by Sam Cameron
Brian was very quiet and unmoving.
“Sorry if this is a crappy rescue,” Denny offered.
“It’s the best rescue ever,” Brian said fervently, but then he was quiet again.
Denny thought on the scale of one to ten this was a negative number rescue. They were both wet, Brian was in obvious pain, the backpack with all their supplies was lost, and Denny had been a dumbass not to radio for help when he’d had the chance.
Maybe he should swim back to the Sleuth-hound.
But Poul Damgaard might come to them before the Coast Guard did. Poul and his gun.
“If you stop shivering, that’s a bad sign,” Denny said. “Hypothermia.”
“Okay.”
Denny used the small light to examine Brian’s face and pupils. “Are you sure you’re okay? Did you hit your head?”
“I’m worried about my mom, and Henrik, and your brother, and Nathan Carter—”
Denny put his hand on Brian’s good arm. “Slow down before you hyperventilate.”
Brian covered his face with his left hand. “I’m not good with emergencies.”
“Wait until your tenth or eleventh shootout,” Denny said. “It’ll be a cakewalk.”
“I don’t know what that word means.”
“Piece of cake.”
Brian considered. “Chocolate cake? Lemon?”
“Whatever you want.”
“With ice cream?”
Denny said, “Any flavor at all.”
Brian sighed. “I didn’t have dinner.”
“I can catch us some fish come morning.”
“You were a Boy Scout, weren’t you?” Brian asked.
“Five years.” Denny patted the reassuring weight of the army knife in his pocket. He was already planning how he could catch a fish and cook it, if they dared risk a campfire. “Then we started karate classes in Key West and something had to give.”
Another squall rolled over them—harder rain, colder. Denny began to calculate the odds of hypothermia. Their soaking wet clothes weren’t a good start. The drum of water on the bricks and trees made talk impossible, so he scooted a few inches closer to Brian and tried to think positive thoughts.
Steven’s fine.
The Sleuth-hound is fine.
Nathan Carter isn’t dead.
The Coast Guard will find the beacon.
We won’t be dead by then.
He hunkered down to wait out the storm.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Agent Crown looked like he was trying hard not to vomit. Garcia didn’t look much better. Neither of them suggested that they stop searching, but the storm was getting worse with the passing hours, and Steven knew he was endangering everyone.
Still, he couldn’t stop—not with Denny out there somewhere on the dark ocean. He kept the Docket moving across the waves.
Standing beside him in the covered flybridge, wrapped in a big yellow raincoat, Kelsey said, “Think like your brother. Wouldn’t he have put in somewhere nice and dry?”
He’d objected to her coming along, but she said he had no choice if he wanted to use her father’s boat. It wasn’t worth arguing over. And he was kind of glad, maybe, to have her along, even if she was still mad at him over Jennifer O’Malley.
The boat heaved on the waves. Visibility sucked. He was relying on the navigation gear and his own experience to keep them from running ashore on one of the keys or reefs. His head and chest ached from the smoke inhalation earlier, and the skin on his hands was pink and tight.
“Denny would have called the Coast Guard if he was safe,” Steven said.
Garcia was in charge of monitoring the radio. Crown was in charge of staying on his own two feet. Kelsey had announced she would make coffee for all of them, but the seas were too rough to risk boiling water.
Kelsey put her hand on Steven’s shoulder and kneaded his tight muscles. “You can’t help him if we run aground.”
Steven glared through the plastic window at the wind-tossed ocean and flickering skies. He knew what Denny would say—put ashore, stay alive. His dad would say the same thing.
The boat heaved again.
“Damn it,” he said and turned toward the Coast Guard station.
The station captain, Dermot Flaherty, was a friend of Dad’s. He eyed the first-degree burns on Steven’s arms and face and said, critically, “Go lie down in my office before you fall down.”
“But I want to—”
“Right now,” Captain Flaherty said. “There’s a cot there with your name on it.”
