Thorn felt the pressure of the gaff slacken.
“I can walk away any time I want. I’m here because I want to be here. Nobody’s forcing me to do anything. I’m a free woman.”
“I don’t think so. I don’t think any of you people are free.”
“What bullshit,” she said, but her heart wasn’t in it.
“When somebody’s drowning,” Thorn said, “if you jump in and try to save them, you better be a damn good swimmer, because if you’re not, the chances are pretty good they’ll drag you down with them. That’s been my experience.”
“Is that the best you can do? Can’t think of another reason why I shouldn’t tear your throat out?”
His eyes shifted to the scene behind her, a sudden burst of action in the cockpit.
“Oh, I can think of one.”
“Yeah?”
“Because,” Thorn said, “your fish is coming up.”
Holding the pressure on his throat, she turned him to the door and saw what was happening.
“Go on. Move, goddamn you, move.”
Thorn pushed open the salon door and stepped outside. She pulled the gaff away and came up beside him.
A. J. Braswell was pumping furiously. As fast as his arms could move. The fish was rising with astonishing speed.
“Keep her astern, Farley,” Morgan called up to the flybridge. “Do it.”
Braswell whirled the crank, his hand a blur. Line thickened on the reel.
Johnny spun around, shoved past Thorn, and hustled into the cabin. A second later he was back with a twelve-gauge shotgun. Holding it by the stock, he gave Thorn a humorless grin, then moved to the edge of the fighting chair.
“I’m cramping,” Braswell groaned. He writhed against the safety harness. He looked helplessly at Thorn, then twisted in the chair, muscles in spasm. “I can’t hold it anymore. I’m going to lose it.”
“You can do it, Dad. Hold on. You can do it.”
Braswell cried out and wrenched to his right. With his crabbed fingers he unsnapped the clips and thrust the rod at Thorn. Morgan screamed a curse.
The fish must have sensed the uncertain struggle up above and chose that moment to make a run. The reel ratcheted, line spinning free. With a moan, Braswell let go of the rod. Thorn snatched at it but it flew across the deck, clattered against the transom, and started to tumble overboard. Thorn lunged, seized it midair, and grappled for a hold, the fiberglass pole twisting and jerking like some electrified creature.
One-handed, he fumbled for a grip, finally got hold of the padded handle with his right hand, then clutched the forward grip in his left. He sucked down a breath, lifted himself upright, and levered the butt hard against his stomach. He leaned back and began to crank.
Beside him Braswell had slumped forward in his chair and was peering bleakly out at the water.
Johnny jammed the cool steel of the shotgun barrel against Thorn’s cheek.
“Give me that rod, goddamn you. You’re not part of this.”
Thorn lifted his elbow and brushed the barrel away, then bowed his back, flared his shoulders, and strained against the monstrous weight on his line. The fish reacted with another surge, catching Thorn off-balance.
He staggered forward, but managed to cock one foot up and brace it against the transom. He bent back, throwing all his weight against a fish that had to outweigh him by at least a thousand pounds. Thorn pulled back on the rod and reeled on the downstroke. Reeled and reeled some more.
“You bastard!” Morgan shrieked. “You fucking bastard.”
Ten feet behind the boat the water humped as if somewhere down on the ocean floor a volcano had begun to erupt.
Thorn reclaimed the last of the line and his hands went still.
“Holy shit,” said Johnny.
As they watched, the dark blister on the water’s surface doubled in width. Then in a white blast of seawater, the blue marlin exploded into view and soared into the air so close to the stern that any one of them might have reached out and touched her electric blue hide. The fish was lit up, her flesh glowing as if a switch had been thrown from deep inside her molecules. Showing herself completely, her neon stripes, her dark scythe tail, her wild and furious eye.
Thorn watched as the fish stabbed her rapier at the sky, shook her head, and hung weightlessly before them as if she could suspend at will the gravitational laws. The marlin’s glistening eye took them in, each in turn, and whatever reckoning she made seemed to infuriate that leviathan even more. She swiveled in the air, went on her side, and slammed back into the sea, a great belly flop that sent a flood of water over the transom and buckets of cold spray raining down from the sky.
