Close Reach (12 page)

“Kelly? How are you?”

She looked back at David, and he nodded to her.

“Um … I’m okay. Can you hear me clearly?”

“Yeah, it’s fine. Where are you?”

“Dean and I are sailing. We’re in the South Pacific now. Midway from Tonga to Auckland.”

“You’re still out there? When you left, I thought: they’ll be back in six months. Or she
will, with everything but the hyphen and the Reid. But I’m a cynic. I’m really glad it’s working. It
is
working, right?”

“It is.”

“So what’s going on?”

“I called you first because I trust you. You know, from before,” she said. She looked up at Dean, but his head was still down. “We’re moving to New Zealand. We’ve been before, and we really like it. We want to buy a place. A home, some land. So we need to sell the Mystic house. I was wondering if, I don’t know how it works—could I maybe give you a power of attorney to sell it? So I—so I don’t have to come back and be there for the closing in person?”

“Sure,” Annie said without any hesitation. “You could give me a power of attorney to do anything. But I’d need an original signed copy, and it’d have to be notarized. And there’s the rub, because you’re in the middle of the ocean.”

Kelly closed her eyes again and tried to picture the charts between Tonga and New Zealand. She knew what Annie was going to say next and needed a plausible-sounding reason why it wouldn’t work. She could hear the rope creaking as Dean swung, the rustle as David ran his thumb back and forth over the matchbook. Lena’s arm was under the blanket, tight around her waist.

“Why don’t you just wait till you get to Auckland?” Annie said. “I could e-mail you a draft of the power of attorney. You print it and find a notary. Then you FedEx it to me, and we’re good to go. I could hire a realtor, list the house, whatever.”

She looked up at David. He shook his head and pulled a match from the book.

“That won’t work,” Kelly said.

“No?”

“See, because we’re stopping at the Minerva Reefs. It’s about a hundred miles ahead of us, and we’ll be there tomorrow morning. We’ll stay at least three weeks, diving. Then it’ll be another week to Auckland. More if we have to wait out weather or route around it. We’d like to get it started before we get to New Zealand, maybe even have it under contract or closed.”

“Minerva Reefs? I’ve never heard of it. They don’t have notaries there? No FedEx or anything?”

Kelly shook her head, really feeling the role now.

“There’s not even any land. Just a circular reef. A shallow place where you can anchor inside, and the reef breaks up the big ocean waves so it’s flat. Calm. It’s thousands of miles from anywhere.”

“Weird place to spend three weeks, you ask me.”

“Yeah, but can’t I sign electronically? We have e-mail and everything on the boat. I could print it and sign it, then scan it and e-mail it back. Maybe you could get Sharon to notarize
it there?”

“That won’t work. You’d have to be here to sign the notary book. I’d never ask Sharon to do that. It’d be fraud.”

“Isn’t there any way we can do this? I mean, Jesus, it’s the twenty-first century.”

“Not in Connecticut, it isn’t. We still need ink on paper, a raised seal. But hang on and I’ll check something. I don’t know what this call is costing you—can you hold a minute?”

It was costing someone a lot, Kelly was sure. But it wasn’t her phone and probably wasn’t David’s either. She wondered what kinds of records the satellite provider kept, how soon someone might notice the missing phone, the call to a Connecticut law office. Would the FBI or Interpol or somebody call Annie Kersch? Would it make any difference even if David hadn’t disabled the GPS tracking in the phone’s signal?

“Sure. Take your time,” she said.

“Okay.”

She heard Annie’s fingers tapping on a keyboard. The connection faded for a moment. There was no static—the digital phone removed any fuzz from the signal—but the volume dropped out briefly. Then it was back. Annie was typing again. They waited another minute. Kelly closed her eyes again, pretending she was at the navigation table aboard
Freefall,
relaxing in the leather armchair with her feet on the slanted teak tabletop. Dean was topside, steering
Freefall
to the Minerva Reefs. The warm wind was blowing an easy fifteen knots off the starboard quarter, and they were sailing fast and level with all their canvas out.

