The Water Keeper

by Charles Martin

  “When I answered, I said, ‘The me I wish I was.’

  “She looked curious and asked, ‘Who do you wish you were?’

  “I said, ‘Not broken.’

  “She smiled, nodded, slid closer, lit a cigarette, and eyed the paper. ‘Tell me about him?’ I tapped my pencil and glanced at my words. A love I once knew. She held out a hand. ‘May I?’ Maybe the most dangerous question I’d ever been asked. But I figured, what do I have to lose? So I slid her the pad. She read a few minutes and lit another cigarette. ‘You got any more of this?’

  “I answered honestly. ‘Sixty-seven more pads.’

  “She smiled. ‘You let me see those?’

  “I couldn’t tell if she was hitting on me or just passing time, but I said, ‘I’ll be here tomorrow. If you are, you can see them.’ So tomorrow rolled around, I went for a long swim in the ocean, and she was sitting at the bar when we opened. I set the mountain of pads in front of her, and she sat and read and sipped coffee and smoked cigarettes until two the next morning.

  “When she closed the last pad, she took off her glasses, wiped her eyes, and stared at me. She said, ‘You know who I am?’ I shook my head. Had no idea. She placed one hand on the mound of paper. ‘Will you let me publish this?’

  “That struck me as strange. ‘Why?’ I asked.

  “She stamped out a cigarette. ‘Because I’ve been publishing books for thirty-eight years, and I have yet to come across one that will heal broken hearts like this.’

  “I poured myself some club soda and sipped. ‘You really believe that?’

  “She nodded once. ‘I do.’

  “So we talked an hour while she tried to convince me. I took her number. She said she’d be down here a week. I could call anytime. Before she flew out, she swung by the bar. I was sitting there writing. I handed her a plastic grocery bag stuffed with all my notebooks. I raised a finger. ‘Nobody but you ever knows me. We don’t use my real name, don’t put my face on the cover, and I’m never doing a single interview. I am a ghost.’

  “She smiled. ‘Even better.’”

  I tried not to look at Summer, whose jaw was hanging down in the water.

  “So we concocted this plan to let my character continue to write his own stories. This weird twist on autobiographical fiction. Like if Indiana Jones had written his own books and published them under his own name. We used my name. David Bishop.” I shrugged. “My real name is David Bishop Murphy. ‘Murph’ or ‘Murphy’ was my nickname. ‘Shepherd’ we added. Or rather, Bones did.

  “The publisher took my bag back to New York and broke those sixty-eight pads into four stories, which she published systematically every six months. By the time the second installment was slated to release, people were champing at the bit and news organizations had hired private investigators to determine my identity. The book stayed at number one for weeks before it ever hit the shelf. Numbers three and four set publishing records I knew nothing about. Seems women readers had a thing for a guy like David Bishop. So while I tended bar for tips, I made more money than I could spend in ten lifetimes.

  “I called Colorado and told him I wanted to go back to work but I wanted to do it a little differently. I wanted to create a place where we could help folks once we found them—help them walk the road from broken to not. So we did. I bought a ghost town. A literal town that had been abandoned when the silver ran out, and we brought it back to life. Now we have a school, a hospital, all-female sports teams, and really good security. It’s a community of people all wrapping their arms around girls who thought they’d never hear the sound of their own laughter again. Whose lives have been a thousand times worse than anything I can imagine. We’ve built condos. Homes. If they don’t want to go to school, we train them in a skill or trade. We also partner, silently, with Fortune 500 companies, since many of them are run by the moms and dads of the children we’ve found. They ski on the weekends. Raft and mountain bike in the summer.

  “Colorado, or Bones, runs our little secret town, while I find people who need finding.” I shrugged. “And at night, to remind myself that I once knew love, I write. Or at least I did.”

  Summer whispered, “What do you mean?”

  I pointed to Gone Fiction. At Fingers’ orange box. “I wrote the final installment, due out in a couple weeks.” I shook my head. “Thanks to readers like you, it, too, sits at number one. Has for over a month. In the story, Fingers dies. As does Marie. Writing just hurts too much. I had to kill them and the series because writing the life of David Bishop was killing me. So before I started out on this trip, I took all fourteen novels, burned them, collected their ashes in that orange box, and strapped it to my boat so that when I got here—to the end of the world—I could spread those words out across the water where I first heard them. So I could say goodbye to Fingers. And when I get home, I’ll say goodbye to Marie.”

