Bloody Point (28 page)

Jake stared at the empty slip, his pulse pounding in his
ears, his jaw as tight as piano wire. He would call Campbell. He would call
Foster. He’d call the Bureau Director if he had to.

The sun burst through a small break in the cloudbank forming
in the west. It’s light glinted off something on the dock, something between
two boards, and it caught Jake’s eye. He moved onto the finger pier. He bent
down. What was it? A chain of some kind? Taking his pen out of his pocket, he
carefully extracted it. And as Cassie’s gold cross slid up from between the
boards a jolt of fear ran through him.

“Sir?” Scrub said, snapping Jake back to reality. “I just
remembered something. When I was loading them boxes, I saw a chart on the nav
center. It was of Bloody Point Bar Light, sir, off the south end of Kent Island
and there was a mark on it, like it was a place Mr. Maxwell was planning to
go.”

“How long does it take to get there, Scrub, by boat?”

“By sailboat, a couple of hours. They only go 5 knots or so.”

“How about by powerboat?”

“You can do twenty in them, sir. Maybe twenty-five. So in
half an hour, you’d be there. Maybe longer, though, with this front comin’
through.” Scrub shuffled his foot. “It’s the deepest part of the Bay, sir.
Bloody Hole.”

The Pit.

The wind was starting to come up. It ruffled Jake’s hair. He
squinted into the distance. A few boats were out, most seem headed back to
port.

“Scrub, I need a boat.”

“A boat, sir?”

“A fast boat. I think Cassie’s in a lot of trouble. Can you
get me a good boat?”

Scrub looked around. The A, B, and C-Docks were
three-quarters full. Half were sailboats, but of the other half … “Yes, Mr.
Jake. I can get you a boat. But I’ll have to hotwire one.”

“Do it.” Jake patted him on the shoulder. “Do it now. Be
quick. Gas it up. I need it right away.” The two men began running back toward
Trudy. “Oh, and I’ll need a map or directions or something, and whatever else …
a life jacket.”

“I’ll set you up, Mr. Jake! Meet me in ten minutes, there,”
he said, pointing, “at the fuel dock.”

† † †

Craig Campbell pulled up into the driveway of a small, split
foyer home in Deale. The front yard, fenced with chain link, was filled with
kids’ toys. A nondescript brown dog barked at him as he strode up the walk. He
rang the bell, and Deborah Hawkins answered.

She was about thirty-five, short, heavy-set and frightened,
from the look on her face. She nervously brushed her hair back from her face,
and, after he showed her his creds, invited Craig into the home. He followed
her upstairs to a kitchen, which still smelled like the pizza she’d cooked for
dinner.

“Tell me, Mrs. Hawkins, what’s going on with your husband?”

She began to tell him what she knew and Craig took notes.
Seth was an engineer for a defense contractor. He dealt with highly secure
technology. After their boat had burned, he’d become brooding and suspicious,
angry and depressed. “He’d forgotten to renew the insurance,” she said, “and so
that put us in a real hole financially.

“And then tonight,” she continued, “he got a call and turned
white as a ghost. He told me he had to go somewhere, and that he’d be back very
late and not to wait up. He refused to tell me where he was going, Agent
Campbell, but I can tell, something’s up. For some reason, my husband is very
frightened.”

“Did the number show up on your Caller ID?”

“No … he’s been getting these strange calls on his cell
phone.”

“What’s that number?” Craig jotted down the number she gave
him. “Where was he when he got this last call?” he asked.

“Why, in the kitchen … right there, in fact. By the counter.”

Craig walked over to it. Just as he’d hoped, a notepad was on
the counter. Without picking it up, he bent down to look at it at an angle.
There was an imprint on it, left over from the top sheet of paper. He could just
barely discern a series of numbers. No, it was a latitude and longitude.

“Mrs. Hawkins, does your husband have access to a boat?”

“I … I really don’t know. He might. He has a lot of friends
who have boats.”

Craig nodded. “Tell you what. Would you start calling as many
of his friends as you can? Ask them if your husband asked to borrow a boat.
Will you do that?”

