David Dun - At The Edge

"Ma'am, you have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you. You have the right to an attorney."

"I want to exercise my right to remain silent. That man choked me."

"It was to apprehend her, I expect?" the officer said.

"That bastard got me on the ground and choked me unless I talked."

Dan left them for the piers.

"Where you going?" the cop called.

"Look for Maria," Dan said, with Shohei just behind.

They trotted down the gangway. A friend of Dan's, who also happened to be his doctor, owned a fast sportfishing boat that was docked in the harbor. By virtue of a few salmon fishing trips, Dan had learned where his friend hid the key.

Dan started the boat. A quick study, Shohei had the lines free in seconds. And then they were boiling up the bay to the jetties and the ocean bar.

The night was thick with fog and salt. Dan didn't know what he was searching for, but he had to try. He turned on the GPS navigator and the radar along with a bright searchlight on the bow.

On an electronic display Dan found their boat shown superimposed on a chart, its location heading and speed over the ocean bottom plainly visible. He accelerated to eighteen knots but suspected he didn't have the visibility for that speed. Frustrated, he slowed to sixteen knots and watched the radar. Crossing over the sandbar at the entrance to the bay, he saw three targets moving away from the jetties.

He took a bearing on the closest target, which appeared at the six-nautical-mile ring, also traveling out to sea at about ten knots. He could chase them down in less than forty minutes if he maintained his current speed. The fog could get no thicker, though, or he would have to slow even more.

Maria could taste her own death. She imagined the water closing over her nostrils and contemplated the agony of sucking the ocean down her throat. Whatever waited in the depths spawned its own peculiar terror. Death wanted to fill her mind, to crowd out reason and love and hope. The contemplation of her gruesome dying threatened to erode even her will to survive.

Groiter and Kenji looked groggy, drifting in and out of consciousness on the back of the fishing boat, each with his feet buried in quick-dry concrete and hands shackled at the wrists. Maria worked feverishly at the line on her own wrists, which, unlike the men's, were tied behind her. She had made little progress, and Corey checked her bindings regularly. Maria knew that at any moment Corey could kill her and reduce her workload by one. The only impetus for keeping her alive, Maria suspected, was Corey's desire to exert her power and watch her drown in some macabre grand finale.

Everything was wet from the mist, the ocean oily calm. Large deck lights poured over the black-painted aft deck, and stout halogens bolted to the spars shone over the deckhouse, illuminating the sea and making the bow wake sudsy white against the dark velvet of the Pacific.

"I'm cold," Groiter said.

''I wouldn't worry about the cold-you'll be dead soon,'' Corey said.

Kenji just stared at the dreary darkness and the ghostly mist.

"You want to go over the side dead or alive?" Corey asked. "Your choice. Bitch here goes over hog-tied and alive so I can watch her struggle. But you guys are going down like bricks."

The line around Maria's wrists had cut off the blood flow. A shark glided through the wake as if it knew that the ocean was about to be fertilized. On the black gunwales the moisture was shiny slick, making it seem as if they traveled on the devil's own vessel. The muffled horn at the harbor's mouth sounded regularly in the distance; occasionally a startled seabird leaped out of the water before the prow and glided through the air.

"I want to go over dead," Groiter said at last. "Get me square between the eyes, from up close."

Corey laughed. "You know I almost forgot something. I have something to show Kenji, but first I gotta go tweak the autopilot a few degrees to miss the outer buoy." When Corey returned, she held a photograph. "Mr. Kim Lee had rather cleverly hid this under the leather of his Gucci briefcase." She held it in the light in front of Kenji; it was obvious he didn't like what he saw. "I took the liberty of sending it to the cops."

"Wanna see, bitch? You might be interested in this."

Corey held it in front of Maria's nose like an excited child with a secret. Effortlessly Corey used a strong arm to turn Maria's body so that the halogens hit the picture square. It was a woman's nude and headless corpse and stuffed between her legs was a man's decapitated head, his mouth open as if in a scream. Maria's stomach turned.

"See, on those thighs, that TS tattooed on either side of that rose stem? That's because those thighs are dedicated to one Tom Swanson. And that's because those are the thighs of one Catherine Swanson. And that head came off the photographer who supposedly killed her. But if he killed her and fled the scene, how can it be that his head is between her thighs? Groiter here took the picture just in case he ever had boss trouble."

Corey got in Kenji's face.

"Now, how did the lady lose her head? It seems that she had been blowing Kenji, and Groiter wasn't positive he could get every molecule of cum out of her mouth. All kinds of nasty new DNA tests, you know."

"I want a knife," Kenji said.

"Oh, this isn't what I think it is? That hara-kiri thing?" Corey laughed. "We get to watch while you spill your guts on the deck? Is that it?"

"I want a knife."

"This I gotta see," Corey said. "Too bad Janet isn't here. You wanna slit your guts too, like your boss?"

Groiter didn't dignify her with a response.

Corey stepped into the boat's galley behind the wheel-house and returned with a long, thin-bladed knife for filleting fish.

"This do?"

Kenji nodded.

"Let's see what you got, Jap. Impress us with your cojones."

She set the knife at his feet and stepped back quickly with the gun leveled at him. Kenji stooped and retrieved the knife. "I need my hands," he said, holding them out. Warily she unlocked the shackles.

Slowly he unbuttoned his shirt, each button made to seem special. Then he removed the garment and deliberately laid it over the rail. Staring into the distance as if he were alone, with both hands wrapped around the handle, he poised the knife in front of the left side of his belly. He waited.

Maria felt her throat constrict. "Please don't."

His eyes betrayed nothing-it was as if she hadn't spoken. In an instant he raised the knife and with all his strength drove it to its hilt, then pulled it across his belly, making a wound that gaped like a grotesque smile. There was a slight sound-like slop in a bucket. Intestines started to spill as he dropped the knife. Blood poured out, but not a sound escaped his lips. Kenji began to fall when Corey jumped, throwing her shoulder into the bloody mess as if she were desperate to get him over. He toppled with a splash, the force of the water on his shoulders dragging the concrete over the side. In a second or two he was gone, leaving only a crimson ribbon.

"Jesus Christ. He had balls after all." Corey carefully cleaned the knife on his abandoned shirt, then tied a lead weight to the garment and dropped it over. The knife she put behind her in the waistband of her pants.

"Shoot me in the head point-blank," Groiter said.

This final, last-ditch effort at escape was pathetically obvious. Maria was certain that Groiter wasn't fooling Corey. Groiter would try to grab the gun. But Corey appeared willing to play the game. For Corey it would be one last torture, a chance to snuff the tiny spark of hope that still remained.

She pointed the gun at his forehead. "Come on, asshole. Give it your best shot." One step at a time, Corey got closer, baiting him until the barrel was just two feet from his nose.