Her right arm hurt too much to move. Reaching down with her left hand, she groped on the floor. Her fingers brushed past the dried carapaces of dead insects, brittle as bits of eggshell.
What did she think she was looking for, anyway? A shotgun conveniently left under the bunk? Or maybe a hand grenade or a bundle of dynamite sticks? Hopeless.
Slam. Closer.
She punched through a gummy meshwork of cobwebs under the bunk. Feeling along the wall, she touched something small and hard and slender, sharply pointed at one end. She withdrew it carefully.
A nail.
Some workman must have dropped it while boarding up the window. A good, long nail-three or four inches.
Slam. Very close now.
A ripple of light-headedness passed through her as she struggled upright. She took a slow step, then another, treading lightly to prevent the loose floorboards from squealing.
Slam. The next door down.
She found the door frame, leaned against the wall, the nail clutched tight in her fist.
Hardly a lethal weapon. But if she put it in his neck, she might disable him long enough to grab his gun- assuming he had a gun-and shoot him, shoot to kill.
She could kill now. Kill either of them. Yes, even Steve. He was not her husband anymore.
Outside, a crunch of footsteps.
There was a very good chance she would be dead within a few seconds. Oddly the thought did not frighten her. She had done her best. She could not have done more.
The door swung open. Pallid light streamed into the gloom. The emaciated shadow of a man stretched along the floor.
Kirstie raised the nail, holding it parallel with her line of vision.
The shadow wavered. The man leaned forward, his face in profile sliding into view.
At first she didn’t even recognize him. Mud streaked the bird’s-nest tangle of his hair. His eyes, sunk deep in the sockets, were underscored by dull crescents the color of dead flesh. Beard stubble dusted his cheeks, fringing cracked and swollen lips, the parched lips of a wanderer in the desert.
And his shirt-God-it was crusted with blood.
He didn’t see her. Though she had hesitated, though she ought to have forfeited the advantage of surprise, his glazed eyes, blinking vapidly, appeared to focus on nothing at all.
Against such a badly weakened adversary, even a three-inch nail wielded by a woman on the verge of collapse might prove as effective as a bayonet in a soldier’s hand.
But somehow she couldn’t make her arm lash out in a deadly thrust. It would be like… like killing a dead man.
Instead, almost involuntarily, she breathed his name.
“Steve…”
The sound of her voice took a second to register with him. He turned in her direction, eyes narrowed, lips pursed.
She couldn’t interpret the look on his face. Warily she lifted the nail in her clenched fist.
“Stay where you are. Don’t try anything.”
He didn’t seem to hear. With dreamlike slowness he reached out to touch her left hand, then gently pried open her unresisting fingers. The nail clattered onto the floor.
“Kirstie…” he whispered in a voice like death.
The sudden violence of his embrace shocked her. The press of his mouth against hers seemed to capture and condense every kiss they had ever shared into a frenzy of desperate, hurried intimacy.
She didn’t understand-it made no sense, none of it-yet she found herself holding him tight, stroking his matted, brier-strewn hair, as his mouth brushed her neck and he spoke her name again and again, each separate moan a new, agonized confession of remorse.
If this was another trick, another trap, then she would let him deceive her, let him win.
45
The guardhouse at the marina was manned by an elderly wharf rat in a security guard’s jacket and cap. His name, he told Lovejoy and Moore, was Mickey Cotter, and he worked the night shift, from midnight to seven a.m.
Lovejoy showed him the mug shot. “The gist of the situation is that we’re looking for this man. His name is Jack Dance.”
Cotter put on a pair of reading glasses and held the photo under the lamp on his desk. “Face don’t look familiar. What’s he called again?”
“John Dance. Often called Jack.”
“I’m no damn good at remembering people. Boats I know. Never forget a boat.”
Moore saw an opportunity. Cotter looked as if he’d hung around this boatyard for decades, a permanent fixture.
“In the seventies,” she said, “Jack used to visit Islamorada with his father. They had a twenty-five-foot flybridge cruiser, the Light Fantastic.”
“Light Fantastic?” Cotter’s glasses slipped down, and he thumbed them back onto the bridge of his nose. “Oh, sure. I knew her. She tied up here every August. Unusual design-semi-displacement hull. She could be trimmed with flaps; you don’t normally see that feature on a canyon runner. I remember one time there was a problem with the flaps. She was riding high-”
Lovejoy cut short the reminiscence. “So you’re saying you did meet Jack?”
“I surely did. ’Course, he was just a kid back then. Smooth talker, though. Never entirely trusted him. Had a friend, nice boy, came with him every time.”
“Was this friend of his named Steve Gardner?”
“Why, yes. That was him. Stevie Gardner. Wait a minute. Pretty sure I heard something about that young man only recently.” He lifted his cap and scratched his sun-browned scalp, frowning hard. “I got it. Chet told me. He’s on Pelican Key.”
Moore was lost. “Who is?”
“Steve Gardner and his missus-they’re taking a vacation there.”
A startled glance passed like a spark of static electricity between Moore and Lovejoy.
“Pelican Key,” Lovejoy said. “Is that close-by?”
“Three miles due east. Why? You interested in finding Steve, too?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.” Lovejoy nodded grimly. “I think it’s fair to say we’re very interested in having a conversation with Mr. Gardner.”
“Well, heck. Chet’s about to head out there right now. He showed up a few minutes before you did, in a real sweat. Seemed peculiar to me; a little early for him to do one of his milk runs-”
Moore interrupted. “Where can we find him?”
“Basin C. Boat’s the Black Caesar. The man you want is Chester Pice. Better hurry, though.”
Lovejoy slid behind the wheel of the sedan. By the time Moore jumped into the passenger seat, Cotter had raised the gate. Lovejoy gunned the motor, and the car shot forward.
“Chester Pice,” Moore said as Lovejoy tore through the empty parking lot. “I talked to him at the restaurant last night. He’d heard of Jack, but he wasn’t sure where.”
“I’m guessing it came back to him.”
They left the car illegally parked near a battered pickup truck-Pice’s, presumably-and pounded down a flight of rickety steps onto the wharf. At the far end of the third basin, a thirty-foot sportfisher was easing out of its berth.
Pice stood at the controls on the flying bridge. Behind him, the sky burned with the promise of the still hidden
