by Lyle Howard
Shuffling through the crowd, Gabe never looked up. Every time he would hear someone say “hey,” or some similar acknowledgment that he felt was directed toward him, he would brusquely flash Rick’s security tag and continue along toward the ramp and the waiting dolly of provisions.
Another helicopter buzzed low over the waterway. In the distance, Gabe could see that the night sky was now filled with blinking red and white lights. Every network station had probably sent their own crew to cover the story.
Gabe had been advised there would be only two people on the yacht: Nathan Waxman and his one man crew, Tyler Kennedy. He had no reason to doubt Bock’s information since he had been right on the money so far. This was a good thing, since maintaining stealth in his anemic condition would be no easy task.
Out of the corner of his eye, Gabe spotted Waxman winding down his impromptu press conference. Onboard Mystique, standing at the top of the loading ramp, was a middle-aged, silver-haired man with his fists planted firmly on his hips. It had to be Kennedy. The description fit. From his overt body language, it was obvious that he was miffed at something. “What the hell is taking you so long? You should have finished loading this stuff 15 minutes ago!”
Gabe pushed the load up the incline, keeping his face to the far side of the boxes. “Nature called,” he answered, trying to disguise his voice in case the man possibly knew who Rick was.
Kennedy held up his wristwatch and pushed on the tiny stem that illuminated the dial in a soft shade of green. “We’re running behind schedule because of your weak bladder, mister. I know you guys get paid by the hour, but I’ve got a schedule to keep.”
Gabe gave him a cursory flip of his hand as he moved past him. “My apologies, skipper. Just give me two minutes to stow these last four boxes, and you can have them pull the ramp.”
Gabe thought Kennedy was going to say something else to him when a floodlight swept across the length of the ship, illuminating his silver-hair in its brilliance. The man turned back to the railing, waving like an excited tourist on his first cruise, forgetting the worker and his supplies. Luckily for Gabe, the distraction was good enough to prevent the skipper from noticing the dock worker’s sudden lack of a ponytail, or his switch from work boots to tennis sneakers. Gabe never realized this was a mistake in judgment that the man would end up paying dearly for.
29
“What do you see?” Damon Washington asked, as he cut back on the throttle.
Shayla steadied herself against the windshield as the boat rocked gently in its own wake. “They’re pulling the ramp away.”
“Any sign of Gabe?”
She shook her head without lowering the night-vision binoculars. “It’s too crowded to see much of anything in particular.” She glanced down at her watch. “We’ll know in a few minutes though.”
Washington surveyed the sky. “Look at all of those news helicopters. They came out of nowhere!”
“It must be a slow news night,” Shayla said sarcastically. “Don’t worry. Once the boat leaves the dock, they’ll be gone.”
“Until…”
“Yes, until.”
“I hope Gabe has the guts to go through with this,” Washington added.
Shayla stared through the green tinted glasses as the water began to smoke and churn like a boiling cauldron behind the luxury yacht. “Guts have nothing to do with this. Gabe will press that button because he believes. Just keep your eyes in that direction and, in a few more minutes,” she said, once again feeling the bandage on her face, “and you…”
Out of the darkness, a voice bellowed through a bullhorn. “This is the Marine Patrol. You, in the black cigarette: turn off your engine and make ready a tow rope.”
Both Washington and Rand turned to see a green and yellow outboard approaching across the channel. “What did we do?” Washington asked under his breath. “We’re just sitting here minding our own business.”
“Good evening,” the lone marine patrolman called out, taking the end of the rope Washington handed him and tying it to his vessel’s portside cleat. “Can I see your boat’s registration and some form of personal identification for each of you please?”
“What’s the matter, Officer … Martinez?” Washington asked, eyeing the officer’s name tag. “Were we breaking some kind of law I don’t know about?”
“Is this your boat, sir?” the officer asked.
“Of course it is, Officer,” Shayla said.
The patrolman waved his left hand while keeping his right firmly on the butt of his pistol in its holster. “I was talking to your friend…”
It whistled through the air with a heated “thwip,” like a dart from a blowgun, narrowly missing Washington’s left armpit. The hollow point bullet struck the deputy just below his chin. The shell went into his throat the size of a dime, flattened out against his spinal cord, and exited through a hole in the back of his neck the size of a silver dollar. The marine patrol officer clutched wildly at his throat as blood spewed between his fingers. He stumbled backward, falling against his seat and cracking his head on the throttle handle. He lay draped over the driver’s seat, his head arched backward, blood spraying the fiberglass decking, his arms flailing like a downed power line.
“Have you lost your mind?” Washington screamed incredulously, unable to take his eyes off of the twitching body. “You didn’t need to kill him. All our papers were in order.”
Shayla had already slipped her gun back into the waistband of her pants and was staring through her binoculars as though the dead law officer only a few feet from where she was standing didn’t even exist. “Forget him. It looks like the yacht is getting underway.”
Washington paced back and forth, running his hands through his hair. “What are we supposed to do now?” he yelled. “We can’t leave him bobbing here like a cork.”
