still pained him. He spoke, playing for time.
'How'd you find us? Zenger?'
'Assume whatever you' like Where's the girl?'
'Then it was Zenger. What'd you do? Fly up last night, knowing we couldn't get off by boat until today? Then you watched the ferry depot until we showed up? Right?'
'You're smart,' he growled.
'Not as smart as your father. But smart' The man had a trace of a middle-European accent. German? Polish? Something.
'How's your throat? Hurt?'
'I like my throat. I like swallowing with it.'
'Like to swallow some water? A whole ocean of water?'
Thomas felt the grip go tight on his arm again. The man would have little trouble forcing him over the rail. Little, if allowed to strike first. Thomas reached into his coat pocket and gripped his car keys.
'I'll make you a trade. The girl's life for yours. Where is she?
Otherwise you both go overboard and-' Thomas's free arm streaked for the man's face, a Volvo key gripped like a blade between forefinger and middle finger, braced by the whole fist.
A strong forearm flew up to block Thomas's thrust. But it wasn't quite in time. The key savagely slashed into the thick skin beneath the left eye. It dug and it tore and the man bellowed with pain and anger.
Blood was already streaming from the jagged deep cut.
Thomas tried to dig the key into the man's eye. He failed. A forearm smashed Thomas's fist so hard that the key, Daniels's only defense, flew across the wet deck. The man's eyes were crazed.
Both hands clutched Thomas around the neck and throat.
Thomas knew. He was to be killed. He'd had his one chance and he'd failed. Thomas kicked at the man's shins, trying desperately to dislodge the grip upon him.
But the hands were at his throat. Then only one hand as the man pulled back a fist and slammed it into Thomas's stomach.
Thomas winced and doubled again, feeling as if he should crumple to the ground. He staggered and tried to stay up. But he was absolutely no match for a man schooled in violence' A savage chop to the back of his neck, and Thomas went down to the wet deck. He wasn't fully conscious.
The man tried to pick him up.
Thomas tried to stay down. Thomas tried to crawl away. Over the railing would be the next stop. Thomas knew it.
He heard a remote noise in the background.
The man leaned down and grabbed him by the coat, hoisting him up.
Thomas was blinded by water in his eyes and pain all over his body. He was coughing and trying to break the grip on him.
But he kept being lifted, lifted. No matter how much he struggled to stay down, he was being forced upward against the railing until he could feel half his body being forced over it.
Only a matter of seconds now, for the other half to join the first.
He was hanging on with one leg and one arm, looking up blearily into the face of his killer, fighting the'rain, the wind, and a man twice as strong as he. He was almost over.
Then abruptly the man let out an unearthly bellow. A howl. A scream of anguish that belonged in a slaughter-house. The iron grip melted.
The power in the hands was gone.
Thomas blinked rapidly and peered through the rain. The man's eyes were bulging, inflated in the most undiluted anguish. He staggered and turned.
Thomas, clinging to the railing, gawked, almost sickened at the sight.
The broad back had been hacked open. Blood poured from a huge seven-inch gash that formed a diagonal cross against his upper backbone. The man staggered, trying to reach with his hands behind his back, trying to get to the source of the pain.
But he couldn't. He could only lurch.
Then Thomas saw. Leslie.
She was standing several feet from him, the fire ax gripped defiantly in her hands, hatred -and perhaps fear in her eyes. Blood, washed by rain, dripped from the blade of the ax.
The man howled obscenely. Thomas was transfixed by what he saw, almost forgetting to pull the part of him that was not on board back from over the rail.
The man lunged at Leslie, cursing her. She held the ax like a spear, thrusting the blunt handle end forward and thumping it with a loud crack against the man's upper chest bone. Then, slashing with the wooden end, she crashed it against his head, sending him down against the wet floorboards.
She dropped the ax. She extended a hand to Thomas and pulled him back from the railing. His mind was a mass of confusion, his body still anguished in several parts.
'Help me,' was all she said.
Help her? he wondered.
The body was still writhing, still alive but bleeding profusely, 'Help me ' she repeated.
He didn't understand. He didn't know what she wanted.
She went to the body, lifted the struggling assassin by a shoulder, and motioned to Thomas. Motioned to the man's other shoulder.
And motioned to the rear of the deck.
He stood there. He knew what she wanted. He couldn't.
'Do it, damn it!' she screamed.
'He tried to kill you! Don't you understand? Twice he tried to kill you!'
He grabbed the other shoulder, and with a quick motion across ten feet of wet deck they ran the man to the railing, using their momentum, the man's momentum and the ship's to send him hurtling against the railing, then up and over it.
Thomas expected to hear a splash.
He didn't. The rain, the wind, and the engines covered it.
They were both soaked, of course, and Thomas knew he was going to be sick. He looked at the wide wake left by the boat and tried to see the body.
He couldn't. The indeterminate mixture of sea and rain covered everything with gray. The man was gone. No visibility on Nantucket Sound in a squall. Fifty feet at best.
He turned and faced Leslie. She was surprisingly calm, as if it were all in a day's work. She looked at him inquisitively as if to say,
'My, wasn't that close.' Then she picked up the ax, carefully holding it by the handle, and glancing around to assure herself that they remained unobserved.
Then she flung it in a twisting, spinning arc over the rear railing, perhaps to act as a tombstone for the nameless man they'd buried.
Again, they heard no splash.
She took his hand.
'I wouldn't trust Zenger again' she said in a most appalling understatement.
'He's not on our side. Shifty eyes.'
She gave his hand a pull.
'Come on,' she said.
'Let's get' dry She gathered his car keys for him. Some women think of everything.
He pulled back and shook his head.
'Nlot yet,' he said. He motioned to the rail and indicated the turbulence in his digestive system.
'Ah, yes. I see,' she said. She paused.
'Well, when you're finished come inside and well have some tea. It will make you feel better.' . He nodded. She disappeared inside and he spent a sickened moment at the rail, alone this time, looking at the gray sea behind the ship and marveling how nature covers everything.
