Randy White - Ten thousand isles

I punched off the radio, feeling an irrational anger toward whoever the fool was who decided to replace a human weatherman with a digitized voice. The phonation was so badly coded that it sounded like a drunken polka king who'd been filching tranquilizers.

No, it had been a group decision, more likely. Individuals are rarely so misguided. Because the voice was difficult to understand, I hadn't been able to decipher the exact location of Charles, nor how many miles the storm still had to cover before it reached the coast. Computer profiteers like Ivan Bauerstock would've applauded the transition to something that was programmable. Maybe that's why it made me so mad…

I swung in close to Dismal Key: a ridge of black trees rimmed with swamp. Said a silent greeting to the old hermit who once lived in a shack on the high Indian mounds there, A1 Seeley.

A1 lived without phone, power or running water, just him and his little dog. He painted, he read books. He had a sharp intellect and an appreciation for the ironic. He loved to tell the story of a hermit colleague who came to Dismal Key determined to build a bomb shelter. He spent hours in the heat and mosquitoes digging through shell until he said, screw it, let global warfare do its worst. He was tired and in need of a beer.

Heading out to sea only hours in advance of a Category Five hurricane, A1 would have found that ironic, too. There was no place safer than the high mounds of his island.

I busted out of the mangrove gloom at Turtle Key and went pounding through whitecaps, steering toward a sunset horizon that was a firestorm of smoldering clouds and tangerine sky. Big, big seas and lots of wind. I banged my way toward Coon Key Light: an offshore tower built of metal and wood that marked the back entrance to Marco and then Naples.

In these seas, Ted or Ivan would have to take the back way to Naples. No way they'd run outside the islands and risk the surf at Big Marco Pass. They would see the light tower on the radar screen, and they would steer for it. Or maybe the marker was already programmed into their Loran and autopilot system. Either way, the thing was nearly twenty-five feet high and impossible to miss. If I kept my skiff close enough to the tower, that's all their radar would pick up.

My boat would be invisible until I decided it was time for them to see…

I began to think I'd missed them. Or that they'd taken the more dangerous, outside route. I sat in my skiff, the engine idling, rolling in the heavy seas. I could feel each wave gather mass beneath the boat. Could feel it lift and thrust me skyward before I slid back into a green trough. From the top of each wave, I could see around the horizon. What I saw was not reassuring. I was the only boat for miles. No Hinckley. No Namesake.

Where the hell were they? Could I have gotten that far ahead of them? Or maybe they'd already passed Coon Key Light and were on the Intracoastal to Naples.

Or maybe, just maybe, they'd stopped back there in the Ten Thousand Islands to dump two bodies…

I had no choice. My best chance of intercepting them was to sit right where I was.

I watched a sunset that had no sun. The world became lemon-bright, as if seen through yellow glasses. A horizon of copper clouds sailed northward and then curled west. The clouds moved in horizontal bands, one above the other, striatums of blue sky showing through. I was seeing the front rim of a hurricane, spinning in slow motion over the earth's curvature. Fog drifted down out of that copper rim, moving toward me as a wave, and then I realized it wasn't fog, it was a misting rain. The rain swept across the water in panels of silver, soaking me, dripping off the poling platform of my skiff.

The lemon world became purple… then charcoal… then gray, as I waited.

Behind me, the solar switch was activated and Coon Key Light began to strobe every four seconds. Wind blew the light across the water in streamers of green, along with the stink of bird guano.

I'd missed them. Unless they'd run aground, or they'd had engine failure, there was no way it should have taken them so long to get to Marco.

So what was Plan B?

Plan B, I decided, was to get to Naples Yacht Club as fast as possible, and maybe catch them there. Get the law involved somehow, make them search the boat.

I'd been holding my skiff bow into the sea. But now I nudged it into gear and began to turn. I waited until I was atop a wave to complete the turn-which is when I noticed the shell of a dark hull wallowing on the horizon, not more than a mile away.

It was the Hinckley.

Detective Gary Parrish was not a blue-water sailor. Judging from what I saw, he wasn't much of a sailor at all. As I made my first pass, I could see him on his knees, hanging his head over the transom and vomiting. He'd made quit a mess on the big golden letters: Namesake.

I approached the Hinckley from head-on. If someone is chasing you, they approach from behind, right? I ran at an angle as if I was going to pass them port to port, just as cars traveling opposite directions pass. In this failing light and at a distance, they wouldn't recognize me. There was no color or detail. They would probably just think me some crazed flats fisherman trying to get his skiff back to Everglades City before the big storm hit.

Something else to my advantage: in heavy weather, men standing huddled in a cabin acquire tunnel vision. They don't look out the side windows, they seldom look behind. They stare hypnotically through the slapping windshield wipers and see little else but the glow of their own red and green running lights.

Namesake already had her lights on, obeying the laws, not wanting to attract any attention. The white anchor light was mounted on the antenna stem atop the cabin, which is why I could see Parrish and the mess he was making so clearly.

I was running without lights. Which is why it was unlikely they would notice me.

But Parrish hanging over the stern was an unexpected component. If I swept in close and lobbed one of my Mason jars at Namesake, he would see me. He'd hear and feel the small explosion and see me very clearly for several seconds, at least, as I blasted past. Plenty of time for him to draw his weapon and empty a clip at me.

The chances of a nauseous man hitting a moving target with a 9mm in heaving seas were not good. Still, all it would take was one lucky round.

If possible, I wanted to eliminate Parrish before I attacked. I needed to do it quietly, without attracting the attention of Ivan Bauerstock, whose silhouette I could see in the computer glow of electronics. He was sitting in the yacht's helm seat, head pushed forward as if straining to see through the rain.

Where were Ted and Nora?

No sign of them.

If they were aboard, they had to be together in the cabin below deck. It was an unsettling possibility-no, probability- that sickened me. It also underlined the need to hurry.

I passed the Hinckley a couple hundred yards to seaward, then swung in behind them. Jumped the wake and turned into their jetstream contrail, throttling, closing the distance between us.

Had Parrish noticed?

No. He was still retching. He appeared oblivious to everything around him. I could see the top of his head and shoulders clearly, heaving up and down. He was such an easy, unguarded target that I was tempted to ram Namesake from behind. Any small impact would have flipped him off the back of the boat. That's exactly what I would do if my first attempt to snag him didn't work.

As I bore down on them, I took the heavy Loomis bait-casting rod from the standup holder. It was still rigged with the Bomber lure that Tomlinson had been using. I tested the reel's star drag; tightened it. Tested it a second time and tightened it even more.