Dark Cay

by Douglas Pratt

  Hoping that Madge’s skipper was a predictable one, I lifted the hinged top on the navigation table. The typical array of charts and books filled the space. A small box was under the Explorer charts for the Bahamian waters. He was as predictable as I imagined. The box had three screwdrivers, a roll of black electrical tape, wire-nuts, a small razor-knife, and several toggles for attaching lines.

  I paused. This skipper was less predictable than I thought. Underneath the tools was a plastic bag with several passports. I spread them out. There were six of them for the same two people.

  The man, a graying blond fellow in his 40s with pale blue eyes, was listed as Craig Gerwin from Kansas, John Cooper from Oregon, and Kevin Pendleton from Rhode Island. The other picture was of a teen-aged girl named either Alison Gerwin, Alexa Cooper, or Minna Pendleton. She had the same penetrating pale blue eyes as her father. Shoulder-length blond hair framed the babyface. I couldn’t guess her age, but according to the passports, she was either 13, 15, or 16.

  Scooping the passports back up, I stuffed them into the plastic bag again before turning my attention to the VHF radio. With the razor-knife, I carefully stripped the thin wires of the plastic coating until the copper showed. The wire-nuts were too big to connect the thin wires. I wound the corresponding cables together tightly and bound them with a small sliver of black tape.

  Less than twenty minutes, I thought, when I flipped the breaker for the radio and watched the display on the VHF radio illuminate.

  The floor was still wet, but the water had receded below the deck. The bilge was still pumping, indicating that the water was now just in the bilge. Another few minutes and the wet carpets would be the only evidence of the near sinking of Madge.

  I keyed the VHF to the emergency channel and pressed the button on the microphone. “Pan Pan Pan,” I spoke into the radio, “this is the sailing vessel Madge.”

  I waited for a response. When nothing came, I repeated my call.

  The green diode on the radio lit up as I spoke, indicating that the radio was transmitting. The red diode that lighted when the radio received a transmission remained dark.

  A thud resounded through the vessel. I froze in place, listening. Grabbing the winch handle from the counter where I set it earlier, I felt more secure.

  The bilge’s whirring stopped; the only other sound, besides the occasional lapping of the water against the hull, was the compressor in the galley’s refrigerator.

  Another thud sounded, much quieter this time. I moved forward. It didn’t have the resounding sound of something striking the hull. The door to the hanging closet swung open at my pull, but there wasn’t anything in there.

  The forward cabin had a queen bed carved into the bow. Much roomier than the v-berth I slept in on Carina. A narrow walkway ran along either side of the bed. The shelf along either side was stacked with clothes and books.

  The boat was quiet again. I couldn’t even hear the fridge from the forward cabin.

  The blanket on the bed was rumpled. I lifted the mattress to reveal the forward stowage locker. The mattress fell over to the port side. The wooden lid on the compartment lifted slightly.

  Raising the winch back in my left hand, I used my right to lift the lid.

  A mass of blond hair was the first thing I saw. The girl from the passport cowered in the tight storage compartment; her head turned toward me slowly. The pale blue eyes I saw in the picture were scared and red. Beads of sweat dripped down her face.

  Dropping my arm, I asked softly, “Are you okay?”

  She didn’t answer. Her whole body quivered as she stared at me. She was twisted into a contorted position to fit the locker.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” I assured her. “My name is Chase. I’m from the other boat. Carina.”

  She responded with a half-nod.

  “Can you get out?” I asked, extending a hand to help her stand.

  Clammy fingers took my hand.

  “My dad?” she asked as she straightened up.

  “I think he left on another boat,” I answered. “I’m not sure it was voluntarily. Do you know who those men were?”

  She shook her head.

  “Come on,” I urged. “Let’s get you out of there.”

  “I didn’t know what to do,” she mumbled as I pulled her to her feet. She was wet, either from sweat or from the flooding. She crawled out of the hole.

  “Did your dad hide you?” I asked.

  “He told me not to move until I knew they were gone.”

  My eyes glanced down to the compartment. Two thick plastic bags had been underneath her. I could make out the green face of Benjamin Franklin. I looked back at the pale-eyed child. She knew what I saw, and her eyes turned away.

  I pulled both bags out and stared at the stacks of bills wrapped tightly in plastic. A quick estimate was 30 to 40 bundles of 100-dollar bills.

  “Is this what those guys really wanted?” I asked the girl.

  4

  “Let’s start with your name,” I urged her. “Your real name.”

  The girl stared at me, dumbfounded. Microscopic movements in her blue eyes signaled that the brain was processing. She had been encoded to lie. The programmer, no doubt her father, had instilled it in her. People in hiding develop that third instinct. It’s no longer fight or flight. Those types of people are always scared. The new natural response is to lie first, flee second, and if all else fails, fight.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” I assured her, “but if I’m going to help you, I need the truth. Sit down and tell me what’s going on.”

  “Are you really from the other boat?” Her voice vibrated nervously.

  Nodding, I answered, “Yes. I’m Chase.” I extended my right hand awkwardly as if we were just making a business deal. I retracted it quickly when she just looked at it.