She would. While she used the house phone, Craig stepped
outside. He had no cell phone coverage inside. Outside, it was marginal. He
called the office and got the number of the Coast Guard in Baltimore. When the
duty officer answered, Craig identified himself and read the coordinates he’d
written down.

“That’s Bloody Point Bar Light, sir,” the officer responded a
moment later, “on the east side of the Bay, off the south end of Kent Island.”

A rumble of thunder sounded in the west. The cold front
moving in was preceded by a huge cloudbank–a dark, ugly mass of lightning-filled
clouds that was now within 20 miles or so. Craig could see it, standing on Mrs.
Hawkins’s deck, his phone pressed to his ear. “Do you have the ability to put a
boat out there?”

“With this weather coming, sir?”

“If it were important?”

“Yes, sir, we can go out regardless, sir.”

“Where would the boat have to come from?”

“Baltimore, sir.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“Yes, sir. Good evening, sir.”

† † †

 “Trudy, listen to me,” Jake exclaimed. He could see the
alarm on her face.

“Is she with him?”

“That’s a strong possibility. Listen. Call Campbell on his
cell phone. Don’t quit until you get him. Call his office, his cell, his pager,
his home … I don’t care, just get him. You got some paper?”

Trudy dug in her purse and found a small notebook. She wrote
down numbers as Jake recited every one he could remember, then he gave her the
names of two other agents she could call.

“Last resort,” he said, “if none of these work, call 9-1-1.
Get Detective Cunningham. Tell him what happened. I’m taking a boat. I’m headed
south. Send somebody to Bloody Point after me. Tell them Maxwell should be
considered armed and dangerous. I think Cassie is being held against her will.”

“Oh, Jake!”

He grabbed her arms. “Stay strong. Make those calls. Once you
get somebody here, and they know what’s going on, go to your brother’s and
wait.”

“Be careful! Please, be careful!”

Jake kissed her on the cheek. “Pray, Trudy! Pray.”

† † †

She was alive, or at least she thought she was. She was
floating in a sea of blackness. To her right, and behind, was a searing,
white-hot pain. She wanted to get away from it.

She could feel movement, a lurching, nauseating,
side-to-side motion but she could not make her hands or feet or head move. She
wanted to speak to someone, to tell them where she was, but she could not find
her voice. And so she concentrated on fighting the pain and fighting the
nausea.

† † †

 “This is the throttle,” Scrub explained to Jake. “Push up to
go fast, and back to reverse. In the middle is neutral. That’s all there is to
it. Watch out for crab pots. Try to go into the waves. Slow down if you start
slapping the water. Look here, at this GPS, sir. I’ve entered some waypoints.
Follow the arrow. It’ll take you out into the Bay, then south to Bloody Point.
You understand, sir?”

“Follow the arrow. Got it!”

Scrub looked up at the sky. “There’s a storm coming, Mr.
Jake. You sure you want to go out?”

“I have to,” Jake responded. “Okay, now what am I looking
for? Describe Maxwell’s boat.”

Scrub did just that. “Mr. Jake, you want me to go with you?”

Jake hesitated, then rejected the idea. He’d be endangering
Scrub, and he wasn’t willing to do that, not if Scrub was just a pawn in this
whole thing. And if he wasn’t just a pawn, that was all the more reason not to
have him along. “No, man, but thanks. You stay here.”

“It’s a Boston Whaler, sir. Very sturdy, but fast. She’ll
take the waves that come up.” Scrub stepped off the boat. “You wear that
lifejacket, sir! You don’t want to be out on this Bay with no lifejacket.”

“I will!” Jake threw him the dock lines. Carefully, he eased
the throttle forward and began to make his way out of the marina between the
rock jetties of the entrance. It was awkward, reaching over with his left hand,
so he tried using his right wrist. Gaining confidence, he increased speed. The
engine roared, and the boat tore through the waves. The wind blew in his face.
He experimented with the wheel, turning the boat right and left to see how much
it moved. Then he headed for the open Chesapeake, his jaw set, his mind
focused.

Richard Maxwell would not get away.

†

Bloody Point

Chapter 28

A
NYONE who knew the Bay
knew it could get very rough very fast when a front was coming through. Jake
didn’t know anything about the Chesapeake, but he was about to get a crash
course. The boat pitched and rolled as the waves built to heights of three and
four feet. Jake gripped the wheel, too focused to be nauseous. He stared into
the distance grimly.

