Missing Person

by Matt Lincoln

  I thought I spotted a figure moving about the boat at the very end of the dock, but I couldn’t be sure given the dark and the rain. I glanced over my shoulder to check if Lex had seen it too, but her eyes were fixed on the boards of the dock as she focused on keeping her footing.

  As we got closer, I grew more certain that there was someone aboard the speedboat. I could see him moving around rather frantically, fiddling with something on the control console. I waited until we were right beside the boat before I announced our presence, relying on the force of the storm to shield our approach.

  “This is MBLIS! Stop what you’re doing!” I shouted, digging a penlight from my pocket and clicking it on at the same moment. I shone the light right into the boat, and it landed right on a man’s startled face.

  His mouth formed the shape of a curse, though the word itself was lost beneath the storm. He snatched at something by the steering wheel and whipped his arm up and toward us.

  “Gun!” I yelled, realizing what it was just a few seconds before he pulled the trigger. I dropped to the dock, scraping my palms on the wood as a shot rang out, the blast muffled by all the wind and rain. I didn’t see what happened to the others, but I didn’t hear anyone scream, so I hoped no one had been hit.

  I stayed low but scrambled toward the boat, thinking I could maybe use the poor visibility to get aboard and disarm the shooter before he fired again. A second later, something scratchy and wet slapped my face, and I flinched back, confused. It took me a long moment to realize that a length of rope, flapping in the wind, had struck me. I lunged for the boat but spotted the rising gun again and flung myself to the side, rolling across the dock, all the while knowing that I could plunge into the turbulent water at any second.

  A hand caught mine, jerking me to a stop, and I opened my eyes to see Meg Shoals crouched over me, stopping me from tumbling right off the dock. She cringed as another shot went off, but I couldn’t even see the man or what he was shooting at from this angle.

  Meg helped me up, though we stayed hunched over, trying to make ourselves smaller targets. The man had pushed his boat away from the dock, and white water churned around the engine, though I couldn’t hear its whine above the storm.

  “Stop!” I yelled fruitlessly, but the man only fired one more bullet our way as he opened the throttle and gunned it away from the marina.

  “Stay here!” Linda shouted, pointing a finger toward the fleeing boat like she wanted to keep an eye on it. Then she grabbed Meg’s hand, and the two of them raced down the dock back toward shore.

  “Where are you going?” I called after them, but my words were torn away by the wind, and I got no answer.

  Frustrated, I turned back to the water, struggling to pick out the boat’s shadow in the dark. Where were they going, and why were they leaving us here? We needed to go after that boat. Maybe if we got back to the cars, we could chase it toward the mouth to Lake Pontchartrain and somehow cut it off from there, but the longer we waited, the further away the boat got, and the easier time it would have to disappear into the storm. We needed to move, and we needed to do it now.

  “Jace, look.” Lex grabbed my shoulder and spun me toward her, pointing up the river. For a second, I couldn’t spot what it was she wanted me to see, but then a boat materialized out of the rain with Linda Reyes at the helm. The engine was soundless against the storm, but she was moving fast, probably faster than she was supposed to this close to the marina.

  Linda waved at us and motored toward our dock, slowing as she approached.

  “Get on!” Meg shouted from the back of the boat, gesturing widely with one arm.

  I realized that Linda wasn’t going to stop for us to get on. Meg had unhooked a section of the railing and stepped back to give us space. I started backing up, giving myself room to pick up speed since I didn’t know how close Linda was going to get.

  “This is going to end badly!” Lex yelled, but I was already running for the end of the dock, and she had no choice but to follow me.

  I planted my foot against the wood and jumped, launching myself into the air as the wind tore at my clothes and the rain pelted against my skin like tiny pebbles. Linda’s expert steering had brought the boat within a few feet of the dock, and I landed on the slightly sloped deck, Meg catching my arm to keep me from falling as the boat pitched around me. Somehow, her hands were still warm despite how long we’d been out in the storm.

