Blackwater Sound (27 page)

“She was only trying to save herself. We got in the way. It was an accident, son. Bad bad luck. This is no monster. She's a creature that wants to be left alone. A force of nature.”

Morgan pulled her eyes from the fish and looked at her father.

“Force of nature! Then why the fuck have we been out here, Dad, all these years? An accident? A fucking accident? Give me a goddamn break.”

Braswell looked at his daughter. She quieted her voice, brought it down to almost a whisper.

“You said this was the end, Dad. You said this would finish it.”

“I changed my mind, Morgan.”

They stared at each other for a short moment.

“Shoot it, Johnny,” she said. “Kill the fucker once and for all.”

Braswell stepped in front of the shotgun.

“Put it down, Johnny,” Thorn said. “Do what your daddy says.”

“You want this fish or not?” Farley asked casually. “I'm not holding her much longer.”

“Just a second,” Braswell said. He kept his eyes on his son's, and put his hand on the barrel of the shotgun and nudged it downward until it was aimed at the deck between them. The boy's face went soft, his mouth stretching wide as if he meant to howl at the twilight. Braswell patted Johnny on the shoulder and stepped past him and went to the fish locker where Thorn had been sitting. He drew open the second drawer and pulled out another silver pod, longer and fatter than the one attached to the fish. Then he withdrew a stumpy harpoon from the same drawer and snapped the pod onto it, just behind the barbed tip.

“What the hell is that?”

“A new design,” he said, “more durable battery, radio signal stronger. Better data collection.”

“Jesus, Dad.”

“No,” Morgan said. “No way in hell are we doing that.”

“This isn't about you kids. This is what
I
want to do.”

“Oh, yeah? Not about us. It's about you. And there's a difference, Dad? The two things aren't the same thing? Now, all of a sudden you decide to do something like this all by yourself.”

“It's what I'm going to do, Morgan.”

“So you can follow that fish for the rest of your pathetic life? For what?”

“It's my decision, Morgan.”

Braswell stepped around the fighting chair and took a grip on the harpoon.

“Your decision,” she said. “Like we can just go on our merry fucking ways? Are you crazy, you old bastard? I put my life on hold for the last ten years because of this goddamn fish. I sacrificed everything for you, your fucking company. And why? So you could stick another goddamn pod on this fish? No, sir. No way in hell.”

“It's a way to stay close,” Braswell said. “To Andy. To your mother. A way to keep the connection alive.”

She looked at her father for a long moment, her face closing down, eyes losing their light. Her black hair fluttered wildly as if invisible bats were escaping from their roosts inside her skull. Behind her the sky was purpling, and overhead was a dense layer of corrugated clouds with gold beams breaking through tiny perforations like searchlights from on high.

“Kill him, Johnny. Kill the fucker.”

“Thorn,” Farley said. “Could you take the shotgun out of circulation?”

“Sure thing.”

Farley's face gleamed with oily sweat. The fish was thrashing, using its last reserves to break free, but Farley kept his feet planted wide, his hand tight in the wire, and counteracted every move. But Thorn could see in his eyes that this was costing him dearly.

Thorn jammed the rod in the holder and came around the fighting chair.

“Shoot him, Johnny,” Morgan said. “Shoot him now.”

“Who?”

He waved the gun at Thorn, then at his father.

“Shoot all of them,” she said. “I don't give a shit.”

Braswell turned his back on his children and lifted the harpoon.

“Goddamn it, Johnny. Shoot him.”

Johnny swung the shotgun in a frantic arc, across the fish, his father, Farley.

On the far end of the arc, Thorn thrust forward and got a grip on the barrel and tore it from the boy's hands. It slipped from his hand and the gun clattered to the deck and Thorn stooped for it, taking a glimpse to his left as Braswell hammered the new pod into place, and then from the other side of the universe, Thorn saw a bright sparkle rocketing in, saw it too late, a microsecond, that's all, only enough time to shoot his right hand up in a feeble effort to deflect the blow, but missing by inches, the gaff crashing down on his ear, his temple. And the sparkle brightened inside his head. Setting off a string of flashes, red blooms of light, silent green explosions as Thorn tumbled to the deck, smacking his own fool head against the steel post of the fighting chair.

And from that position, on his back, on the floor of a steep-sided canyon, a mile away from the rim where sleepwalkers were speaking in slow-motion voices, electronically altered, Thorn watched Johnny raise the shotgun and watched its barrel and the butt kick against Johnny's shoulder. Watched Farley Boissont double over as if he'd taken a battering ram to the gut, and the barrel flared again, and the big black man with the dreadlocks and chiseled muscles bucked backwards over the transom, tearing the fishing line as he went.

