all and take off.”
“Crystal,” he said, “yes.” He turned his back to us and spoke into the phone. “Yes, sir we’re here at the girl’s place.” He stared straight at me. “All right,” he said, “then you’ll bring the Hard Bottom down here, pick them up, and meet us out there.” He laughed. “You’re right.”
He snapped the phone shut and slid it into his pants pocket. “Zeke, the dive gear, in the car.” He jerked his head, and Zeke Moss hurried toward the front door. “Crystal says you and I are to go ahead without them. You find the wreck site, and I’ll take care of Garrett. Our friends will be along to join us later.”
As we rode the tide downriver, I could see the sky lightening behind the houses and trees. The stars were slowly winking out as a watery blue tinged with pink washed in from the east. James sat next to me on the varnished wood midships seat. His thighs showed a tan line—the trunks he had borrowed from Mr. Larsen’s bedroom were too short for his long legs. Between his feet lay the mesh dive bag Zeke had brought in from their car with all the shiny new equipment: mask, fins, and Cesar’s ever-present bang stick. I was more nervous about the firepower of the pressure-sensitive bang stick bouncing around on the floor of the dinghy than I was about the gun that he held low, tucked under his arm, barely visible.
By the time we reached the Intracoastal, dozens of sportfishing boats were headed to the harbor entrance, deckhands readying the baits and outriggers in the growing light. Those big charter boats usually passed me when I was running my tug, but this morning in the Whaler I jockeyed my way between and around them and pounded my way out through the swells in the harbor channel.
At the sea buoy, the charter boats fanned out in all directions, their white wakes etched in the water like the spokes of a wheel. The rim of the sun peeked over the horizon, and within seconds, the whole orb popped into the sky. The sea was flat, and the tiny wavelets reflected back the horizontal rays, making the sea look covered in jewels. The day was shaping up to be hot and almost windless, with no sign of yesterday’s squalls. Summer was nearly upon us. I knew exactly where to head— north, off the condos of Galt Ocean Mile. The coordinates were etched in my memory, the picture of the chart clear in my mind. As we flew up the coast, I tried to come up with a plan, to figure out just what I would do once we got there. When I could make out the Gorda rolling slightly in the little waves, anchored in the same spot I’d found the Top Ten just a few days ago, I still didn’t have a clue.
XXVIII
We were about a hundred yards off Gorda when James waved his hand, palm down, motioning me to slow down. Faintly, across the water and over the sound of our own outboard, we could hear the higher-pitched roar of an engine running. I knew that sound.
“What’s that noise?”
I couldn’t see any reason not to tell him. “It’s a compressor. I use it for filling scuba tanks, hookah diving sometimes.”
He nodded. “I guess we’ll just watch from here. He’ll have to come up sooner or later.”
It was only a few minutes after sunrise, and the heat was already building. I let him sweat for a while before I spoke.
“How far do you think it is to shore from here?” I asked.
“Who cares?”
“I guess that’s the way Neal got off the Top Ten before—you know, after he killed Patty. I guess he used his scuba gear and just swam under the water and came out on the beach.”
James squinted toward the shore.
“He could do the same thing right now, you know. He doesn’t care about the Gorda. Maybe he’s already got the money and he’s swimming for shore as we speak. You may not believe it, but I don’t want to see that son of a bitch get away with that money.”
He raised one eyebrow and swung his head back and forth a couple of times, trying to gauge the distance, to decide if what I was describing was really possible.
“Okay, let’s go over there. Tie up to your boat.”
We tied the dinghy off to the midships cleat and climbed over the bulwark. The compressor was chugging on the afterdeck, making too much noise to permit speaking. The air hose led over the side toward the bow. James stayed behind me, the gun still pointed at the small of my back. I leaned over the bulwark and pointed off the starboard bow to a spot where lots of bubbles were breaking the surface.
“He’s still down there,” I shouted over the roar of the compressor. “Right there.”
James nodded, then searched the horizon to the south, probably hoping to see the Hard Bottom coming out of the harbor entrance.
“One of us could go down, check it out, see what he’s doing,” I said.
He rubbed his chin, staring at the small patch of bubbles off Gorda’s bow.
He motioned with his head. “Rope—where do you keep it?”
“This way,” I said, and passed through the companionway into the wheelhouse. In the passageway heading to the engine room door, I saw that the toolbox was still open on the floor. James was right behind me with the gun, but I reached down and grabbed a big piece of angle iron out of the tin box. I brought the iron up under the gun and tried to carry it through right under his chin.
He was caught by surprise, and as the gun flew up, the noise exploded in the wheelhouse compartment. The starboard wheelhouse window shattered, the safety glass flying in pebble-sized bits and clattering onto the aluminum decks. The gun tumbled to the deck in the wheel- house, and when I tried to duck under his arms and push past him to get at the weapon, his hands twisted me onto my belly, pressing my face to the deck. I was unable to breathe, and he had my left arm behind me, my wrist in his hands. He stepped over me, reaching for the gun. My right hand was free and my fingers could barely touch it, so I pushed it as hard as I could. It skittered across the aluminum deck and slid out the scupper and over the side of the boat. I heard the clunk as it fell into the Whaler tied alongside.
The pressure on my wrist increased, and I waited for the bone to pop.
“I think not.” He pulled me to my feet. “I have something much more interesting in mind for you later. And I want to see your eyes when I do it.”
He used a length of half-inch nylon dock line to tie my hands to the top of Gorda’s wheel. When he was sure the rope was tight enough to cut off my circulation, he said, “The Hard Bottom will be here soon. The more you struggle,” he told me, pointing to my hands, “the more damage those ropes will do.”
As soon as he left to go back to the dinghy, I reached my foot out toward the bottom drawer under the navigation station. After several tries, I got my big toe through the latch ring that locked the drawers, and pulled. It made a loud clatter when the drawer hit the deck, but the compressor noise covered everything. Each movement seemed to draw the ropes tighter about my wrists. Pain wasn’t about to stop me, though.
I pulled the drawer closer and riffled through the junk with my toes: bolts, shackles, old teak plugs, bits of line, and down in the bottom, the stainless-steel rigging knife