“Latham looks sick,” Destiny said, shooting Kharkov a nervous glance. “He’s sweating all the time, and his hands tremble. I don’t think he could even . . .” she paused. “That sounded wrong, like I was considering it. I’m not. At all.”
Frankie waved a hand. “I’ll check back with you later. Can I tell him you said thank you, at least? It’ll help me and Mr. Friendly here when we talk to him later.”
She bit her lip. Thinking of how Latham had stuck his hand down the back of her skirt, the ways his fingers had been probing, burrowing. Frankie might be one of those guys, you didn’t help him out he’d forget the amount he’d offered to pay when they’d set up the contract. He wouldn’t make her play the game Latham wanted, but he might insist everybody at least play along. She nodded, the briefest inclination of her head.
And almost instantly that same feeling she’d had the day before returned, when she should have punched Latham. Destiny Boudreaux, the only prostitute in the world who’d never been paid for it.
“What’s wrong?” Frankie asked. “You worried about the boat?”
Destiny shook her head. “Should I be?”
“We snagged on something last night, something floating in the water. Busted up the boat a little, nothing too serious. Might need a tow in.”
“I knew about that. I’m not worried about the ship.”
“No,” Frankie said. “You seem nice and calm, level-headed. I think the other people down here, they kinda look to you, see what you’re feeling. Like a bombinator, you know, tells the pressure of the air? Way everyone looks at a stewardess when the plane starts to shake. She gets nervous, they get nervous. She keeps smiling . . .”
“I understand.”
“We get towed in, things change a bit. Nothing to get worried about, long as everyone does what I say. People start acting scared, running around? Whole different ball game.”
“Really,” Destiny said. “I don’t get worked up over little stuff.”
“Yeah.” Frankie smiled. “I knew that before I hired you.” His radio crackled, and Frankie pulled it free. A voice was asking for him to come up to the deck immediately, the man somewhat panicky.
“Got to go,” Frankie said. “C’mon, Kharkov. Heel, boy.”
He walked down the hallway, moving like every casino executive she’d ever seen, but Frankie wasn’t an executive.
Bombinator
. That was cute, almost, except the way he’d said it, it was like he said the wrong word on purpose. Bombinator, not barometer. Seeing if she would correct him. Why, though? No reason to try and sound dumb in front of the cocktail girl, or in front of the help. Well, she wasn’t sure if Kharkov was the help; he looked like the enforcer, yes, but his gaze held nothing but contempt for Frankie. As for her . . . well, Kharkov was the kind of man that gave her, and every other girl at the casino, the shivers. Emotionless, apparently lacking libido or the pull of any addiction, he would simply do what he wanted to do. To anyone.
Frankie was different. She’d heard about what had happened to him. It was the sort of thing people liked to talk about, the sort of thing certain people liked to advertise, help keep the troops in line. Frankie had taken a long hiatus after he’d been caught, and nobody seemed surprised when he disappeared. He was different when he came back, quieter, more thoughtful. He wasn’t working the casinos anymore, but he had something going, hiring service people for short-term gigs. Private games, low-key, good money. Over the past few years he’d become a player, even a man of some respect. Now she was on one of his gigs, and the paycheck she’d been promised was starting to make more sense.
But for some reason, Frankie wanted to know if she would call him out on a wrong word. He might have been testing her out, seeing where her loyalties were. Or he might just be dumb, same as when he tried to scam the Coriolos. Either way, she had a feeling she and Frankie Rollins would have more words before the
Nokomis
threw out her dock lines in Boston Harbor.
She could only hope that when those words were spoken, the man named Kharkov was busy doing something else.
And, in her mind, she kept seeing the black snake glistening in the sun.
Chapter 14
T
here was pressure but no pain. He wasn’t sure what had happened, how it had missed him, only that the world had seemed to drop away even as the creature had appeared over the top of him. Falling and tilting and then the pressure of the ocean had wrapped around him and he was going down, slowly, the world growing darker.