The fish hung there a moment more, free of the torment of the line, surveying the spectacle with her cold, unblinking eye. Then she heaved a few inches upward and dropped back into the choppy sea.

A half second later Thorn felt the canyon floor drop away beneath him like an elevator plunging down its endless shaft, and finally finally finally he came to rest in a dark basement, dead but awake, seeing up through the long narrow shaft, in a square of light, the boy with the blond, stringy hair and the stupid hat and the chubby cheeks, slipping two more shells into the shotgun and saw that black steel eye coming down through the frame of brightness, down and down until it
pressed hot as a branding iron against his forehead and there was a sharp click and then he was no more. No Thorn. No noise. No pain. Just drifting in the black airless atmosphere. Falling through the pleasant layers of darkness, from black to blacker to blackest. And then a place that was black beyond all that.

 

“You hear that?”

“I did,” said Sugarman. “Over there.”

He pointed, but Alexandra said, “No, more to the south.”

And then a second explosion echoed across the miles of water.

“You're right,” Sugarman said. He took the compass heading, mashed the throttle down, and stared out at the last remnants of sunshine, a haunted sky full of bruised blue light, frigate birds floating through the high, thin atmosphere, like goblins feasting on the final moments of the day.

“Hey there, sleepyhead.”

Thorn opened his eyes. He had no arms and no legs. His body was floating in a vat of scalding oil.

“Welcome to the fiesta,” Lawton said. “Me and you and this other guy.”

They were lying face to face on a king-sized bed. Thorn on his left side, Lawton lying on his right. One of Lawton's eyes was bruised and there was a knuckle-gash on his cheekbone. Thorn strained to sit up, but his body wouldn't cooperate. After a moment's rest, he managed to lift his head and briefly survey the situation.

Lawton was hog-tied with plastic cable ties and bungee cords and duct tape. Hands lashed behind his back with the binding around his wrists hooked to the cord that circled his ankles. He was arched backwards, his spine flexed against itself. Thorn assumed he was probably
trussed up the same way. Which would explain why he couldn't feel his feet or hands. Just a numb ache.

“What other guy?” Thorn said. His voice sounded so far away he wasn't sure he'd spoken, maybe only imagined the words.

“Him,” Lawton said. And rolled onto his back so Thorn could peek across his belly at the man sprawled next to him. Naked and dead, with the silver butt of a blade protruding from his throat and blood scabbing his right eye, a deep slash on his cheek.

The old man rolled back and lifted his eyebrows.

“Not particularly sociable, this one.”

“Wingo,” Thorn said. “The poor bastard.”

“Who's Wingo?”

“Never mind, Lawton. How are you doing?”

“Oh, I don't know. I been better, I guess. That damn girl sucker-punched me. Put me on my ass, almost knocked me out. A girl. Do you believe it?”

“She doesn't fight fair,” Thorn said.

He shifted on the bed, trying to ease the sharp pinch of the bindings on his wrist. But his new position only aggravated the pressure. Thorn winced and shut his eyes against the long, fat needle that hammered into the base of his spinal cord. He kept them shut and took a gulp of air. He listened to a high whine from deep in his inner ear. He didn't know how badly he was injured, and with his hands and legs bent behind him as they were, he wasn't going to find out soon.

When he opened his eyes again, Lawton Collins was hunched forward on the bed, kicking and squirming grimly. Huffing hard as he tried to wriggle free of his bonds. His face was red, his body contorting into an agonizing pose.

“Calm down, Lawton. Calm down. Relax.”

The old man ceased his struggle and went limp. Panting, he looked over at Thorn.

“I got free once already, but I'll be damned if I can remember how.”

“What happened to your ear? You're bleeding.”

“The kid cut me.”

“Johnny?”

“They were trying to make me tell them something, I forget what.”

Thorn lay still for a moment as images from the last hour trickled back. The colossal marlin, the new silver pod fixed to its back, Morgan's rage, the shotgun blasts, Farley blown backwards over the side. Thorn clenched his eyes shut and said a silent benediction. As if the gods ever listened to him, as if they ever listened to anyone. He said it nonetheless, a prayer of gratitude and respect for a decent man. A man who had tried his best to armor himself against the treacherous world. But no muscles could accomplish that. Thorn had learned long ago, there was no defense against people like the Braswells, only offense. Your own set of sharp teeth and claws and a vengeful thirst for blood.

