by Lee, Rachel
When Jeff reached her, he dropped the bait buckets and grabbed her in a bear hug, giving her a big kiss on the cheek. “I’m sorry, sis. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Just…” She broke off, not wanting to get into it before dinner. Neither of them had eaten last night, and she wasn’t going to let that happen again. “Thanks for having them call me. I was scared to death, Jeff.”
“Sorry.”
“Now go wash up, guys. I want to be able to smell the food.”
They both laughed and hurried past her into the house. She stood on the veranda for a few more minutes, listening to the quieting waves, and smelling the freshness of the rain-washed world. Jimmy Buffett was no longer audible, and she guessed Chase had closed his windows. Too bad. Maybe she ought to get herself an inexpensive stereo one of these days. She could probably afford it now that Jeff was making some money.
That was when she remembered he probably didn’t have a job anymore. Stifling a sigh, she went in to finish preparing dinner.
By the time they all sat down at the table, Callie knew something was seriously wrong. Jeff wasn’t being his usual boisterous self. In fact, he was downright subdued.
But his appetite was fine, she realized with relief as she watched him take half a chicken and give the other half to Eric. That was followed by a huge heap of mashed potatoes, three biscuits, a river of gravy, and a large serving of salad. Nothing, she thought, could be all that bad if he was eating.
“What happened to the boat you salvaged?” she asked, suddenly realizing that they hadn’t towed it in with them.
“Coast Guard’s checking it out,” Jeff said, then stuffed his mouth with potatoes.
“Checking it out? Why?”
Jeff shrugged, chewing mightily. Callie looked at Eric. “Why?”
Eric didn’t try to hide behind the food. “They said it’s unusual for somebody to try to scuttle a boat. They asked us a whole bunch of questions about it, like they wondered if we knew anything, but we didn’t. Anyway, they want to look the boat over before they give it to us. They said something about making sure it hadn’t been used to transport drugs, and something about Customs checking it out, too.”
“Oh.” Callie shrugged. “Makes sense.”
“That’s what we thought.”
“How long do they think it’ll be?”
“A few days,” Jeff said, reaching for a biscuit. “The captain of the cutter said it seems really weird. I guess they’re going to try to find out who the owner is.”
“Does that mean you won’t get to keep the boat?” That would certainly explain why Jeff was so subdued. He’d risked his neck to get the vessel.
“He said that since it wasn’t fully sunk, if the owners want it back, they have to pay us for salvaging it. But since they tried to scuttle it, I don’t think anybody’s going to want it back.”
“Which is crazy,” Eric said. “It’s a really neat boat.”
“Cool,” Jeff agreed. His blue eyes were suddenly alight with excitement. “Wait’ll you see it, Callie. It’s a dream.”
Eric laughed excitedly. “It’s perfect. We could let two people at a time fish. More money on each trip.”
Callie was enjoying their excitement but felt her stomach lurch as Eric reminded her what he and Jeff were going to use that boat for. But, she told herself, it wouldn’t be the way it had been with her father. The boys would be taking tourists out on day trips for deep-sea fishing; they wouldn’t be going out for weeks on end the way her dad had. At least at the end of every day she would know Jeff was safe.
“It’ll be great, sis, you’ll see,” Jeff told her enthusiastically. “And once we’ve got the boat free and clear, most of what we make will be profit!”
She nodded, smiling, but the smile felt unnatural on her face. In her heart she could feel only trepidation. She knew she had to hide it, knew it wasn’t fair to Jeff, but God, she didn’t want to lose the last of her family to the sea.
She managed to smile and laugh appropriately until the boys were doing the dishes and she was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee. Then she couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“Jeff? What about your job? You missed work today.”
He shrugged but didn’t look at her. “It doesn’t matter. We’ve got the boat now. As soon as I saw that baby, I knew I wasn’t going to give her up to get back here for that dumb job.”