  She helped me regain my footing, and we turned to try to catch Lex. The boat was just starting to leave the dock behind, so Lex had to angle her jump, her distance further than mine had been. She flung herself out over the water, arms windmilling, and I clung to the post of the railing with one hand as I reached for her with the other. Lex’s foot hit the very edge of the boat, and she began to tip backward with no hope of righting her balance, her center of balance in exactly the wrong spot. Meg and I lunged forward, and I seized a fistful of Lex’s jacket and heaved as hard as I could, dragging her onto the boat before I lost my balance, and the three of us tumbled into a heap on the deck. Something hard and oddly shaped dug painfully into my side.

  It took us a hot second to disentangle ourselves, breathing heavily the entire time, but once we each had our own limbs back, we staggered to the front of the boat to join Linda by the steering wheel.

  “Nicely done!” she shouted over the wind.

  I seemed to spend a lot more time jumping off things I wasn’t supposed to jump off of than I ever did at the FBI. Luckily, I’d been working on my parkour skills ever since I’d jumped off an entire building to chase down the thief, Blair Haddow, so it was slowly getting easier. That didn’t mean I liked it.

  12

  I stepped up to the railing and shielded my eyes with both hands to see if I could make out the shape of the boat ahead of us. The water churned all around us, and each wave we hit threw sea spray into my face, and I had to fight to keep my balance, making it hard to focus on the search. It was impossible to lose the fleeing boat, though, since we were both stuck on the straight path of the river, but if we didn’t have a clear line of sight to the other boat by the time we reached Lake Pontchartrain, we would lose it.

  We picked up speed, though I could still barely make out the whine of the engine. The bow smacked straight into a particularly rough wave, and I lost my balance, banging my knee against the deck so that a sharp snap of pain shot through the leg. After that, I decided to stay sitting, my hands wrapped around the slick lines of the railing, water pooling along the folds of my pants.

  “There!” I shouted suddenly and pointed out in front of us. The shadow of the other boat had finally come into sight, lit by a great slash of lightning. It bobbed and crashed against the waves, its wider bow struggling to cut through them.

  Linda opened up the throttle. I hadn’t thought there was any more speed left in our boat, but we shot forward like we’d been flung from a slingshot, and I almost pitched right off my perch. Only my death grip on the railing saved me from that embarrassment.

  Lex dragged herself over to sit by me, hunching against the howling wind, still trying to shield her face from the rain despite the absolute futility of that endeavor. She leaned her head in close to my ear so that I’d be able to hear her over the storm. Even then, she still had to shout.

  “What’s the play?”

  I eyed the fleeing boat and the slowly depleting distance between the two of us. We couldn’t shout for the man to stop. Even if he could hear us, I doubted he’d heed the warning. I didn’t particularly want to jump from one moving boat to another, especially when there was a gun involved, but it didn’t look like we had a choice.

  Meg joined us at the bow while I was still thinking Lex’s question over. Her bun had lost much of its integrity, and her dark hair was plastered to her head, but she didn’t look like she even noticed the fact that she was soaking wet. She beckoned for us to get close. “Linda’s going to get us close, and I’ll tie the boats together. Can you keep the man’s attention whil
e I do so he doesn’t shoot me?”

  I wasn’t sure what benefit could come from tying two fast-moving boats together, but I trusted Linda’s judgment.

  “We can do that,” I said and glanced out over the water to make sure the other boat was still in sight.

  “Great,” Meg said and gave us two thumbs-up, grinning even as water dripped over her mouth, and I shot a rather weak set of finger-guns back at her.

  Meg rejoined Linda at the steering wheel, her steps swaying in perfect harmony with the rolling deck, and Lex and I got ourselves into position, shifting over to the railing on the right side of the boat. I honestly could not say if it was the port side or… whatever the other one was. I didn’t draw my gun quite yet. I didn’t want to risk hitting a big wave and losing my grip on the weapon. I could picture it dropping right over the railing and into the water, gone forever. I’d always kind of wondered what happened to items lost to the water. As a kid, I’d imagined them frozen in time, trapped way down there in the shifting sands, oh-so-lonely as they waited to be found.