Through the mattress, Thorn felt the throb of the big diesels at low revolutions, just above idle. He imagined the happy family was having a powwow in the salon. If A. J. was still alive, he was probably trying to reassert his paternal authority. But from what Thorn had seen, the father didn't stand a chance in hell of winning back the esteem of those two feral children. Which meant that when their meeting broke up, the real fun would begin. Thorn assumed the only reason he was still alive was that Morgan did not yet know how much of her plot he was aware of, or whom else he'd confided in. Torture was in the offing. There would be a blade and there would be cutting.

“You don't believe me,” Lawton said. “But I swear, I got out of these damn restraints before. I know I did.”

Thorn rolled over to face him.

“We're going to have to do this together,” Thorn said.

“I don't know. I usually work alone.”

“So do I,” Thorn said. “But we're going to have to adjust.”

“What? I gnaw through your bracelets or you gnaw through mine?”

“Close,” Thorn said. “I was thinking about that.”

He lifted his head and aimed his chin at Wingo.

“Oh, he's not going to help us. That man is in a state of rigor mortis.”

“I mean the blade.”

“What?”

“In his throat,” Thorn said. “The blade in his throat.”

Lawton rolled onto his other shoulder and looked at the dead man, then rolled back.

“I think it's just a nail file,” he said.

“Well, it's more than we've got right now.”

“Yeah, sure,” Lawton said. “But how the hell do we get it?”

“I'll do it,” said Thorn. “Dead guys hardly ever bite back.”

Lawton scooted toward the foot of the bed. Even in the chill of the air-conditioning, he worked up a heavy sweat before he opened up enough space for Thorn to writhe the three feet to Wingo's side.

He didn't think about it. Didn't try to talk himself out of the squeamish reaction. He simply lowered his lips to Wingo's throat and clamped his front teeth on the half inch of steel and inch-by-inch tugged it loose from the cool, hardened flesh.

He spit it out on the pillow and examined it.

“Is it any good?” Lawton said.

“It'll have to be.”

“I'll cut you loose,” the old man said. “I'm the trained escape artist. This is my area of expertise.”

Thorn tongued the nail file off the pillow and took the sharp, bloody end into his mouth. He shifted around on the white sheets until he was in Lawton's face.

“This is one for the books,” Lawton said. “If it works, that is.”

Lawton brought his mouth close to Thorn's and took the nail file in his lips, then worked it deeper until he had it clamped between his molars. Then he swiveled around to bring his face close to Thorn's bound wrists.

He spoke a few garbled words, dentist-chair talk.

“Lawton, we can discuss things later. Just cut the cords. Cut the hell out of them.”

But Lawton had to speak, and his muffled words finally came clear.

“Houdini,” he mumbled. “Houdini would've loved this shit.”

 

Alexandra could see the faint lights, maybe a mile ahead through the increasing darkness.

“Is it them?”

“It's got to be,” said Sugarman.

“You wouldn't happen to have a gun, would you?”

Sugarman shook his head.

“Customs guys frown on tourists importing heat.”

“Great.”

“Hey, we got a ray gun. What else could we need?”

“Something that would draw a little blood.”

Sugarman looked at her.

She was gritting her teeth, a bitter smile that seemed to be holding back a sob.

“Stay cool, Alex. Your dad's okay.”

“You know that, do you?”

“Thorn's on the case. He'll look out for him.”

She sighed and mashed the heel of her hand to the hollow between her breasts, grinding it against her sternum, trying to relieve the band that was tightening around her chest.

“What're we going to do, Sugar, when we get there?”

“Depends on what we find.”

“Unarmed like this, what can we do?”

“Throw the switch,” he said. “Turn off their lights.”

She patted him on the back as if he'd made a weak joke.

“Yeah. Turn off their lights. That should put the fear of God in them.”

Lawton lifted his head to take a breath and Thorn twisted around to see him. A dribble of bright blood leaked from the corner of his mouth. Lawton shifted the nail file with his tongue and licked at the blood.

“Almost there,” he mumbled, then something else Thorn couldn't decode.

Lawton bent back to his work, sawing the file against an edge of the duct tape. All they needed was a tear and Thorn could do the rest. With just a nick in the edge of the tape he'd found he could rip it in half like a cotton sheet. They'd already cut away one section of tape and Thorn's hands were looser, feeling the first prickling sensations of life.