Steven obeyed, but he didn’t sleep. Instead, he listened to the murmur of voices that drifted under the door and tried to use twin telepathy to find Denny. He didn’t actually believe in telepathy—neither of them did—but he’d take anything he could get on this miserable night.
Maybe he did fall asleep, just a little, because when he blinked his eyes the sun had started to rise and Kelsey was curled up in Captain Flaherty’s armchair, sleeping under someone’s uniform coat.
He let her sleep and went in search of the Command Center, where the crew on duty was watching screens and monitoring communications. Captain Flaherty was drinking from a coffee mug the size of a thermos.
“Your parents are on their way back from Tallahassee,” Flaherty said. “They’re pretty worried.”
Steven was worried too, but he didn’t feel like saying it aloud.
“Sir, we think we’ve found it,” said one of the petty officers nearby. “The EPIRB matches for Dennis Anderson and the Sleuth-hound.”
Steven instantly moved to study the display. Mercy Key, Whale Island, and Longman’s Key formed an irregular line to Fisher Key’s east. The blinking light for the beacon was off Longman’s Key.
“We thought we had a fix on it a half hour ago,” Captain Flaherty said, his hand heavy on Steven’s shoulder. “The signal’s been weak and intermittent, though. It looks like she’s drifting south. A boat’s already on the way.”
Steven went to round up Kelsey and then Crown and Garcia, who were napping in a conference room. They were halfway to Longman’s Key when the patrol boat radioed in they’d found the beacon afloat, no sign of the Sleuth-hound.
“It doesn’t mean they sank,” Kelsey said, squeezing Steven’s hand.
“Your brother’s fine,” Garcia added, looking hollow-eyed and gray in the morning sun. Steven knew he was still worried about Carter, who at last word was in surgery in Tavernier.
Crown added in, “He’s a resourceful kid.”
They all meant well, but Steven didn’t believe them. The Sleuth-hound’s EPIRB was designed to automatically broadcast when submerged. If the beacon was in the water, the boat was probably submerged as well.
With his brother and Brian aboard.
Drowned and dead at the bottom of the ocean.
Chapter Thirty-nine
“Talk to me,” Brian said.
The rain would stop for short periods, then burst down on them again as more storm clouds passed overhead.
Denny said, “You should get some sleep.”
“Talk me to sleep. I need something—something other than what’s in my head.”
So Denny talked. Brian listened to stories about the Boy Scouts, and about how Denny and Steven started camping on their own at age thirteen.
“Dad dropped us off right on this island. We pitched a tent, caught our own dinner, thought we were real men. Afterward we found out he only anchored out of sight. But that tent was the best birthday present ever.”
Brian smiled, or thought he did. His eyes were closed as he drifted along the shores of exhaustion and discomfort.
Denny kept talking. About how he and Steven had earned Boy Scout merit badges in Crime Prevention after solving their first mystery at age twelve. About his dad, who’d played football at the University of Miami but would never let his sons play, because he thought they were already soft in the head and didn’t need more brain injuries.
Brian was pretty sure that wa
s a joke.
Denny kept talking. The steady, comfortable sound helped drown out the horrible little voice inside that kept saying Nathan Carter’s dead, Mom’s in danger.
“And I knew right after talking to him that I wanted to be in the Coast Guard,” Denny was saying. Brian wasn’t sure how they had gotten onto this topic, but he didn’t open his eyes to ask. Denny continued, “No other options. But it’s kind of depressing because I don’t want to be part of an organization that discriminates. There was this officer we knew over at the Coast Guard station, Lieutenant Murphy. Saved three people in a plane crash. He was gay and everyone knew it. Nobody cared. Then he was transferred north and his new commanding officer had him discharged for being seen in a gay bar. What kind of crap is that?”
Brian wanted to say that it was the kind of crap that was unfortunately common, but exhaustion dragged him down into a black sea of nothingness.
Only a few minutes had passed, at best, before he realized he was on fire. Burning, the flames licking up his clothes and toward his face—
“Easy, easy!” Denny said, as Brian flailed awake. Before them was a tiny fire, nothing more than a handful of twigs but blessedly warm. The sky was still dark behind Denny.
