Surface Tension - Kling Christine - Страница 60
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The key turned easily in the lock. With a single tug, the Jet Ski slid out and down the carpeted ramp, splashing into the water. I jumped on and hit the button with my thumb. Nothing happened.
“Damn!”
I glanced upriver in the direction Neal had gone. Just as I was about to give up, I remembered the emergency kill switch—a tab that had to be in place for the bike to start. I threw an extra dock line over the water bike and crawled into the little boathouse on my hands and knees. I felt the coiled plastic-coated wire, grabbed it, and hopped back on the boat. I slipped my hand through the Velcro wristband and slid the tab into place. I prayed the gas in the water bike wasn’t too old. She started right up. I hunkered my body down tight to the machine and cranked that baby up full bore.
Only a few hours earlier, Sunny and I had rowed quietly down this waterway. Now the Jet Ski screamed back upriver, her engine’s whine echoing back off the houses lining the riverbanks, the wind making my eyes water and tying my loose hair into knots. I’d ridden this thing only once before, and I found myself oversteering, zigging and zagging, nearly slamming into one seawall, then the other.
The startled bridge tender’s moonlike face appeared behind the glass as I roared under the Andrews Avenue Bridge. He must have wondered what the hell we were doing tearing upriver at that hour, first Neal in my Whaler and now me, maybe two to three minutes behind him.
After I passed under the 1-95 bridge and the river widened, I could see the remains of the Whaler’s wake ahead of me. I knew I was closing on him.
As I approached the fork in the river, I wondered which direction he would take—west toward the Everglades or south to the Dania Cutoff Canal and a big circle back to the entrance to Port Everglades. I bet on the Dania direction, and that choice was confirmed when I saw that his wake still ruffled the water in that direction.
I was entering Pond Apple Slough, one of the few remaining freshwater swamps in South Florida. Though developers had built a trash incinerator, a superhighway, and industrial parks all around the swamp, the environmentalists had managed to save these last few acres. It
was totally undeveloped and dark as hell. The amber light of the highway did little to penetrate the tangle of grass, mangrove, and dead cypress. Tearing upriver I feared hitting some obstruction. I eased off the gas a little just before I heard the gunshot.
I swerved violently, then overcorrected in the other direction. The shot had come from somewhere along the left bank, and I had to get control of the bike to put some distance between us. I was trying to remain upright when another shot hit a tree just behind me.
“Shit,” I said aloud, my lips nearly touching the handlebars. I couldn’t see him, but obviously he had stopped somewhere deep in the brush along the eastern bank. If he could hide in the brush, so could I. There was an opening ahead, like a little tributary stream, and I turned into it, cutting the engine. The Jet Ski barely fit into the slot between the mangroves, and I used the overhanging branches to pull myself forward.
My skin was soon covered in a thin sheen of sweat. I continuously wiped my palms on the shorts I’d borrowed. My smell seemed to be attracting every bug in the swamp. Several tones of offkey buzzing assaulted both ears, and the stinging started about my calves. When I dipped my bare feet into the water to discourage the biting, they sank into the muck on the bottom.
The Whaler’s outboard started up, and the sound of Neal searching for me filled the night.
He stopped at the break in the brush where I had entered. I winced when I heard branches and roots scraping the sides of the Whaler’s hull. Then the prop hit the mud and the engine started to sputter. There was no mistaking the voice doing all the cursing: Neal.
The night suddenly grew quiet in the void left after the engine’s rumble quit. I froze holding on to two different mangrove branches, my arms spread wide, imagining a
bullet striking between my shoulder blades at any moment. The mosquitoes buzzed more insistently, and one even flitted into my ear canal. It took every ounce of willpower not to flinch.
“Seychelle, is that you in there?” His voice sounded strong, confident, and much too close. “Because if that’s you, I’ll put this gun away right now. You know I wouldn’t ever do anything to hurt you, Sey.”
I kept quiet, listening.
“Shit, I know you must really be pissed at me, but I can explain it all to you.”
Water sloshed around the Whaler as he shifted position in the boat. I wanted to turn around to see if I could spot him back there. Though the moon had set, the glow from the city grew brighter as my eyes adjusted to the night.
“Your money. Okay. I had to take that. There were some tools, things I needed to buy. But I’ll be able to pay it all back soon, baby. With interest. You’d better believe that.”
I felt a mosquito land on my face next to my eye, and then the tiny sharp pain as it pierced my skin.
“I don’t know what they’ve been telling you, but I’m the victim here, Sey. These guys, they want to kill me. They sent that girl, Patty, to kill me. You believe me, don’t you, Sey?”
Part of me wanted to believe him, to believe that all this had just been a colossal mistake, to believe that there was an explanation, that I just needed to listen to Neal’s side of this and it would all suddenly make sense.
“Come on, I know you’re there, but I feel stupid talking to the mangroves. Just come out and I’ll explain it to you.”
My face, my legs. I tried to concentrate on not scratching, not moving, not believing what he was saying.
“Okay. Look, here’s what happened. I surfaced when I heard the engines shut down and found her there talking to them on the VHF, telling them where we were. I had to stop her. She shot me. A little lower and I’d be dead. What the hell was I supposed to do? Talk to me, Sey. Come on out of there. You know me.”
About fifteen, twenty feet away, a little to the south of where Neal waited, I heard something move, causing branches to quiver and a shhhhh sort of noise as the thing moved through the water.
“You don’t know what it’s like, Sey, working for a man with all that money, a complete asshole.”
The little ripples on the surface of the water caused other branches to shift, turning leaves in the half light, making the trees creak slightly as wood rubbed on wood. I squinted as I looked over my shoulder.
“Guys like that don’t deserve it.” When Neal spoke, I could hear the direction of his voice change as he swung his head around, listening to the swamp. “I’m not leaving till you come out of there, Sey. I know you want to believe me.”
I struggled to see what was moving through the water. My mind whirled with visions of reptilian jaws opening as they neared my ankles. Ever so slowly I lifted my toes out of the muck. Placing my feet on the footrests, I slowly reached for another branch, but the stick broke off in my hand with a loud snap.
Shots boomed out and bullets flew into the brush around me. I hunkered down against the water bike, my eyes squeezed shut. A startled large bird flew out of the scrub, letting loose with an eerily childlike cry, the sound of its wings audible as it circled and turned west. I leaned back down and pressed my cheek against the warm metal of the water bike. My heart felt like it was battering at the inside of my rib cage. Neal cursed the bird and
fired off another three or four shots. I heard one bullet shatter a tree branch less than a foot above my head.
He had not been shooting just to scare me.
I waited, but he didn’t say anything more. There wasn’t much more to say.
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