Surface Tension

by Christine Kling

  I was entering Pond Apple Slough, one of the few remaining freshwater swamps in South Florida. Though developers had built a trash incinerator, a superhighway, and industrial parks all around the swamp, the environmentalists had managed to save these last few acres. It

  was totally undeveloped and dark as hell. The amber light of the highway did little to penetrate the tangle of grass, mangrove, and dead cypress. Tearing upriver I feared hitting some obstruction. I eased off the gas a little just before I heard the gunshot.

  I swerved violently, then overcorrected in the other direction. The shot had come from somewhere along the left bank, and I had to get control of the bike to put some distance between us. I was trying to remain upright when another shot hit a tree just behind me.

  “Shit,” I said aloud, my lips nearly touching the handlebars. I couldn’t see him, but obviously he had stopped somewhere deep in the brush along the eastern bank. If he could hide in the brush, so could I. There was an opening ahead, like a little tributary stream, and I turned into it, cutting the engine. The Jet Ski barely fit into the slot between the mangroves, and I used the overhanging branches to pull myself forward.

  My skin was soon covered in a thin sheen of sweat. I continuously wiped my palms on the shorts I’d borrowed. My smell seemed to be attracting every bug in the swamp. Several tones of offkey buzzing assaulted both ears, and the stinging started about my calves. When I dipped my bare feet into the water to discourage the biting, they sank into the muck on the bottom.

  The Whaler’s outboard started up, and the sound of Neal searching for me filled the night.

  He stopped at the break in the brush where I had entered. I winced when I heard branches and roots scraping the sides of the Whaler’s hull. Then the prop hit the mud and the engine started to sputter. There was no mistaking the voice doing all the cursing: Neal.

  The night suddenly grew quiet in the void left after the engine’s rumble quit. I froze holding on to two different mangrove branches, my arms spread wide, imagining a

  bullet striking between my shoulder blades at any moment. The mosquitoes buzzed more insistently, and one even flitted into my ear canal. It took every ounce of willpower not to flinch.

  “Seychelle, is that you in there?” His voice sounded strong, confident, and much too close. “Because if that’s you, I’ll put this gun away right now. You know I wouldn’t ever do anything to hurt you, Sey.”

  I kept quiet, listening.

  “Shit, I know you must really be pissed at me, but I can explain it all to you.”

  Water sloshed around the Whaler as he shifted position in the boat. I wanted to turn around to see if I could spot him back there. Though the moon had set, the glow from the city grew brighter as my eyes adjusted to the night.

  “Your money. Okay. I had to take that. There were some tools, things I needed to buy. But I’ll be able to pay it all back soon, baby. With interest. You’d better believe that.”

  I felt a mosquito land on my face next to my eye, and then the tiny sharp pain as it pierced my skin.

  “I don’t know what they’ve been telling you, but I’m the victim here, Sey. These guys, they want to kill me. They sent that girl, Patty, to kill me. You believe me, don’t you, Sey?”

  Part of me wanted to believe him, to believe that all this had just been a colossal mistake, to believe that there was an explanation, that I just needed to listen to Neal’s side of this and it would all suddenly make sense.

  “Come on, I know you’re there, but I feel stupid talking to the mangroves. Just come out and I’ll explain it to you.”

  My face, my legs. I tried to concentrate on not scratching, not moving, not believing what he was saying.

  “Okay. Look, here’s what happened. I surfaced when I heard the engines shut down and found her there talking to them on the VHF, telling them where we were. I had to stop her. She shot me. A little lower and I’d be dead. What the hell was I supposed to do? Talk to me, Sey. Come on out of there. You know me.”

  About fifteen, twenty feet away, a little to the south of where Neal waited, I heard something move, causing branches to quiver and a shhhhh sort of noise as the thing moved through the water.

  “You don’t know what it’s like, Sey, working for a man with all that money, a complete asshole.”

  The little ripples on the surface of the water caused other branches to shift, turning leaves in the half light, making the trees creak slightly as wood rubbed on wood. I squinted as I looked over my shoulder.

