The old man was still motionless. Brian turned his gaze to the rope, ignoring Gilly’s shouts. The rope quivered under the tremendous tension. All he would have to do was touch the edge of the bait knife to its length and the rope would part. They would live.
And the old man would die.
“Shit.” He tucked the knife into his pocket and pulled on the pair of rawhide gloves he kept in his back pocket. They were Filsons, unoiled to improve their grip, his constant use the only thing that kept them from turning into salt-caked claws. Gilly and the others at the marina laughed at what they called his farmer’s gloves, but there was nothing better for working with rope, or for handling fish if you didn’t mind the mixed smell of rawhide and fish that would permeate your hands for days afterward.
“Drop her into neutral!”
“Do
what
?” Gilly shouted.
“Neutral! Do it now!”
The transmission clunked. The last foothill wave caught the hull and lifted it, the much larger wave behind it now seeming to rise straight out of the ocean’s surface, casting the faintest of shadows on this dull day. The rope sagged at the sudden release of tension and the terminal knot, which was wedged against the upper block, finally loosened. Brian stripped in the slack, letting the wave do the heavy lifting. The hull surged closer, and as the wave crested next to the boat, he screamed at Gilly to give it juice. At the same time he pulled as hard as he could down on the rope, taking in every bit of slack.
The
Tangled Blue
moved forward as the wave shadow crept over her deck. Brian braced himself for impact, yelling for Gilly for more speed as he stripped in another foot of rope. There was a lull, then the boat shot forward, and Brian half-hitched the rope to the cleat a split second before it was ripped from his hands. Then the rope snapped tight with an audible pop, spraying his face with water, and the
Archos
’s hull jerked up and out of the water.
The crane bent over the side of the boat with a splintering sound. Brian gathered in more rope, grunting with effort. The hull was swinging crazily in the air, halfway up the side of the
Tangled Blue
. Gilly’s wrecking ball.
The boat tipped to port as they climbed the side of a large wave and the hull swung outward. Brian played out the foot of slack he had just gained, letting it sizzle through his gloves. The hull dipped lower, and the curved protuberance under the hull brushed the water’s surface, the old man’s leg flopping over the side of the hull. It paused there, at the far end of its pendulum, and then swung back toward the
Tangled Blue
.
Brian heaved on the rope as the hull careened toward them. He caught a glimpse of the old man’s face, his brown eyes lucid, arm still twisted under the steel rail, and then his vision blacked as he strained to pull the hull high enough to clear the
Tangled Blue
’s gunnels.
He was sixteen inches short. The hull smashed into the
Tangled Blue
’s gunnel and the stern skidded sideways. For a moment the man was right in front of him, almost within reach, but Brian could not let go of the rope. The hull swung out again, paused, and careened back toward the
Tangled Blue
.
No
, he thought, leaning into the rope with all his strength, his shoulders and hips screaming in pain. The hull popped loose of the ocean for a second, then brushed across the top of the wave. At the contact, the protuberance on the bottom of the hull splashed into the ocean.
Brian felt the loss of weight immediately. He wrapped his hand in the rope and yanked on the rope, using every muscle he had earned in the past forty-odd years, his tendons taut as the rope. And then he gave it just a little bit more.
The hull came swinging in, scraping up and onto the gunnel. It balanced there, undecided on which gravity it would follow, then the boat tilted and the
Archos
’s hull crashed onto the deck of the
Tangled Blue
. It slid across the deck, pinning Brian’s right foot and shin to the starboard side. He was vaguely aware that the old man was screaming, his voice a raspy creak only a few inches from Brian’s ear.
“You okay?” Gilly’s voice was tight with worry.
Brian pushed himself up and looked at the wall of water. They were at the wave’s base, stern down, the gray-green water just inches below the gunnels. He opened his mouth to yell at Gilly to power up when the boat surged underneath him and he fell back to the deck, the mountain of water curling above the boat.
Chapter 7
T
hey had told her there was going to be a day care, and she was okay with that. Taylor Millicent knew all about day cares, and babysitters, and waiting out those long evenings with near-strangers. One summer, she had even learned firsthand about a snotty brand of babysitter called a nanny.