Farley clambered down from the bridge and barked instructions to Thorn, telling him to reel, goddamn it, to tighten the drag, keep his rod tip up, turn that damn fish around before she had a chance to take a breath and flex her muscles again. He pulled on his glove and watched as Thorn cranked a dozen turns, watched as the double line emerged through the blue skin of the sea.
“That’s my job,” Johnny said. “I’m the wire man.”
Holding the shotgun one-handed, Johnny stepped forward, but Farley put his broad back to the boy, and Johnny had no choice but to watch helplessly as the black glistening bill appeared and the fish floundered and writhed.
Drenched by spray, Farley whipped off his sunglasses and tossed them away and leaned over the transom and snagged the wire in his hand and took a double wrap and hauled the fish close. Thorn watched the slabs of muscles in his arms and shoulders pump full of blood. The fish was massive. Larger than the great white shark that made such a stir in Islamorada a few years back, a world-record behemoth that hung at Bud and Mary’s dock for twenty-four hours till every news organization in America had filmed it. But this was larger. Much larger.
On the marlin’s back, the silver cigar-shaped pod glittered in the failing light. The steel hook that attached it to the marlin’s gristly back had worked its way to the surface of the fish’s hide. It was one good shake away from breaking free.
“Stand back,” Johnny said. He brought the butt of the shotgun to his shoulder. Aiming at the fish’s eye.
“No, Johnny.”
Braswell rose from his chair. His shoulders were hunched in pain, his legs uncertain beneath him. He held his hand up, halting his son, and peered over the transom at the fish.
“We’re not killing her.”
“Yes, we are. We’re killing the motherfucker right now. This is it.”
Morgan picked up the flying gaff and stepped over to the transom and took her place beside Farley. He looked at her and shook his head.
“No gaff,” he said. “I got her fine.”
But Thorn could see a pale light rising in his eyes, the strain already showing in the slightest of quivers in his neck and shoulders. Like the night before when he’d lifted the iron bar loaded with five hundred pounds from the rack on the bench press and held it aloft until his muscles were on the verge of failure.
Braswell stared at the fish, his mouth working as if he were carrying on a silent conversation with the monster, or perhaps mumbling a prayer on her behalf. The fish thrashed, but Farley held it in check.
“We’re not killing her,” Braswell said.
“What!”
“Yes, we are, goddamn it,” Morgan said. “Yes, we are.”
“No. We’re letting her go. She did nothing wrong.”
“Nothing wrong! And what about Andy? What about Mom?”
Johnny was still sighting along the barrel, his aim fixed on the fish’s right eye. The marlin lurched upward, slashing her sword just inches from Farley’s ear. He heaved back, jerking the leader line upward to reinstate his authority, remind the fish that it was caught in an unyielding grip. The marlin’s mouth opened and gulped down the treacherous air, and twisted defiantly, but Farley held fast.
“She was only trying to save herself. We got in the way. It was an accident, son. Bad bad luck. This is no monster. She’s a
creature that wants to be left alone. A force of nature.”
Morgan pulled her eyes from the fish and looked at her father.
“Force of nature! Then why the fuck have we been out here, Dad, all these years? An accident? A fucking accident? Give me a goddamn break.”
Braswell looked at his daughter. She quieted her voice, brought it down to almost a whisper.
“You said this was the end, Dad. You said this would finish it.”
“I changed my mind, Morgan.”
They stared at each other for a short moment.
“Shoot it, Johnny,” she said. “Kill the fucker once and for all.”
Braswell stepped in front of the shotgun.
“Put it down, Johnny,” Thorn said. “Do what your daddy says.”
“You want this fish or not?” Farley asked casually. “I’m not holding her much longer.”