  “Guys like that don’t deserve it.” When Neal spoke, I could hear the direction of his voice change as he swung his head around, listening to the swamp. “I’m not leaving till you come out of there, Sey. I know you want to believe me.”

  I struggled to see what was moving through the water. My mind whirled with visions of reptilian jaws opening as they neared my ankles. Ever so slowly I lifted my toes out of the muck. Placing my feet on the footrests, I slowly reached for another branch, but the stick broke off in my hand with a loud snap.

  Shots boomed out and bullets flew into the brush around me. I hunkered down against the water bike, my eyes squeezed shut. A startled large bird flew out of the scrub, letting loose with an eerily childlike cry, the sound of its wings audible as it circled and turned west. I leaned back down and pressed my cheek against the warm metal of the water bike. My heart felt like it was battering at the inside of my rib cage. Neal cursed the bird and

  fired off another three or four shots. I heard one bullet shatter a tree branch less than a foot above my head.

  He had not been shooting just to scare me.

  I waited, but he didn’t say anything more. There wasn’t much more to say.

  I hoped he would think it had been the bird that had snapped the branch. More carefully now, I reached out for another branch, gently pulling on it to test the strength of the wood before I put any strain on it. I continued to pull myself deeper into the swamp, following the snaking turns of the narrow open space, just fitting through whatever holes in the vegetation I could find.

  My eyes had grown quite accustomed to the darkness, and I began to see freshwater shrimp and other fish moving in the dark water breaking the surface with fins and feelers. In the branches of a dead cypress, high over the pond apple trees, I saw a raccoon rouse himself from his sleeping position and climb down the dark trunk. Big fronds of ferns and palmetto directly over my head made dark silhouettes against the starlit sky. There was a Jurassic feel to the place, as though a T. rex could come charging through the brush at any moment. My mother used to tell us a story about venturing into the Pond Apple Slough with friends back in the fifties. She insisted there was still a hunting shack back in the swamp, a place built by the Rivers brothers, trappers of local legend. She and her friends would canoe back in there and get drunk on weekends, or so Red told me later. If that shack still existed, I’d love to find it now.

  When the Whaler’s outboard started up again, I was surprised by the faintness and the direction of the sound. Already I’d become disoriented in the dark swamp, with no landmarks. The outboard noise grew fainter until finally it vanished. I tried to get my bearings, but it was difficult to be certain, the way noises surrounded you in there.

  I had to climb off and step down into the muck to turn the water bike around. My bare feet are pretty tough, but the rocks and roots protruding from the mud hurt like hell. Not only that, I could have sworn things were moving in the water, brushing against my calves and ankles. The opening in the brush had narrowed so that I had to push the bike into the vegetation in order to horse it around, and the handlebars kept getting caught on a creeper hanging down from a dead cypress tree.

  “Shit!” A branch I hadn’t seen ripped a gash across the back of my hand. The blood oozing out appeared black against my pale-looking skin. Drops were falling in the water and I wasn’t quite sure what they might attract. I licked the blood off and held my hand straight up in the air to try to stop the bleeding.

&
nbsp; Damned deadwood. The swamp was choked with it. I’d heard that saltwater intrusion was killing off Pond Apple Slough. I just didn’t want the swamp killing me.

  After about a minute, the bleeding had pretty well let up, and I climbed on the bike, happy to get my bare legs out of that water. The entire insect population of the swamp seemed to zero in on my ankles at that point, but I was less worried about their bites than those of whatever might live in that water.

  The bike hadn’t gone five yards when I came to a fork in the watery trail. Of course, I couldn’t remember which one I’d come through on, probably hadn’t even been aware there was a fork at the time.

  When I heard the low rumble of an engine, I was sure it was Neal, coming back to finish me. I strained my ears trying to figure out where the sound was coming from, swiveling my head around, using my ears like radar antennae, when I suddenly realized the noise was coming from overhead. The red, green, and white lights of a small plane twinkled almost directly above me. The wind was out of the east, and he was surely going to land on the east-west runway at Fort Lauderdale Airport. Therefore he was headed due east. I took the right fork.