“Mmm.” Her face felt frozen now. “Maybe if you call Mr. Donleavy and explain, he won’t fire you.”
“I don’t care if he fires me! I’ve got the boat I need to start my charter service.”
Why was it, Callie wondered, that she could remain so calm at work when dealing with other people who took these attitudes, yet with her own brother her temper always flared to white heat almost as soon as they started talking?
She drew a couple of deep breaths, told herself to pretend she was dealing with a patient, and said in her calmest voice, “Jeff, you don’t have the boat until you get it back from the Coast Guard. What if they find out there are drugs on it? They’d probably impound it as evidence and you’ll never get it—at least not until they don’t need it anymore. You need money in the meantime. Besides, you might need money to fix her up once you have her.”
“I’ve got money,” he said impatiently. “I’ve got all the money I was saving toward buying a boat. That’s almost two thousand dollars.”
And why was it, Callie wondered, that two thousand dollars sounded like so very much when you were twenty and sounded like so very little by the time you were nearly thirty? “You can always use more,” she said. “And what if there’s a delay getting the boat back from the Coast Guard?”
“You worry too much, Callie.”
He’d been saying that to her for years, ever since he had grown old enough to argue with her when she didn’t want him to do something. Her stock answer was, “I’m just concerned about you,” but tonight something in her seemed to snap.
“Yes, I worry too much,” she said in a low voice. “Of course I worry too much. Since I was fourteen years old I’ve been responsible for you and had to worry about you. And since Dad died, I’ve had to worry about everything for both of us. So just tell me, Jeff, when are you going to start doing your own worrying so I can stop having to do it for you?”
He stood with a pot in his hands, looking shocked, as she got up from the table and walked out of the kitchen. Eric, she noted from the corner of her eye, looked as if he wanted to be anywhere else on earth.
And she didn’t care. She was twenty-eight years old, and she was sick and tired of being responsible for her ungrateful brother. Sick and tired of being responsible for someone who hated having her worry about him. Let him go to hell on his own roller coaster. She was washing her hands of it here and now.
She left the house and walked down to the path, turning toward the point. As many times as she had walked out there today she was surprised she was doing it again. But somehow, despite her hatred for the sea, it was to the sea she always turned when she needed the comfort of perspective.
The storm had blown away since sunset, and the sky above was clear and speckled with brilliant stars. The breeze blew briskly, carrying the musty scents of the forest behind, mingling them with the richer scents of the shore.
At last she looked out toward the Atlantic, across the waves that rolled in steadily. The sea was almost phosphorescent tonight and she wondered if the storm had stirred up the phytoplankton, or if the water itself had a subtle glow. She often wondered about such things, and stubbornly refused to look them up. She didn’t want to know any more about her enemy than she already did.
The steady rhythm of the waves was hypnotic as always, and little by little the tension and worry ebbed from her, seeming to slip away with the surf.
Squatting down, she wrapped her arms around her knees and watched the waves in their eternal dance.
Little by little, she began to see herself as smaller and smaller, as if her
mind were lifting up above on a bird’s wing, and seeing her tiny body against the vastness of the shore and sea. The perspective brought her peace as it always did.
Finally, feeling better, she stood and walked back to the house. Jeff was heedless, but he was only twenty. And he could always find another job if he needed to. It wasn’t worth the emotional energy she was investing in it.
When she got back to the house, Jeff and Eric were sitting on the veranda smoking cigarettes. That was another thing Jeff had refused to listen to her about, but at least he bowed to her insistence that he not smoke indoors.
“I’m sorry, Callie,” he said as she climbed the steps. “You’re right. I’ll call Mr. Donleavy in the morning and try to straighten things out.”
She managed a shrug as if she didn’t care, even though it pleased her that he’d apparently thought about it. Maybe pretending not to care would be the best way she could teach him to think for himself. “Are you spending the night, Eric? You’re welcome to.”
“Thanks, Callie. I think I will.”