  The girl glanced around at the mess in the salon. This was her home, and she was appraising the damage done. There was some introspection in her face as she seemed to finally decide to rest on the salon settee.

  “My name is Lily.”

  Cocking my eyebrow, I resisted the urge to cast doubt on her statement. A girl with three different passports was prone to avoiding the truth. Something down deep told me that she was truthful at the moment.

  “Do you want to start at the beginning?” I asked. “Or just tell me what happened today?”

  “Dad saw the boats coming first.” She paused and looked at me. She was beginning to register that her father wasn’t there. The blue eyes showed evidence that the girl was bolstering herself. The quivering of welling eyes ceased, and Lily visibly swallowed that fear and worry down.

  This child was going to be strong. She was still being forged, but the armor was thickening as I watched her.

  “He told me to get into the compartment and stay hidden in there until I knew that they were gone. I heard the boats speed off, and I tried to get out.”

  “The mattress was holding it down. From your angle, that might have been difficult.”

  She nodded. Her teeth whistled as she sucked in a breath of air.

  “What did they want?” I asked, already knowing that at least part of the answer was sitting in a plastic bag in the forward cabin.

  “My father,” she mumbled.

  Studying her, I waited to see if she would continue. Lily was smart, and she was trying to reconcile the programming of distrust with the only available avenue she had in this situation. She wasn’t ready to trust me. Telling her real name was safe. The people looking for them already found them, so if I was part of that, I would know who she was. That nugget of truth could sugarcoat the lies coming.

  She wasn’t ready to trust the honest face I sported. The best tactic for that is silence. It’s incredible what can be drawn out from someone by merely keeping one’s mouth shut.

  I waited without asking a question.

  “He worked for a bad guy. I don’t know what he did. Some kind of accountant, I guess. He worked with numbers and bank
s. Boring shit, so I never paid it much attention.”

  She droned on, “Like a month ago, he came home and told me to pack everything up. We had to leave. He had a different car. He never told me what he did with his truck. I thought this might have been a rental or something.

  “Anyway, he made me grab everything I could fit in a couple of bags. He said we couldn’t come back. Ever. I didn’t think he meant it, though. He was always making grand gestures, saying things like it was all going to be different. It never was.”

  I offered an attentive gesture every few moments to keep the pump primed. She would seem to slow for a minute as if her mind warned her that she was talking out of turn. Maybe she heard the engine revving like a little sports car that slowly gets faster and faster, and the only way the driver knows they are speeding along the curves is the high-pitched whine of the motor. She seemed to notice the whine, and she’d decelerate for a second. I’d give a little nod that told her she had my attention, and her foot would press the gas slowly until she was speeding along.

  “Next thing I know, we are in Jacksonville and loading the boat up. I didn’t know he knew how to sail, but he said that he had spent several years sailing along the panhandle with his cousins when he was a kid. It was an adventure. We never took vacations. Not since Mom died, and I was enjoying the first few weeks. We would swim and fish. It was nice.”

  She came to a stop. Maybe there was an intersection or some signal in her mind that she had to stop. The acknowledging nod seemed to have no effect. Lily just stared at me, over-thinking how much she had just said.

  “How long has your mom been gone?” I asked.

  Letting out a sigh, she said, “I was ten. She got cancer; I think it was pancreatic. She did chemo and radiation. Lost big chunks of her hair. It seemed like she was doing better. I mean, I’m not sure how anyone actually judges that. The doctors said she was looking good. They did one of those scans where she had to lay on the table for an hour in the tunnel. They said that she had a tumor that they could remove surgically. It was like the last thing they thought she needed.

  “I guess she’d still have to do the chemo for a bit, but once the big tumor was out, things were supposed to get better.”

  Her eyes began their little quivering. She sucked in a breath through her teeth to steel her resolve. The tears never came. They sat on the edge of the cliff, ready to jump off. The horde of tears, though, was pushed back. There was no jumping off today, not if Lily had anything to do with it.

  “They cut her open during surgery. She had, like, hundreds of little cancer spots all through her. The doctors said they were tiny and not visible on the screens. It was just downhill after that. She decided to stop the chemo; it was making her miserable. It was only going to buy her another six months or a year.

  “I mean, a lot can happen in that time, right? The doctors might have saved her.”

  “Maybe,” I commented.

  “After she died, it was just Dad and me. We didn’t have a lot of money; I guess Mom’s hospital bills cost a lot. He ended up getting this job. Things started to turn around. We were living in a two-bedroom apartment after Mom died. He had to sell the house. After he started this job, he was able to get us into a new house. I didn’t have to change schools or anything. That was what I was worried about.”

  “Where did you live?” I asked during a breath.

  “We lived in University Park in St. Petersburg,” she answered.

  “Your dad just came home one day, and the two of you took off?”

  She nodded.

  “Did he take that money?” I asked, pointing to the clear, plastic bag filled with stacks of hundred-dollar bills.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I guess so. He never told me.”

  “Do you know who your dad was working for?”

  “No, Daddy never mentioned his name. He referred to him as ‘his boss.’”

  “What’s your dad’s real name?”

  “Travis. Travis Porter.”

