Bad Attitude

by K.A. Mitchell

  Gavin shut his eyes as he pictured fiberglass wreckage. He hoped he wasn’t too late. Because Beach’s sport cruiser might be big enough to be seen, but it was going to be piloted by someone freshly out of a coma and not thinking too clearly.

  “I promise I’ll make it up to you this week, babe. What we’ve been missing.”

  “That’s not why I called,” Gavin said.

  “Didn’t think it was. But the offer still stands. And stands.” Jamie’s short laugh was husky, and Gavin knew he wasn’t entitled to one, but if he could trade his trust fund for a wish right now, he’d put Beach back in his bed so that Gavin didn’t have to try to explain this to Jamie.

  Gavin took a deep breath. “I need some help. Beach is missing.”

  “Missing? You mean they discharged him and—”

  “No, I mean he walked out on his own because he’s got this idea in his head that he needs to go to Fort Carroll. It’s what he said that night, that he could swim to the island from the bridge. He thinks there’s something he needs out there.”

  Gavin imagined Jamie rubbing the back of his neck, his lips pressed tight together.

  “And you think he’s going to jump again to swim out there?”

  “No. I think he’s going to try to take a boat out there.”

  “I realize he’s been in a Rip Van Winkle, but it’s the festival. The only thing not in the harbor is an aircraft carrier. Tell me he knows how to pilot.”

  “He does, he has his own boat, but he’s been—he’s barely out of his coma. He’s not himself.”

  A seagull disturbed from its night roost screamed as it narrowly missed Gavin’s shoulder.

  “Where are you?” Jamie demanded.

  “Bridgestreet Marina. He has a berth here.”

  “Okay, so if his boat is gone, you call 911 and tell them that someone with diminished capacity is driving and describe his boat. I just dropped off the kayaker at Harbor Hospital, but my sergeant is in Lynch Cove, he’ll be able to cut him off fast.”

  “I can’t call 911 on Beach.”

  “You called me. Supposing he doesn’t get into trouble in the harbor… Jesus. I’ve been out to Fort Carroll. It’s nothing but crumbling walls and guano. He’s not going to find anything there but another trip to the hospital.”

  “I called you because I thought you could—”

  “That I’d do it unofficially? As a favor? Keep your buddy from a trespassing arrest that’ll fuck up things up for him while he’s already busy wriggling out of dragging three aquatic divisions out because he was too high to think straight? He almost killed you, Gavin.”

  “He didn’t do anything to me.”

  “Yeah, right.” Jamie’s tone was full of sarcasm. “It’s getting dark. If you don’t want your buddy to get hurt, call 911.”

  Gavin couldn’t believe he’d actually thought Jamie would help him. He remembered how angry Jamie had been when Gavin asked to be shown the rescue boat. How Jamie had acted as if Gavin was a freak. It may not be true in your tax bracket, but for us mortals here on the ground, there are consequences. Maybe all that tenderness, the way Jamie had acted as if Gavin mattered, was just Jamie’s way of keeping a good fuck around.

  “Thank you for the suggestion, Officer Donnigan. I’m sorry to have troubled you. Please forget I called.” Without waiting for a response, Gavin turned off his phone and shoved it in his pocket.

  Gavin’s memory was reliable to a fault. Beach’s boat was not in its usual berth. The adrenaline-packed race to intercept him, the unmistakably empty slot that proved he was too late, and the numbing realization that Jamie’s priorities didn’t have room for Gavin, those feelings coalesced into a nauseating swirl, cold as congealed grease in his stomach, and he knelt to vomit it into the bay.

  Between dry heaves, he heard a foot scrape the docking and quickly wiped his mouth and eyes with the back of his hand before climbing to his feet.

  “You never used to get seasick. Glad you made it.” Beach slapped him on the back and swung down off the boards into a small aluminum launch with a single outboard.

  “Beach—what—that’s not the Fancy Nancy.”

  “I know, see? It says Property of Bridgestreet Marina. The same Bridgestreet Marina I have a contract with to store my boat and to put it in the water by April 10. As it is now May 11, they owe me a boat.”