“You know where everything is. Help yourself. Good night, guys.”
It was earlier than her usual bedtime, but she was exhausted from all the tension of the day. Hiding away in her room with a glass of milk and a book seemed like the perfect escape.
As it turned out, it was. Twenty minutes later she was fast asleep.
Tom suspected something. Chase sensed it when his old friend suddenly announced that he was staying the night.
“No point driving back to Miami,” Tom said with a shrug. It’s late and it’s a long haul.”
“Sure. Glad to have you.” Gladder than he could say. Maybe he would actually be able to sleep tonight.
Tom pulled his pipe out of his back pocket, along with a tobacco pouch. “I’ll just step outside and light up.”
It was almost a question, and Chase opened his mouth to tell him he could smoke his pipe indoors, but then it struck him that this might be a good time to face down some of his fears. With Tom here, maybe he could go out onto that porch now that it was dark. And maybe if he did that he’d be one step closer to banishing these insane ideas of being threatened by the night.
“Sure,” he said, with more calm than he felt. “Let’s get some air.”
Crossing the threshold was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. It hadn’t even been this difficult in SEALs training when they’d tied him up and thrown him in the swimming pool. He’d faced that with a hell of a lot less trepidation than he was facing opening the door and stepping out into the night.
But he was a man who’d long ago learned to take his fear and turn it into something useful. Once he made up his mind to walk out that door, he was going to do it no matter how hard his heart pounded or what kind of cold sweat he broke into. All the adrenaline that suddenly flooded him with an overwhelming urge to run could also be used to make him do the impossible.
He used it now to propel himself out the door and onto the dark porch.
His ears buzzed oddly, and he could have sworn he heard the shadows whispering to one another. But he made himself ignore it and walk over to the railing. Tom joined him, taking his comfortable time about packing his pipe and lighting it. Soon the familiar, comforting smell of Tom’s tobacco wafted toward him, and the night seemed a little less threatening.
Then he saw shadows moving along the shoreline, coming toward them, shadows with small, glowing eyes. For an instant, Chase’s heart lurched as panic slammed him in the chest. This wasn’t the first time he’d seen glowing red eyes in the dark. Usually they were bigger.
Tom pointed with the stem of his pipe. “The boys are coming over this way.”
Tom’s reasonable tone yanked Chase back from the edge. Forcing himself to look more carefully, he recognized the silhouette of Jeff Carlson, saw that both boys were smoking cigarettes. Not glowing eyes at all. Christ, he thought with a sudden wave of self-disgust, he had to quit this crap!
“Wonder what they want,” Tom remarked.
“Probably to tell me all about the salvage today. I talked to Jeff on the radio a couple of times.”
“Ahh.”
The boys reached them a couple of minutes later. Jeff introduced himself and Eric, saying, “I guess I was talking to one of you on the radio this afternoon.”
“Me,” Chase said, shaking the boy’s hand, hoping the kid didn’t notice his palm was slick with sweat. “I’m Chase Mattingly. This is Captain Tom Akers.”
“Nice to meet you.” Jeff looked at Chase. “I wanted to thank you for taking care of my sister this afternoon. She worries too much.”
“You think so?” Even with his skin crawling from the feeling he was being watched from the shadows in the woods, Chase didn’t miss the irony. “Hell, son, I thought you were an absolute fool to sail out this morning.”
Jeff jerked his head as if he’d been slapped. “We didn’t expect to be out for very long.”
“Planning for the unexpected is what makes the difference when all hell breaks loose,” Chase said unrepentantly. “I don’t blame your sister for worrying. There’s not much else she can do when you won’t exercise your own common sense.”
He wasn’t quite sure what response he expected, and he wasn’t sure he cared. The shadows were still whispering to one another, and they seemed to be moving in closer, as if they didn’t care about the presence of other people. He felt almost as if something was breathing down his neck, but he forced himself not to look. He wouldn’t give his hallucinations that much power over him.