Her parents had also warned her there would be some grown-up card games, which she couldn’t play. She didn’t mind, but she felt a brush of irritation at their choice of words. Grown-up card games; she wanted to ask them if they were going to play blackjack or Caribbean poker, or that endless hold-’em game Taylor associated with her grandmother’s game room at Crestview Homes. Maybe their eyes would widen, or narrow. Would
focus
. Anything besides that distracted, I’m-explaining-the-world-to-a-nine-year-old expression. But she didn’t say it, because her parents liked to think she didn’t know what they were really doing. That they were gambling.
Whatever. Her parents did not go to the reservation casino for the buffets, and Taylor suspected those end-of-night fights when they came home from Atlantic City weren’t because someone cut them off on the interstate.
No, she didn’t care that they gambled, only that they were gone a lot and sometimes they fought (only sometimes; other times they came home all snuggly and touchy and that was better, but not much), and that she sometimes felt like she was more of a well-loved pet than a daughter. Like one of those little Yorkies with a ribbon in its curly hair. Which she wanted, really bad.
They had
also
told her they would eat dinner together on this vacation, every night, and they hadn’t even
started
to follow through on that. It was the first night, and there had just been some sort of announcement about crossing the international line, and cheering she could hear from the other rooms, and then her mother had unwrapped a soggy croissant sandwich from the deli and held up some foil packets and asked her if she wanted mayo or mustard. Then they both watched her eat, not hiding their impatience very well, and told her the breakfast buffet would be really good. And then it was time to go see the other girls.
Which was the second part they hadn’t been completely honest about.
She looked around the day care, the simple art and the primary colors, the blocks and big-lettered books. Six other kids, and she was the only one not in diapers. Her mother had promised there would be a kid room on the
Nokomis,
and here it was. What a crock.
The day-care lady was Amanda. She was nice enough, but there wasn’t nearly enough of her for all the babies. Taylor had already changed two diapers herself—pees, not poops—and had read that book about race car dogs with funny hats to a curly-haired little boy named Xavier, who seemed to want to grow up and be either a wrestler or a boxer, or maybe one of those ultimate fighters her daddy liked to watch on television. Or perhaps a street criminal, like the ones her mother was afraid of. The book had settled Xavier down and he was sleeping in her arms now, hot and sweaty. He smelled like a race car dog himself.
Amanda, who was bent-shouldered and had a long face, sort of like a horse’s, smiled at Taylor. “Nice job,” she whispered. She was holding a chubby girl, not even a year old, who was swiping the air ineffectually with clenched baby fists. The baby’s face was red and blotchy.
“Is she sick?” Taylor said.
“Just teething,” Amanda said. “How come you’re not in school, Miss Lucky?”
“We got out early this year,” Taylor said, a small fib. The rest of her classmates at Harrison Elementary had to go to school for another two weeks, but her parents had asked the school if Taylor could be allowed an early start on summer vacation. Her parents had Important Jobs, and now it was time for Vacation. She’d spent time in summer camps the past few summers, but now it was easier (and cheaper, Taylor suspected) to just bring her along.
The school didn’t mind. Her fourth-grade classroom was really full, and Taylor, who had just finished her end-of-year testing, was putting up scores indicating she should be in junior high. As her dad said, missing a few math assignments and the last chapters of
Where the Red Fern Grows
weren’t going to screw her up too bad.
“I just finished with finals myself,” Amanda said. “I’m exhausted.” She nodded toward Xavier. “Want to lay him down?”
Taylor stood, feeling Xavier squirm and then go still, a line of spit running from his open mouth to her forearm. She walked carefully to one of the small rooms at the back, really no more than a closet, and settled Xavier softly onto the mattress. He tossed and turned for a moment, then rolled onto his belly and stuck his butt up in the air, elbows out to the side. A few seconds later, tiny snores issued from his lips. He was kind of cute when he wasn’t awake.
