Taking the other ring out of my pocket, I pick up my mother’s. Hers is larger and less delicate, but the lettering of
Delasangre
looks as though it were etched by the same hand.
I sigh and put both rings in my mother’s jewelry box. Max pads up behind me, shakes his head and lets out a snort. I turn, laugh and grab his head, scratch him behind his ears. “I don’t know, boy,” I say. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
In the evening, when Chloe calls, I listen as she tells me about the flight and their drive into the interior to Bartlet House. “Oh, and I tried to call Mum but there was no answer,” she says and giggles. “I think she made good on her promise to throw out the satellite phone.”
Toward the end of the conversation, I say, “I saw the girl again. This time on the side of the island, on the rock at the Wayward Channel. But she was gone before I could get to her or really see what she looked like.” Then I tell her about the ring.
“How strange,” Chloe says. “Do you think your mother or father lost it there?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” I say.
13
Chloe and I talk by phone every evening and every morning. While we discuss most things, I say nothing about my new habit of wandering from room to room, touching her things and the kids’, sleeping sometimes in Henri’s bed and sometimes in Lizzie’s. I do tell her that Max has become my constant companion.
Not surprisingly, Henri and Lizzie seem to be adjusting to life in Jamaica with hardly any problems. “They miss you, dear,” Chloe says. “But between horseback riding and fishing with Granny and visiting Cockpit Country, their days are pretty full.”
With my first deposition still a month away, I’ve little desire to visit the mainland. I busy myself tending Chloe’s garden and doing the routine maintenance the house and its machines can always use. Another boater disappears, but no more after that. Soon the number of patrol boats lessens again.
I look in the harbor every day to see if Henri’s dolphin has chosen to make an appearance. But it never does. I always make sure to check the rock jutting into Wayward Channel and the sandbar at the end of our channel for any sign of the girl. But I never see her either.
Ian calls me three weeks after Chloe’s departure. “We need you to come in for a practice deposition, Peter,” he says.
I sigh and say, “Weren’t you supposed to have the damn suit quashed?”
“We’re working on it. And Arturo and Claudia are working on Pepe Santos too,” he says before I can ask. “Toba’s dating the guy now, for Christ’s sake. We couldn’t get any closer to him unless you adopted him.”
“So what good is it doing?” I say.
“He’s a stubborn guy. Relax. We just need to find the right leverage.”
Frowning, I say, “Well, find it already.”
But I smile when it’s time to leave the island for the practice deposition. I’ve lived alone too long already and done too little with my time. Besides, Chloe’s informed me that she and the kids are leaving to spend the next week with her parents at their home in Morgan’s Hole in Cockpit Country. Knowing I won’t be able to talk on the phone with her magnifies my loneliness.
Just kicking the motors alive on my Grady White makes my grin widen. Max barks as I pull away from the dock, and for a moment I consider going back and bringing him along. I shake my head, thinking what Ian Tindall’s reaction would be if I brought the beast to our office.
Besides, I know the poor dog would be miserable in the boat on a day like this. While the sky is mostly clear and a brilliant blue, a brisk north wind blows over the bay, churning up waves and white froth.
A blast of wind hits the Grady White as soon as I motor out of the harbor. I welcome the challenge after my weeks of inactivity, steer the boat through the chop as it tries to throw me out of the channel and crash me into the rocks.
I’m so intent on helming the boat I don’t notice the dolphin until I’m almost on top of it. It shoots a breath out of its blowhole and kicks away from me. I laugh when it returns, cresting a wave just a few yards to the side of the boat. Like it or not, I know it will be my companion as long as it wants. As rough as the water is, I’ve little chance of outrunning it.
The dolphin stays with me all the way across the bay, disappearing from sight one moment, reappearing dozens of yards away the next. But when I get to Monty’s marina, it dives out of sight. As much as I search the water, I can’t find any sign of it.
If anything can make someone hate lawyers a deposition can. Ian starts as soon as I sit in his office. “Remember. Just answer the questions. Never volunteer anything.”
“Okay.”
He looks at a notepad and says, “Did you know Maria Santos?”
“Not really. She waited on my table once. She gave me her phone number.”
“No, Peter, you don’t have to volunteer about the phone number. Just answer the questions.” He clears his throat. “Are you in the habit of dining alone.”
“I was when I was single.”
“Maria told friends she gave you her phone number.”
“She did.”
“Did you call her?”
“No. I threw her number away.”
“Wasn’t she attractive enough for you?”
“She was very attractive, but I wasn’t interested.”
“Did waitresses often give you their numbers?”
“Some did, but I didn’t call them either. I’m a rich man. It’s hard to trust strangers’ motives.”
“Good,” Ian says. “What did you do that evening?”
“I went home, read and went to bed.”
“Can anyone verify that?”
“No.”
“Did you own a Chris-Craft speedboat or one that looked like it?”
“Never. I owned a Grady White, the same as I do now.”
“And you never met Maria Santos anywhere at any time other than at dinner that night?”
“Never.”
“You do realize she disappeared only a few weeks after the night she waited on you?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Did you have anything to do with that disappearance?”
“No.”
The questions churn up memories of her unfortunate death. It takes all my self-control not to sigh. When Tindall insists we review the questions again and again I begin to glare at him.
Finally, just before I’m about to lash out at him, he says, “We’re doing this for practice. So you can be prepared. I’m on your side, Peter. Remember, I really am.”