“Just a second,” Braswell said. He kept his eyes on his son’s, and put his hand on the barrel of the shotgun and nudged it downward until it was aimed at the deck between them. The boy’s face went soft, his mouth stretching wide as if he meant to howl at the twilight. Braswell patted Johnny on the shoulder and stepped past him and went to the fish locker where Thorn had been sitting. He drew open the second drawer and pulled out another silver pod, longer and fatter than the one attached to the fish. Then he withdrew a stumpy harpoon from the same drawer and snapped the pod onto it, just behind the barbed tip.
“What the hell is that?”
“A new design,” he said, “more durable battery, radio signal stronger. Better data collection.”
“Jesus, Dad.”
“No,” Morgan said. “No way in hell are we doing that.”
“This isn’t about you kids. This is what I want to do.”
“Oh, yeah? Not about us. It’s about you. And there’s a difference, Dad? The two things aren’t the same thing? Now, all of a sudden you decide to do something like this all by yourself.”
“It’s what I’m going to do, Morgan.”
“So you can follow that fish for the rest of your pathetic life? For what?”
“It’s my decision, Morgan.”
Braswell stepped around the fighting chair and took a grip on the harpoon.
“Your decision,” she said. “Like we can just go on our merry fucking ways? Are you crazy, you old bastard? I put my life on hold for the last ten years because of this goddamn fish. I sacrificed everything for you, your fucking company. And why? So you could stick another goddamn pod on this fish? No, sir. No way in hell.”
“It’s a way to stay close,” Braswell said. “To Andy. To your mother. A way to keep the connection alive.”
She looked at her father for a long moment, her face closing down, eyes losing their light. Her black hair fluttered wildly as if invisible bats were escaping from their roosts inside her skull. Behind her the sky was purpling, and overhead was a dense layer of corrugated clouds with gold beams breaking through tiny perforations like searchlights from on high.
“Kill him, Johnny. Kill the fucker.”
“Thorn,” Farley said. “Could you take the shotgun out of circulation?”
“Sure thing.”
Farley’s face gleamed with oily sweat. The fish was thrashing, using its last reserves to break free, but Farley kept his feet planted wide, his hand tight in the wire, and counteracted every move. But Thorn could see in his eyes that this was costing him dearly.
Thorn jammed the rod in the holder and came around the fighting chair.
“Shoot him, Johnny,” Morgan said. “Shoot him now.”
“Who?”
He waved the gun at Thorn, then at his father.
“Shoot all of them,” she said. “I don’t give a shit.”
Braswell turned his back on his children and lifted the harpoon.
“Goddamn it, Johnny. Shoot him.”
Johnny swung the shotgun in a frantic arc, across the fish, his father, Farley.
On the far end of the arc, Thorn thrust forward and got a grip on the barrel and tore it from the boy’s hands. It slipped from his hand and the gun clattered to the deck and Thorn stooped for it, taking a glimpse to his left as Braswell hammered the new pod into place, and then from the other side of the universe, Thorn saw a bright sparkle rocketing in, saw it too late, a microsecond, that’s all, only enough time to shoot his right hand up in a feeble effort to deflect the blow, but missing by inches, the gaff crashing down on his ear, his temple. And the sparkle brightened inside his head. Setting off a string of flashes, red blooms of light, silent green explosions as Thorn tumbled to the deck, smacking his own fool head against the steel post of the fighting chair.
And from that position, on his back, on the floor of a steep-sided canyon, a mile away from the rim where sleepwalkers were speaking in slow-motion voices, electronically altered, Thorn watched Johnny raise the shotgun and watched its barrel and the butt kick against Johnny’s shoulder. Watched Farley Boissont double over as if he’d taken a battering ram to the gut, and the barrel flared again, and the big black man with the dreadlocks and chiseled muscles bucked backwards over the transom, tearing the fishing line as he went.
The fish hung there a moment more, free of the torment of the line, surveying the spectacle with her cold, unblinking eye. Then she heaved a few inches upward and dropped back into the choppy sea.