“Okay,” Annie said. “You still there?”

“Here.”

“All right. Connecticut may still be in the last century, but Virginia jumped ahead. They’ve got an e-notary statute now. So a notary there can verify your ID in a videoconference, and you can sign from anywhere and e-mail it.”

“Okay.”

“A friend from law school lives in Alexandria. I could give her a call. Tomorrow’s a Saturday, but we could set it up maybe on Monday or Tuesday. Can you videoconference on your boat? Like Skype?”

Kelly looked at David and nodded.

She could do a videoconference on
Freefall.
It’d be easy. Dean did it all the time. He’d retired from Sikorsky but consulted on technical matters at least twice a month. David picked up his ballpoint pen and scribbled something on one of the sheets of notebook paper. He held it to the cage for her to see.

Monday.

“Monday’s good,” Kelly said. “You still got my e-mail address?”

“Yeah.”

David was writing on the notepaper again, but she couldn’t see what.

“Okay, so send me the power of attorney and set it up with your friend in Virginia. Any time Monday is fine.”

“If my friend can’t do it for some reason, I’ll find someone else. Good?”

“Fine.”

“I’ll also need to e-mail you a retention agreement. So we’ll need to figure out a fee structure for this.”

“Oh. Yeah, okay.”

David held up the paper again. He’d thought this far already.

“How about this?” Annie said. “You could—”

David shook the paper and tapped the matchbook against it.

“I got an idea,” Kelly said quickly, cutting Annie off. She looked at David’s writing again. “We’ll do it like a commission. You get half a percent of the sales price if it sells for ten million or less. A full percent if it sells for anywhere between ten and fifteen. And 2 percent for anything over fifteen.”

“Yeah,” Annie said, and paused.

Kelly knew she was doing the math in her head, realizing that if she could sell the Pratihari-Reid estate for over $15 million, she’d be home free for the rest of the next year.

“That’s … generous. I’ll draft the retention and see you by video on Monday.”

“Okay.”

“Anything else you need to talk about?”

David shook his head.

“That’s it.”

“You sure you’re doing okay? I mean, this is a little—”

“I’m fine,” Kelly said. “See you on Monday.”

“Thanks, Kelly. And thanks for thinking of me first.”

David ended the connection before Kelly could answer.

She moved away from the edge of the cage to put more distance between herself and David.

“Please let Dean down. I did what you asked.”

“Sure, okay.” He shrugged and stood up. “You did good. Really good. So I’ll let him down. But you know what I think your lawyer is doing right now?”

“Drafting a power of attorney and a retention letter. You heard her. She wants the commission.”

“Yeah, maybe. But first she’s going to check out Minerva Reefs or whatever you called it. See if it’s really there. Because if it’s not, like you just made it up, or if it’s not anywhere between Tonga and New Zealand, she’ll know something’s wrong.”

“Go check it out,” Kelly said. “You’ve got Google.”

David walked to the center post and took hold of the rope. The other man had tied a quick-release knot. David jerked down on the free end of the rope, and the knot popped open; he let go, and Dean fell feetfirst into the pot of diesel. Kelly heard the broken bones in his shins crunch together, and he cried out as he fell face forward into the rocky floor. He lay still a moment, then struggled to roll over. The diesel spread in a pink pool and then sank into the ground. Dean’s arms were still above his head, his shoulders dislocated and useless.

He was like a man who’d been broken on a rack. He might live. He might even walk and use his arms again if Kelly could get to him, if she could take him aboard
Freefall,
where there was medical equipment.

But without that he wouldn’t last long. They all knew it.

“I’ll check it out,” David said. “It’s not there, you know the deal.”

