A Face at the Window (29 page)

Which—especially if you were engineless—was bad enough. But between here and there swirled something worse, that made the Narrows look as trivial as your average golf-course water hazard: Old Sow, the largest whirlpool in the Western Hemisphere.

Twice a day when the tide ran hardest, billions of gallons of water surged through it, over channels, ledges, and granite spurs, into abysses so cold and black that the creatures in them resembled science-fiction animals, eyeless and strange. Com bined with the massive tides, that hidden geology dropped the bottom out of the water or sent it surging, swirling it into spouts
and sinkholes that swallowed boats or tossed them heedlessly, broken and spinning. Ferries had been lost there, and schooners, not to mention the occasional unwary pleasure boat.

But these two guys wouldn't know anything about the hazards. Why should they? And that, she thought as the boat's bow jerked stubbornly from Anthony's control again, was very likely her only chance.

Because Marky being moody was the least of it. Worse, he was hard. Hard as hinges, as Bella Diamond would say, and he didn't mean Jake to live much past her usefulness to him, she felt sure. For one thing, she'd seen his face, and no matter what Campbell had told Marky to do or not do, money and witnesses were the two things a fellow like Marky never left on the table.

Maybe Campbell thought he'd been employing a hired gun when he signed Marky up for this. But he'd gotten a loose cannon and sooner or later it would fire, and to hell with how well Campbell thought he was controlling the situation.

Glancing down, she spotted the pair of life jackets lying behind her in the well of the bow. Cautiously, she snagged one of them, covering the action with Lee's blanket.

Marky paid no attention, fiddling with the engine's choke lever. Not that a two-and-a-half-horse outboard would do them any good in the Old Sow, but he didn't know that, either, did he?

To him, one engine was as useful as another. Besides, now that daylight had come up a little more, she realized that this one wasn't going to start at all, because what jumped out at her now was that there wasn't any spark plug in it.

The socket where the plug belonged was empty, the short wire with the electrical contact on it dangling. But nobody left gas in a boat's tank and then took the spark plug out of the engine; if you were careless enough to leave one, you left the other.

Ipso fatso,
as Sam would've put it. Which meant…

It meant that maybe Anthony had the spark plug. She hoisted the life jacket up under the blanket. The jacket was too big for Lee, but if Jake overlapped the front panels and ran the straps a couple of times through the armpits before tying them, she thought she could make it stay on.

Just in case…Lee barely moved, lying there in Jake's lap, and the redness of her cheeks was now way past the rosy pink of health and into the flush of fever.
Just a little longer,
she promised the child silently as the rolling, pitching vessel they were trapped on wallowed farther out into the bay.

But she still didn't know how or whether her promise would be kept. As they struck open water, the cold breeze blowing out of the north stiffened miserably, sending icy slaps of salt water off the oars’ blades each time Anthony lifted them. Blood soaked his sloppy bandage and a low grunt of pain escaped him with each stroke; she wondered how he kept on rowing at all, much less so steadily and determinedly.

Fear, she supposed. Fear of Marky, and the kind of youthful energy that Sam still had; boundless, seemingly inexhaustible. As larger waves began smacking the boat's sides, bullying the tiny craft this way and that and hurling spray up in foamy gouts, she thought again about what Anthony could be planning.

The way they were seated, Marky in the stern still furiously struggling with the outboard and Anthony a few feet from him on the rowing thwart, facing his partner, she didn't see how Anthony could do anything without Marky noticing. Meanwhile Anthony rowed on, helped by the rushing current.

Even now the retreating shore lay only a few hundred yards distant. But in this forty-degree water, she reflected, it didn't matter if you could swim at all, much less how well.

And anyway, Marky would shoot her if she tried it. Cradling Lee, she hoarded the scant warmth they shared. A spark plug,
the dead, perhaps deliberately crippled engine…what was Anthony up to?

"Cripes, Anthony," Marky's nasal voice cut into her thought, "what the freak are you doing? Get us out of this, can't you?"