The sky was black now. A west wind whipped the waves, forming
whitecaps that stretched into the distance. Waves broke against the port hull
and water crashed onto the deck and sluiced back to the cockpit, drenching
Jake. He licked his lips, tasting the saltiness, and shivered in the cold.

Maxwell had to be up ahead. Jake strained his eyes, looking
for twin hulls, an aqua Bimini and sail cover, a boat about forty-feet long, and
the only other idiot desperate enough to be out in this weather.

A loud rumble of thunder pierced the darkness. Jake clenched
his jaw. The deck, rising and dropping beneath his feet, was unnerving. Dark
clouds, dark sky, and the dark waters of the Bay merged into a seamless
panorama accented only by the whitecaps and periodic flashes of lightning. To his
left were the lights of shore, barely visible. He kept parallel to them and
hoped he’d gone far enough into the Bay to miss protruding headlands.

Jake glanced at his watch. It was 8:30 p.m. He could see a
lighthouse up ahead and to his left. According to Scrub, that would be Thomas
Point Light, just outside of Annapolis. Stay away from it, Scrub had warned.
There were rocks around it.

Cheating the boat a bit to the right, Jake swung in a long
arch, setting a southerly course. Looking ahead into the growing darkness,
something didn’t look quite right. When the boat lifted on a crest of a wave,
Jake could make out something … something …

With a jolt, he realized it was a huge tanker, coming out of
the darkness and headed straight for him. The ship’s horn sounded, and
adrenaline coursed through his body as he pulled hard right on the wheel. He
hoped he’d done it soon enough.

• • •

 “We can’t get the helo up, Craig. The wind is too high,”
Danny Stewart said.

Craig pressed the phone to his ear. If he moved his head the
wrong way, his cell phone dropped out. “Okay, then, listen. I need the Coast
Guard to come down the Bay, and pick me up in Annapolis.”

“In this weather?”

“It’s important.” Campbell’s pager went off as he spoke. He
pulled it off his belt and glanced down at it. The number cited was unknown to
him, but it had a suffix: 911–the signal for an emergency.

An arrow of adrenaline streaked up his back. “Gotta go,
Danny. Call you back in a minute.” After terminating that call, Craig dialed
the number on his pager. And as he listened to Aunt Trudy’s story, chills raced
up and down his spine. He called Danny back. “You gotta get the Coast Guard for
me. Ask them to help us. Beg them. Tell them we’ve got two agents in trouble
out there. Ask them if they’d pick me up at City Dock in Annapolis.”

“Got it, Craig. I’m on it.”

† † †

The pain was unbearable. She moved her head far to the
left to ease the pressure on her skull. Where was she? Why did her head hurt so
much?

She could not see, nor could she open her mouth. Silently,
she fought to understand, to force herself back to reality.

She was lying on her back, her arms stretched over her
head. Cassie reached with her hands, and realized she was locked in handcuffs
secured around a metal post. Panic raced through her. Why?

Why couldn’t she see? Duct tape. Duct tape on her eyes and
her mouth. She could feel it when she turned her head and rubbed against the
cover of the bed she was on. And then she remembered standing on the pier, and
Rick Maxwell, and the panicky feeling of him choking her.

An intense fear swelled in Cassie and she became nauseous.
She knew if she threw up, she would choke to death, so she forced the panic
back down, forced herself to be still, forced herself to think.

Her head hurt so much. Oh, God …

Footsteps. There were footsteps coming. Cassie lay perfectly
still. She smelled Polo, and grew nauseous again. And then she felt a hand on
her leg, stroking it, running up and down her calf.

“Don’t die yet, sweetheart,” Rick said. “I wouldn’t want you
to miss out on the fun.”

And Cassie McKenna passed out.

† † †

The engine screamed in Jake’s ears as the Boston Whaler
fought the waves, plunging forward, getting knocked sideways, rising and dropping
with the tempest. He steered right, just missing the tanker, and headed south
again.

Feeling the fatigue now of the constant battle, Jake forced
himself to go on. What if they hadn’t gone south? What if they’d put in at a
marina? What if he’d missed them in the storm? What if?