  Summer sat shaking her head. She spoke softly. “What about David?”

  “You were right. I am wounded. Some days I write to remember. And some days I write to forget.”

  Ellie was white as a sheet. Gunner lay unmoving with his head flat up the rock. “If by writing about my love for her, I’ve given Marie a life beyond her watery grave, then I’m glad. If that life has spoken to broken people and helped them walk from broken to not, then I don’t even know what to say. I’m beyond glad. I didn’t expect that. Somewhere around here, Bones convinced me that maybe I could write my way out of brokenness . . . but with every year and every book and every written word I open up and look inside, I find that the writing is breaking me. Because no matter what I say or how I say it, I can’t bring her back. Marie is gone, and no amount of writing will fix her or my shattered heart.”

  I wiped my own tears. “One time, I loved. With all of me. Emptied myself unselfishly. And then she was gone, and I never got to tell her. Anything. I’ve published over a million words, spread my soul upon the page. I am known by millions and yet I am wholly unknown. And when I wake and walk about this earth, breathing in and breathing out, I try to give my love away . . . and I can’t. Can’t carry her anymore.”

  We sat in silence as the breeze washed over us. Gunner stood and walked around me, finally coming to rest, just leaning against me. I spoke into the wind. Not really to them but loud enough for them to hear me. I was speaking to someone else, but she couldn’t hear me. “Every name on my back—” I shook my head once. “I wasn’t looking for them. I was looking for Marie. Trying to find the one girl I lost. And I have searched the world over.”

  Summer sat sobbing. Ellie stared blankly, not knowing what to say. Nobody said anything for several moments. The water around us was only one to three feet deep.

  I climbed down off the rock and waded out into the water. Gunner followed, swimming alongside. I walked out to Gone Fiction, unlashed the box, and kept walking. Several hundred yards from shore. The water pressing against me. I stood a long time, holding that orange box. The memories returned. The laughter. The fun. Mentor and friend. As I stood in that water, it all flooded back. I would miss him. I would miss the sound of his voice in my mind. But that’s all it was. It was just make-believe medication, and I couldn’t cope anymore. My drug, writing, had lost its efficacy. The pain in me was deeper than the writing could root out.

  I opened the box, pulled out the bottle of wine, pulled the cork with my teeth, and stood there, wine in one hand, ashes in the other. Crumbling under the weight, I turned both upside down. The wine tinted the water while the ashes floated around me, encircling me. Amused, Gunner swam in circles. The wind lifted some of the ash and sent a cloud south. To parts unknown. Waves rippled across me, the incoming tide pulled at my feet, and within three minutes, the red cloud on the water had been washed out to sea. Somewhere out in the seam where the Gulf sews itself into the Atlantic. That tapestry we call an ocean. One man amid a mosaic we call the human heart.

  When I turned around, Ellie and Summer stood just a few feet behind me. Summer’s hands were clutche
d to her mouth. Ellie stood with one arm locked inside Summer’s.

  The pain in my chest was piercing. It was the most pain I’d ever felt. My breath was shallow and the crack in my soul had widened, fractured. Splitting me. Sending the two halves of me spinning off in opposite directions. I’d spent my life searching for and finding the lost. Returning the one to the ninety-nine.

  But who would rescue me? Who would return the pieces of me to me?

  Chapter 41

  We climbed into Gone Fiction and motored slowly back to the hotel. Ellie kept looking over her shoulder at the rock. Summer kept looking at me. After we tied up, Summer sat staring west, rubbing one thumb with the other. Nervous energy working its way out. She wanted to say something, but time had gotten away from us. And Angel was still out there somewhere. I needed to bring her back to her reality. I tapped my Rolex. “I know you have questions, but you need to call your date.”

  She gathered herself and placed a call to the mystery man, who was glad to hear from her and told her where to meet him. She changed into her bikini and complemented the costume with a chiffon wrap around her waist. She was putting herself into danger. I said, “You don’t have to do this.”