“Sure we can,” Shayla said, never lowering the glasses from her eyes. “By the time anyone finds him, we’ll be long gone.”
Everything Damon Washington had ever thought about Shayla Rand had just been confirmed in less than a second. He was in shock, he was aghast, but mostly he was very afraid. She was a soulless killing machine that had been programmed to be devoid of mercy. “What if he called it in?”
“Just untie the boat. He’s the Marine Patrol, not the Coast Guard. He hands out tickets for expired tags, or at least he used to,” she chuckled out of the corner of her mouth.
Instinctively, Washington grabbed a rag and wiped down the hull where he might have left fingerprints before untying the rope and setting the green and white marine patrol boat adrift. “I can’t believe you just turned around and shot him!”
Shayla momentarily glanced to see which direction the current was taking the wafting boat. Pleased that it would soon be carried into the far bank and swallowed up by the mangrove overgrowth, she continued with her surveillance. “He would have been pestering us for half an hour or more.”
Washington didn’t realize his hands were shaking until he saw the nylon rope vibrating in his hand. “We can’t stay here. Someone might have spotted him questioning us,” he said, more to himself than to Shayla.
“You worry too much, Damon,” she said, calmly adjusting the focusing ring of her binoculars. “I spotted him across the channel nearly an hour ago. I’m sure we were nothing more than just another routine stop to him.”
Washington wrapped the rope around his arm and let it fall to the deck in a coiled heap. “I still say we should get out of here.”
“I agree with you one hundred percent,” Shayla said, stepping aside to make room for Washington next to the boat’s throttles. “It’s time to crank her up. Mystique just pulled out.”
30
Inside the provision hold, the temperature was a bone-numbing 45 degrees, and Gabe felt every icy degree of it. Fumbling with the snaps on his coveralls, he could see the tips of his fingers turning a sickly shade of blue. He removed Rick’s coveralls, rolled them into a clumsy wad and stashed it between two boxe
s of assorted vegetables. His breath billowed from his mouth like smoke from a Vermont chimney as he rubbed his arms trying to get some sensation back in his extremities.
Becoming a stowaway had been easier than Gabe thought. All he had to do was hide beneath the metal stairwell leading to the upper decks and drag over a few boxes of canned goods to complete the camouflage. Five minutes later, the outer cargo hatch was sealed, and he emerged from his burrow … cold, tired, shaking, and with less than ten minutes to live.
The fiberglass decking beneath his feet rumbled to life with the drone of the engines. Even in this windowless compartment, the feeling of movement was evident. It was a gentle rocking motion that one felt in their inner ear rather than beneath their feet. The instability was affecting Gabe’s equilibrium so badly that he had to steady himself by holding onto the metal banister at the base of the stairs. He stared up at the twenty or so steps that led to the upper decks. The gleaming metal steps were as daunting as the Himalayan Mountains with the way he was feeling now.
Step by excruciating step, Gabe pulled himself toward the hatch that looked down upon him like the entrance to the promised land. He struggled upward, hand over hand, with every muscle in his arms straining beyond their limits to lift him to the next landing. If there was a correct time to die, Gabe thought, when one’s body had been completely depleted of energy, then this was it.
He finally reached the hatch. He could no longer feel the boat swaying as it had settled into a steady pace, its sharp bow gently slicing through the dark water like a scalpel. With the utmost caution, he released the latch that opened the heavy steel door. A rubber gasket around the door frame had created a vacuum inside the refrigerated compartment, demanding Gabe to use what little power he had left in his shoulder to help force the hatch open. When it finally hissed open, the cold salt air rushed over Gabe like a damp smog.
To his left, he could see the west bank of the Intracoastal Waterway sliding past. Pine trees reaching up into the darkness, their brown needles and dried cones resisting Winter’s attempt to shake them loose. Gabe figured the yacht was running at minimum pace, what was called “no wake” speed, so any waves kicked up by the massive engines didn’t damage the seawall behind some of the more elegant homes that lined the eastern bank of the channel.
Closing and sealing the hatch behind him, Gabe moved to his left along the port side of the ship. This was the side of the yacht away from where the crowds had been on the dock. All that faced him now was the tree-covered west bank, a smattering of pleasure boats headed in the opposite direction, and the occasional channel markers poking their wooden supports out of the water, guiding boats through the deepest section of the waterway. The helicopters had all disappeared, undoubtedly summoned to cover some news event that really mattered.
As he moved steadily toward the bow, Gabe remained crouched as he passed beneath the portholes to the main cabin, galley, and staterooms. He would pause beneath each one only long enough to glimpse inside for any sign of movement. As he found each one empty, he would continue toward the front of the ship. The sound of the waves slapping against the surging hull was soothing, but Gabe would have no chance to revel in its tranquilizing effects.
Gabe glanced back toward the stern of the ship. All he could see were the bright lights of the shore to the east, and the pitch blackness of the horizon to the west, but he could feel she was out there somewhere … watching … waiting. He could feel her eyes on him like an invisible hand on his shoulder, urging him onward. A voice on the wind…
He was a few yards from the open hatch to the bridge, still crouching with the tendons in his knees burning like wildfire. Black strands of his hair were matted against his forehead even though it was too cold to sweat. The time was fast approaching and he knew it. His mouth was dry and pasty, and he couldn’t have conjured up spit if he wanted to.
