Thomas Perry - Vanishing Act

"A shear pin. If the prop hits something, there’s a little pin that breaks, so even though the propeller is stopped, the drive shaft can keep turning."

"Why in the hell would anybody put a fiendish thing like that in a motor?"

"Just cross your fingers," she said. She set the controls, gave a pull on the lanyard, and the motor started. She listened for a second, and it sounded strange. She shifted to engage the propeller and nothing happened. She leaned over the stem and looked into the water, said something Felker couldn’t hear, and turned off the motor.

Felker said, "Pin?"

Jane shrugged. "That’s how they act when that’s what’s wrong. It doesn’t mean there aren’t other things, too."

Felker carefully made his way toward the stern. "Any chance it can be fixed by two rabbits?"

Jane smiled. "We forgot to steal the toolbox. People carry extra pins."

He thought for a second. "Describe the pin."

"It’s a little peg of metal ... soft metal, I guess. About an inch long and an eighth of an inch thick."

"How is it held in place?" He sounded different now, and she wasn’t sure whether it made her uncomfortable or if she was grateful for it. She supposed it was his serious, patient cop voice.

"It just sits in a little slot."

"Where?"

"Down next to the prop."

"Do we have anything to lose if we try to fix it?"

She shrugged. "Beats rowing, and there’s no reason not to try," she said. "The pin will be in two pieces, but we might be able to use something else."

He unscrewed the clamps and lifted the motor into the boat. Jane touched the propeller. It didn’t seem to be bent. It must have dug into the ice long enough to shear the pin before it had come loose.

He said, "I feel something sticking out—wire?"

"The cotter key," said Jane. She could tell without being able to see that he was pinching the two legs inward. Then he took out his knife and put the point into the loop and extracted it.

"I wish we had some light," he muttered.

"Those four men wish we did, too. By now they’re looking in our direction."

"I guess so. What’s next?"

"Feel that part that’s shaped like a big bullet?"

"Got it."

"Depending on the model, it either comes off in your hand or you have to turn it."

She heard him fiddling with it, and then he said, "It’s off."

"Now feel for washers—almost paper-thin."

"Just one," he said. "Big one."

"Now it’s my turn." She carefully lifted the propellor off and felt for the shear pin. "Here it is," she said. "Only now it’s them."

He held out his hand and she placed the pieces in his palm. He pushed them together, felt them, then touched the slot in the motor. "How about a nail?" he asked.

"Great," she answered. "Got one?"

"No. I saw about ten of them in that garage."

"He pounded them in with the hammer from the toolbox."

"How about a piece of wood? We could cut one off an oar."

"Too soft. Go for too hard. At this point I don’t care what happens to a stolen motor."

Felker said, "Do you have a piece of jewelry or something?"

"No," she answered. "I don’t wear jewelry when I work unless it’s a disguise." Then she said, "My belt."

"What about it?"

"The little piece of the buckle that goes through the holes is about the right size." She pulled off the belt and handed it to him. He felt it, held it up to the slot in the motor, then set the belt on the seat beside him and went to work prying it off the bar with his knife.

"Here it is," he said.

She placed it in the slot on the motor, sliced a little leather off the belt to pack it tight, and whistled with pleasure.

"What was that?" he said anxiously. "Did you hear it?"

"I was whistling. It fits. Or it feels like it fits."

"You know, I never heard a woman whistle before."

"You’ve lived a sheltered life." She started carefully replacing the parts on the motor. "Where’s the washer?"

"Here. You mean you could all whistle all this time and you just didn’t do it?"

"Yes, and do arithmetic and pee outdoors and smoke cigars." She reached for the next part, but found his hand was already on it in the dark. They touched hands for an instant, and she pulled hers away to let him put the bullet-shaped piece on. "I hope you still have the cotter pin."

"Yeah," he said. "It’s a little bent up, but I can straighten it enough." She could hear him fiddling with it on the motor. "I think it’s done."

"Let me feel it," she said, and then realized she was warning him to get his hand out of the way so they wouldn’t touch again in the dark: the rules. "It feels as though everything is where it should be," she said. "If it only lasts a mile or two, we’re still ahead."

He stood to lift the motor onto the transom again, then went to his knees beside her to tighten one side while she turned the other clamp. Then he made his way forward again.

Jane felt for the fuel hose, connected it, and said, "Keep your eyes open for ice. If you see anything, don’t be shy. Sing out."

"You’re assuming this will work."

"The lady in the store where I bought that belt said it was timeless and perfect for all occasions." She gave the motor a pull.

He said something else, but his words were drowned out by the sound of the motor coughing. It gave its familiar sputter, then hummed with a louder, even sound. She was glad she hadn’t heard him. There was something about their relationship that was getting too fluid. His good-natured words were like ambassadors sent out to penetrate her defenses. It was making her uncomfortable. He was changing things, moving the line back, closer and closer to her.

What he hadn’t said was bothering her, too. He had been a cop. He must have thought of the shotgun right away. There were two parts on a shotgun—the pin that held the trigger assembly into the receiver, and the pin that locked the magazine plug—that would have been better than the belt buckle. Cops saw shotguns every day of their lives, rode with them upright in a rack in their patrol cars. You had to pop the pin out even to clean and oil the trigger mechanism. He would have been perfectly justified in saying, "Too bad you dropped the shotgun into two hundred feet of water."

Had he kept himself from saying it because he thought she wouldn’t have known what he was talking about, or because he had known she would have thought of it already—how she had stupidly gotten rid of it when it was full of little pieces of metal in just about any shape you wanted? The answer was that he knew she would have thought of it and that she would feel guilty enough already and that she would be grateful to him for never mentioning it. Jane didn’t feel like being grateful. She didn’t want to have to give him credit for being considerate or calm or cheerful or for having big, strong hands that could bend a cotter key or for anything else. Everything he did was calculated to slip through her defenses, to decrease the distance that made her feel comfortable. But maybe it wasn’t calculated, and her defenses just weren’t what they ought to be.

She kept her ears tuned to the sound of the motor. It seemed to be all right. The minutes went by, and every one of them was a reprieve from rowing, and added to their chance of hopping out of reach of the men who had been chasing them.

Felker got up on the seat on his knees and pointed. He half-turned his face to her, so she twisted the handgrip on the throttle and slowed down to hear him. "Big one ahead," he called. "Go to the left a little."

She changed course a few degrees and kept the motor’s revolutions low enough to let her hear the next sighting. She was being unfair to him, she knew. This had to be the worst week of his life, with the high probability that the next one wouldn’t be as good. She wasn’t used to making men like him disappear. Most victims weren’t even men. They were women and children. For the children, the whole world seemed to be a dream, first the bad kind, and then the kind where they were compelled by her voice to keep moving, going through unfamiliar landscapes for no reason they could explain. The women stopped bristling at another woman’s authority only when they were sure she was about to go away again. Most of the men had been thrown off balance by surprise and fear before she met them. They just wanted to know how to get out fast. That was his problem: He hadn’t been thrown off balance. He hadn’t just run; he had sat down and thought it through and decided to come to her, without relinquishing control.