  “Beach, c’mon, don’t be crazy.”

  Beach grinned up at him. “Gavin. C’mon. Get in.” He pushed his hair out of his eyes. “You always say that and you always have fun.”

  “Not this time. It’s dark. How do you expect to find one ring on a goddamned island in the dark?”

  “Because Beau told me where to look.” In typical Beach fashion, he made it sound as if the answer were perfectly obvious. “And I brought a flashlight.” Beach produced a small one still in the package before tucking it back inside his windbreaker. He reached for the starter on the motor, gave it a pull and toppled over. Gavin climbed down and helped him sit. This time he could stop it.

  “How did you manage to get here?”

  “I took a cab. I had a couple hundreds in my wallet.”

  “Beach, you should be back at the hospital.” Gavin dragged him toward the ladder.

  Beach shook him off and went back to the motor. “I’ll rest tomorrow. After I find it. Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  “I left it in my other jeans.” Gavin was beginning to sympathize with Jamie’s anger when Gavin wouldn’t get off the rescue boat. Except Gavin would never have reached again for the motor.

  “Stop.” He lunged for Beach’s arm, and the boat lurched violently. There was a lot less stability in this dinghy than on board the Carpe Diem. As Gavin settled his weight, Beach snaked along the center seam and cast off the mooring lines.

  Already rocking, the boat drifted more than an arm’s reach out of the berth.

  “Uh-oh, I don’t see a paddle.” Beach grinned.

  “Lucky you, I’d have bashed you on the head with it.” Gavin tossed the mooring line toward the dock and hooked the ladder enough to start to pull them back.

  “Look at me, Gavin.” Beach yanked the starter cord again. The engine coughed and sputtered and choked out a plume of black oily smoke. “You can wave from the dock as your friend fresh from his coma sails off, or you can help me.”

  “There’s another option.” Gavin took out his phone. Fuck the arrogant redheaded bastard for being right. Before he could dial 911, the phone was snatched from his hands. He lunged for Beach, and the boat rocked wildly. Beach held the phone out, arm across the gunwale over the dark green water.

  “You can try, but it’s going to get wet. The phone for sure, and possibly you and me.”

  “Beach, this isn’t funny.”

  Beach pushed the throttle, and the mooring line slipped clean. Gavin could haul it in or see if it caught something else, potentially ripping off or capsizing them when it did.

  “I should have tied you up while you were still on the dock,” he muttered as he coiled it.

  “Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Same thing as always.” Still dangling Gavin’s phone, and the one link to sane people, over the water, Beach pushed the tiller to steer them south toward the bridge.

  The way Gavin saw it, he had two options. Dive in and swim back to shore and go for help, or wait until Beach was distracted in order to grab the phone to call for help. Leaving Beach to his own devices seemed to be the worst option.

  Gavin tried a variety of reasonable-sounding plans to encourage Beach to relinquish the tiller and the phone.

  “We can come back when it’s light. With equipment.”

  “I don’t want anyone to know about it. They’ll claim the ring is fake if people find out.”

  “We can hire someone who knows how to do this, make him sign a nondisclosure agreement, wrap it up tight.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “According to Beau, the ring has been out there for almost fifteen years, so what’s
the rush?”

  “What if someone buys the island?”

  “For fuck’s sake, Beach, I’ll buy you the goddamned island.”

  “Really? Why?”

  A high-pitched, whistling sound pierced the sky. Gavin ducked, then felt like a fool as a burst of colored light shattered over Fort McHenry. Fireworks.

  “Perfect. More light to see by.” Beach opened the throttle.

  However harbor traffic had been earlier, at least darkness and a desire to stop and watch the fireworks had tamed to a trickle of sailboats and sport cruisers coming back in. The fireworks were completely behind them now but still splashed strange colors over them. The Key Bridge had been in sight almost since they left the marina, but Gavin fixed his eyes on the bow, unwilling to watch as Beach dragged them back into the same mess that had started the whole thing.

