Reese opened his eyes. Saltwater. He smelled saltwater. “We’re close to the ocean…”
"Great, we could be even more trapped than we were a minute ago,” Jo replied.
"No—don't you see? This is great! Hurry, follow me!"
"Where we going?” asked Jo.
"To the coast,” Reese called over his shoulder. “Hurry!”
Jo mumbled something that Reese couldn’t hear, but he didn't care. His tortured, sleep-deprived mind latched onto the idea that they were near Boston Harbor. Green Harbor—the port where a little over a week ago he and Ben had left for the fishing trip—lay just a handful of miles south of Boston. He had no illusions that he might find his car, parked at the dock…it was far too close to the ocean to have survived the tsunami. But he knew private marinas that catered to yachts peppered the coastline all around Boston. If they could find a boat, and if the boat survived the tsunami, and if it wasn't damaged…
If, if, if…
Reese shook his head as he plowed forward and stepped over a heavy wooden door that lay propped against a car that looked more like an accordion than a Ford. He climbed over the seaweed-covered metal frame and slipped down to the ground on the other side. Jo clambered down with all the grace of an ox at an ice rink and cursed mightily when she landed in the muck.
"This had better work," she growled.
“It’s our only chance,” Reese replied as he helped her up.
A shout echoed down the street behind them.
"These guys don't give up, do they?" asked Jo.
Reese put his good hand to his face. “It’s gotta be Mayo.”
“Who?” Asked Jo.
“The guy I…the one I killed when they kidnapped you. His brother was the leader of that group of miscreants. Sean Mayo. He wants payback…”
Jo put a hand on Reese’s shoulder. “When the time comes, we’ll line him up next to his brother then. But first we need to get out of here.”
"Good point," Reese admitted. "Look!" he said as he pointed. Across the street at the intersection, a sign proclaimed the North Boston Yacht Club was only a few blocks away. Mud had coated the sign to the point that it partially fell off the building, but that had allowed the gunk to slide off enough for Reese to read the letters. "We're almost there!”
“A yacht club—oh, no, you want me on another boat?” Jo demanded as she followed him down the street.
Two blocks later, Reese skidded to a stop in the mud-choked street at the sight of a sailboat on its side in the middle of the intersection. "Well, we’re definitely getting close."
"I hope that's not the only boat here…” Jo muttered.
The horizon opened up around the next building, and Reese clattered down a set of rickety wooden steps covered in sea slime and trash. At the bottom, only a few feet above water level, he found the wreckage of dozens of boats, piled up against the seawall and ripped to pieces like matchsticks.
"Anybody else got a real strong sense of déjà vu?" asked Jo as she made it to the bottom of the steps and stood next to Reese.
"Come on, if we can't find something quick, we can at least hide from them. Over here!” Reese said quickly. He took Jo's hand and pulled her further into the wreckage. They had to slow to a crawl to avoid impaling themselves on broken wood and shredded fiberglass, but they managed to get over, around, and through much of the wreckage and got down to the water itself.
Reese could almost feel the crosshairs on his back as he urged Jo forward. They crawled over the hull of a capsized sailboat and used the keel as a balance point to drop down to the water's edge. The sailboat, on its side with its mast speared into the mud at the shoreline, created a lean-to of sorts. From their position at the water's edge, they were completely hidden from observers back up on the surface street.
"Here—this is it, duck under here," Reese commanded. They ducked under the deck of the sailboat and into the shadows. Despite a good fifty yards that separated them from their pursuers, Reese and Jo held their breath and remained quiet. Angry shouts echoed back and forth as the men searched for them. Reese detected at least three voices. They'd spread out along the docks and worked their way down to the shore, but the going had definitely been rougher than they’d expected. After a few long minutes of curses and taunts, the search party gave up.
The shouts faded, and Reese and Jo were left surrounded by the relative silence of the marina-turned-graveyard. The hulls of wrecked boats creaked and groaned against each other in time with the gentle pressure of the minimal waves that rolled in off of Massachusetts Bay.
Flotsam choked the water for the first fifty yards offshore. It looked just like the scene they'd witnessed at Bar Harbor a week earlier. Complete and utter destruction of the shoreline had rendered the coastal waterway absolutely useless to all but the most skilled navigators and strong-hulled boats.
Jo pulled her scraped, bruised, muddy knees up as much as she could, placed her arms across them with a wince, and rested her head. "What are we going to do now?" she whispered. It was the closest thing Reese had seen to surrender from the former park ranger.
Hope swelled in Reese’s heart despite Jo’s gloomy outlook. He breathed in the clean, fresh air off the Atlantic. The smell of death and rotting garbage was behind them. Only the open horizon—just