Taylor wiped Xavier’s drool off on her jeans and went back into the main room. “You’re a big help,” Amanda said. The girl was snuffling cries into the crook of her arm, and Amanda stated rocking her again. She nodded toward the small desk at the entrance. “There’s a note on there for some Anbesol. Want to run down to the pharmacy and pick it up?”
Taylor walked to the desk. “Where do I go?”
“Just down the hall, to your right.” Amanda shifted the girl from her right arm to her left. “If the store doesn’t have it, go see Doc Perle in First Aid. He’s short and round, looks like a pink bowling ball with glasses.”
Taylor giggled.
Amanda gave her a weary smile. “I’m going to lay down with her. You can just hang out, okay?”
“Okay,” Taylor said. The room smelled of sweat, of baby pee and baby poop. A trip down the hallway sounded like heaven. “I’ll be right back.”
* * *
The chubby guy with the goatee at the convenience counter didn’t have the Anbesol. He directed Taylor down the hallway to the small medical clinic. She wondered if she was supposed to tell Amanda, then remembered her tired smile, that big yawn, and decided to just go. It wasn’t like she was on a pirate ship or something, with danger all around her. No, the ship felt like a slightly unsteady motel.
It felt good to be alone, with a mission. She could handle being alone; she didn’t get scared like other kids. She’d known that for a long time, at least a year. There was no reason for a babysitter, she realized as she padded down the hallway, no reason for day care. Their room on the
Nokomis
had satellite television and a mini-fridge, and she had brought four new books. Why come down here to help babysit strangers’ kids? She liked Amanda and felt sorry for her, but Amanda was getting paid. Taylor was supposed to be on summer vacation.
She turned down the angled deck way and saw three men leaving the room marked
FIRST AID,
twenty feet from her. One man was tall and thin, the other guy thick and muscular, with close-shaven hair. She’d seen the shaven man earlier, when they had boarded, standing outside a door at the end of the hall, and for some reason had felt a trickle of fear when his bloodshot eyes had passed over her. The shaven man had winked at her, and she had turned away and forced herself to walk, not run, back to her room.
The third man was not much taller than she was but very fat, his bald head gleaming in the hallway lights. Doc Perle. The shaven man’s hand was clamped above the doctor’s elbow. Doc Perle was protesting the grip but unable to break it. The shaven man didn’t seem to pay the doctor’s protests any mind, just kept steering him down the hallway.
There was something going on, something . . . urgent. Yes, that was the word. They had come for the doctor because something urgent was happening.
Maybe someone was hurt.
Maybe someone had been killed.
Or maybe . . . maybe the ship was being attacked, like that movie with the Somali pirates, and she would need to help free the captain and there would be—she wasn’t sure—maybe there would be a boy, eleven or twelve, who would help her. A smart boy but strong, too, who was scared of the pirates but more scared they’d hurt Taylor and so they would do brave things together....
She paused in the hallway. Ideas entered her mind and then split and ran in different directions, sometimes all at once, like lightning forking into the night sky. Her parents knew this, had her tested, and didn’t find anything bad; her grandma diagnosed her as a scatterbrain, pure and simple. Grandma was always getting hushed by Taylor’s mother, but Taylor figured she was right.
Still, she wasn’t scatterbrained
all
the time.
The door to First Aid was locked, the room dark inside the rectangle of glass in the door. She could either wait here, go back to the stinky day-care room, or follow Doc Perle. Taylor shifted from one foot to the other, biting on her lower lip. Maybe they were just taking him to dinner, and they held his arm like that because he had a bad leg. The shaven man, maybe he wasn’t as bad as he looked, he was one of those guys that was only scary on the outside. Maybe he had saved Doc Perle’s life when a horse had fallen on his leg during a military raid, and now they were best friends, and ate dinner together every night while they plotted ways to avenge those who had wronged them. She would approach their dinner table and quietly ask for the Anbesol. They would question her, suspicious she might be a spy for the other side, but soon they would see her obvious intelligence and admit her into their circle. Later, they would take her to the horse farm in Kentucky where they raised Arabian stallions that were as smart as a person and tell her she was destined to be a Freedom Rider.