  Except this time, there was so much more at stake. Gavin should have listened to Jamie and called 911. No matter how disgusted Jamie would be in what he would definitely call Gavin’s “fuckwitted” behavior that led to him being under the Key Bridge with Beach again—this time in a stolen boat—Jamie couldn’t be more disgusted than Gavin was. Hell would freeze over before Jamie would forgive him, but the universe would implode before Gavin could forgive himself for this epic a cock-up.

  Gavin glanced up at the goddamned bridge. “I saved your life that night, you know. Got us both out on the pilings there.” He pointed at the islands of rock that surrounded one of the huge pylons that supported the bridge.

  “Thanks for that,” Beach said.

  “So will you give me my phone back?”

  Beach considered for a second. “Nope.” He dropped it inside his windbreaker. “Guess you’d better hope the pocket holds.”

  “Next time, I’ll let you drown.”

  “Nice talk. See. That’s the quay Beau told me about.”

  There was a stone docking area about ten feet from the sheer sides of the hexagonal fort, a nose-down cannon providing a mooring line. The problem was, the only way into the fort was over that ten feet of space.

  “There’s no way to get in. It’s a fort, Beach.”

  “Beau said they used a metal gangplank when he came out.”

  Beach’s face lit from time to time with the flash of fireworks, the low rumble and occasional blast of music carrying over the water from the Inner Harbor two miles away. “Here.” He reached into his jacket, and Gavin felt a wave of relief so big he could have cried. But all Beach did was throw the flashlight in its package at him. “Get that working.”

  “You know,” Gavin said as he struggled with the plastic, “some people might consider this kidnapping.”

  “At what point did I force you into the boat? Or keep you from jumping and swimming to safety. Face it, old man, you love doing something that will piss off your old man.”

  At last Gavin freed the flashlight, filled it with the batteries and switched it on. “Look at my face, Beach. Not. This. Time.”

  Beach blinked. “You are serious. Does fucking a cop fill you with some sort of moral imperative? Going to go all noblesse oblige on me now?”

  “Better mention my morality with a little more respect, Beach. Noblesse oblige is about the only thing keeping you from swimming right the fuck now.”

  “Damn, hope I never fuck a cop. We can at least look, since we’re out here.”

  Beach was a little wobbly as he hauled himself up on crumbled rocks, then onto the quay. “Coming?”

  “One condition,” Gavin spat out as he climbed up next to him. “Lose my number and forget you ever met me.”

  “One time things don’t go right and you get all bitchy.”

  “One time?”

  Beach played the flashlight across the water that separated the quay from the fort entrance. “Very medieval. I suppose that’s where the drawbridge went.” The beam picked out two iron girders stuck into crumbling masonry on either side. Four inches of walk space on top, a six foot drop to waves below.

  With the sudden explosion of the fireworks finale off to the north, Gavin could picture the fort during the Civil War, the cannons poking through the two levels of openings spaced around the walls. The other thing that was easy to picture was how unlikely either of them would be to get across those beams. Beach was already swaying with exhaustion.

  “You tell me where it is and I’ll go look,” Gavin suggested.

  “I made it this far.” Beach straightened his shoulders and went over to test one of the iron beams with his weight. No creaking or further crumbling of stone. After that deluge of noise from the finale, the silence was broken only by the sound of the waves lapping against the stone. He looked back at Gavin. “You know what I think the secret is? Speed.”

  With that, Beach darted across the beam. As he neared the entrance, he tipped toward one side and flailed his arms, nose almost touching the beam, one leg over the other side for balance. Just when Gavin was sure Beach’s head would split open again, either from the beam or the stone wall, he righted himself and sprinted inside.

  God looks out for fools and lovers, Gavin remembered his grandmother saying.

  Gavin was definitely both.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Now that the fireworks were over and all the good little boating citizens were hopefully tucking into a berth for the night, the county harbor patrol was on its way back to tying up at the precinct. Jamie leaned against the starboard side of the cockpit and took out his phone as Geist piloted them across the harbor.

  He’d been ticked when Gavin hung up on him, but the guy needed to know that Jamie couldn’t be a pet cop to fix things every time one of Gavin’s drunk prep school buddies fell into the shitter. That’s what their ten-grand-a-suit lawyers were for.

