Back Bay (67 page)
Authors: William Martin
Tags: #Suspense, #Fiction / Historical, #Fiction / Sagas
He raised the gun. He aimed. He told himself that Rule was no different than the assassin who had done Rule’s killing. His hand squeezed the gun, but he couldn’t pull the trigger. He was too decent to shoot a man in cold blood. He lowered the pistol. He wished he had the stomach to kill Billy Rulick.
After twenty minutes at high speed, the Boston whaler ran out of gas. Fallon and Evangeline were left adrift in the fog with no oars and no means of signaling. The air was thick and gray and quiet. They could see nothing but each other and a small carpet of water around them.
“Dammit!” Fallon slammed his hands against the wheel.
“You’d never catch them in this boat.”
“We have to keep trying.” He wouldn’t admit that it was over.
He stood up and tried to listen for the engines, although he had no way of following. He cocked his head one way, then another, but he heard nothing. For almost five minutes, he gazed silently into the fog. He had never felt more helpless in his life.
Evangeline shivered and drew her arms around herself. They were both soaked from their plunge into the harbor, and the air temperature was only about sixty degrees. Cold water was dripping from Fallon’s hair and running down his neck. He tried to ignore it.
He slipped down into the bow of the boat and pulled his knees up against his chest. His cotton shirt was plastered to his skin. Depression was closing in around him like the fog. “I didn’t even get to see it.”
She left her seat and joined him in the bow. “Maybe you’re lucky. I saw it. It was beautiful, but all I could think of was the pain it caused.” She shivered again. “It wasn’t worth it.”
Then they heard the explosion. It seemed to vibrate through the fog and water, and the small boat began to roll on the swell. According to the compass, the sound came from the east, the direction the
Peter
had taken. They both knew what it was. They moved closer to each other.
“Poor Jack,” said Evangeline softly. Her body shuddered with the cold.
“It’s gone,” said Peter. “It’s gone to the bottom.”
“For good.”
He gazed to the east. The fog was moving up the scale from dark gray toward white. The sun had risen. “Maybe not.”
“Forget about it, Peter.” She had dug it up. She had seen it. Wherever it was now, it couldn’t hurt her. She didn’t want it to hurt them. “Forget about it.”
“I can’t forget about it. You can’t ever forget about it.” Fallon was getting colder.
“No matter how hard you look, you’ll never find it. You’ll just destroy yourself. For what?”
He realized he didn’t know.
He shivered.
She said his name. He put his arm around her, and the two bodies shivered together. He wished they had a blanket.
W
ILLIAM
M
ARTIN
is the
New York Times
bestselling author of ten novels, an award-winning PBS documentary, and a cult classic horror movie, too. His first novel,
Back Bay
, introduced treasure-hunting hero Peter Fallon, who has now appeared in five novels, and spent fourteen weeks on the
New York Times
bestsellers list. Since then Martin has been telling stories of the great and the anonymous in American history, from the Pilgrims to the victims of 9/11. His novels, including
Cape Cod
,
Annapolis
,
City of Dreams
, and
The Lincoln Letter
, have established him as “a storyteller whose smoothness equals his ambition” (
Publishers Weekly
). He lives near Boston with his wife and has three grown children. In 2005, he was the recipient of the prestigious New England Book Award, given to “an author whose body of work stands as a significant contribution to the culture of the region.”
LSO BY
W
ILLIAM
M
ARTIN
The Lost Constitution
Harvard Yard
Citizen Washington
Annapolis
The Rising of the Moon
Nerve Endings
Cape Cod
Back Bay
“A clever and entertaining blend of history, family saga, and mystery.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“Adventure spiced with history and laced with mystery… Martin has plotted an intricate tale and moves with facility between past and present.”
—
John Barkham Reviews
“Excellent… Martin has effectively captured the flavor of the past without sentimentality or pedantry.”
—
Library Journal
“This mystery/adventure is no Beacon Hill tea party, but a Southie-style rouser, starring several generations of Yankee tycoons—the crafty Pratts—and their immigrant-descended allies and enemies… An inventive plot with narrow escapes and stop-watch action.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
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Copyright
Copyright © 1979 by William Martin
Introduction copyright © 2013 by William Martin
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First ebook edition: April 2013
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ISBN 978-1-4555-2550-8