Randy White - Gone

For several shaky seconds, my courage wavered. Then my anger at what Meeks had done fired a burning drive in me, that grew stronger and stronger as I imagined what Olivia Seasons had suffered and might still be suffering. As Nathan and Lawrence Seasons had both observed, the missing girl and I had some unusual ties in common. Now there was one more-a mean, wolfish man by the name of Ricky Meeks.

As mad as I was, though, I wasn’t about to do anything foolhardy or stupid. That’s what I kept telling myself, anyway. To prove it, I took my cell from its waterproof pouch and called Gabby, hoping to be reassured that Meeks hadn’t left the yacht. I wasn’t surprised she didn’t answer, and so left a message asking her to call me first chance she got.

I couldn’t call Martha or Lawrence Seasons and tell them where I was going-they would have stopped me-but I wanted someone to know. Nathan would try to talk me out of it, too, of course, so I called his apartment instead of his cell and left another message. In detail, I told him where I planned to search, and what he should do if I didn’t make contact before noon, which is when Martha, Lawrence, and I were scheduled to meet sheriff’s deputies in Caxambas.

“Cell phones probably won’t work down there,” I explained, “but I’ll monitor channel sixty-eight on the VHF if there’s some kind of emergency.” Nate is experienced with boats and water so wouldn’t have found my mention of the radio as comforting as most. Handheld radios transmit at low wattage with a line-of-sight range that’s rarely more than five miles, depending on how many islands block the signal. Even on Sanibel, I sometimes receive Key West weather a hundred miles away. But transmitting a solid signal to even nearby Captiva is considered a lucky day.

Even so, I had taken all the precautions available to me. As a reward, I allowed myself to do something personal. I dialed Marion Ford’s lab, even though I knew he was in South America, just to enjoy the comforting sound of his recording. His was a low voice, so calm and solid that I found myself replying with the same details I’d left on Nathan’s machine, which pretty much guaranteed the biologist would call the moment he got back.

“I’ll tell you the whole story when we fish for tarpon on Friday!” I added with some spunk, then returned my cell phone to its waterproof case.

Reassured by my solid behavior, I stood at the wheel as I neared the channel, feeling some confidence for a change and the first spark of excitement about the trip I was about to take. Within easy reaching distance, I had secured a thermos of cold sweet tea and a Tupperware container that held two blueberry yogurts, a banana, and an orange I’d packed for the ride home after the party. I hooked the ignition safety lanyard to my belt in case I fell overboard, checked around for Coast Guard boats, then shoved the throttle forward-too fast in my eagerness. The rocket sled acceleration caused my cell phone to jump off the console, then skitter overboard despite my desperate lunge to catch it.

Too late. The case was waterproof, not sinkproof, and it was gone.

No reception down there anyway, I told myself, then buried the mistake by opening the throttle wide. Minutes later, after shooting beneath Big Carlos Pass Bridge, I entered the Gulf of Mexico doing fifty-plus according to my gauges, my eyes blurring from speed.

To my left, windows of distant hotels and condos mirrored a brassy westwarding sun. Afternoon storm clouds were building, I noticed, but I ignored them, preferring to concentrate on my destination. A mile offshore, safe from sandbars, I checked my GPS, then the compass switch, just to make sure my electronics were a hundred percent. The compass glowed a mild red for nighttime navigation. The GPS told me that at current speed, estimated arrival time at the sea buoy off Marco was 19:47 hours, which would put me off Cape Romano around eight p.m.

Good! My guess had been right. I would have more than an hour of daylight to search for the Skipjack cruiser and Olivia.

Feeling more confident than ever, I turned south. Checked fuel, oil pressure, and water temp-all fine despite the engine’s blistering fifty-five miles an hour-then sat behind the windshield to dry my eyes and take a swig of tea. Overhead, a jetliner banked to land at Southwest International, and it pleased me to imagine how my fast boat looked to passengers peering down. Like an arrowhead, I hoped, that cut a feathered wake as it cleaved a straight line toward its target. The Seminole shaman, Billie Egret, and Tomlinson would have both liked that.

I finished my tea, tweaked the trim tabs to nudge more speed from the engine, and felt my skiff settle beneath me, a Kevlar hydroplane, only its chines and propeller connected to the water.

Ahead, there was no horizon, no buildings to use as range markers. There was only the emptiness of water and my teenage memory of the wild islands that lay beyond.

IF THE MAKESHIFT MARKERS I REMEMBERED AT THE ENtrance to Drake Keys hadn’t been moved, I never would have spotted the Skipjack cruiser. Instead, a fast loop around the bay would have convinced me the boat wasn’t there before I hurried deeper into the islands toward channels that zigzagged toward Dismal Key.

A thirty-foot boat with Mercruisers required depth for safe anchorage, especially on a falling tide. As I approached the entrance, though, a glance told me there wasn’t enough water inside those islands to float a canoe. Plateaus of turtle grass, blades combed smooth by the tide, leaned toward gutters of deeper bottom, but there wasn’t a boat in sight. There were two navigable cuts, however, that sliced Cape Romano, and the shortest route to the nearest was through the shallow bay. That’s when I began to look seriously for the markers I remembered from my trips to the islands with Uncle Jake.

Normally, I don’t need poles or floating milk bottles to direct me through thin water. Even in unfamiliar regions, I have confidence in my abilities. But visibility had changed during the hour it had taken me to raise the shoals of Cape Romano. Now a flotilla of squall clouds muted the sky above while sunset painted the surface from a low angle, cloaking sandbars and nervous water with a blinding film of gold. I backed the throttle… squinted through my polarized glasses… thumbed the jack plate higher while searching for the best line to run. No matter how hard a boat passenger tries to pay attention, only the driver’s brain is actually branded with the self-taught ranges and contours of bottom required to navigate backcountry. I had run this little cut several times while Jake steered, but the placement of those old markers now refused to take shape in my head.

Twenty yards from the island, I knew I was in trouble. The hull lifted beneath my feet, as it always does in thin water, then my engine’s skeg banged bottom. Rather than kill the motor instantly, I got aggressive because I’d come too far to be stranded here in the middle of nowhere. Not if Ricky Meeks might soon return!

Instead, while my thumb worked the trim button, I steered hard to the right, jamming the throttle forward until the engine kicked and bucked us toward deeper water. By the time we’d broken free, my skiff was heeled precariously on its starboard chine, so I spun the wheel to the left, which caused a turn so sharp, I was nearly thrown from the boat.

Gradually, I got my skiff under control but continued steering hard rights and hard lefts until it was safe to run flat, the foot of my engine tilted deep in water that its cooling system required. For almost a minute, I thought I’d dodged a serious mistake. Then I heard BZZZZZZZZZZZZ! as my motor sputtered, then died, a cloud of exhaust steam floating past me while my skiff drifted to a stop.