There were too many options. Jake knew only one thing: he had
to try to find Richard Maxwell, and his best guess was that he was headed south
in the Bay, toward Bloody Point Bar Light. Beyond that, all he could do was
pray.

The bow of the boat rose and dropped again and a wave slammed
into the hull. The boat shuddered, and tension rolled through Jake. “I hate
boats!” he yelled into the wind. Straining to look ahead, it seemed that the
darkness was increasing.

And then, in a flash of lightning, Jake saw something forward
and to the right. It was a sail, dipping and bowing on the waves, nodding and
cresting with the storm. He nudged his engine higher. If it was the catamaran,
he would catch up quickly.

The rain began coming down in sheets. Within seconds, he was
soaked. Shivering, he wiped the rain from his eyes. He had to find Maxwell. He
had to find Cassie. He could not quit.

• • •

Danny Stewart’s voice was steady. “Craig, the Coast Guard is
sending a vessel for you. They’ll be at City Dock within the hour, if you
really want to go out. They’re sending another one straight down to the
waypoint you gave them.”

“Great!” Campbell said. His blue light was flashing on his dashboard.
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

• • •

Again she reached consciousness, her pain and fear dragging
her back to a reality she dared not ignore. Listening carefully, she guessed
she was alone.

She knew now she was on Rick’s catamaran, and from the feel
of it, the Bay was in a tumult. She could hear thunder and the sound of the
waves slapping the boat. She felt the tugging and pulling, the rocking and
lurching, of the vessel as it struggled. Rick would have his hands full for a
while.

She assessed her circumstances. Her feet were free, that was
good. Cassie groped to feel what she could with her hands. In her mind, she
could see the sliding cabinet above the bed she’d noted when she first saw the
boat. The metal rod her cuffs were around? What was it? A support post?

Cassie traced the rod with her fingers. It seemed to be
wedged into the wood. How far into the teak did it go? Could she pull it loose
by sawing around it with the chain of her cuffs? Was it ornamental rather than
structural?

Listening carefully, and hearing no one in the cabin with
her, she began. She forced the chain low, against the wood near the bottom of
the metal post, and she started to saw back and forth, pulling on it as hard as
she could, jerking at it, then sawing again. Left, right, left, right. Eat
through the wood. Loosen the post. C’mon. The pain of moving was a fire in her
brain, but the rasping noise was the sound of hope.

• • •

It was a boat. Jake could clearly see that it was a boat with
a mast. A sail was flapping in the wind. The sail ought to be in, that much he
knew. He’d heard Cassie talking about hauling in the main and the jib quickly
when the storms hit. So the sailboat was not being handled well. Jake tossed
his head to fling water out of his eyes. A flash of lightning confirmed what
he’d hoped. The boat was a catamaran.

His heart pounding, Jake pushed the throttle forward. In this
wind, the cat might not even hear him approach. He had to hope for that.

It was half a mile ahead now, and he was gaining fast. With
every dip of the Whaler, he could see the progress. A huge wave crashed into to
the port side of the bow, lifting the boat, then pressing it down. Jake’s
stomach dropped, but he hung on to the wheel, and focused on the cat.

As he got closer, during flashes of lightning he could see
someone in the cockpit. Jake hooked his right arm in the wheel and grabbed the
binoculars with his left hand. Fighting the instability he trained them on the
cat. But the rain and the lurching and the darkness made them useless. Then in
a flash of lightning, he saw the cockpit was empty. The man must have gone
below.

It was his chance. Jake gunned the engine. He raced forward
and while he did, he formulated a plan. He was closing on the boat, one hundred
yards, fifty, twenty-five. He throttled back to reduce the noise. Needing
access to his gun more than anything, Jake ditched his life jacket. When he got
near the back of the cat, he cut his throttle to idle, grabbed onto the
catamaran, shoved the Whaler off with his foot, and swung on board.

• • •

She could hear him in the head and she lay perfectly still.
She’d made progress on the teak; she could feel it with her fingers. She hoped
she had arranged her hands to cover the damage.

