Straits of Fortune - Anthony Gagliano [36]
I thought of Vivian then with a mixture of anger, sadness, and curiosity. She must have been in pretty desperate straits to bring me into such a game. But, of course, she had just allowed herself to be used as bait to do her father’s and William’s dirty work. This was the Colonel’s master plan, not hers, but what was the game? Two men were dead, and for what?
And as for me, the only thing that kept me from being a complete idiot in all this was the fifty grand at home under my sink and the promise of fifty more. Right then and right there, I made a promise to myself that I would get the rest of the money even if I had to break that glass house apart with a sledgehammer. Then the four of us—me, the Colonel, Williams, and Vivian—would have us a little sit-down. I looked forward to that. All I had to do was make it back.
It was time to go. The answers I needed were all on shore. I went out onto the dive deck and looked around me, but there was nothing except an endless plain of water stretching out in all directions. The only light came from the quarter moon and the stars over my head. Slender cirrus clouds slipped by like long white canoes headed west with the night and the soft, salty breeze blowing from the east. It was a beautiful night, and I was a fool.
I got the kayak loose and slipped inside. I paddled out a ways until I was a few hundred feet from the yacht. I ate a protein bar and washed it down with water from my canteen. Then I swallowed two capsules containing a mixture of ephedrine, caffeine, and ginseng. The protein bar would take two hours to digest, and when it did, the capsule would be quickly absorbed into the bloodstream, delivering a jolt of energy just when my blood sugar would be dropping. I didn’t like to take them, and I could certainly make it back without them, but the night had been full of surprises, and I didn’t want to come up short on juice if there were any more.
The northbound current was running smooth and strong, and there was nothing to do but go with the flow, which would mean making landfall somewhere just south of Fort Lauderdale. I was so intent on my strokes that for a long time I forgot to look back at The Carrousel, as though the water behind me were already part of the past. Then it came to me, and I stopped and turned the kayak around. The yacht was only a shadow now, but even in the weak, halfhearted, sidereal light, I could see that its stern was starting to list ever so slightly toward me, like some great and dying, air-breathing leviathan still unwilling to give up its life. I watched it for a few seconds, then started for home.
That’s when I heard it. At first I thought it was the sound of another plane, but the engine sounded more like a boat’s, possibly a speedboat, and it was to my left and very close. The engine revved, then died out again as though waiting for something. I had just started to paddle away from the noise when the wake hit me broadside and knocked me over. I was upside down in the water before I had a chance to take a breath. I gathered myself and whipped my body hard to the right, hoping for enough momentum to execute what’s called an Eskimo roll, but the water was too rough and I missed it. Then I was upside down again, trying to steady myself for another attempt. The craft was right above me. A bright light illuminated the boiling water as I struggled. My lungs were empty. I had swallowed half of the ocean.
I gave my body a vicious but calculated twist, and suddenly I was right side up again, bobbing and weaving and coughing up water, struggling damned hard not to capsize again, because I knew that if I did, I might not make it. I yelled over the roar of the engine for whoever was on board to turn the goddamned thing off. I knew they could see me. The light was right on my face now. I could