With his back to the smooth fiberglass bulkhead, Gabe inched his way toward the bow of the ship. The voices he heard rang familiar. It was the same voice that had given him a hard time on the loading ramp only a few minutes earlier and that of Nathan Waxman.
Tyler Kennedy stood alongside Nathan Waxman. “Everything looks good, Nate,” he said. “We’ll be out of the channel in 20 minutes.”
Waxman looked disdainfully at the sidearm Kennedy was sporting on his hip. “Do you really need to be wearing that thing?”
The friend and bodyguard patted the Colt .45 his father had given him long ago; he patted the butt of the weapon. “This baby is staying on my belt until we’re out to sea, and then it might still take some convincing to make me take it off.”
Waxman raised an eyebrow. “What’s the matter? You afraid of pirates?”
Kennedy shook his head. “Nothing scares me so long as Mr. Colt is by my side!”
“Well, keep it holstered. You know how I feel about guns.”
Kennedy looked skeptically at his longtime friend. “What’s really bothering you, Nate? You’re a free man. This should be a victorious moment for you.”
Waxman slipped his hands into his pockets and stared off into the distance. “Not as long as whoever killed her is still out there. I feel like I’m running away, when I should be mustering a search to find her real killer.”
Kennedy patted his longtime friend on the shoulder. “They’ll be time enough for that when we get back. Right now, you’ve got to regroup. That’s what this trip is really all about.”
Waxman frowned. “I’m really starting to have second thoughts about leaving Haley behind too. Maybe I should call the house and have her throw some stuff in a duffle bag. I can fly her to Exuma.”
Kennedy resisted. “Hasn’t she been through enough losing her mother and with you standing trial? You said yourself, she needs to work it out too. It’s only for a few weeks, and you can still call her anytime you’d like.”
Waxman thought about his daughter, who was the spitting image of her mother, and nodded. “Get me my phone.”
Kennedy nodded and worked his way toward the bridge on the opposite side of the ship from where Gabe had heard the entire conversation while hiding in the shadows.
A few seconds later, Kennedy returned with a cell phone. The ex-mayor worked his way toward the very tip of the bow where he felt more alone. When Waxman finally reached the bow of Mystique, the only light shining on him was lunar. Haley answered the phone on the first ring.
“Hi, dad.”
He could almost see her cradling the phone against her ear with her large brown eyes making her look like one of those doe-eyed Mexican children in a velvet painting. He’d even be willing to bet she’d asked Isabel, the housekeeper, to braid her ponytails the way her mother always did it for her. It was her way of keeping the love alive. “Hey princess. How’s my little baby-girl tonight?”
“I’m okay. I wish you were here though.”
“Yes, I know baby-girl. I really wish I was there too. But you remember what I promised you, right?”
“Yes.”
“And what was that?”
“That as soon as Easter comes, we’ll take a trip together.”
“Are you looking forward to that?”
“Uh-huh.”
Waxman stared up at the cloudless night sky and the brilliant full moon. “So am I.”
“Dad?”
“Yes, princess?”
There was a long pause on the line. Waxman first looked at the phone thinking it had been disconnected.
“When you come back, can we go see mom’s grave?”
The dark water surrounding the yacht suddenly looked endlessly deep and ominous, but not nearly as empty as the void in their lives. What would one more drop mean in such an infinite amount of salty water? He wondered about that as the tear trickled off his cheek and joined its brethren in the channel. “You know you can visit her anytime you want, princess. If you want, you can tell Isabel I said it was okay, and she’ll take you to mom’s resting place.”
“But it’s not the same. I don’t li
ke going there without you.”
Waxman drew in a deep breath of the pungent air, and wiped his face with the back of his hand. “Okay. I promise we’ll go together to see mommy as soon as I get back.”
“You really promise?”
“Cross my heart and…” He stopped himself mid-sentence. “You know. Pinky promise.”
“Dad!” she reprimanded him. “You can’t pinky promise over the phone!”
“Sure you can! Where are you?”
“Up in my room, doing my stupid math homework.”
“Does the phone cord stretch all the way to the window?”
“I think so.”
“Then walk over to the window and look for the moon.” He could see her in his mind’s eye, struggling with the phone as she hauled it over to the window.
“I see it.”
“Me too. Now, point your pinky up at the moon. We’ll do a long-distance, bounce-it-off-the-moon, pinky promise.”
“Okay, I’m pointing.”
“So am I.” He must have looked crazy to the reporters, but he didn’t give a damn. “I promise to take you to see mommy, and to take a trip wherever you want over Easter break.”
There was another long pause on the line.
“And I promise to miss you until you come home.”
The ex-mayor couldn’t talk anymore. Not without his voice betraying his heartache. “I’ve got to go now, baby-girl.”
“Will you call me again?”
“Of course I will, baby. I’ll call you back later to wish you sweet dreams.”