Rick was humming to himself, an odd thing. She heard him
pumping the head to flush it, and then she heard the door open and shut. Cassie
lay still, breathing deeply as if she were unconscious. She heard his footsteps
as he hesitated at her door, and then went back topside. Clenching her jaw, she
began working again to free the post.

• • •

Jake crouched in the cockpit, waiting, gun drawn, like a cat
waiting to pounce. Maxwell had to appear soon. His patience paid off. He heard
a noise, then Maxwell emerged from the salon.

“FBI, put your hands up!” Jake yelled, standing suddenly, his
pistol in his hand.

“You son of a …” Maxwell cursed.

“Put ‘em up! Now!”

Maxwell complied, his mouth curled into a snarl, his eyes
glittering with hate. “How dare you … ” he began.

“Shut up! Now put your hands on your head and turn around
slowly.”

• • •

She worked quickly despite the pain and the fear. Then she
heard a voice, not Maxwell’s voice, but another. It sounded like Jake, and she
wondered if she were hallucinating.

Her head hurt so much. Right, left, right, left. She sawed
and sawed and then, finally, she felt it. The metal piece was, as she’d
guessed, decorative. It was coming loose as she worked on the wood.

She redoubled her efforts. She heard Rick’s voice, angry now,
and another voice captured and carried off in the wind. She worked and worked.
Her arms ached, her shoulders burned, and then she felt the post give way, and
her hands, still in the handcuffs, were free of the constraints.

She was free. Free! Cassie sat up. Her head spun. She choked
down the nausea.

With her handcuffed hands she felt for the edge of the duct
tape on her mouth. She found it, and pulled it off slowly, tears forming in her
eyes. When it was off, she leaned over and threw up, over and over, the nausea
released at last.

Then she began to work on the tape on her eyes. Hot tears
stung her eyes as she pulled it off, taking much of her eyebrows with it. She
rubbed her eyes and looked around. She was in Rick’s catamaran’s master berth.
But she was free.

• • •

Slowly, Maxwell put his hands on his head. The catamaran
rocked left and right, shuddering with the slap of each large wave. Jake’s mind
was racing. How could he cuff Maxwell and still keep a gun on him with one
hand?

Suddenly, a wave hit hard, and Jake stepped sideways, losing
his balance momentarily and taking his eyes off Maxwell.

Maxwell’s hand flashed down and grabbed a boat hook. Turning,
he lashed out at Jake, hitting his gun hand. The gun clattered to the deck.
Jake lunged at Maxwell, who swung the boat hook again. It hit Jake in the face,
opening a cut above his eye. He fell to the floor of the cockpit.

Maxwell bent over to pick up Jake’s gun. Suddenly there was
motion behind him. Cassie emerged from below decks, threw her handcuff chain
around his neck, and pulled hard.

“Ughhhh,” Maxwell choked. He put his hands to his throat. His
eyes widened.

Jake pulled at his soaked pants legs to retrieve his back-up
weapon, a Chief Special, a small, .38 caliber revolver. Maxwell put both hands
on Cassie’s and leaned forward suddenly, pulling her over his head and throwing
her to the deck. Maxwell ran below decks, and Jake fired as he did. Cassie lay
stunned and still.

Jake wiped the blood off his face with his sleeve. The wind
was howling in the mast, and the rain pelted him. He picked up his Glock, put
the Chief in his pack, and cautiously moved into the salon, gun drawn. There
were two sets of steps, one to the left pod and one to the right. Maxwell had
disappeared to the right. Jake hoped the two weren’t connected some other way.

Crouching low next to the galley stove, Jake advanced slowly.
He heard a noise, then the racking of a shotgun. He fired toward the sound and
dove for cover back into the cockpit, just as a loud roar erupted. A slug from
Maxwell’s shotgun shattered the glass in the salon ports.

Jake stuck his arm around the corner and fired back,
pop-pop-pop, enough to keep Maxwell below decks. The wind whistled through the
broken glass in the salon. Spray from the crashing waves was drenching the
cushions. Then Jake heard the racking sound again and he fired,
pop-pop-pop-pop! Maxwell’s shotgun discharged. Shards of glass and pieces of
fiberglass flew all around the salon. Once again, Jake fired, so focused that
he never heard the roar of the gun, or felt it jumping in his hand.