  “And you’re Lily Porter?”

  She nodded.

  Standing up to stretch my legs, I tried to wrap my head around it. “You’ve been out here a month, you say?”

  “Yeah, pretty close.”

  “How did these guys find you out here? This isn’t the most remote place on earth, but it has to be close.”

  Lily shrugged and dropped her head.

  If Travis Porter was hiding out with the means he seemed to have at his disposal, this boat wouldn’t be registered in his real name. To pinpoint their location in the Bahama Banks meant someone had to give them at least the rough coordinates.

  “Who would your dad tell that you were going to be hiding on a boat?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she mumbled. “Why?”

  “Finding a boat out here is kinda tough, but these guys pulled right up to your boat. Our two boats were about a mile apart in a big open sea. They didn’t even have to come by mine to verify it wasn’t your boat. That means they knew exactly what to look for. They were looking for a blue Beneteau sailboat. Someone told them what to look for.”

  The tears were marching again. They were congregating on the cliff again; one was hanging over.

  “Did you talk to anyone?” I asked.

  She nodded slowly as one big tear scaled down her cheek. “The other day, when Dad went out to do some fishing, I used his satellite phone to call J.J.”

  “Who’s J.J.?”

  “My boyfriend. I didn’t get to say goodbye or anything to him,” she muttered. “I just wanted to tell him I was okay. I didn’t want him to think something was wrong.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “J.J. wouldn’t tell anyone. I made him promise.”

  The little girl was far from fully formed. She was being built with sturdy armor, but there was still that part of her that longed for the connection. Some feelings that she hadn’t felt since her mom succumbed to cancer. That was the ultimate betrayal, and Lily Porter hadn’t been able to find the feeling that she thought she remembered with her mother. There would always be a black mark on her timeline. B.M.D. and A.M.D.: Before Mom Died, and After Mom Died. Life as she knew it changed. The kid didn’t know that life changes like that all the time. She just knew that when the time came to buy her first tampon, her mom wasn’t there to help her. When she kissed her first boy, her mom wasn’t there to either tell or hide it from. She just didn’t know.

  She didn’t understand that the kind of people who could hunt her father down in the middle of the ocean had no qualms about making a young boy tell all his secrets. J.J. would talk. Most grown-ups would talk. They would tell everything from where they saw their first boobs to where to find their girlfriend. Even if J.J. was the stalwart knight errant of the eighth grade, men with no moral compass would have no issue finding his breaking point.

  “What did you tell him, though?”

  “I told him we were sailing in the Bahamas. I didn’t tell him where we were exactly. I don’t even know that.”

  “Did you talk about the boat?”

  She bit her lip and nodded. “I told him it was named Madge and that it was blue. He just wouldn’t tell on me. I know he wouldn’t.”

  There was no point in destroying the girl’s belief. She was dragged into this by a father who knew that he was risking her life by his actions. She just wanted to hold onto the only thing she thought she had.

  “He might not have, but someone could have tapped his phone.”

  It wasn’t possible. Sure, the old movies show it all the time, but that was in the days before wireless phones. Tapping a phone actually meant hooking into the wires carrying the transmission. Now, the information is scattered and encoded so that without the proper equipment and a warrant to use it, the information would at best be jumbled nonsense and at worst dead air.

  “We need to call the authorities,” I told her. “We’ll need to go over to Carina and use her radio. Yours doesn’t seem to be working.”
>
  “We can’t!” she exclaimed.

  I looked at her.

  “When he put me in the compartment, Dad said that if he was gone when I came out to take the money and hide. As long as they didn’t have me, he wouldn’t be forced to tell them where the rest of the money is.”

  “Rest of the money?”

  She nodded. “He said as long as they didn’t know where the rest was, he would be safe. You have to take me back. If I can find the rest of the money, I can try and trade it for him.”

  “Do you know where it is?”

  She stared at me silently before shaking her head.

  “You don’t even know where he is? Who this ‘boss’ might be?”

  She stood up defiantly. Her moment of weakness passed. The armor was back on this girl. “I’ll find them somehow.”

  Putting my hands on her arms, I tried to reassure her. “The best bet is with the authorities. They have the resources to find who this man is and where he’s keeping your father.”

  “You can’t mess this up,” she said.

  “These men had every intention of sending this boat north into the Atlantic with all her seacocks opened. They don’t seem like the kind of people you want to go up against alone.”

  She huffed audibly.

  “Lily, I’m going to pull up the anchor and motor back. That’s final. I can’t let a 14-year-old girl try to go up against whatever this guy is. That’s final.”

  She dropped onto the settee and scowled at me. Her attention suddenly turned to a new sound, and she came to her feet.

  The high-pitched squeal of a motor approaching.

  5

  Lily’s eyes widened. Her quivering pupils were the only thing moving, otherwise, she was frozen in fear.

  I wondered if she felt the same fear when I came aboard. Maybe by now, she had calmed, and the adrenaline was gone. Now she just stood in the center of the Beneteau’s salon listening to an engine racing toward us.

  “Does your dad have a gun on board?” I asked.

  She came out of her trance and shook her head. “I don’t think so.”