Part 12 (1/2)

She hadn't known the birds flew at night. Maybe they didn't, maybe it was a hallucination. Or a sign: that if he did kill her, she might sail away, too.

Her spirit, maybe. Or maybe nothing. But she didn't find out which, because as he leaned over her with the knife in one hand, his other hand patted his s.h.i.+rt pocket unthinkingly, then froze.

A puzzled look came into his eyes, replaced at once by one of consternation. He straightened, patting both s.h.i.+rt pockets and then his pants in urgent succession.

Turning away, he searched the dimly lit deck with his eyes, then began pacing, back and forth, peering into and under everything. His left foot dragged slightly, but it didn't slow his search.

Where? His whole body seemed to be saying it as he lifted the life ring from its hook, raised the lid on the wooden bench, patted himself all over again anxiously.

Carolyn cringed at the sight of three mutilated fingertips on the man's right hand, the nails gone and the tissue there all scars that hadn't healed right. That paper, she thought as he went on searching himself, the one he'd lost overboard and hadn't noticed. Maybe he'd been too distracted by the thrill of having captured her.

It gave her a brief moment of grim satisfaction to think she had spoiled part of his plan. But he had gotten ...

The money. She'd forgotten all about the money. Now, as the memory of it flooded back to her, another low groan came from the hatchway. Someone down there.

She'd forgotten that, too, but now she realized she'd been hearing the sounds all along. The man came back and stood over her.

Maybe he was thinking about whether he should just kill them both, get it over with. Carolyn, and whoever it was down there in the cabin beyond the hatchway, too.

Probably he was considering it. After what he'd already done, he couldn't very well leave them alive, could he? Because for one thing, she'd seen his face.

So if she lived, she could testify against him. And he knew it. She could see it in his eyes, that for his purposes ...

-Whatever those were, no don't think that- ... she was already dead, and so was whoever she'd heard groaning down there.

Dead and gone; the only question was when. A pair of bodies he'd need to dispose of ...

-When he was finished with them, oh dear G.o.d when he was- All he needed was the right time and place.

But not right now. Not yet.

Please. Just not quite yet.

s.h.i.+VERING IN THE CHILL OF A NOVEMBER AFTERNOON ON the water in downeast Maine, Chip Hahn blinked astonishedly at the object in his hands. It was a hand-drawn map, he could see even before he got done peeling the plastic wrap from it.

The thing had come bobbing by, very different from the half-submerged chunks of driftwood and matted clumps of seaweed that Pa.s.samaquoddy Bay was full of. Curious, he'd leaned out from the motorboat he'd stolen and grabbed it.

Stolen. Oh, he was going to be in so much trouble. What, back on land, had been explainable now seemed much less so, with the sh.o.r.e a mile distant and the streets and houses of Eastport fast diminis.h.i.+ng to toy-town miniature.

On the other hand, a little thing like a stolen boat was not going to matter if Carolyn and Sam Tiptree didn't get back okay. You couldn't find money that might be floating on the bay without going out there, either.

Could you? No, you couldn't. And anyway, the deed was done and it was too late to worry about it.

He unfolded the sheet and squinted through the mist at it, through the chill drizzle that was developing. X marks the spot, he thought. Only there was no X, just an outline of a something or other that he didn't recognize, blue ballpoint ink marks pressed in hard, as if someone who felt very urgent about something had drawn it.

In the bluish-gray light of the fast-fading autumn afternoon, Chip reopened the chart he'd found in the boat and tried comparing it to the markings on the paper. There ...

A little rock called Digby Island was the same tiny comma on the hand-drawn map as on the printed one. It was surrounded, too, by the same dangerous-looking periods and parentheses, asterisks and exclamation points.

Which if he was not mistaken meant that Digby Island, a tiny hunk of land sticking out of the northern end of Pa.s.samaquoddy Bay, was surrounded by submerged spurs, ones that would munch the bottom out of his small vessel like so many sharp teeth.

Local boaters might know how to pick their way through them, but he didn't. He didn't even know if that was really where Randy Dodd was going, or if this was even Randy's map.

Why, after all, would a guy like Randy need one? He'd been fis.h.i.+ng these waters for years, and must surely know his way around them competently. He probably knew all the places to hide in or escape through, and how to navigate by sight wherever he wanted to go.

So, why would he need this? The bit of paper could've been dropped in anywhere, by anyone, Chip realized with a bad sinking feeling.

Maybe it was some kid's science project, or a joke. Maybe it had blown out of a car window, or the back of an old pickup truck on its way to the dump.

Or it might be a trick. Huddled in the open boat, Chip considered the many unpleasant possibilities this bit of paper could offer if that were true: s.h.i.+pwreck, drowning, being marooned.

Or ... capture. Suddenly the prospect of venturing off to save Carolyn and Sam seemed worse than foolhardy. The smell of the sea, pleasantly exciting back on the breakwater, now tickled an anxiety nerve Chip hadn't even known he possessed.

Big icy droplets leaked down his neck, soaking his jacket collar. The steady collision of the boat's keel with the waves made his rump sore.

If only he could run parallel to them for a while ... but when he tried, the boat wallowed dangerously, the chop rocking it back and forth violently until the craft threatened to swamp, bucking and rolling.

So he eased away again, turning the bow so it angled at the rollers and cut though them. By now they were the only things he could see, as evening kept coming on and fog thickened around him with shocking suddenness.

The sh.o.r.e he'd left so confidently (stupidly, the mean voice in his head commented) had long ago vanished into the equivalent of dark gray cotton b.a.l.l.s, and the Canadian island of Campobello, only a mile or so off, according to the chart, might as well have been on the far side of the Atlantic.

A bell buoy clanked somewhere. He couldn't see that, either. It was getting dark so fast, and now it occurred to him that the ma.s.sive freighters he'd read about before coming to Eastport-it was, he'd learned, the deepest undredged U.S. port, second only to Valdez-must navigate through this pa.s.sage.

One of those freighters, he realized with an inward s.h.i.+ver, could cut him in half without anyone on it even noticing. All he would know of it himself was the deafening blast of the horn as the s.h.i.+p plowed through him on its way to the freighter terminal.

Whichever way that was. The open boat had been stocked with a lot of gear, including a compa.s.s. But in the fog he couldn't see it. For a moment Chip wished heartily that he was in Central Park again, running a s.h.i.+ny toy boat on the pond with a remote control, instead of sitting on a real one here.

He'd have turned back, given up, and admitted this foolish effort was doomed, taken his lumps for stealing the boat, too-at least the Evinrude was still rumbling along well, fortunately-but by now he was fairly sure he wouldn't find his way back to land at all.

Certain of it, really. Or find his way anywhere; until this fog lifted, the lights of the sh.o.r.e, no matter how nearby, might just as well not have existed.

Suddenly the fear he'd been trying to hold down got free with a vengeance, climbing from the pit of his stomach right up into his throat. He looked down at the map that he'd plucked from the water again, but he couldn't see it, or the chart, either.

Or even own his hands. Panic invaded him as he realized he should turn the running lights on. But he hadn't noted where the switch for them was back when he could see it, and now he couldn't even find that.

He was lost, and in planning this little adventure it now seemed he'd left too much to chance.

Way too much to chance.

Like, a hundred percent too much.

Yeah, he thought. You're an idiot, is what you are.

He was still thinking this when the engine quit.

CHAPTER 5.