Tom had grown very still and very quiet, and was looking intently at him. He wondered if that was because Tom sensed his fear and tension, or because he disapproved of what Chase had said to the boy.
Jeff and Eric stood frozen, too, but Jeff was the first to move, turning to toss his cigarette butt away onto the damp sand. Then he looked at Chase.
“We were only going out for a couple of hours,” he said to Chase. “But you’re right, sir. We should have thought about the possibility that something could go wrong.”
“Damn straight,” Chase said flatly. “A lot of things could have happened to delay your return, and on a bucket that size you don’t want to be six or eight miles out when a storm hits. You were damn lucky today.”
“Yes, sir.”
Tom puffed on his pipe and blew a smoke ring into the humid air. It was visible for only a second before the night swallowed it. “A wise captain never underestimates the sea or the weather, and never overestimates his own ability to deal with them.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jeff, and Eric echoed him.
The shadows seemed to be closing in even more, and Chase had the feeling that the maw of night was opening to swallow him the way it had swallowed the smoke. He could feel sweat streaming down his face and neck, and soaking his T-shirt. He had to get inside now.
“It’s sticky out here,” he said abruptly. “Let’s move this discussion inside.”
Tom gave him a quick look, but said nothing, merely nodding agreement. The boys hesitated briefly, but then followed.
After the warm night air, the air-conditioned cottage felt icy, but for Chase it was a relief to know all the windows were locked, and all the curtains drawn, and any shadows that got in would have a hard time finding a place to hide.
Everyone sat at the table. The boys weren’t old enough to consume alcohol, so Chase dug them out some soft drinks. The dark boy, Eric, looked a little nervous, but Jeff Carlson looked downright awed. His gaze kept sliding toward Tom as if he wanted to ask a million questions.
“I’m a deep-sea diver,” Chase said. “Was, anyway. Tom’s the captain of a salvage vessel, the Lady Hope.”
Jeff’s eyes lit up. “Really? You spend all your time at sea looking for vessels in distress?”
Tom grinned around his pipe. “I’ve been known to do a bit of that from time to time, but mostly I get hired to go out and do specific jobs for large shippers or insurance companies.”
“D
o you ever get there and have to save people’s lives?”
“Sometimes.” Tom settled back in his chair, puffing on his pipe, but saying nothing more. He wasn’t one to toot his own horn. “How about that boat you found today? Chase says it was abandoned and scuttled.”
“Well, it was sinking. There were holes in the hull. It looked deliberate to me.”
Chase’s and Tom’s eyes met across the table. Chase looked at Jeff.
“Didn’t you find that odd?” he asked.
“Yeah,” both boys said simultaneously. “It’s a great boat,” Eric said. “Not a thing wrong with it. Beats me why anybody would want to sink it.”
“Unless maybe they were carrying drugs,” Jeff said. “That’s what the Coast Guard suspects. But it still doesn’t make any sense to me. Once the drugs are off the boat, why sink it?”
“Maybe,” said Chase, “they knew the boat had been identified as a drug runner. In that case, you’d want to move the cargo to another vessel and sink the one that had been identified.”
Eric and Jeff exchanged glances and nodded.
“That makes sense,” Eric agreed.
“Well, we sure didn’t see any drugs on board,” Jeff said. “Except that we didn’t really get to look all that close. Once we got the pumps on board we were pretty busy trying to find out where the water was coming from. It looked like somebody actually drilled holes in the hull.”
“It should have sunk pretty fast then,” Tom remarked.
Jeff shook his head. “It had kind of reached an equilibrium, you know? Like there was enough water in the boat that no more was coming in? But when we started pumping, we were barely getting ahead of it, so we were pretty hectic trying to stop it”
Chase looked at Tom. “The best-laid plans…”
Tom nodded.
“What do you mean?” Jeff asked.
Chase looked at him. “Only that somebody intended to sink that boat fast, but it didn’t work the way he planned it.”
