Gilroy started to reach for Jermaine’s shoulder, then thought better of it as Jermaine bared his teeth. I expected him to growl like a sabretooth beast, but he only made a soundless face, which somehow made it more menacing. A flicker of madness lit his eyes as he pulled away. Gilroy returned to the wheel.
“I be proud when she do as she told,” Jermaine said, shaking his head as if he were trying to shake water out of his ear.
Making it out of this night was beginning to look about as likely as a bloody cat out-swimming a hungry shark.
We stopped dead in the water. Streetlights and houselights twinkled from Charlotte Amalie, but the place seemed as distant as the stars above.
“You see him?” Gilroy pointed at the still twitching head of Jermaine. “This is what he lives for. He does the dirty work. Oh, yes. He does that.”
“He killed Kendal?”
“The reporter? ‘Course. I don’t go in for that sort of thing.”
“You aren’t worried about controlling him?” I asked, genuinely concerned, but also wanting to drop an ounce of doubt on the deck for later should things go that way.
“Control is an illusion. Just ask Francine. All that money and good intentions didn’t save her, did it?”
“Did he kill Francine?”
Jermaine piped up, “Yeah, I kill she.”
“Shut up, Jermaine. You got a big mouth. She wasn’t supposed to die. We were supposed to keep her alive and convince her to make a better ... dispensation. I wanted her to do what Dominic Bacon wanted, not some half-assed, two-hundred-years-too-late crap.”
“You could have dove in to save her,” Jermaine chirped. “She needed it to be real or she wasn’t gonna listen. You say to scare she.”
“Dumping an old woman into the ocean a mile out wasn’t what I had in mind, you idiot. Do you understand when you kill the person you are negotiating with, it defeats the whole fucking purpose! ‘Hold her’, not drop her is what I said,” Gilroy barked. “Enough. We’re asking questions, not you. Who else knows about us?”
Gilroy had wanted Francine alive long enough to get a better deal. To convince her to give him the distillery. That had to be it. Is that what Dominic had promised? It didn’t much matter that he didn’t intend to kill her, he’d still go down for felony murder.
“What is it Dominic Bacon wanted?” I asked Gilroy.
“Who else knows about us?”
“Are you two a couple?” I shot back. My bravado seemed to be swelling after moments ago thinking it was all over but the clean-up.
Gilroy snatched a handful of my shirt and yanked my head downward in a fierce arcing motion.
“You feel that? Control. I have it. The rest of them are fools. In the end they’ll get theirs. So will you. Now, talk. Who knows about you seeing us?”
“Harold, Herbie, Junior, Pickering, I think a cop named Leber. Oh, the sister, what’s her name? Hillary. She probably knows, too. You know what they say about secrets, right? Once two people know. Well, you know.”
He let go. As I straightened up I noticed a small, lightless vessel approaching from port. My captors were too busy interrogating me to notice anything else. Besides, who would expect to see a rowboat out here at this hour?
“You didn’t share with all those people, that’s bullshit. You’re the lonesome type who likes to gather before showing anyone anything.”
He was right. “Not true. I’m a sharer. Those people are paying me. They want constant updates. It’s brutal.”
I needed to keep their attention on me. Jermaine seemed preoccupied with his crossbow, not a good sign either. Was he talking to it?
“You know, Boise, you shouldn’t play cards, ever. You’re a terrible liar. Although I’d like an excuse to torture you ... ”
“There’s no need for that.”
Torture wasn’t high on my list of fun activities either. Maybe it was time to reassess my negative opinion of drowning.
“Jermaine!” Gilroy said over his shoulder.
I threw another look to port. Nothing there. Maybe I was hallucinating. Maybe the grim reaper was in the row boat.
“Jermaine!” Gilroy repeated.
Jermaine reappeared in my line of sight, behind Gilroy. His mouth was still moving in that baring and unbaring dance between his lips, teeth, and nose. There was a rhythm, like a song played in his head. He had the crossbow held at the ready.
The gun. The gun wasn’t next to the steering wheel anymore.
Gilroy threw a disdainful look at Jermaine, asking, “What is wrong with you?”
Jermaine shot Gilroy through the eye. The feathered end of the arrow tilted up as Gilroy collapsed. Blood splatter bedazzled the white seat and the deck around the steering wheel as the body dropped in time with a swell. A gunshot resounded from somewhere in the darkness. I tensed my legs, feeling only a twinge in my bum knee before diving into the black ocean. I struck the chilly water. The waves battered my legs as I dove under the choppy surface.
Darkness swallowed my body. Images of seaworthy, nighttime predators flashed in my mind as I desperately breast-stroked under the boat. Twice I started to surface only to find I was still under the hull. The second time I scraped my scalp on a barnacle. I burst to the surface on the other side. The frantic need for air and my disorientation had sent me to the edge of panic. Although probably only a fifty-foot swim, it felt like I’d crossed the English Channel.
My head banged against the underside of something else in my panicked need for air. I stifled a yelp and flailed at the surface as crest after crest of the deep, relentless ocean battered my face. I twisted in a circle trying to find purchase.
After rotating hopelessly several times, something thumped me on the head again. In the dim, a snakelike object swirled in the water next to me as I dipped into a liquid valley between swells. The hull of a small vessel bobbed on a whitewashed wave above me.
My name drifted