  This was not a time for my mind to wander, I reminded myself firmly as I pulled my attention out from under the waves and back to the boat we were chasing. It was in the center of the channel, and Linda had swung us just slightly toward shore so we would be able to come up alongside our quarry. We had no way of knowing for sure if the man on board had spotted us, but we had to operate under the assumption that he had. So Lex and I made sure we stayed low, providing the smallest possible target.

  We continued to gain on the other boat. I thought I could maybe see the mouth to Lake Pontchartrain up ahead of us, a widening of the darkened water, but it might have just been a trick of the storm. We needed to act before we reached it, while we were still hemmed in by the walls of the channel and the fleeing boat had nowhere to turn.

  Despite our great speed, it felt like we were moving in slow motion creeping up on the other boat an inch at a time, and then, quite suddenly, it seemed, the tip of our bow was pulling up alongside the very back of the speedboat. I wiped my wet hand off on my equally soaking jacket, rolled my eyes at myself, and then drew my gun. I clenched my fingers tightly around it, hoping that the weapon wouldn’t slip from my slick hand.

  We drew up another foot. There were maybe five feet of space between the two vessels, which I thought was too close for comfort because what if one of us jerked suddenly? There’d be no avoiding the crash. But I supposed that was kind of the point. I couldn’t see the man with the canvas covering in the way and all the rain lashing down around us, but I kept my eyes locked on where he would appear from, ready to react as soon as he did.

  Linda twisted a little extra speed out of the engine, and when we were halfway up the boat’s length, Meg stepped forward with a rope in hand, a thick clip secured to one end. Linda turned the wheel, and we cut toward the side of the other boat at a shallow angle. A shadow shifted within the adjacent cockpit, and I pulled the trigger, aiming high so I wouldn’t hit anything important but would still, hopefully, keep him from emerging. I braced myself, waiting for the return shot, but none came.

  Meg stepped over the railing and hung off the side of the boat, one hand wrapped around a metal post as she reached across the water. She snapped the clip into place around the closest bit of railing and then hauled herself back. Lex reached out and caught her arm, helping her clamber back to safety. Meg gripped the rope in both hands, feet braced against the wet deck, her knees bent. She glanced over at us and raised an eyebrow. I nodded.

  Meg heaved on the rope, dragging the two boats together with more precision than Linda could get out of the wheel, while Lex and I readied ourselves to step across. When there was just over a foot between the two decks, I rose and took one great stride across the water, well aware of the churning waves beneath me and how I’d get crushed between the two boats if I slipped. Lex was close behind me, just in case anything happened—we didn’t want to get separated.

  It was a good thing she was right on my heels because the moment our feet hit the other deck, the boat jerked beneath us, away from its tether. I felt myself start to pitch backward and took a huge step forward, right off the raised deck and into the lowered seating area. My foot plunged much further than expected, and I yelped as I fell, pain lancing through my shin as I hit the deck. I somehow managed to stay upright, my arms windmilling in an attempt to keep my balance.

  Someone slammed into me from the side, and then I did go down, the sopping cushions ringing the berth softening my fall. I lashed out blindly with one arm, knowing that the other man had a gun and not wanting to wait around for him to fire it. I connected with a shoulder maybe, something hard and unyielding, and hands scrambled for my eyes, seeking the soft flesh there.

  I got my feet under me, braced against the slope of the seat, and shoved, forcing us upright as my thighs groaned in protest at the strain. We staggered, and I pushed at the man, driving him away from me so that there was enough space to get my gun up between us, pointed at his chest. But we hit a large wave, and I staggered to the side, giving the man the opportunity to lunge into the cockpit and snatch up his own weapon.

  Lex shot at him, but her aim was thrown off by the bucking boat, and the man fired back at her, forcing her to duck out of the way, her feet slipping on the wet deck. I darted forward, slamming into the man, and his back struck the wheel, jerking the boat sharply to the left. We crashed into Linda’s borrowed boat, and the impact threw me to the ground, the man sprawling over me, his knee narrowly missing my face.

