Wild Card

easy to hear a noise like that when you were underwater, tough to judge the direction it was coming from because of the way vibrations scattered.

Blake smiled. Maybe old Pete was worried he’d scram off with the boat. It was dotty to even think he’d be concerned about that, sure, and wasn’t something that struck Blake in a serious-minded vein… or not too much so anyway. Hard to put a finger on it, but there was quite a bit more to that fellow than might seem. Always on the watch, he was. And three or four thoughts deeper into his head than he let on.

Blake turned toward the sled-shaped racing boat again. It was still coming on apace, and had gotten near enough for him to tally a crew of four aboard, men in gray shortie wetsuits. A few minutes later it had almost pulled abeam and was throttling down.

He moved to the starboard safety rail, watched the racer slow to a halt in the water several yards away.

“Hello!” hollered the man seated beside the pilot. He was an American, to tell from his accent. “Embarrasses me to say this, but we’ve gotten ourselves lost.”

Blake stood with his hands on the rail. Well, he thought, that answered a question or two.

“Sorry to hear it, mate,” he said. “You out of Los Rayos?”

“And trying to find our way back,” the man replied with a nod. “Our GPS unit went on the blink.”

Blake gave him a commiserative look. Lord knew why, but it was just the sort of thing that happened with tourists.

“Got to love those gizmos… It’s why I always bring a good, old-fashioned reliable map for backup,” he said. “No need to fret, ’owever, I could shout you directions if you’d like. The island’s no more’n forty minutes due east, with a small twist this way ’n’ that.” He paused. “You gents set for petrol an’ supplies?”

The man nodded.

“No problems there, thanks,” he said. Then he tilted his head toward his pilot. “Hope I’m not imposing, but it’d be a help if we could have a look at that map of yours.”

Blake thought about it a second and then shrugged his broad shoulders.

“No imposition ’t all,” he said. “Pull yourselves broadside, toss a line across, ’n’ we’ll bring the two of you aboard — how’s that?”

The man offered a big smile.

“Sounds perfect,” he said.

* * *

“I ’ave a spare chart in this chamber a’ horrors somewhere, worst part’s findin’ it ’midst the rest a’ my junk,” Blake was saying a few minutes later. He was in his pilot station bent over a storage compartment below the butterfly wheel, the men from the racer’s bow seat standing behind him, their craft bound fast to his gunwale. “Soon’s I pull it out, I can get the route ’ighlighted with a marker an’ you’ll be on your way right quick.”

“Can’t tell you often enough how much we appreciate it,” Eckers said. He nodded to his companion, who reached into a belt pouch against his hip.

Blake fumbled in the compartment, moving aside a first aid kit, a pack of facial tissues, a bottle of sunblocker, a box of toothpicks, and a two-year-old program for the Matildas women’s soccer team with a feature article on a particularly sexy goalie.

“You blokes keep thankin’ me, I might start to believe I’m doin’ somethin’ that deserves it,” he said without turning, his hand still in the box. What on earth was a plastic bag filled with marbles, metal jacks, and a red rubber ball doing in there? One of these days he’d have to tidy up. “By the way, m’name’s Blake Davies. Didn’t catch either a’ yours.”

Eckers glanced at the man beside him, saw that he’d taken the blunt wedge of stone from the pouch into his hand, and nodded again.

“They call us Grim and Reaper,” he said as the rock was smashed forcefully against the left side of Blake’s skull.

* * *

Nimec had surfaced to look over at the pontooner several times after Blake flashed the OK sign with his thumb and forefinger. He didn’t think much of it when he saw the yellow racer approach, except that maybe the Aussie had run across a couple of his water-loving buddies having their own little jaunt off the island.

On the instance he came up to see lines being cast between the boats, it drew his closer attention.

“Annie,” he said. “What do you make of ’em? Those guys who came in that racing boat, that is.”

Swimming in place beside Nimec, she watched a couple of them board the pontooner.

“They seem friendly with Blake,” she said, and kind of shrugged her shoulders out of the water. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Nimec said.

He kept watching the boat. Blake had gone around into his pilot’s console, followed by the two men.

“Pete?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you thinking something’s wrong?”

He took a moment to consider that, lifted his dive mask over his forehead.

“I’m not sure what I’m looking at, and I’d like to be,” he said, glancing over at her. “If that makes sense.”

Annie read the expression on his face.

“It does,” she said. “Should we go back to the boat?”

“Maybe I should,” Nimec said.

“You?”

“Right.”

“By yourself?”

“Right,” Nimec said, shooting another look at the boat. “Find out what’s up, then come on back.”

She shook her head.

“No, Pete. Where you go, I go—”

Annie broke off, the words dying on her tongue, her eyes grown wide with shock and confusion as she saw what was suddenly happening on the boat, happening all in a terrible second — the one man raising something in his hand, bringing it down on Blake’s head, then Blake slumping over the console, falling below it onto the deck.

“Pete!” she cried, and reached out to grip his arm. “Pete! ”

Nimec turned to her.

“Annie, stay put,” he said.

“What about you?”

“I need to swim over there,” he said. “It’s our best chance.”

Annie shook her head again vehemently.

“How, Pete?” she said, clinging to him. “What can you do against them alone?”

He looked at her, unable to think of a reply.

And then the men aboard the pontooner made any answer he could have settled upon irrelevent as they hurried to the side of the boat, pulled guns from under their wetsuit jackets, and pointed them at Nimec and Annie over the safety rail.

“Over here,” one of them shouted in a voice that carried clearly over the water. “Both of you. Now.”

* * *

Tolland Eckers faced Nimec and Annie across the pontoon boat’s deck, the Steyr 9mm in his right hand leveled on them. He had donned thin black boater’s gloves as a precaution against fingerprints.

“It fascinates me how quickly a person’s situation can change,” he said. “Turn from one thing to another overnight. Or sometimes in the blink of an eye. You never know what might happen next.”

Still dripping water, Nimec stood there in the booties he’d worn under his fins before removing them on the dive platform. He lowered his gaze to where Blake lay fallen in a motionless heap, blood oozing from his temple to mat his thick blond hair against the side of his face. Then he shifted his eyes onto those of the man with the semiautomatic.