He exhaled a stream of bubbles. There was other fluid moving in the water, darker. He followed the movement of the bubbles, light and dark, and saw them racing toward the dim ceiling of light above him. Globs of oil, liberated from severed lines in his destroyed boat, losing the race to the bubbles of air.
He was fifteen feet under the surface, and something was dragging him deeper.
He looked down at the pressure on his foot, saw his ankle was twisted in the ladder of the flybridge. The
Tangled Blue
was sinking, leaking hydraulic fluid and diesel into the ocean as it descended, trailing the severed mooring ropes behind it. His boot was trapped between the rungs of the ladder, which had been crushed against the cabin. Another trail of bubbles escaped his mouth, involuntarily this time. And just like that he felt the aching hollowness in his lungs.
He yanked his leg upward and felt a wrenching pain in his knee. He blinked, trying to see through the water. The flared rubber sole of his work boot was wedged between the rung and the cabin wall. He leaned down, trying to peel back the cuff of his jeans to loosen his boot, which was laced all the way to the top eyelet. The double knot was tight, swollen by the water, and his fingers dug ineffectually against the waterlogged laces.
He caught a flash of movement, and more bubbles raced out of his mouth. The creature was fifty yards away, just at the edge of his vision. It thrashed and writhed, and when it spun its massive bulk around he saw the bright speck of light from the flare, still burning in its eye socket. Its head had an odd shape, distorted, and Brian saw that it had a section of the
Tangled Blue
lodged in its mouth, the fiberglass and steel infrastructure caught in those massive barbed fangs. It swung its head wildly, trying to free the remains of his ship from its mouth.
He looked down at his wedged boot and braced both hands on the railing, pushing upward as hard as he could. Pain exploded in his knee and his ankle, but the boot only wedged itself tighter between the rung and the cabin. He slapped at his pocket, feeling for his pocketknife. It was there, but wedged deep in his front pocket. He was trying to worm it free when he caught another flicker of movement, much closer this time.
Something was coming for him.
The shadow was a small circle at first, then details appeared, arms and legs, scissoring toward him. The silver glint of a knife in one hand. Gilly moved past him and Brian clutched at him, lost in his panic, trying to pull himself up. He was rewarded with a hard blow to his cheek and more bubbles escaped his mouth.
Gilly dropped lower, bent over Brian’s foot. There was more pain, and then release.
He thrashed for the surface, thirty feet away now, the last bit of air in his lungs pushing up in his throat. Gravity pulled him down. His wet jeans limited his movements, the heavy mackinaw flaring around him. His vision started to close in, blackness circling the edges, until all that remained was the light of the surface, distorted by the globs of petroleum in the water.
He breathed in his first mouthful of seawater when he was ten feet from the surface.
He thrashed in the water, trying to claw the water back out of his throat. It came retching out and there was more behind it, all the water in the world pouring into him. The light of the surface dimmed as he somersaulted slowly in the water, neither sinking nor floating.
Then he was being propelled upward, steadily pushed toward the light, finally breaking through the rolling waves. He managed a quick, greedy breath and immediately vomited seawater. He hacked, gagging as a fist pounded on his back, another hand holding his collar to keep his head above water. He managed another breath, coughed only half of it back out, and wiped the water and oil from his eyes.
They were twenty yards from the
Nokomis
, floating in a sea of debris, the air reeking of oil. He vomited more seawater, teetering on the edge of unconsciousness as he retched, his vision fading in and out.
“Come on,” Gilly panted, steering him toward the ship. They chopped toward the ship, and when they reached its side, Gilly plucked a rope out of the water, looping it under Brian’s armpits. Gilly’s inflatable life belt floated behind him like a fanny pack. Gilly must have inflated it after he’d freed him from the flybridge ladder, using the buoyancy of the life vest to propel both of them out of the water.
“Ready, old man?”
Brian nodded, unable to speak. He could still feel the pressure of the ocean inside his lungs, bulging against his ears.
