A car door slammed in the driveway, startling us. We don't get much company at seven in the morning.

Mom looked out the window and said, “Paine, it's a deputy.”

“Oh, not again,” Abbey groaned.

“Try to stall him,” said my father. “Noah, come with me. I'll need your help.”

We hurried down the hall to my parents' room, Dad locking the door behind us. The electronic bracelet was hidden beneath the bed, along with the tools he had used to remove it. I held the heavy plastic collar around his right ankle while he worked feverishly with needle-nose pliers, a screwdriver, and a hex wrench.

“Hold extra still,” he whispered. “One little slip and I could break the transmitter.”

From the living room we heard the low tone of the deputy's voice, politely saying, “No, thanks. Really, I'm fine.” It sounded like Mom and Abbey were trying to feed him breakfast.

Moments later I heard my mother's footsteps, followed by a light rap on the door. “Paine, are you up yet? There's a gentleman from the sheriff's department here to see you.”

“Be out in a minute,” Dad drawled, trying to sound sleepy.

From the intense way he was gripping the tools, I knew my father truly didn't want to go back to jail-but that's where he was headed if we didn't get the bracelet clamped back on his ankle.

“Almost there,” he murmured, pausing to wipe the palms of his hands. Both of us were sweating, we were so nervous.

There were more footsteps in the hall, only this time they were too heavy to be my mother's. This time the knock on the door was sharp and impatient.

“Mr. Underwood? Open up, please, this is Deputy Blair from the sheriff's office. Mr. Underwood?”

Another hard knock.

I motioned for Dad to hurry. He looked up, smiled, and made an “okay” sign with his fingers.

When I let go of the bracelet, it held fast to my father's leg. The police would never know it had been unfastened for a night, or so we thought.

Now the doorknob began to jiggle. On impulse I grabbed up the tools and rolled under the bed.

My father opened the door. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Officer, but I was putting on some clothes.”

“Step this way, sir,” I heard the deputy say, in a tone that wasn't particularly friendly.

My dad was an awesome fishing guide. Everybody in the Keys said so. Tarpon, bonefish, redfish, snook-Dad was dialed in on all of them. He could put his customers into fish when the other guides were getting skunked. My mother said it was a special talent he inherited from Grandpa Bobby.

We all knew how much Dad missed being out on the boat every day. He never complained, but he was basically miserable driving a taxi up and down the highway. Three different times he'd gotten rear-ended by other cars while crossing one of the bridges. That's because he always slowed down to stare out at the open water. He couldn't help himself-scoping out the tides, the depth, the wind direction, all the things that were important if you were hunting fish.

After the third accident, my father's boss at the cab company got on his case. Dad pointed out that, technically, none of the rear-enders had been his fault. It had always been the other drivers who'd gotten the tickets, for following too close.

But his boss didn't care. It was costing him money every time the cab was off the road, in the body shop. “One more crash,” he'd warned my dad, “and you're fired.” The guy acting like he was Donald Trump.

I had a hunch he wouldn't hold Dad's job open after what happened with the gambling boat, and I was right. When Mom called the taxi company, the owner told her that he'd hired a new driver the day my father got arrested. Mom told us that she didn't blame the guy-he had a business to run. Still, I knew she was worried. The bills were piling up, and her paycheck wasn't nearly enough to cover them all.

It would be a while longer before Dad could start searching for a new job, because now he was back in jail.

I don't know if Dusty Muleman ratted him out, or if the electronic ankle bracelet was programmed to send a certain signal when somebody messed with the lock. In any case, the sheriff ordered my father hauled in again, for “tampering with a court-ordered monitoring device.”

He wasn't in a great mood when I went to visit.

“This is really getting old,” he said wearily. “You didn't have to come today, Noah. This place is the pits.”

In a way I was glad to find my father depressed, because that was a perfectly normal reaction to being in jail-and Dad acting normal wasn't something you could take for granted. He was a much different person from the happy camper I'd visited there only three weeks ago.

“I bet your mother's really ticked off,” he said.

“What for?” I said.

How could any of us be mad at him? The only reason he'd pried off the stupid ankle monitor was so that he could leave the house to hunt for Abbey. Any father would have done the same thing if one of their kids had disappeared in the middle of the night.

“Mom's trying to get hold of Mr. Shine,” I said.

“Tell her not to bother. They're only keeping me for forty-eight hours,” Dad said, “to, quote, teach me a lesson. Talk about a waste of tax dollars!”

“What should we do with Abbey's video?” I asked.

Dad shook his head. “God bless her, she really tried. But you saw the tape, Noah. If we took it to the Coast Guard, they'd laugh.”

He was probably right. “So what now?” I asked, and mentally tried to brace for whatever new scheme my father had dreamed up.

He cut a dark glance toward the broad jowly deputy, who was leaning against the door. The man was thumbing through a motorcycle magazine, but I assumed he was listening to every word we said.

“It's over, Noah,” my father said with a sigh. “I'm done with Dusty and the Coral Queen. I just want to come home and live a quiet, seminormal life.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

I searched his face for some familiar hint of mischief, but it wasn't there.

“I know when I'm beat. I know when the ball game's over,” Dad said.

If he was putting on an act for our babysitter-deputy, it was a good one. He looked totally tired and fed up, and his voice rang flat with defeat.

“Abbey's little adventure was the last straw,” he said. “She risked her neck just to prove I was right about the casino boat. But you know what, Noah? Being right isn't worth squat if you're endangering the people you love. If anything bad had happened to your sister last night, I'd never forgive myself. Never.”

I shuddered to think what that creepy Luno might have done if he'd caught Abbey sneaking around with the video camera.

Dad leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Look, I wasn't trying to be some kind of hero when I pulled the plugs on Dusty's boat. I was only trying to stop him from using the ocean as a cesspool. And it backfired, okay? So now-”

“Time's up.” The deputy slapped shut his magazine.

My father squeezed my arm. “Things'll be different when I get home. That's a promise, Noah.”

I left the jail with mixed-up feelings. I wanted things to be different at home, for Mom's sake, but I sure didn't want Dad to make himself into a whole different person.

Yet maybe there was no other way.

Later Abbey and I packed a lunch and rode our bikes to Thunder Beach. It was one of those bright hazy days with no horizon, when the sea and the sky melt together in a pale blue infinity. The heat rippling off the dead-calm water made the lighthouse seem to flutter and shimmy in the distance.

We sat down on the warm sand and ate our sandwiches and shared a bottle of water. I tried to gently tell Abbey the truth about her videotape, but she was one step ahead of me-as usual.

“It stunk, I know,” she said. “I already erased it.”