buddy maybe I like you real good, maybe I want to spend a little quality time with you, he’ll stop laughing so much. He’ll go green with envy. He gets real jealous if I take an interest in a pretty girl like you. He’ll break every bone in your body, starting with the rest of your toes and then the fingers and working up to ribs, collarbone, major organs. And no one out here to hear you scream. So don’t lecture me.’
Claudia bit the pillow. The stateroom door opened again.
Danny said, ‘I told you to leave her alone.’ Sounding a little uncertain, trying to be in command.
‘I didn’t do nothing,’ Gar said.
‘Her nose is bleeding. I won’t tolerate you hurting her.’
‘I got something for you to tolerate. She’s his puss, man. She’s no better than he is. Price of the choices you make.’
‘Did he hurt you, Claudia?’ Danny asked.
Claudia hesitated for a moment before choosing her answer. ‘I tried to kick him and he dissuaded me.’
‘You’re not to hurt her,’ Danny said, ‘unless she tries to escape. And by escape, I don’t mean she mouths off at you or you feel like dishing out fists. You understand?’
‘I don’t see no captain’s hat on your head,’ Gar said. His weight pressed against her ribs, his erection poking into her thigh.
‘Be a good girl,’ Gar whispered in her ear, ‘and I’ll keep myself on a leash. Be bad, and I’ll play with you. For hours on end.’ Gar made a wet kiss against her ear. Then he left the room and shut the door.
Silence. Danny must have walked out with him.
Claudia lay in blindfolded darkness, shivering. They’re not gonna let us go. They’re not. Even if Stoney pays this ransom. They knew this is Stoney’s boat. Knew he was supposed to be out on the water today. Didn’t know he canceled. How?
A journal. A jewel. Treasure hunters. Crazy, but she could not worry about that now. The only thing that mattered was getting help or getting the hell out of here.
So how are you going to get you and Ben out of this?
The kidnappers had the guns but they quarreled among themselves, improvising since Stoney wasn’t here, no backup plan in place. So they were being stupid and she would be smart.
Claudia twisted around on the mattress and managed, by dragging her head down the bedding, to nudge the chamois-cloth blindfold a hairbreadth off her eyes. Again. Again. She could see below the blindfold’s edge. The stateroom was dark. Thin light filtered in from the oblong portholes above the bed, cut into rods of black and white by half-opened shutters. On the walls were reproductions of old sailing maps and a framed set of antique coins. Next to the closet hung another yellowed print – a portrait of a man with flowing black locks, wearing a rakish hat and a blue nautical jacket, in an arrogant stance. The print was vaguely familiar, something she’d seen in a tourist bar in Port Leo, but she couldn’t place it. She looked at the picture as a focus point, took calm, steadying breaths.
First get loose.
She rolled across the bed. Her hands were bound in front of her and by lying on the bed’s very edge and inching forward, she was able to reach and slide open a side table drawer. No gun, no pocketknife, nothing inside but a weathered paperback and a self-winding watch. The bookshelf, a small one, didn’t even hold a heavy bookend. A closet stood on the opposite wall but she remembered it only held clothes and hangers. She rolled up to kneel and look out the rectangular portholes above the bed; the stateroom was directly beneath the salon, where she and Ben had fished in luxury, and below the portholes was a small swim platform.
Smash the glass in the frames, cut the ropes? They’d hear her, and she wouldn’t have time to free herself.
If she could ease out the porthole – no guarantee she’d fit – she could wriggle onto the swim platform. And then what? More than seventy-five miles out at sea, no way to call for help, roasting in the sun until they found her. Or she fell off and drowned. Bound foot and hand as she was, she could hardly wriggle up and across the main deck without them hearing her. Maybe she could ease into the water and slice her ropes on the propellers. Yeah, just like a movie action hero. One flick of the propeller switch and she’d shred like cabbage, assuming she didn’t drown first. She remembered the silky sharks, plowing through the yellowfin school. She might be too big for the silkies but sharks didn’t measure their meals. They just ate. They would still take her, make her a five- course meal, a leisurely limb at a time.
She listened. In the quiet roll of the waters she heard them threatening Ben, shoving him into a chair, Ben protesting. She lay very still, breathing through her mouth.
She heard a phone ring. Ring. Click on. ‘Good afternoon, this is Stoney Vaughn.’
‘Good afternoon, Stoney.’ Danny’s voice was creamy as butter. ‘This is your friend Danny, from New Orleans.’
A pause, then Stoney, annoyed, ‘I told you to quit calling me, you fucking nut.’
‘We’ve got your brother and his girlfriend.’
Silence.
‘You weren’t on your little boat today. Were you too busy killing people, stealing, ruining lives?’
‘Stoney,’ Ben said. ‘He says you took something of theirs?’
Silence again. ‘They’re lying. Is this some sort of sick joke?’
‘The Devil’s Eye, Stoney. Give it to me – along with the journal you stole and a big freaking wad of cash, just to make up for all the grief you’ve caused me – and we’ll be even. And I’ll let Ben and his friend go.’
Then Stoney’s voice, not much more than a whisper, ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about…’
Claudia struggled to a kneeling position, fumbled for the handle, started cranking open the porthole. See if you can slide through the porthole. Get up to the deck. Radio for help. Now, while they’re occupied.
Slowly, the pane of glass began to rise.
10
‘So you haven’t seen Jimmy since Monday?’ David Power asked Linda Bird. He didn’t like to sit during questionings; he liked to stand. Pace around the room a little like a lawyer. Because the interviewee was always nervous talking to the police, guaranteed nervous, even if they were as pure and innocent as a half dozen saints, and him standing made them a little smaller. That was the goal, make them feel small and they’d crack. The Encina County sheriff, Randy Hollis, sat across from Linda Bird, doodling interlocking circles on a legal pad.
Jimmy Bird’s wife looked up at David. Her hair was cut in a style last fashionable ten years ago, frazzled from home dye jobs. A small patch of acne scars, badly camouflaged with makeup, dimpled her cheeks. ‘Yes. I told you that already.’
She wasn’t feeling small enough yet. He crossed his arms. ‘No need to get upset, if you don’t got anything to hide, Linda.’
‘You either believe me or you don’t,’ Linda Bird said. ‘If he’s gonna keep asking me the same things again and again, like a fucking parrot, I’m getting me a lawyer, because then he’s just trying to trick me.’ She glared over at Sheriff Hollis.
‘I’ll call you a lawyer right now, Mrs Bird,’ Sheriff Hollis said. He had a low, pleasant voice, the kind that made for good radio. ‘But no one is accusing you of anything except being Jimmy’s wife, and we just want to know where he might have gone to.’
‘Jimmy mention any places he might like to go? Where’s he got family?’ David asked.
‘All his family’s either in the cemetery or Tivoli, and none of ’em like him.’
‘Names of his family in Tivoli?’
She gave them, an aunt and two male cousins.
‘Patch fired Jimmy, what, a year ago?’
‘Right before Labor Day.’
‘Why?’
‘Jimmy got mad that Patch wanted him to work on a Saturday and called him a motherfucker under his voice. Patch heard him and fired him on the spot. Jimmy begged him for another chance, but Patch said he’d