  Besides, if Gavin was still in a pissy mood, Jamie was looking forward to sucking and fucking him out of it.

  He pressed Gavin’s number. The hello on the other end came from someone Southern, crossed with upper-class Brit, and definitely not Gavin. Jamie didn’t bother to check to see if he’d dialed the wrong number. He knew he hadn’t.

  “Where’s Gavin?”

  “Hello again,” the voice said. “Are you Gavin’s police officer friend? You sound like a cop.”

  “Where. Is. Gavin?”

  “He’s around somewhere. Ah. He made it.” The speaker was pleased. “I’m David Beauchamp.”

  “I figured that much. Put Gavin on.”

  “I don’t plan on doing that, though from the way he’s approaching I think he wants to talk to you.”

  “Listen, Beauchamp, whatever Gavin told you, I can’t help you.”

  “No need, Officer, everything’s perfectly fine.”

  Jamie heard Gavin yell, “Give me that goddamned phone, or cracked skull or not I’ll take it.”

  Before Jamie could add his own threat, he got an earful of panic.

  “What the— Oh shit. Gavin!” Sounds of crashing, cracking, and worst of all, silence.

  The wave of vertigo almost brought Jamie to his knees. He clutched the starboard rail, head filling with the sound of that other fall, the hollow crack of Colton’s neck. He forced all those memories and fears as far away as he could get them and went into the cockpit.

  “Send a radio call out. Emergency. Fort Carroll. Civilian injuries.”

  Geist looked back and gave him a tight nod before reaching for the handset.

  “And get out of my way.” Jamie pushed him aside and opened the throttle.

  Gavin ran toward the spot where Beach had disappeared. A darker patch of dirt showed a hole. As his eyes adjusted without Beach’s wildly flailing light, Gavin saw what had happened. The brush and ground cover had hidden the entrance to a staircase that Beach had rediscovered while walking backward.

  “Beach?”

  “Fuck,” was the moaned answer. Gavin grabbed as big a branch as he could find to feel his way around the ragged opening. The stairs were still intact. Beach’s light showed down an arched hallway. Carefully pokin
g for weaknesses, Gavin made his way down the brick stairs. A curve at the bottom finally revealed Beach, one leg stretched out, the other one bent awkwardly beneath him.

  “Nice night for a stroll, huh, Gavin?” Beach’s voice was strained.

  “What the fuck did you do?” Gavin tried to haul him to his feet, but Beach screamed and went down again.

  “I’m guessing,” he hissed through clenched teeth, “I broke my leg. Heard it crack.”

  “Where’s my phone?”

  “I broke my leg and you want your phone?”

  “To call for help, you idiot.”

  “Oh. It was in my hand.”

  Gavin found the flashlight and scanned the stairwell and the bricks and dirt around them. Crouching next to Beach, Gavin offered an insincere apology and rolled him onto his side.

  Beach whined and grunted but didn’t fight him. Gavin found the phone, a horizontal crack splitting back casing and front screen, with some internal workings visible through the seam. After settling Beach none too gently on his back, Gavin tried a combination of rebooting and squeezing and holding to make the phone work, but he might as well have let Beach throw it into the bay.

  He fired it overhand into the stairwell wall. The resulting shatter and tinkle of glass didn’t satisfy the feeling clawing its way out of him.

  “Your, uh, boyfriend sounded very manly.” Beach grunted. “Maybe he’ll get the hint and come to your rescue.”

  “Or maybe…” Gavin knelt down, “…he’ll decide he’s had about enough of dealing with someone who lets assholes like you drag them into shit like this.”

  “Gavin…” Beach had the unmitigated gall to sound offended.

  “Listen to me.” Gavin used a handful of jacket to haul Beach to sitting, the open arch of the stairwell at his back. “I’m going to find something to make a splint. Then we are going out to that boat and leaving if I have to drag you every fucking inch of the way. Are we clear?”

  “Wow, if I wasn’t in so much pain, I think I’d be turned on. Are you always that forceful with your— Ow.”