Free B0092XNA2Q EBOK by Charles Martin Page A

wanted to say for a long time before he spoke it. I’d learned to give him time. I fed the fire and watched the boat. With the moon high, the fire hot, and coals glowing white, Steady walked to the water’s edge, filled a bucket, and carried it to the fire. Without speaking, he poured five gallons of water across my bonfire.
    “What’d you do that for?”
    He shook out the last few drops as darkness enveloped him and steam rose around him. His eyes were trained on the boat. “It does seem a shame to purposefully douse something so beautiful.”
    I nodded. “She is beautiful.”
    Steady tossed the bucket at me and climbed back in the dinghy. “I wasn’t talking about her, dummy.”

    Gone Fiction
has two cabins. One starboard, one port. Her royal highness was asleep in my cabin so Steady stretched out in the guest cabin, or since he was the only one to ever use it—his cabin. At midnight, I stretched my hammock across the posts of the aft deck. It’s a Hennessy and I’d prefer it to most any bed but, admittedly, I’m used to sleeping alone. It also has a built-in mosquito fly, which can come in handy just before daylight.
    I slept with one eye open, which meant I didn’t.

CHAPTER SIX
    A t two a.m., a door cracked. Then a zipper. A snap. Boards creaked. I’d been expecting this. The cabin door opened and closed slowly. I stared through the screen of my hammock. Moonlight lit upon her shoulders. She crept barefooted across the lower deck and untied her boat. Steady appeared just below me in the galley. We watched her push off into the current. He whispered, “This feels bad.”
    I nodded.
    “You’d better go with her.”
    I grabbed my hat and the keys to
Jody
. In the distance, I heard the rumble of her engine. She was idling out—into the gulf. I turned the corner and watched as the blue LED lights from her instruments lit her silhouette. The water was a black sheet of glass. Not a ripple. That was good for her and bad for me—it meant I’d never catch her. I stepped into the Pathfinder, untied the bow, cut the running lights, and cranked the engine. Following her would be easy—all that power created quite a churn in the water. ’Course,it was nearly three times as fast as my boat, too. Neither one of us could throttle up, or gun it, until we reached deeper water. She needed four feet. Given my jack plate, I needed at least two and a half. More like three. She was nearly a half mile away when I heard her engine rumble, saw the bow rise up, and she started putting distance between herself and the island.
    She had become a far-off speck when I pushed the stick forward. One advantage I had—and possibly the only one I had—was that her exhaust was running straight out the back. When she was on plane, I could see flames. Like following a candle across the water. Seconds later I was skimming the surface at sixty-two miles an hour. I wasn’t catching her, but I wasn’t losing sight of her as quickly, either. The trick would be following her while not being detected. If she cut her engine—or snuffed out the candle—and mine was still screaming behind her, she’d simply crank the engine, slam the throttle to the dash, and leave me in her dust.
    I had one shot at this.
    I adjusted my trim tabs and reached sixty-seven miles an hour. Too fast for my boat. A rogue wave or odd ripple and I’d flip, probably snap my neck, and Steady would have to swim home. Not to mention what would happen to the woman.
    But my mind was not thinking about what might happen at that moment. It was thinking about the moments tomorrow. Next week. Next month. Playing the what-if and if-then game. Chances were good that if we, or I, convinced this girl not to end her life, that she’d stick around awhile. Where else would she go? She’d have to hide and I had a good hunch she’d not thought that through. Although, I’d bet my boat that Steady had. Which was why he said to bring her here. In fact, I’d bet he had thought that