  “You’re one to talk.”

  “I’ve been doing it a long time.”

  “I have to do something.”

  “There is risk here.”

  “You’ll be close, won’t you?”

  I hung a necklace around her neck. A silver shark’s tooth on a chain. I tapped the tooth. “It allows me to track you.”

  She asked again, revealing her fear. “You’ll be close?”

  “As close as I can get without spooking him.”

  She blinked and pushed out a tear. “Murph—”

  I smiled. “My mother called me Bishop.”

  A weak smile. “Is Angel . . . ?”

  I held her hands in mine. “I don’t think so, but”—I tried to find the words—“time is not on our side. And . . .”

  “What?”

  “Time is winding down.”

  She swallowed and nodded while the sun bathed her face. Summer was innately beautiful. She slid her phone into the side of her bikini and kissed me on the corner of the mouth, then kissed me again. Then she gently placed her hand on my face, turned me, and held her trembling and salty lips to mine. Without another word, she kicked off her flip-flops and carried them in her hand. Adding the final brushstrokes to the forlorn look. Before she turned the corner, she stopped, looked at me, closed her eyes, twirled once, then again, and disappeared.

  I walked the dock to the slip where I’d moored Gone Fiction and found Ellie sitting on the bow, Fingers’ box open and empty in her lap. She hadn’t said much since we left the southernmost point. I cranked the engine and began pulling in the lines when I turned and found her staring up at me, Marie’s ring sitting in the palm of her hand. An offering. I shook my head. “You were meant to have that.” I glanced at my watch. “I told you I’d fly you anywhere.” I offered my cell phone.

  She looked from me down to Gunner. Then toward the sunset. “Could I . . . would you . . . ever take me to see Colorado?”

  “Just say the word.”

  Finally, she touched my arm. An olive branch. “I’d like that.”

  I looked out to see Summer lean against the railing of the boardwalk, spending nervous energy. “Won’t be long. Day or two.”

  When Ellie spoke, there was a kindness in her voice I’d never heard. “I can wait.”

  Summer’s date had promised to call once he got the boat loaded and ready. Said he’d pick her up at the marina a few blocks away. This right here, this was the hard part. The waiting. Where each second was a minute. And each minute a day. I did a lot better at full throttle with my hair on fire, but this was not that. This was agonizing.

  Once she stepped on the boat, or as soon as she was able to without raising suspicion, Summer was to text me the name he gave her and the number of people on the boat. I also asked her to send me the name and description of the boat. A picture if she was able.

  Summer’s shark’s tooth wasn’t much good beyond line of sight. On the ocean that means six or seven miles. Less if conditions break down. I could track her phone as long as she remained within cell coverage. The key there was coverage. No service, no tracking. My ace in the hole was Bones. If the name turned up nothing, he should be able to grab a heat signature from the boat and link it to my satellite phone. That meant I could track him anywhere and he’d never see me—provided he kept the engines running.

  I’d told Summer not to ingest anything under any circumstance. Even if he gave her an unopened water bottle, fake it. Let it touch her lips. Don’t swallow. Pour it out when he’s not looking. If he had anything to do with the guys who’d taken Angel, he’d drug her. Knock her out. She’d wake up in a shipping container in Australia. We’d also changed my name in her contacts to “Amber.” Creative, I know.

  Our story and code were simple. Summer was a designer from Los Angeles. On a long-needed break. A workaholic with a painful breakup. Amber was her assistant, holding down the fort while they readied some line of clothing for next month’s release. So she would text me instructions about pretty much nothing, but she would use color words to let me know she was okay. Any color was a good sign. But the moment she used either black or white, then things had gone badly and she needed immediate evac. Bring the cavalry. If at any time she sensed Angel’s presence or had any information about Angel, she would tell me the stars were beautiful last night. If he brought her somewhere and there were other armed men, she would tell me not to worry, that she’d be home in that many days, and we’d talk about it then. So three men meant she’d be home in three days. Four men, four days, and so on. Lastly, if he brought her to a place where there were other women, and Summer believed those girls or women to be there against their will, then she would tell me their number in relation to the number of days before the clothing release.

