Part 14 (2/2)

”I put some food in a bag, just snacks to keep our energy up, and the rest of the coffee in a thermos,” she added, as if she were in the habit of sneaking up on murderous men hiding on desolate islands every day of the week.

”Thank you,” Jake said, trying to keep the smile out of her voice as she backed the car out into the dark street.

Maybe this expedition was just as crazy as Bob Arnold would say it was, if he knew about it. Maybe it was insane.

But she was suddenly very glad to have Bella riding shotgun on it with her. ”What's your plan?” Bella asked as they drove out of town.

”We'll drive up to where Sam said the sandbar to Digby is at low tide,” she began. Her own voice was as shaky as Bella's.

Bella didn't notice, or if she did, she decided to make no comment. ”We'll get as close as we can, maybe even right out onto the island,” Jake went on.

In the predawn hours, Eastport's streets full of antique mansions and small wooden bungalows slumbered peacefully; only the fog and their own vehicle moving through them.

”The rocks there are probably very slippery, and it'll be dark, so we'll have to be careful. We can't turn on a light, and we'll need to be very sure we don't-”

Slip, fall, cry out, make a commotion, or in any other way get injured or react to an injury, she did not finish. But Bella just nodded once, her hands clasped tightly together in her lap.

They pa.s.sed the bank and the IGA, took the long turn in the foggy murk past the Mobil station and Quoddy Airfield, its runway lights pinp.r.i.c.ks in the streaming dark. Bella spoke again when they'd crossed over the causeway to the mainland and turned onto Route 1 headed north.

”I'll warn you if need be,” she said calmly, as if Jake had been inquiring as to Bella's job description on this trip. ”Or I will bonk someone, if that needs doing.”

She reached into the back seat and came up with her bonking tool, which she'd apparently placed there while Jake was down in the cellar. ”With this.”

It was an iron crowbar from Jake's workroom, curved at one end, flat at the other. As a bonker, it could not have been more satisfactory. Still ...

They sped between the trees and thickets lining Route 1 on both sides. ”You know we're probably just reconnoitering, though, right?” Jake asked her.

The headlights were flat white cylinders in the fog ahead. Jake slowed, trying not to drive into what she couldn't see. But it was no use going so slow that it felt safe.

”That even if we find them-”

On a night like this, the only safe thing was staying home, huddling under the covers.

”All we can do if that happens, probably, is call Bob Arnold and tell him.”

”Hmmph,” said Bella communicatively.

Bob hadn't been impressed by the soot smear she'd delivered to him, or by their invasion of the Dodd House. He'd warned Bella not to do such a thing again, though he'd promised to follow up.

According to Bella, who'd been quite indignant about it when she got home from the police station, Bob said that if it was a map they'd found, there was no proof Randy had drawn it.

Nor would their romping around down there clarify matters, he'd added. ”Bob said if Randy did make it,” Bella declared now, ”it could just be part of a plan that Randy had thought about and then given up on.”

Which Jake had to admit made some sense. Digby Island was about the least likely refuge in the bay, with not one single easy place to get out onto it by boat. Even helicopters couldn't land there, Sam had said, because of the trees; also, there was nowhere flat.

And anyway, tracings from the pen grooves of a map-if it was one-weren't much evidence of anything. This could be just a goose chase. But: ”If I were Randy Dodd,” Bella went on, ”and I needed to find a hideout, I'd pick the one place that no one would expect me to go. If it were infested with poisonous snakes that would bite you to smithereens-”

Jake was pretty sure poisonous snakes only needed to bite you once, and that the result was rarely smithereens. But never mind; Bella continued: ”That is where I would go. I know Bob wouldn't, but that boy has the failing of too much common sense.”

The other news Bella had brought home was that the Coast Guard had called back its search vessels until morning, and air traffic was grounded, too, on account of too much fog.

Shedding tamaracks' gold needles made a slick, wet carpet of the winding two-lane. Twenty minutes later they entered Calais, the border town between Maine and Canada.

The officer in the border-crossing booth looked sleepy and uninclined to think they were either smugglers or terrorists. After rattling off his questions-where they were from, where they were going, what they would do there- ”My sister's sick,” said Bella with a straight face.

-he let them through without a hitch. Coming out of customs into the small town of St. Stephen, New Brunswick, they turned right onto the main street, past the dark, silent duty-free shop and the currency-changing storefront.

It was still several hours before dawn; only an occasional car moved in the streets. ”When I was a girl, we used to come up here for parties now and then,” said Bella. ”We'd have bonfires on the beach. The boys brought beer and the girls ... well, the girls brought themselves,” she added.

Jake hadn't ever linked Bella with the notion of parties, or of being a girl. ”Turn here,” Bella said. ”It's a shortcut.”

The narrow, rudimentary road was of pale gravel, angling in between old fir trees that crowded up on either side. The car's tires on gravel made loud crunching sounds, and the headlights's glow made Jake nervous.

More nervous, even, than she already was. Bella frowned. ”Pull over and park. That's what we used to do. It's only another half mile or so to the beach.”

Jake tried imagining Bella with a gaggle of girlfriends, out late at night for a party featuring boys, a bonfire, and beer. Not being able to picture it at all made her feel sad, and what Bella said next didn't help.

”You new people around here think you know what it was like back then, when no one had a penny and we were all we had. But you don't,” she added as she got out. ”You really don't.”

In the pine-smelling darkness, the silence all around them felt huge, Eastport and home very far away. The only thing that kept Jake from turning back was the knowledge that Sam might be out here, too.

”All right,” said Bella. Her voice shook only a little bit. She began marching forward into the darkness. ”Let's the two of us just get this over with.”

After a moment, Jake followed.

CAROLYN RATHBONE LAY FLAT ON HER BACK ON THE DECK of the boat Randy Dodd had put her on some unknown number of hours and a whole long lifetime ago.

They had motored along very slowly through the fog for what felt like forever. Now with the sky clearing and her eyes fully adjusted to the dark, she could glimpse that the boat was pulled up against the side of a cliff rising out of the water.

Above her, very near, spread a canopy of dead branches, made, she supposed, by a tree that had toppled off the side of the cliff as erosion took the edges of it.

Or something like that. Not much about her situation was certain, was it? she thought ruefully; only that she was in bad trouble.

And that Randy was gone ... for now. She didn't know where. But she knew that sooner or later he would return.

And then the trouble would get worse. She turned her head. Nearby, the young man whose name was Sam sat with his back to the rail.

He didn't look good. ”Hey,” she said.

His eyes opened. Grimacing, he held a hand to his side. It was still leaking blood. As the moon emerged from the thinning overcast, the blood's dark wetness shone in the bluish light.

”Hey,” he said in reply, and managed a smile. But his lip trembled as he did it.

h.e.l.l, she thought. He didn't even look able to get up, much less get off this stinking boat and walk.

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