“Bring him up!” Gilly shouted, pounding the side of the
Nokomis
.
The rope tightened, cutting into his ribs, his face sliding against the hull of the
Nokomis
as he ascended. He turned in a half-circle as he was pulled, his back against the ship’s hull. The remains of the
Tangled Blue
still floating were spread out over a fifty-yard circle, a ring of rainbow-colored sheen littered with small pieces of fiberglass, foam, and clots of hydraulic oil. Gilly treaded water next to the
Nokomis
, watching Brian being hauled upward.
The smoothness of the hull was replaced by three thuds as he scraped across the railing. Several hands grabbed him and pulled him onto the deck, where he collapsed. He started coughing again and put out a hand to steady himself, clutching the railing.
Several men were leaning over the side of the railing, dropping the rope back down to Gilly. Wells was huddled on the deck, back against the bulwark, a wool blanket over his shoulders. Farther down the deck way, a few other men were holding out their arms to keep back a small group of spectators.
Brian gasped, “What happened?”
One of the men turned back to him. “Your buddy cut the rope right before that thing hit you. Boat went down, and it went right over the top of you.”
“I hit it with the flare gun.”
“I saw that,” the man said. “Might have driven it off.”
“What is it?”
“Shit,” the guy said. “Who knows?”
Brian leaned over the railing and saw Gilly slap aside a piece of hull to get at the rope. Gilly was like an otter in the water, had even been a diver for a few years, until his overtaxed liver revolted at having to process both alcohol and the dive toxins.
He saved my life
, Brian thought.
Gilly Blanchard saved my life. Now he’ll probably want a raise.
“What is that?” one of the men said, pointing out beyond Gilly.
“Dunno,” another said. “Part of their boat?”
Brian followed their gaze and saw a shadow at the edge of the debris circle. It was motionless, or nearly so, and for a moment he wondered if it was indeed the back half of his boat, held aloft by the intrahull insulation, or perhaps even the aft section that had been lodged in the creature’s mouth. Then the shadow turned and started toward the
Nokomis
, simultaneously rising up toward the surface.
“Grab the rope!” the man shouted at Gilly.
Gilly clutched it to his chest, throwing a look over his shoulder. A second later they were hauling him upward, Gilly not so much lifted as jerked out of the water. He skidded up the side of the
Nokomis
, his boots scrambling for purchase. Brian grabbed onto the rope, pulling as best he could in his confused state.
The sea broke open.
It was visible for just a moment. Its left eye was a smoking ruin and at the corner of the socket Brian could see where the spent casing of the flare was still lodged. It lunged upward, its tremendous flippers powering it straight out of the water. Mouth like a cave lined with slanting yellow stalagmites.
Gilly turned toward the creature at the last moment, one hand pushing off the
Nokomis
. His other hand splayed in front of him—
stop
. The jaws clamped down on Gilly’s waist, at the exact apex of the creature’s leap. They went down, then the men on the rope lurched forward, crashing into the railing and then falling back as the rope broke. There was a large splash below them, the spray arching over the
Nokomis
’s deck.
Brian rushed forward, bellowing.
Gilly bobbed to the surface, his life jacket inflated, still conscious, still aware. Brian turned, yelled at the men to throw him another rope. Then Gilly rolled slightly and Brian saw his legs were gone, his stumps jetting dark blood into the sea. Brian gripped the railing, planting his foot onto the middle railing, and the two men hauled him back from the edge. He strained forward, howling, and dragged them forward.
Gilly’s face paled as the blood poured from him. The stumps of his legs moved in an awful parody of a man kicking his legs, blood blooming around him. Brian shouted his name, and Gilly reached up a hand, his hair dark against his forehead, his eyes wide. Then, slowly, the shadow moved beneath him, grew darker, partially obscured by the cloud of blood, and pulled Gilly underwater.
He grew smaller and less distinct, his image hidden by the debris and the plume of blood, melding into the blue-gray depths, until he was gone.