This time they were alone in the building for hours without any of the men coming. Kelly and Lena laid one of the blankets on the bottom of their cage to soften the rocks and steel wires, and they put the other blanket over themselves and held each other while leaning against the side of the trap. Dean had rolled as far as his side in a process that had taken almost an hour. During that struggle he’d been breathing hard and raggedly but had not spoken at all. When he finally reached his side, he rested and was perfectly still.

He wasn’t facing the trap. For a long time, Kelly couldn’t tell if he was breathing. His exposure suit was padded with flotation foam and insulation, and so she couldn’t see the rise and fall of his chest.

Outside, the men were arguing, stomping around, and moving gear. Then silence.

From that silence, humming up from a long distance, came the sound of a smoothly running diesel engine. It cut out, and there was the splash of an anchor hitting the water.
Freefall
had arrived, she was sure of it.

Next came the buzz of the Zodiac leaving the beach, and then, as soon as it was back, the arguing started up again with a new voice thrown into the mix. The men were behind the wooden wall of the building. Kelly could see them briefly through the cracks. Then they moved away, footsteps crunching over the black basalt. Perhaps they were going to whichever shed they’d picked for themselves, where there’d be a fire and dinner.

They’ll have liquor there, too
, Kelly thought.
Rum or whiskey.

After they’d eaten and warmed themselves with fire and drink, maybe they’d be back. One at a time or all at once. Maybe this time, when they reached into the trap with the fish gaff, they’d pull her out instead of Lena. Maybe they’d—

“You have to stay with it,” she whispered. “You can’t do this. Not now.”

“What?” Lena murmured, her breath warm against Kelly’s throat.

“Nothing.”

Kelly was so thirsty, she’d have licked dewdrops off the filthy wires of the trap if there had been any. Her throat was dry, and her head thumped steadily. She leaned against the bars and let Lena hold her and thought through how she’d care for Dean if she could. This was something better to think about. Better than thinking of water she didn’t have or the man with the gaff. She could get Dean on a saline drip and give him a shot of codeine for the pain that would come when she reset his shoulders. She could clean the harpoon wound in his thigh and bandage it
properly and put his legs in splints.

It had been almost a decade since she’d dealt with a fracture.

She’d been on an ER rotation in medical school when the emergency room filled with the victims of a school bus accident. She’d taken the lead on the first patient wheeled to her and hadn’t forgotten it. That had been a compound fracture, the child’s bones jutting through the skin of her shin. For Dean, it might not be so bad. The real worry would be infection. Or maybe frostbite and gangrene. She didn’t know where they’d kept him, how cold he’d gotten. She couldn’t feel her own toes, yet she hadn’t bled much and had Lena for warmth.

“Dean?” she said.

He didn’t move. At least not at first.

But then he was struggling to roll onto his back. When he tipped past the point of resistance and rolled the rest of the way, his head came over and she saw his face for the first time since he’d been strung up. He’d bled from his nose and down his neck, and that was all dried now, black and caked with dirt and volcanic soot. Below his nose, his face looked like a fright mask. His eyes were still clear, though, and she took that as a good sign. He was fighting.

“What do I do now, Dean? Tell me.”

He opened his mouth. They’d pulled out two of his front teeth. Or else he’d knocked them out when David had cut him loose from the rafter and he’d fallen facefirst into the rocks.

“You … gotta … get out. Some. Somehow.”

“I don’t know how, Dean. I tried, but there’s nothing. The trapdoor’s locked, and the wires are welded to the frame.”

“A tool. You need—”

He coughed. A bubble of blood expanded from his lips, then burst.

“You need to find a tool. And find … the …”

Again he trailed off into a spasm of coughing. She thought he’d probably come close to drowning when they’d dragged him off
Freefall
and into the waves. His lungs would have filled with seawater in the shock of his immersion. Later, after the beatings, they’d have filled again with blood. That he was alive now was a miracle. Or a statement about Dean and what he was made of.

He was just a few feet from her, but she could do nothing for him.