Out in the salon there was shouting. The family meeting getting ugly. Thorn could make out only a word here and there. Morgan's voice, Johnny's. Either Papa was dead or speaking in muted tones. From the fragments he'd made out, he gathered they were still assigning blame, sorting out the guilt and responsibility for deaths past and deaths to come. Whining and upbraiding, the thrust and parry of a family who would never know the sweet relief of forgiveness.

“Shit,” Lawton said. “I dropped it.”

“Where is it, Lawton?”

“On the floor. Here at the end of the bed. I see it.”

Without warning, Lawton rolled off the foot of the bed and flopped hard on the deck. He gasped. None of it was loud but the voices out in the salon went quiet.

Thorn wriggled over the side of the bed, let himself down as smoothly as he could, and squirmed quickly over to Lawton. The old man was trying unsuccessfully to pluck the nail file off the deck with his lips and tongue. While Thorn positioned himself and presented his bound hands, Lawton cursed and grumbled.

The big diesels notched up slowly, and the yacht's bow tipped up, then gradually settled back as the boat rose up on plane.

“Better move it, Lawton.”

Lawton famed and muttered. His mouth stuffed with cotton and marbles. Thorn felt the old man's lips against his wrists, the jab of the nail file. Lawton's spittle and blood coated his flesh. With a grunt and a growl, he resumed the sawing. Faster now, while Thorn strained against the fabric of the tape, his shoulders aching.

“There,” Lawton said.

He spit the nail file on the deck.

“I'm still caught,” said Thorn.

“Go up and down, your arms, pump them like pistons. There's only a little thread holding you.”

Thorn tried it and on the second pump, the duct tape broke apart.

There was a voice in the hall. It took Thorn a moment to recognize it, so different from how she'd sounded before. Morgan giving commands to her father.

“Keep moving. Go on. Move.”

A cold, rigid authority in her tone. The sound of someone holding a gun and damn well ready to use it.

Thorn brought his hands around, stretched his arms, worked the blood back into his fingers. He groped with the cable ties around his ankles, fumbled for precious seconds with the locking mechanisms. When he had them open, he snatched up the nail file and gouged several quick holes in the duct tape on Lawton's wrists, weakening it, then ripped it in two. He unknotted the bungee cords, unwrapped the several turns of duct tape, unlocked the cable ties. It took a minute, two minutes.

The voice in the hallway was gone.

He got to his feet. Lawton opened his mouth to speak, but Thorn put a quick finger to his lips. He moved to the edge of the door and waited. Lawton got to his feet and went into the small head and ran the water in the sink and used the toilet and flushed it. If that didn't bring them running, they could always try singing a verse of “Twist and Shout.”

A second later Thorn heard the heavy clomp of someone running
down the hallway. Even though he was prepared, when the door exploded he stumbled backwards and fell into the dresser. The shotgun blast had opened a fist-sized hole at eye level in the door.

Lawton came out of the head, rubbing his face in a towel.

“Cause for celebration,” he said. “A feat worthy of the great Houdini himself.”

He took another step around the edge of the bathroom wall and Thorn hurled himself across the room and tackled Lawton around the waist and they tumbled back onto the bed as a second blast widened the first hole to the size of a cantaloupe. A spray of buckshot lashing his right leg, turning it hot and numb. He shoved Lawton across the bed.

“What the hell're you doing?”

Still clutching the nail file, Thorn put his hands against the man's bony chest and forced him into the crack between the mattress and the wall. Wingo was in the way, so Thorn wrenched the dead man's arm, pulled him aside, then crammed Lawton over the edge into the narrow space.

“I see you,” Johnny said through the hole in the door. “Nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run. Game's over. Time to go bye-bye, Tinkerbell.”

But the blasts must have bent the hinges off-center. The door moved a few inches, then stuck. Johnny leaned his shoulder against it and heaved, and the door screeched and started to move.

While he wrestled with the door, Thorn spun back and looped an arm around Wingo's waist and hauled him to his feet. A heavy corpse, stiffening. Thorn lugged him like a drunk toward the opening door, then got him moving, managing some good momentum by the time the door came open and Johnny stepped through smiling, lifting his shotgun. Wingo doing a last good deed, hurtling across the room, running interference for Thorn. Good old Wingo taking the blast in his face as Thorn followed a second later, staying low, his shoulder digging into the small of the dead man's back. Then letting him go
and stepping out from behind him and uncorking a wide hooking arm, catching it around Johnny's throat, then slipping behind him, Johnny's neck in the crook of Thorn's arm. Thorn trying for an enraged second to tear the boy's head off.