“Girl?”

“Little kid,” Dusty said. “Curly brown hair, if I remember right.”

“Ash blond,” corrected my mother.

Luno's shark eyes flicked to the wound on his arm. I wondered if he'd ever admitted to Dusty that he'd been bitten by a pint-sized trespasser. I also wondered if Luno recognized me as the one who'd slugged him that night on the charter boat.

If he did, he didn't let on. His gaze revealed nothing but icy and casual indifference, and I had no doubt he was capable of anything-even killing Lice Peeking.

Dad didn't seem even slightly intimidated by the bald-headed goon, which is one of my father's problems. Sometimes he doesn't know when to be afraid.

“No girl here tonight,” Luno said with a shrug.

“We want to look around for ourselves,” Dad declared.

Dusty said, “Luno says she's not here, she's not here. You can take it to the bank.”

“Please,” said Mom. “We won't be long.”

“Suit yourself. I got nothin' to hide.” Dusty took the cigar out of his mouth. “So, Paine, I meant to ask you-how're the anger management classes goin'?”

Part of the deal for Dusty dropping the charges was that my father would sign up for “professional counseling.” Dad thought it was ridiculous, of course.

My mother said, “We've got an appointment with a therapist in Key Largo, as soon as Paine gets off house arrest.”

“Outstanding!” said Dusty.

“Yeah, I can hardly wait,” Dad mumbled.

“Listen, man, you can't go around sinkin' other people's boats just because you get some wacko idea in your head,” Dusty told him. “You need to get a grip. Seriously.”

“He will,” Mom said.

My father's face reddened.

“Let's go look for Abbey,” I said.

Luno went along, probably to make sure that we didn't go snooping anywhere Dusty didn't want us to go. We traipsed from one side of the basin to the other, up and down the charter docks. Dad and Mom kept shouting my sister's name, but the only response was some crazed dog barking its head off-a big old German shepherd that one of the captains kept chained on his boat.

When we returned to the ticket shack, the light was off and Dusty had gone. Luno leaned against the fender of his beat-up station wagon and folded his beefy arms.

“See? Girl no here,” he said. “You go away now.”

Mom and I turned to leave, but Dad didn't move. He stood there nose to nose with Dusty's goon. It was too dark to make out their expressions, but the tension in the air was like the hot static buzz you feel before that first clap of thunder.

“If anything's happened to my little girl,” Dad warned in a low voice, “I'll be back for you and your boss man.”

Luno grunted out a harsh chuckle and rasped something in a foreign language. Whatever he said, it didn't sound like he was the least bit worried by my father's threat.

Mom spoke up. “Paine, let's go.”

Being a sensible person, she was nervous in Luno's presence.

“Paine, please,” she said again. “It's late.”

Slowly Dad pivoted his shoulders and began walking away. Feeling the heat of Luno's glare, the three of us trudged down the dirt road. Mom and I kept swatting at mosquitoes that were buzzing around my father, who hadn't bothered to use the bug spray. He didn't seem to notice the annoying little bloodsuckers, or maybe he didn't care.

Once we were safely inside the car, my mother took a deep breath and said, “All right, Noah, where should we look for your sister now?”

Unfortunately, I didn't have a Plan B. I'd been so sure she'd gone to spy on the Coral Queen that I hadn't even considered any other possibilities.

“Let's just drive,” Dad said glumly, fiddling with the switch on his spotlight.

In the glow from the dashboard his face appeared to be covered with odd black freckles-but then I realized that the freckles were actually more mosquitoes, too gorged with blood to fly away.

“Maybe Abbey went home already,” I said hopefully. “She's probably already back in bed, sleeping like a log.”

Mom nodded. “Yes, that's where we should go next. She'll worry if she sees my car is gone.”

“And what if she's not there? What then?” Dad asked.

“Then we call the police, Paine,” my mother said with a hitch of anger.

There wasn't much to discuss after that. Mom drove slowly up the dirt road, away from the marina. Dad couldn't get the spotlight working, so he started cussing and pounding on it with the heel of his hand. Finally he just gave up and flipped on the radio.

My mother had to make a wide turn onto the Old Highway, to avoid hitting a possum. She stepped on the gas and rolled down the windows to blow out the bugs.

Dad was sunk down in the passenger seat, his head bowed. Mom was humming some old Beatles song, trying to act as if she wasn't all that worried, but I knew better. She was doing 52 in a 30-mile-per-hour zone, which for her was some kind of speed record.

We had gone maybe a mile or two when I spotted a flash of something in the distance along the side of the road, something larger than the usual Keys critters.

“Mom, slow down!” I said.

“What?”

My father looked up. “Donna, stop!” he exclaimed.

“Oh, for heaven's sake,” Mom said, and hit the brakes.

Together we broke out laughing, all three of us, in pure relief.

There, in the headlights, stood my little sister. She was wearing her backpack, her white Nikes with the orange reflectors on the heels, and, hanging from a shoulder strap, our video camera. Her skinny bare legs glistened with insect repellent.

As always, Abbey was well prepared.

She grinned and stuck out a thumb.

“How about a ride?” she called out.

TWELVE

My parents were so thrilled to find Abbey that they couldn't even pretend to be mad about her sneaking out the bedroom window. They made us go to bed as soon as we got home, but she was up early the next morning, insisting on showing the videotape that she'd made at the marina.

I was impressed by what my sister had tried to do, but she's no Steven Spielberg. The tape was so dim and shaky that it was almost impossible to see what was going on.

Abbey was bummed. She scooted closer to the TV and pointed at the fuzzy image. “There's the hose! See, they're dropping it right in the water!”

Dad asked, “Honey, where were you hiding-up a telephone pole?”

“Tuna tower,” my sister said over her shoulder.

It was a cool idea, actually. A tuna tower is the tall aluminum platform that sits above the cockpit on a deep-sea charter boat. The captain climbs to the top so he can spot game fish crashing bait from far away. It would have been a perfect roost for secretly filming the casino boat, except for a couple of problems.

First, Dad's video camera wasn't one of the newer models, so the picture was lousy when it was dark outside. Second, my sister never quite figured out how to zoom the lens, so everything on the tape was extremely small and grainy. You could make out the profile of the Coral Queen, but the crew looked like June bugs crawling around the deck.

“It's not your fault,” Mom told Abbey, “it's the camera's.”

“But I can still see what they're doing-can't you?” My sister stabbed her finger at the TV. “That's the hose from the holding tank right… there.”

“Now I see it,” I said.

“Me too,” said my father.

We really weren't sure what we were looking at, but we didn't want to hurt Abbey's feelings. She popped the cassette out of the camera and announced, “All we've got to do is take this to the Coast Guard, and Dusty Muleman is toast!”

Mom and Dad exchanged doubtful glances. Neither wanted to be the one to tell Abbey that her videotape was useless.

“I know what you're thinking,” said my sister, “but they've got supercool ways to enlarge the image and make it crystal clear. The FBI and CIA do it all the time-they can count the zits on a terrorist's nose from a mile off!”