"Wait here," Keyes said. Quickly he went into the woods.
"Did you know about this?" Wiley asked Kara Lynn.
"What're you so upset about?" she said. "It'll make a better story, right?"
Mulling options, Wiley nibbled his lower lip.
Keyes returned, leading Jenna by the hand. At the sight of her, Wiley's face drained.
"Oh boy," he said in a shrunken voice.
"I'm sorry, Skip," Jenna said. She acted embarrassed, mortified, like a teenager who'd just wrecked her father's brand-new car.
"She's a little shy," Keyes explained. "She didn't want you to know she was here."
"I ruined everything," Jenna said. She gasped when she saw Wiley's mangled knee but made no move to dress the wound. Florence Nightingale Jenna was not.
Wiley looked at his watch. It said 6:07. Dawn came at 6:27 sharp.
"Skip's through talking," Keyes said to Jenna. "He's said everything he could possibly say. Now all four of us are going to get aboard the boat and get the hell off this island before it blows up."
Wiley kneaded the calf of his right leg. "I can't believe you actually shot me," he said.
"I thought it might shut you up."
"Just what the hell were you aiming for?"
"What's the difference?" Keyes said.
Kara Lynn had climbed the old homestead plot. The elevation was scarcely ten feet, but it was high enough to afford a view of the surrounding waters, now calm. A distant wisp of brown diesel smoke attracted her attention.
"I think I see the barge," she said.
Keyes said, "What's it going to be, Skip?"
Wiley gazed at Jenna; Keyes figured it was about time for a big sloppy hug. They both looked ten years older than before, yet still not quite like a couple.
"There's a mooring at the north end, on the lee side, opposite the way you came," Wiley said tiredly. "That's where the Mako's anchored up. You'd best get going."
"We're allgoing," Keyes said.
"Not me," Wiley said. "You can't make me, podner." He was right. The gun didn't count for anything now.
"Hey, there's an eagle," Jenna said.
The bird was airborne, elegantly soaring toward the pines. It carried a silvery fish in its talons.
"Just look at that," Wiley marveled, his eyes brightening beneath the Seminole bandanna. He took off his baseball cap in salute.
"It's a gorgeous bird," Kara Lynn agreed, tugging on Brian's arm. Time to go, she was saying, step on it.
"Skip, come with us," Keyes urged.
"Or what? You gonna shoot me again?"
"Of course not."
Wiley said, "Forget about me, pal. I'm beginning to like it here." He held out his arms and Jenna went to him. Wiley kissed her on the forehead. He touched her hair and said, "I don't suppose you want to keep a one-legged lunatic company?"
Jenna's eyes, as usual, gave the answer. Keyes saw it and looked away. He'd seen it before.
"Aw, I don't blame you," Wiley said to her, "the bugs out here are just awful." He patted her on the butt and let go.
To Keyes he whispered, "Help her pick out a new coffee table, okay?"
"Skip, please—"
"No! Go now, and hurry. These radio-controlled devices are extremely precise."
Keyes led the two women across the clearing. Jenna trudged ahead woodenly, but Keyes and Kara Lynn paused at the crest of the homesteader's hill. They looked back and saw Wiley in the clearing, leaning against the rusty flagpole. His arms were folded, and on his face was a broad and euphoric and incomprehensible grin.
"Hey, Brian," he shouted, "I didn't finish my story."
Keyes almost laughed. "Not now, you asshole!" The guy was unbelievable.
"But I never told you—they called."
"Who?"
"The Davenports. They phoned the day your piece ran, but you were already gone."
Keyes groaned—the bastard always wanted the last word.
Anxiously he shouted back, "What did they want?"
"They wanted to say thanks," Wiley hollered.
"I couldn't believe it! They actually wanted to say thanks for butting out."
Keyes waved one last time at his old friend.
Lost forever, his odyssey now measured in minutes, Skip Wiley swung a ropy brown arm in reply. He was still waving his cap when Brian Keyes, Jenna, and Kara Lynn Shivers disappeared into the buttonwood.
They found the trail and, ten minutes later, the mooring where the outboard was anchored. The tide was up so they had to wade, skating their feet across the mud and turtle grass. Jenna lost her footing and slipped down, without a word, into the shallows. Keyes grabbed her under one arm, Kara Lynn got the other. Together they hoisted her into the boat.
The engine was stone cold.
With trembling fingers Keyes turned the key again and again. The motor whined and coughed but wouldn't start.
"You flooded it," Kara Lynn said. "Let it sit for thirty seconds."
Keyes looked at her curiously but did what he was told. The next time he turned the key, the Evinrude roared to life.
"Dad's got a ski boat," Kara Lynn explained. "Happens all the time."
Keyes jammed down the throttle and the Mako chewed its way off the flat, churning marl and grass, planing slowly. Finally it found deeper water, flattened out and gained speed. Already the rim of purple winter sky was turning yellow gold.
"How much time?" Jenna asked numbly.
"Three, four minutes," Keyes guessed.
They had to circle Osprey Island to reach the marked channel that would take them to safety.
''Brian!" Jenna blurted, pointing.
Keyes jerked back on the stick until the engine quit. The boat coasted in glassy silence, a quarter-mile off the islet. They all stared toward the stand of high pines.
"Oh no," Kara Lynn said.
Keyes was incredulous.
Jenna said, "Boy, he never gives up."
Skip Wiley was in the trees.
He was dragging himself up the tallest pine, branch by branch, the painstaking, web-crawling gait of a spider. How with a smashed leg Wiley had climbed so high was astonishing. It was not a feat of gymnastics so much as a show of reckless nerve. He hung in the tree like a broken scarecrow; ragged, elongated, his limbs bent at odd angles. From a distance his skull shone three-toned—the russet beard; the jutting tanned face; the alabaster pate. In one hand was Tommy Tigertail's red bandanna—Wiley was waving it back and forth and shrieking at the top of his considerable lungs; plangent gibberish.
"Brian, he wants us to come get him!"
"No," Keyes said, "that's not it."
It was sadder than that.
The object of Wiley's expedition was perched at the top of the forty-foot pine. With its keen and faultless eyes it peered down at this demented, blood-crusted creature and wondered what in the world to do. As Skip Wiley advanced, he brayed, flailed his bright kerchief, shattered branches—but the great predator merely blinked and clung to its precious fish.
"He's trying to save the eagle," Brian Keyes said. "He's trying to make the eagle fly."
"God, he is," said Kara Lynn.
"Fly," Jenna murmured excitedly. "Fly away, bird!"
"Oh please," Kara Lynn said.
That is how they left him—Skip Wiley ascending, insectine, possessed of an unknowable will and strength; the eagle studying him warily, shuddering its brown-gold wings, weighing a decision.
Brian Keyes turned the ignition and the boat shot forward in a widening arc. The Mako was very fast, and Osprey Island receded quickly in the slick curling seam of the speedboat's wake. Within minutes they were far away, safe, but none of them dared to look back.
Off the bow, at the horizon, the sun seeped into a violet sky.
Somewhere out on Biscayne Bay, a flat red barge emitted three long whoops of warning, the most dolorous sound that Brian Keyes had ever heard. He clung to the wheel and waited. "Fly!" he whispered. "Please fly away."