  By the time I got back out into the New River I wasn’t worried about gators or murderous ex-boyfriends. I’d been hit, scratched, bitten, and attacked quite enough for one night. I fired up the Jet Ski and headed home at full throttle, my jaw set so tight my teeth ground hard with every bounce of the water bike. I didn’t wave to any bridge tenders, I didn’t worry about Crystal’s boat, and I didn’t even see the buildings of downtown. I just wanted to get home.

  An empty dock was all I saw when I came around the bend upriver of the Larsen place. I didn’t notice anything else about that stretch of the New River except for that long stretch of gray, vacant seawall. Gorda was gone.

  XXVII

  I turned the throttle way down and circled around so I could pull into the dock against the current. As I turned, I noticed my Boston Whaler downriver, lodged between a big Hatteras and the seawall. Neal hadn’t even bothered to tie it up. The bastard had just set it adrift.

  “Sey!” Sunny appeared out of the bushes, running toward the empty dock. She was wearing a man’s T-shirt, and it looked like a billowing white dress on her. Her legs and feet were bare, and with her tousled blond hair, she looked like a little girl. Heck, she really was a little girl. “Come on! Quick!” she said, waving her arms, signaling me to hurry. Her voice was like a loud stage whisper, and it was difficult to hear her over the idling water bike. I cut the engine.

  “You’ve got to help him!” she said.

  I grabbed a spare dock line and tied up the Jet Ski. “Who? What are you talking about?”

  “It’s B.J. He’s hurt!”

  I brushed her aside and ran up the walkway leading to the back door of the Larsens’ house. Sunny ran behind me, panting and trying to spit out the story.

  “When I woke up, I heard voices. I started to get up, but I could hear them fighting. I hid. I was too scared to come out.”

  I ran into the living room and saw B.J. on the floor. There was blood in his hair just above his temple, blood staining the rug under him.

  “Oh, man ...” I dropped to my knees and slid one hand beneath his head while the other caressed his cheek. His skin felt warm.

  Sunny was still talking. “The other man, the one with the gun, ran away. He got a bunch of stuff from upstairs and left on that boat that was out there. I tried to call nine-one-one, but the phones don’t work. I wanted to help your friend, really, but I went to the front door and those men were out there in their car parked right in front of the house, and I was so scared. I didn’t know what to do. Is he dead?”

  My fingers probed his neck under the jawbone and felt an even, rhythmic pulse. Thank God. I leaned down and pressed my lips to his forehead. He moaned softly. “B.J. Are you okay?”

  His eyes flicked open, then shut, then open again, swimming in their sockets. He reached up to touch his head and winced in pain.

  “What happened?”

  “I’m not sure. Sunny said ...”

  “Neal,” he said.

  “Yeah, I know. He did this?”

  “I’m gonna ...” He went to heave himself into a sitting position, but collapsed back onto the floor. “Oh, man. What the ...”

  “He shot you. I think it’s just a flesh wound, but you’ve lost a fair amount of blood. Here, let’s get you onto the couch.”

  With Sunny’s help I got him onto the same deep sofa we’d used for lovemaking only a few short hours ago. I told Sunny where to find the key to my cottage and what to tell the police dispatcher.

  “Be careful. Those guys are still cruising this neighborhood. I doubt they’ve come into the yard or Abaco would have alerted us. All the same, go slow, stay hidden, and try not to make any noise.”

  “I’ll be okay.” She smiled at me and took off to go call 911.

  “How’re you feeling?” I asked B.J.

  “Gonna have one hell of a headache.”

  “He took Gorda.”

  “What?” He tried again to get up, but I eased him back.

  “I’ll deal with it, B.J. I know where he’s going, but I don’t have time to explain. I’ve got to get my boat back.”

  “I can help....”

  “Forget it. Look, I know what Neal’s up to. He took my dive gear.” I kissed him on the forehead again. “I’ll be right back.”