“Sun’s coming up soon,” Denny said.
Brian said thickly, “I don’t see it.” Then, “Where’d you get the fire?”
“I made it.” Denny sounded amused. “Merit badge, remember?”
Brian moved closer to the warmth. As the sun came up he saw more of the fort around them. Not so much a fort but lots of bricks and greenery, maybe. Denny offered to catch some lizards to snack on, or unearth some grubs, but Brian put a stop to that talk.
“I’ll wait for real food.”
“It is real food,” Denny said, but he didn’t insist.
They hiked back to the beach past ferns and trees that looked impenetrable in the daylight. Brian was surprised Denny had even found the path last night. After a half mile or so they were stepping out onto the beach, where the storm tides had left behind new driftwood and a fine littering of sea plants. The Sleuth-hound was moored offshore, exactly where they had left her.
Denny abruptly pulled Brian back into the brush.
“What?” Brian hissed, his arm in agony from the sudden jostling.
“Look beyond her,” Denny said.
A forty-foot cabin cruiser was anchored just beyond the Sleuth-hound. A sleek boat, modern, no sign of life.
“Your uncle found us,” Denny muttered. “Come on.”
Denny went off the path into the trees, choosing his footing carefully. Brian felt clumsy and awkward as he followed. They had shared some gathered rainwater back at the fort, but Brian was still thirsty, and starving, and in dire need of caffeine and his painkillers both.
He didn’t complain, though. If Denny didn’t complain, Brian wouldn’t either.
They reached the south end of the island several minutes later. No sandy beaches here, just mangroves giving way to the sea and the sight of another key not too far away.
“That’s Bardet Key,” Denny said. “Steven and I inherited an old fishing shack there from a friend of my mom’s. I’m pretty sure we left a flare gun there last trip over.”
Brian studied the distance with dismay. “I can’t swim that far.”
“No,” Denny said steadily. “But I can.”
Brian blinked at him. “What? No! You can’t leave me.”
“Once I fire the flare, Steven will see it.” Denny sounded absolutely sure that his brother was out there searching for them. Brian wondered what it was like to have such faith in someone. “It also might scare your uncle off when he realizes help is coming.”
“Or make him go after you,” Brian protested.
The breeze blew Denny’s hair back from his forehead. He looked very handsome against the backdrop of the sea, like a male model posing for a magazine. Well, a rumpled and tired male model who hadn’t gotten any sleep and was just as hungry as Brian was.
Denny pulled off his shoes and handed them to Brian. “It’s only a mile or so. I can swim it in about a half-hour. Your job is to stay hidden, stay out of sight. Don’t let your uncle lure you out. Can you do that?”
“No,” Brian said. “I need you here.”
For a moment, the determination on Denny’s face flickered. Brian knew then that Denny wanted to stay with him, but was doing the one thing he thought would save them both.
Brian said, “Go. Be safe. Don’t get eaten by sharks.”
Denny nodded and waded into the surf, leaving Brian behind.
*
Denny hadn’t been lying when he said he could swim a mile in a half-hour. Usually less, in fact. He’d timed himself more than once in a swimming pool. The ocean was no pool, however. As he set off with a steady stroke the push and pull of the ocean reminded him how easily he could be pulled off course, tugged toward or away from Bardet Key. The hollowness in his stomach reminded him that he hadn’t eaten anything substantial since lunch yesterday. He should have dug up some grubs during the long dark hours of the night.
Still, hunger or not, he could do this.
He kept swimming.
The water was warm but choppy. He wished Brian hadn’t mentioned sharks. Stretch his arm, scoop water, breathe, kick from the thighs—he knew the rhythm, had performed it for years, but urgency made him clumsy and he forced himself to slow down.
Alternate your strokes, he heard Steven say, as surely as if his twin was right there with him. His annoying, irritating, know-it-all twin, who had better not be dead right now.
