carried.
She piled us into a pickup truck—Talbot and I sat in the bed. I peered into the cab to see if Annalise had something to say to the driver, but I didn’t see them talking.
The truck ride ended at the docks. We had to detour through waterfront construction, but we eventually pulled into a long parking lot and stopped at the back.
Annalise followed the tall woman, and Talbot and I followed Annalise. The driver unlocked a gate and we followed her down the dock. The boats on either side of us were pleasure craft of one kind or another—some sailboats, but mostly they were tall motorboats with enclosed cabins and tinted windows. They looked like expensive condos with a hull, or maybe oversized SUVs. A little thrill went through me. I had never liked the ocean, but I liked a high-class ride as much as any car thief.
Unfortunately, the boat we stopped at was the smallest of the bunch. It was a little more than twenty feet long, I guessed, and completely open to the weather. BAYLINER was written along the side, but it looked like a brand name, not the name of the boat.
Annalise stopped short. “This isn’t a sailboat.”
“There wasn’t time,” the tall woman said.
“Wasn’t time for what? This is a deck boat.”
The woman sighed in exasperation. “Wasn’t time for you to find someone else. I’m not doing this for you people in a sailboat. Not again.”
I had an uncomfortable moment waiting for Annalise’s reaction, but after a few seconds she nodded. “You’re the expert.”
The captain led us aboard. She cast off and carefully motored out of the slip.
“Do you have our folder?” Annalise asked.
“After we pass Jetty Island,” Captain answered.
It was about thirty minutes before she opened her satchel and handed Annalise a folder. By that time, we were all stretched out on the long cushions that ringed the small deck area. Talbot went to sit out at the bow, but Annalise and I stayed near Captain.
Annalise opened the folder and took out three sheets of paper in plastic slipcovers. She handed one to Talbot and one to me. It was a map. I laid it flat on the cushion beside me to make it easier to read—we weren’t going that fast, but there was enough of a breeze that the ride was rough.
“This is Slostich Island,” Annalise said. “The little
There was a little mark on the paper where we were coming ashore. It was some sort of park, and it looked to be about a mile from the cabin. “Will there be a car for us, boss?”
“Not unless we steal one. There was no time to arrange it.”
I nodded, but I didn’t like it. A mile wasn’t far to walk if you’re going for pad thai, but fleeing the scene of a murder—and probably an arson—was another thing entirely, especially on a long strip of land with what appeared to be two north/south roads running through heavy woods.
Talbot looked at us, irritated. He waved the plastic sheet cover at me. “In the service, we had blue-force tracking. We had computers and … not fucking Google maps! We flew here on a private jet, but we can’t afford a GPS?”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Annalise snapped. “The jet is Csilla’s. She spent a couple of centuries killing people and taking their shit. You haven’t. We’re lucky we have someone in place to take us by boat.”
“We could do better, is all I’m saying. Do we really have to go the whole way by boat?”
“Did you bring your passport?” Captain asked.
Talbot took a deep breath. “No.”
“I’m a convicted felon,” I said. “There’s no way they’d let me through a checkpoint.”
Annalise scowled at Talbot. “So we cross the border. We surprise King in his home, hopefully while he’s asleep. We kill the hell out of him. We cross back into U.S. waters and fly east before anyone even knows about the body.”
East? I almost corrected her, when I noticed Captain take the unsealed envelope out of her satchel. She opened it and unfolded the single sheet of paper inside. I couldn’t read it, but I saw that it was a short, printed letter. Captain looked it over grimly, then put it back into the envelope and shut it inside a compartment below the steering wheel.
We cruised for about an hour. I studied the map off and on. I’d never been much for learning things off paper, but I went back to it several times until I was sure I had it down.
Finally, Captain turned off the engine. We floated a thousand feet off the Washington coast, gently rolling with the waves. Talbot looked alarmed. “Why did we stop?”
“We’ll cross into Canadian waters after dark. Sunset’s just after eight P.M., which is … two hours from now. Try to act like we’re out for some summer sun. Maybe no one will pay attention to us.”
I closed my eyes and lay back on the cushions. I was going to see Wally King again. Did he sleep with all those predators inside him? I hoped so. We could destroy the creatures and him at the same time.
How simple that seemed. How right. I closed my eyes, but I couldn’t sleep.
After night fell, Captain started the engines again. We puttered forward, obviously in no hurry. She told us we