  The “bunch of stuff” Sunny was talking about must have been my tank and the regulator that he had stolen out of the cottage. Judging from the FedEx boxes upstairs, he had also been buying gear with my money and having it delivered to the house when he knew nobody would be around. I wondered how he got from the beach to my place on the day I’d towed in the Top Ten. He swam ashore, but then he made it across town in swim trunks with a bullet in him. He certainly was resourceful, but then again, this was South Florida. I figured that once here, he broke into my cottage and took my money and scuba gear. He’d spent the last few days up there healing and planning how to get at Crystal’s money without the use of the Top Ten.

  I trotted outside to the large shed where the Larsens stored some more gear. There was a small padlock on a thin metal hasp, and I picked up a geranium-filled urn

  and bashed the lock. It let go on the third bash. In amongst the bikes and water skis and windsurfers, sure enough, I found tanks, regulators, masks, and fins. The fins were huge, even for me, but they’d work. I took what I needed and walked down to the dock. I was surprised Abaco didn’t join me, but I decided she must be nosing around with Sunny. With the boat hook, I retrieved the Whaler and tied it up to the dock. After dropping the dive gear in the dinghy, I jogged back up to the house.

  “How’re you doing?”

  B.J. shrugged.

  “Where’s Sunny?” I asked.

  “She hasn’t come back.”

  B.J. didn’t look so great. He needed to see a doctor soon. “I’m going to go see what’s taking her so long.”

  As I slipped out the back door of the Larsens’ place, I stepped into the bushes that ran along the base of the house and surveyed the yard. Sunny should have been back by now. How long could it take to call 911 at four in the morning? Something was wrong. Keeping my body low to the ground, I trotted across the grass to my cottage and peeked around the corner of the door.

  “Sunny?” I whispered. “You there?”

  Nothing.

  It took no more than fifteen seconds to glance into the bedroom, into the bathroom, and behind the bar in the kitchen. I picked up the phone on the bar to dial the police myself. It was dead.

  Maybe she had gone next door to the neighbors’. Maybe the phones were out all over the neighborhood. Or maybe the crew out in front of the house had cut the phones to this property. I was still standing there staring at the dead receiver when I heard a soft whine.

  “Abaco?” I said aloud, and the whine grew louder.

  I followed the sound to the walk-in closet in my bedroom. Eve
n without the lights, I could see the outline of a girl, her hands and feet tied with rope, her mouth gagged with a scarf of my mother’s I’d saved for years but never worn. Next to her, a huge pile of my clothing had been dumped off the hangers and then covered with my spare anchor chain. It was from inside the pile I heard the weak whine. I shoved the clothing aside until Abaco’s head came clear. She licked my hand, then squirmed out, groggy from lack of oxygen but alive. Sunny’s eyes held that too-familiar terror.

  The girl’s arms and legs were bound with some light polypropylene line I’d had stored in my closet, and the knots were so tight I couldn’t budge them. “Just a minute. I’m going to get you out of here.” I went to the kitchen and was about to open a drawer to grab a knife when Abaco started barking like mad.

  “Shh.” I grabbed the dog in the middle of the living room just as James Long poked his head around the open front door.

  “Hello? Seychelle?”

  I held the squirming dog tight as James walked in, cool and immaculate in his violet silk shirt, open at the neck, and his long, crisply pleated wheat-colored slacks. Abaco wouldn’t stop barking.

  “Abaco, no! Shh!” I stroked her head and grabbed her muzzle while keeping her in a headlock.

  “Seychelle, are you okay?” He sounded genuinely concerned.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I got this call from Sunny on my cell. She told me to come over here fast, that you were in trouble.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, offering it as though it proved his story was true.

  Abaco was still growling deep in her throat. I didn’t dare let her go.

  “What’s going on here, Seychelle? What did she mean by trouble?” He held his hands wide, his palms lifted. “What can I do to help?”

  “Sunny called you?”

  “Yes. Where is she?” He looked around the combined living room/kitchen and then headed into the bedroom. Abaco tried to lunge at him as he walked past us, and it took all my strength to hold the dog back.