Free The Seadragon's Daughter by Alan F. Troop Page B

“Derek?”
    “Derek?” Chloe says, staring at me.
    I nod. “I asked Claudia and Arturo to keep an eye out for your brother—in case he’s here.”
    Chloe waves a hand toward the bay and the nearby patrol boats. “You don’t think he’s responsible for all that?”
    “I think we don’t know where he is, and I wouldn’t put it past him,” I say.
    “Well, whatever you guys think, we haven’t seen any sign of anyone like him,” Claudia says. “In the meantime you need to tell me whether or not you want Tindall to write that letter to Santos.”
    I shrug. “Sure, tell him to go ahead. Worse comes to worse that jerk Davidson will just write another editorial.”

9
     
    Chloe spots the girl just before sunset, just after Henri and I have set up a pre-dinner game of chess on the dining table in the great room of the third floor of our house. “Peter, come look at this,” she says, squinting out the window, one hand up to block the glare of the setting sun. “I think there’s a young girl down in the water.”
    I groan at the thought. “The last thing we need is more attention,” I say, Henri and I both getting up, joining her.
    My mate points toward a shallow place near the end of the channel where a sandbar always appears at low tide. The late-afternoon sun’s rays, joined by the reflected brilliance from the water, burn through the window and obscure my view. Even squinting I can only make out the shape of a female sitting cross-legged on the sand, staring out across the water.
    “I don’t think it’s a girl,” I say. “It looks more like a small woman.”
    “Don’t you think we should take the boat out? See if she needs help?”
    I squint out at the woman again. “She doesn’t look like she’s in any distress.”
    “She could be dazed. She could be from one of those boats where everybody disappeared,” Chloe says.
    I sigh. “I’ll take the Donzi. It’ll be quicker. There’s no need for all of us to go.”
    Chloe nods.
    Looking at Henri, I say, “Want to come? You can steer.”
    “Sure, but she won’t be there when we get there,” Henri says.
    Chloe and I both stare at him. “How do you know that?” she says.
    The boy studies his feet, always a sure sign he expects to be in trouble. “I’ve seen her before,” he mumbles.
    “Where? When?” I say.
    Henri points to the end of the channel. “Not out there,” he says. He moves his hand to point at the windows on the side of the room, the ones that face north, toward the Wayward Island Channel. “Over there, on the rock.”
    I nod. I know the rock well. It juts out into the channel, a perfect spot for a young boy to stand and throw things into the current without getting wet. When Henri was smaller he would spend hours throwing leaves and twigs into the water and watching them float away. I did the same when I was little. “You saw her there?” I say.
    The boy nods.
    “When?”
    “Different times,” he says. “Usually for a few seconds. Then she wouldn’t be there anymore.”
    “Did you see her go? Did she dive into the water or hide?” Chloe says.
    Henri shrugs. “If I batted my eyes or looked away, she wasn’t there when I looked again.”
    My wife looks at him. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
    Eyes down, the boy shrugs, says nothing.
    I squint through the glare again. The girl or woman turns, seems to face in my direction. Her image shimmers in the late afternoon’s light and I realize I can’t make out any sign of clothes on her body, not even the lines of a skimpy bathing suit. “Was she naked, Henri? Is that why you didn’t tell us about her?”
    My son nods.
    “What did she look like?” I say.
    “She had long, black shiny hair,” he says. “I thought she was pretty.”
     
    By the time we reach the end of the channel, only the last tip of the sun shows above the mainland, and the sky has turned gray, almost dark. We find the sandbar empty, the water lapping around it, and we sit with the Donzi’s motors