  I scrambled upright, trying to be faster than my opponent. I’d lost my gun somewhere along the way, but so had he, and I snapped my boot out, kicking the pistol out of the way as he snatched at it. I lashed out with the same foot, nailing him right in the face so that blood burst from his nose, and he cried out. I rolled to my knees as the man scrambled away from me, clutching his nose. Another wave knocked the boat, and I braced my hands against the deck until it passed and then shoved myself all the way to my feet, shoulder braced against the wet canvas wall of the cockpit.

  Lex appeared behind the man just as he regained his feet, and she placed the mouth of her gun to his back.

  “Freeze!” she ordered. She had her feet planted wide against the rocking of the boat, her face determined.

  I spotted my gun just under the boat’s dash, but I’d have to turn my back on the man to retrieve it, so I pulled handcuffs from my pocket instead and advanced toward them. The man slowly raised his hands in the air, defeat in his eyes.

  I bound his hands behind him and then shoved him to the deck underneath the canvas covering where we could stay somewhat dry while we interrogated him. I retrieved my gun and his, tucking the former into its holster and hanging onto the latter while I leaned against the opposite wall and looked down at him.

  “Go tell Linda we got him,” I said to Lex.

  She nodded and ducked back out into the rain.

  I looked the man over. It wasn’t Simon Ward, that was obvious. He was considerably younger, his face clean-shaven, his eyes bright blue and slightly glazed with pain from his still bleeding nose. It had a slightly squashed look to it. I’d probably broken it. I didn’t feel too bad about that.

  “Look, whatever you think I did, I--” the man began.

  “Shut up,” I interrupted, and he squirmed beneath the weight of my stare. “And stop the boat.”

  He hesitated and then reached up and pulled back on the brake, locking the steering wheel into place. The two boats began to slow and skew to one side, and I swayed with the motion as best I could, not wanting to fall and make a fool of myself in front of the prisoner. It took us a few minutes to come to a complete stop since the boats were tied together, and I imagined that made the maneuver much more difficult. We had no way to anchor ourselves, so the boats bobbed in the waves, occasionally bumping into each other.

  Linda, Meg, and Lex appeared at the door to the speedboat’s cockpit and crowded inside. There wasn’t really room for all five
of us, but no one wanted to be out in the driving rain any longer, so we pressed ourselves into all the little nooks and crannies around the steering wheel and the swivel chair bolted to the floor while our prisoner stared up at us with wide eyes. He had two streaks of blood down his beige shirt, and he licked nervously at his lips, flinching when he tasted the blood there.

  “Where’s Simon Ward?” I asked, making my voice low and dangerous.

  The man’s brow furrowed, and he glanced back and forth between the four of us, unable to pick a person to focus on. “Who?”

  “Don’t play games with us,” Lex snapped. She took a threatening step forward but bumped into Meg along the way and had to abort the motion halfway through. “We’re in no mood.”

  The man shrugged his shoulders, shifting to try to ease the pressure on his bound hands, and shook his head. “I swear. I don’t know anyone named Simon Ward.”

  “Then why did you run?” Linda asked from beside me. She’d taken a seat on the swivel chair and had undone her bun so she could squeeze the water from her hair. It drip-drip-dripped to the floor, silent beneath the steady drum of rain against the canvas over our heads.

  “And shoot at us,” Meg added.

  The man’s eyes darted from side to side, and he licked his lips again. His gaze lingered a moment too long on the space underneath the console before he dragged his head up and shrugged at us again, refusing to speak.

  “Watch out,” I said to Linda, and she swung her knees out of my way as I knelt down and wedged myself under the center console. I felt the panels there, and one of them bowed beneath my touch.

  “Anyone got a screwdriver?” I asked over my shoulder.

  “There’s one by the steering wheel,” Linda said and tapped my side with the handle. I reached back, and she put it in my hand, and I set about unscrewing the panel from the wall. It came away quickly since none of the screws were very tight, and I shoved it aside, shining my little penlight into the cubby there.