Anthony didn't answer, too busy handling the boat. He had wisely decided to let the water's massive power have its way for now; the current hurtling them along was going in the direction they wanted, apparently. If not, surely Marky would already be yammering about it in that buzz-saw voice of his; Jake made a mental note to slap the taste right out of that boy's mouth, as Bella Diamond would've put it, if she ever got the chance.

But the satisfaction she took in this imaginary comeuppance was short-lived, as an unwelcome sensation invaded her stomach all of a sudden.
Seasick…

"Oh, hell," she muttered miserably, the wind snatching her voice away. The lurchingly unsettling movements of the boat had gotten to her. Queasily she leaned over the rail…but then Sam's voice sounded in her head:
Look at the horizon. Find it, and keep your eyes fixed on it.

Gasping, she straightened. Despite Anthony's efforts the boat had come around on its own in a swirling eddy: deep green, glassy-looking, and foam-topped. She cast her gaze past it.

The water tower at Pleasant Point loomed dead ahead. After that came Carryingplace Cove, Walker's Landing, and the summer-cottage-sprinkled green mound of Kendall's Head.

Just beyond them lay Gleason's Cove and above it Dog Island with its high, grassy bluffs, clusters of birch, mountain ash and raspberry cane, and a miniature red-and-white lighthouse perched at the edge of them among the masses of beach roses.

As the pale yellow dry grass of the highlands came in sight, she had a moment of hope; from them, it would be an easy walk to town, to people and help. But between her and any such
refuge still boiled the Old Sow, turning and churning with chaotically tossing whitecaps. Anthony bent forward and pulled on the oars again, the skiff juddering as its prow struck the higher wave tops.

"Anthony," Marky began hectoring again. His nagging sounded panicked, though she could tell he was still trying to hide his fright.

"I'll get us out when we need to get out," Anthony panted in reply, leaning into his work.

And then she saw it: Jody Pierce's gun, the Glock he'd shown her. Its dull black grip peeked from the back of Anthony's waistband when his shirt hiked up; he must've taken it from Pierce's body back in the driveway of the house on Jiminy Point, she thought. Now the weapon was so close, she could almost reach out and—

Marky looked up. She yanked her hand back. "So you're some kind of freakin’ navigator, now?" he inquired evilly of Anthony.

He had straightened from fiddling with the uncooperative outboard and was in an even more foul mood than before; he hadn't noticed the empty spark plug socket.

"We get down there," he went on, "this damn current, it's gonna carry us under the damn bridge, right out into the freakin’ ocean."

And for once he was at least half right. If they didn't run aground by the concrete bridge pilings and get pounded to death by the waves there, or smash to smithereens on the rocks around them, they would end up adrift in the Gulf of Maine.

Which would not be a good outcome. "Hey. Switch places with me," Marky told her suddenly, giving up on the outboard at last.

Half a mile distant, the Deer Island ferry set out on its first
run of the day, three cars and a handful of tourists with bicycles and backpacks on board. Pairs of porpoises played in the ferry's wake, their slick green backs reflecting the rising sun. But the ferry was too far off to be of help; at this distance, no one on it would even notice the skiff.

"These gas fumes are makin’ me sick." Marky had his own gun out and was waving it sharply at her. "Anthony, get those damn oars in. Now. I mean it."

He half stood, staggered unsteadily, then began making his way forward past Anthony to change places with her, heedless of the way the boat pitched dangerously under his uncentered weight. "Keep it steady, you punk," he spat as he went by.

"Jesus, Marky," Anthony protested, hastily hauling the oars in to get them out of his partner's way. But that made the little boat even less manageable; it heeled over, green water shipping the rail in a thick, sloshing surge.

Jake snatched the other life jacket from under the seat as Marky lost his balance. Pitching forward, he saved himself from toppling into the waves only by gripping the rail with one hand and Anthony's hurt shoulder with the other.

Marky's gun clattered down. Now, she thought, aiming her foot at it. But quick as a lizard his arm came up hard to smack her leg away, then swooped down to grab the weapon back.

Anthony's face went still, his hands on the shipped oars as a stray current turned the boat in a half-circle, then swung it back.
Marky might do anything,
Anthony's look said. But Marky was more interested in being seated again than in punishing her for the weapon-grabbing attempt.