A half second later Thorn felt the canyon floor drop away beneath him like an elevator plunging down its endless shaft, and finally finally finally he came to rest in a dark basement, dead but awake, seeing up through the long narrow shaft, in a square of light, the boy with the blond, stringy hair and the stupid hat and the chubby cheeks, slipping two more shells into the shotgun and saw that black steel eye coming down through the frame of brightness, down and down until it pressed hot as a branding iron against his forehead and there was a sharp click and then he was no more. No Thorn. No noise. No pain. Just drifting in the black airless atmosphere. Falling through the pleasant layers of darkness, from black to blacker to blackest. And then a place that was black beyond all that.
“You hear that?”
“I did,” said Sugarman. “Over there.”
He pointed, but Alexandra said, “No, more to the south.”
And then a second explosion echoed across the miles of water.
“You’re right,” Sugarman said. He took the compass heading, mashed the throttle down, and stared out at the last remnants of sunshine, a haunted sky full of bruised blue light, frigate birds floating through the high, thin atmosphere, like goblins feasting on the final moments of the day.
Twenty-Six
“Hey there, sleepyhead.”
Thorn opened his eyes. He had no arms and no legs. His body was floating in a vat of scalding oil.
“Welcome to the fiesta,” Lawton said. “Me and you and this other guy.”
They were lying face to face on a king-sized bed. Thorn on his left side, Lawton lying on his right. One of Lawton’s eyes was bruised and there was a knuckle-gash on his cheekbone. Thorn strained to sit up, but his body wouldn’t cooperate. After a moment’s rest, he managed to lift his head and briefly survey the situation.
Lawton was hog-tied with plastic cable ties and bungee cords and duct tape. Hands lashed behind his back with the binding around his wrists hooked to the cord that circled his ankles. He was arched backwards, his spine flexed against itself. Thorn assumed he was probably trussed up the same way. Which would explain why he couldn’t feel his feet or hands. Just a numb ache.
“What other guy?” Thorn said. His voice sounded so far away he wasn’t sure he’d spoken, maybe only imagined the words.
“Him,” Lawton said. And rolled onto his back so Thorn could peek across his belly at the man sprawled next to him. Naked and dead, with the silver butt of a blade protruding from his throat and blood scabbing his right eye, a deep slash on his cheek.
The old man rolled back and lifted his eyebrows.
“Not particularly sociab
le, this one.”
“Wingo,” Thorn said. “The poor bastard.”
“Who’s Wingo?”
“Never mind, Lawton. How are you doing?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I been better, I guess. That damn girl sucker-punched me. Put me on my ass, almost knocked me out. A girl. Do you believe it?”
“She doesn’t fight fair,” Thorn said.
He shifted on the bed, trying to ease the sharp pinch of the bindings on his wrist. But his new position only aggravated the pressure. Thorn winced and shut his eyes against the long, fat needle that hammered into the base of his spinal cord. He kept them shut and took a gulp of air. He listened to a high whine from deep in his inner ear. He didn’t know how badly he was injured, and with his hands and legs bent behind him as they were, he wasn’t going to find out soon.
When he opened his eyes again, Lawton Collins was hunched forward on the bed, kicking and squirming grimly. Huffing hard as he tried to wriggle free of his bonds. His face was red, his body contorting into an agonizing pose.
“Calm down, Lawton. Calm down. Relax.”
The old man ceased his struggle and went limp. Panting, he looked over at Thorn.
“I got free once already, but I’ll be damned if I can remember how.”
“What happened to your ear? You’re bleeding.”
“The kid cut me.”
“Johnny?”
“They were trying to make me tell them something, I forget what.”
Thorn lay still for a moment as images from the last hour trickled back. The colossal marlin, the new silver pod fixed to its back, Morgan’s rage, the shotgun blasts, Farley blown backwards over the side. Thorn clenched his eyes shut and said a silent benediction. As if the gods ever listened to him, as if they ever listened to anyone. He said it nonetheless, a prayer of gratitude and respect for a decent man. A man who had tried his best to armor himself against the treacherous world. But no muscles could accomplish that. Thorn had learned long ago, there was no defense against people like the Braswells, only offense. Your own set of sharp teeth and claws and a vengeful thirst for blood.
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