She took a deep breath. Okay, her mind was in overdrive, even worse than normal. The cause was simple: too much downtime, followed by the day care and three hours of immersion in First Reader books. Also, the realization, not quite formed or coherent, that she was done being Mommy and Daddy’s perfect little girl.
She started after the men, thinking “Freedom Riders” would make a good story for next year’s English class.
* * *
Frankie stood at the edge of the bar, nursing a whiskey-water, just enough booze to feel in the back of his throat. It was almost eleven o’clock, and Latham and Prower were deep into the poker game.
Latham handled his cards slowly, careful not to bend the edges. He was sweating, little streams running down his face. It obviously wasn’t from the game, Frankie thought; Latham had been kicking Prower’s ass all over the card table for the past four hours. Prower had made a strong run to begin with, but had lost a big hand to Latham forty-five minutes in and he had never recovered. Now Prower was on the defensive, and Frankie could see him taking inventory of his shrinking pile of chips after every losing hand.
Frankie’s mind kept trying to do the math. If the game was over tonight, or even early tomorrow evening, he could be in Akron by Tuesday. Tuesday was good, a working day, and he would have the cash to get things moving. It wouldn’t take more than a day or two to finish up business, and then he would shake Ohio dust from his clothes once and for all. Leave enough cash to get them set up for a while, not enough for them to act like Powerball hillbillies, but enough to take care of the big-ticket items, move out of that ratty little trailer. He’d go take a nice long break with a clear conscience, come back and get them set up with something like an annuity, regular as a paycheck. He was more and more convinced that was the way to do it.
Concentrate, he thought. You got plenty to do right here.
He pushed himself off the bar and walked behind Latham. He had a three of hearts, followed by a six, seven, and eight of mixed suits, and a suicide king on the end.
“Your bet,” Latham said.
“Two hundred,” Prower said, tossing half of his remaining chips into the center of the table. A tumbler of Glenmorangie was at Prower’s elbow, the ice cubes catching the mellow light of the room. Against the wall, an iced tray filled with platters of shrimp, beluga caviar, and assorted salami and cheeses remained untouched. Adrian was standing on one side of the cart, stealing furtive glances at the food.
Prower’s cheeks were bright red, the veins a darker purple, not nearly as sweaty as Latham’s. Strange for a fleshy man like Prower to be so obviously nervous and still dry, Frankie thought. It reminded him of a boy he’d known in junior high, a butt plug of a kid who had weighed two hundred pounds at fourteen and was unable to perspire. The gym teacher made the entire class run until the kid, who would be gasping for air by then, either passed out or puked on his shoes. It had been a lot of fun, junior high in northern Ohio.
“Price of poker just went up,” Latham said mildly.
Prower spun his cane in his hands. It was the same motion he’d performed early in the game, when he had bet the equivalent of eighty thousand on a pair of sixes. Latham had folded, and Prower had shown off his two sixes proudly, although he wasn’t obliged to.
Frankie leaned forward, feeling his own pulse quicken. He’d been at tables where men had tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars, had seen their expression twist and expand as fortunes were won and lost. He had never been party to stakes like this, and he was acutely conscious of his own self in that moment, could feel the air sliding in and out of his chest, the dizzying rush of adrenaline. There was nothing like a good game to get the juices flowing.
Latham wiped the sweat from his forehead. Then he slowly counted out his own stacks of chip next to Prower’s bet, which was spread out across the center of the table in an uneven spray.
“See it,” Latham said, then pushed out another column of chips. “And raise you another two hundred.”
All right
, Frankie thought.
Here we go.
* * *
Captain Donald Moore was ready for bed.
He stood out on the deck of the
Nokomis
, the same location where he had met Frankie earlier that afternoon. The running lights of the
Nokomis
cast a yellow veil in the thick fog. Below him, the waves rode up along the sides of his ship and broke in a steady roar. The air was thick and cold, December air, heavy with the briny, minerally smell. The unmistakable odor of the North Atlantic, but with a twist, a hard, clean smell like cold metal. From the Kaala, no doubt, which was turning out to be a major bitch of a current.