"Funny," he said humorlessly, settling on the sailing thwart she'd vacated while she made her unsteady way to the transom. "You a comedian?"

"No," she replied flatly.
Stay in the center, no fast moves, go where you're going and sit,
said Sam from inside her head.

By following these instructions while holding her breath and praying hard to whatever gods took care of blithering idiots, she reached the transom seat by the outboard engine successfully and sat on it. But now that they'd switched places, Marky would spot Jody Pierce's Glock in Anthony's waistband as soon as Anthony began rowing again.

"Hey." Marky leaned forward, poked Anthony in the shoulder. "Hey, you moron, I said get us out of this freakin’ current. You hear me? And hurry up, we're goin’ in soon. Right over there."

She followed his gesture out to the rocky tip of Dog Island, where a narrow, sandy inlet lay at the foot of a set of granite cliffs, dark gray and fissured by eons of heaving and weathering. The Knife Edge, it was called by kids who went trespassing there, close to town but out of sight of any houses, to party and dare each other to venture onto the promontory soaring into thin air.

Sam had done it once, reporting unfazed afterward that at its narrowest, the Knife Edge was about two feet across, and very unstable. And when she got done reading the riot act to him about that, he'd told her further that the view from the Knife Edge was amazing, all water and sky. Like you could float right up into it, he'd said, highly pleased with himself and, as ever, utterly fearless.

And of course Campbell would pick a dramatic spot.…
Because maybe it was about money for the two yo-yos in the boat with her, she thought, but for Campbell this was about
him.
His loss, his pain…even the ruby earring he still wore like some twisted red badge of devotion.

The question was, what
else
was it about, she wondered as the shore—and whatever Campbell planned to have happen there—drew nearer. "Anthony," she ventured softly. "Where's Helen? The other girl you guys took, where is she?"

If she didn't find out soon, she might never know. And she owed it to Jody Pierce to try to find out. Not that it was likely she'd be able to do much about it, but…

Anthony looked up. She'd been wrong about him, she realized; seen close up, it was clear he wasn't in very good shape at all. His eyes had the dull, beaten glaze of a wounded animal, his face slack and a cut on his left cheek gaping raggedly. "Why should I tell you?" he asked.

Not "What girl?" or even simply "I don't know," either of which answers would have been much better, more self-protective for him. So either he was just too hurt and tired to be able to think straight or he didn't care anymore.

And neither of those things boded well for her and Lee, she thought with an inward shiver. But his next remark surprised her so much, she nearly fell out of the boat herself.

"Guy's nuts about you."

"Who, Marky?"

"Nah. Other guy. One we're going to see."

Behind Anthony, Marky leaned over the rail and lost whatever he'd eaten recently. So she wasn't the only one prey to what Sam called the green monster; good, it would keep Marky busy, while Sam's antiseasickness tip had cleared her own nausea completely.

Like old-house repair, she thought with the little part of her mind that wasn't scared absolutely witless. Just learn the tricks and tips of the trade, and use them.…

"What're you talking about?" she demanded. "How could you possibly know that about him?"

Anthony glanced over his shoulder to check on his progress; they were near enough to shore now that the red blobs of the rose hips showed against the deep green foliage tumbling down the edge of the cliffs.

"Carries your picture," Anthony said, looking back at the approaching beach, too.

Now she could see the steel cable that ran from the shore to the survey marker, a squat concrete pyramid sunk in a concrete foundation blasted into an offshore boulder. If she could reach it, she could use it to…

Carefully, Jake eased her arms into the straps of the second life jacket. "But… I don't understand. You've met him? He showed you some picture of me that he had?"

Still following Anthony's gaze toward land, she recalled the photograph these two were supposed to have shown Tom Godley, in Wadsworth's Hardware Store. But seeing the cliffs massed against the shore triggered another memory, too: that near the beach was a set of caves.

Each opened from the rear of the previous one, their ancient depths hollowed out by hammering water over millions of years. From out here you couldn't see them, or from the top of the cliffs, either. But they were there. And they might make a good hiding place, should that turn out to be necessary…