  So “Use the red silk and turquoise belt” meant all was well. “You should have seen the stars last night” meant Angel was in play. “I leave in three days and we’ll have five days to get ready for the show” meant three more bad guys, a total of four, and five girls. And any mention of black or white meant things were not good. Come running.

  Lastly, the nuclear option was one word: ballet. No particular reason other than it was so different from anything else. Ballet meant things were bad and he knew about her. And absolutely every bit of this was dependent on cell coverage. No cell, no communication. I was flying blind.

  When we finished with our code debriefing, Ellie shook her head and asked, “Is all that NCIS stuff really necessary?”

  I spoke more to myself than her. “I hope not.”

  “So what’s the worst thing she could say to you? Like the world has come to an end . . .”

  “Midnight ballet.”

  She waved me off. “Catchy.”

  I didn’t like the thought of Summer leaving without me. I felt helpless. Responsible even. What if I was wrong? What if . . . ? The questions surfaced. Summer was tough, courageous even, but she was nothing against these guys. There comes a point in every search where you lean out a little too far. Where you hear the clock ticking and your thinking gets muddled and you do things you wouldn’t ordinarily do. Stupid stuff. Problem is, you can’t see it at the time. Like asking a fish to describe water.

  I wondered how blind I’d become.

  Chapter 42

  Sitting by the pool, I turned my phone in my hands, fingers tapping. Ellie and Clay sat nearby. Gunner lay on the end of Ellie’s lounger, her hand rubbing his stomach.

  Clay broke the silence. “You know, someone has to dial a number for that thing to actually ring.”

  I dropped the phone in my pocket and ordered a coffee. A shadow appeared over my shoulder. Clay and Ellie looked up, surprise spreading across both faces. I turned to find Sister June wearing her habit and staring down at me. Her hands were folded. Her k
ind face had been replaced by one much more serious.

  I stood. “Sister June.”

  She turned to one side and gestured to me and Ellie. “Would you two come with me, please?”

  “What’s this about?”

  Sister June considered her words. “I have some information for you. Or—” She rubbed her hands together. “I wasn’t entirely truthful with you.”

  Ellie rose to her feet. “You weren’t?”

  She gestured again. “Please.”

  I stared at my phone. Then out across the water. Finally at Sister June. “Can it wait? We’re a bit busy here.”

  She shook her head. “I’m afraid not.”

  “Go ahead.” Clay stood, nodded to Sister June, and whispered, “I’ll hold down the fort.”

  I was afraid to look at Ellie. When I did, her eyes were pleading.

  We drove Gone Fiction. Sister June smiled when I suggested it but said nothing. We launched, circled south, then headed east and along the southern side of Key West. We passed my rock and the southernmost marker, then Smathers Beach, the airport, and the little cut leading to Stock Island Marina. Finally, we slowed in the waters leading into Boca Chica Beach. The cottages of Sisters of Mercy sat beneath the trees directly in front of us.

  Idling into shallow waters, I felt my phone pulsate in my pocket. I opened the text to find that Summer had sent a picture of the boat. Which meant he had called. Which meant she was now in play. And something in me did not like that.

  Not at all.

  The picture had been taken from an odd angle, maybe thigh high, which meant she’d taken it without him knowing. Or attempted to. When I saw it, I scratched my head. I knew that type of boat.

  Custom-made in collaboration with Mercedes, they are the crème de la crème of boats in this class. The 515 Project One is over fifty feet long, almost ten feet wide, and boasts a rum runner’s pedigree that goes back to Prohibition. Once used to smuggle rum and drugs, they were popular with the offshore racing guys from the islands to the mainland. Boats like this have a deep V shape, making them remarkably comfortable in rough water. This particular version was custom-made from bow to stern light and powered by a pair of Mercury racing engines producing 1350 horsepower apiece. When racing fuel was used, that horsepower rose to 3100, pushing the boat to 140 mph. A waterborne rocket. From Key West, it could be in Cuba or Bimini in less than an hour. Even worse, it could be there and back in under two. His problem, which was also my problem, was the thirty-plus mph wind and eight-foot waves in the Atlantic. None of which currently existed in the glass-calm waters of the Gulf.