But still we go over the same ground for hours more. By the time I get back to the boat the late-afternoon sky has turned gloomy, dark clouds scudding by overhead. I no longer have any great desire to spend time fighting the wind and waves. Ian’s practice deposition has battered me enough.
I toy with the thought of staying on land for the night, taking a room at the Grand Bay or the Ritz. But then I remember Max. The last thing I want is to leave the poor dog waiting all night on the dock.
This time the dolphin shows itself just after I reach the last marker in the channel. I smile at it and then turn my attention to steering through the waves. When I look for it again, I see no sign of it.
The sky darkens even more as I cross the bay. Drawing near my island, I glance behind me, see the few final rays of light slowly sinking away and put on my running lights. While I can see perfectly well in light like this, I certainly don’t want some dim-eyed fool to run into me.
A girl or small woman jumps up on the sandbar by the entrance to the channel and begins to wave, her left hand open, something, maybe a thin stick, clasped in her right fist. I squint but I’m still too far away to make out just what it is or to see her features or expression. While I hear no shouting, from the way she waves her arms, I assume she needs help.
I look around. Seeing no sign of any other boats, I slow my motors and steer toward her. She keeps waving, beckoning me forward until I’m near to running aground. At that close distance, even in the dusk, I can make out some of her features, her long hair and small breasts—the fact that she’s naked.
Before I can shout out to her, she dives into the water, cutting it so cleanly that she leaves barely a ripple, and starts swimming toward the boat. Yanking the wheel so the Grady White turns sideways to the wind, I throw the Yamahas into neutral.
Waves immediately begin to batter the boat’s windward side and push it southward. I shrug. If the girl swims as well as it appears she can, I calculate that it will take her only a few moments to reach me.
Making my way to the windward hull, I hope she knows enough to approach from this direction. If she swims up on the leeward side, the waves will drive the boat over her.
A large breaker slaps the Grady White, pours water into the cockpit. A second wave follows, spraying salt foam everywhere, stinging my eyes, blinding me for an instant. And then a small hand, still holding a stick, reaches above the coaming of the boat.
Somehow the girl manages to take hold of the boat’s side without losing the stick. She raises her thin left arm and reaches up for help. I rush forward, putting out my right hand, close enough now to see the flat shape of her stick, how it tapers to a sharp point on one end. “Why don’t you just drop that damned thing?” I say. “It’s only in the way.”
Saying nothing, she grabs my right hand with her left. I gasp at her viselike grip and shift my stance, my weight on my rear leg in anticipation of lifting most of her weight. But when I yank her up it’s like lifting air. The lack of resistance throws my balance off and I gasp and stumble backward as the small woman flies out of the water, her shape beginning to shift, her face contorting, her jaws opening, showing off her growing fangs.
She falls with me, reaching for my throat with her teeth. I try to shove her away but she growls and thrusts her stick forward, burying its pointed end in my midriff. A hot pain burns into me and I howl. Adrenaline jolts through me. Shifting my shape too, I open my mouth, my jaws expanding, my teeth still growing as I lock my mouth on hers.
I land on my back on the cockpit floor, the girl on top of me, her jaws opening and trying to close, my teeth blocking hers, both of us bleeding, the smell of our blood mixing with the damp ocean air around us. Unsure what type of creature has attacked me, I continue to change shape, my clothes ripping apart as I grow, the other creature writhing, pushing her stick deeper into me, trying to find any advantage.
When I reach my full size, the creature suddenly stops struggling, opens its jaws and goes limp. Standing, I shove it away and watch it fall to the deck in front of me. My eyes locked on it, I extend my right claw, ready to rip into it should it even twitch. Grasping her stick with my left claw, I yank it out of my body and throw it forward, out of the her reach.
Blood gushes from the wound. Stifling a groan, I concentrate on stopping its flow. Once it diminishes, I turn my mind to healing that wound before I begin to heal all the puncture wounds the creature’s bites have inflicted on me, my claw still ready, my eyes still focused on the creature lying before me.
Far smaller than I, its scales a dull black-gray, it gazes back with emerald-green eyes and mindspeaks,
“Hello, cousin.”
14
Another wave slams into the side of the boat, forcing it still further southward. I look up, drop my mouth open when I see how far we’ve been driven from my island. Glaring at the small creature now lying on the cockpit floor in front of me, my heart still pounding from the attack, I flex my sore jaws and consider tearing it to pieces.
Surely it wouldn’t take any great effort. It looks something like one of my kind, but the pitiful thing barely measures half my size. Its wings look so small that I wonder if they’re deformed. Even its scales appear deficient—too smooth and too close to the body to provide proper armament.
“Why shouldn’t I kill you?”
I mindspeak.
“I am no threat to you,”
she mindspeaks.
“No threat? You attacked me!”
She dismisses my words with a slight motion of her right claw.
“Only to confirm what you were.”
“What about all the other boats? Did you attack them too?”
The creature nods.
“Are there others of you?”
“Not here.”
The boat shudders as yet another wave collides with it. If I don’t do something soon I know it will be driven onto rocks or pushed aground or, even worse, noticed by a patrol boat. After all the centuries of my family protecting its identity, I’m not about to let some puny creature cause us to be discovered.
“We have to get underway again,”
I mindspeak.
“I need to change into my human form. You too. But stay where you are. If you attack me again, you’ll die. Quickly. Understand?”