After several minutes Denny rolled over and did the backstroke. Easier that way, but the sun stung the salt on his face. He turned into a sidestroke. Steady. Keep breathing.
When he stopped to figure out his speed and course, he saw that the current was pulling him east. He’d have to swim diagonally instead of straight. Danny glanced back to Mercy Key, but it had retreated into a smudge of green and there was no sign of Brian at all.
Brave, steadfast Brian, who hadn’t complained at all about this mess Denny had dragged him into.
He swam for several more minutes, trying to stay focused. Stretch, scoop, breathe, kick. He was alone under the bright, scorching sun, pale blue above and cobalt blue below, a puny human in a vast sea of sharks, jellyfish, and other hazards.
Best not to think about that now.
He imagined he was swimming at the Coast Guard Academy, showing off for all those pale northern kids.
He imagined himself as Nathan Carter, vagabond hunk, swimming around the keys at night in his tight swimming trunks. Had it only been a week since The Tempest blew up, setting all this craziness in motion?
Without warning, a fierce cramp grabbed his right calf and exploded in agonizing pain. The shock of it made Denny swallow a mouthful of seawater and start to sink.
Just like that, he was drowning.
Chapter Forty
Brian watched Denny swim away until he was just a vanishing dot. He shaded his eyes against the sun and stared a little longer.
Don’t get killed, he thought. Come back to me.
Finally, he retreated into the thick interior of Mercy Key and tried to keep himself hidden.
Moving as quietly as possible, swatting off flies, he tried to imagine a happy future: himself at MIT come fall, the big campus with its mix of old and new buildings, the Charles River filled with college men rowing boats. All those handsome and smart boys he’d meet. Everything he’d been planning for since Mom and Henrik dragged him down to Fisher Key.
Was there room for Denny in that picture? Did Denny want there to be?
Sure, Denny could drive up from New London. Bed down in Brian’s dorm room, or they could rent a hotel room. Would he want to? He might prefer his military friends, the academy itself, never letting himself break free of the prison he kept himself in.
A voice rang out through the trees.
“Brian! Brian, answer me!”
Henrik.
Brian froze.
“Brian?” Henrik sounded more desperate, his accent heavy. “You have to come out, son. It’s time to meet your uncle.”
He stayed silent. Henrik had put them all in jeopardy by refusing to disclose his past—a past that seemed pretty shady. Poul’s daughter had shot Nathan Carter and set fire to the house. The more Brian thought about it, the more he suspected they were a family of lunatics.
But Henrik was still his stepfather, the man who’d been part of his family for five years. He was the man that Mom loved. Brian guessed he loved him, too. Right now he couldn’t tell.
Could he let him be hurt?
“Brian, please!” Henrik sounded closer now. “You have to help me out here. They just want to talk to you.”
Not enough time had passed for Denny to get to Bardet Key. That was the most important thing right now.
Brian kept moving, kept silent, and promised himself that rescue would arrive soon.
*
The blue waters of the Atlantic shimmered all around him as Denny sank. After a few seconds of incoherent pain and near-panic, he pulled his cramped leg close and kicked upward with his good leg. He broke the surface with violent coughs.
The pain ripped and ripped at his leg, nearly made him sink again. He tried rotating his foot. That helped a little. He wheezed past the water clogging his throat and tried to drag air in through his nose. Black spots blocked his view of the sky and the sound of his own frantic heartbeat drowned out everything else.
What if he drowned out here? They might never even find his body. For the rest of their lives, Steven and his parents would never know what had happened.
Not going to drown, he told himself fiercely.
After several chancy minutes he was able to knead the knot out of his calf. His chest and throat ached, but he could breathe normally. When he looked for Bardet Key he saw that he’d been pulled eastward again, even more off course than before.
No use complaining about it.
He started swimming again. Sidestroke and backstroke, mostly. Arms and legs slicing through the waves. Seawater sloshed around in his stomach and he stopped once to vomit. Pain lingered in his cramped calf. He kept going anyway. No way was he never going to see his family again.