“Shut up, you fucking dog,” Cesar called across the river.

I felt Sunny squeeze my hand tighter. Neither of us breathed for several long seconds as we floated just opposite their boat. The barking dog raced to the end of the dock. He had finally noticed our dark shadows in the water.

“Come on, Cesar, we lost them. Crystal’s gonna be pissed,” Moss said just before the idling engine revved and we heard the thump of dock lines being thrown on deck. The noise of the boat began to move upriver, away from us.

Sunny was shivering, and I could feel the trembling in her hand. I had to get her out of the water. I began scanning the docks and banks of the river for a small boat. Nearly everything we passed was chained up and locked. The river residents knew better than to leave boats loose in this town. We finally came by a little trawler with a punt tied alongside. The punt was no more than eight feet long, and it was so beat-up and ugly, its owners must not have worried about thieves. There were two oars tucked under the center seat. It would do. I held down the bow as Sunny climbed in over the stern, and I soon followed her. After untying the lines and fitting the oars in the locks, we were off, my back and arms straining to pull those oars as hard and fast as I could.

At the Seventh Avenue Bridge, I pulled off to the side and grabbed hold of a piling. The noise of the cars passing on the steel grate overhead sounded like the rumbling of a jackhammer. This was where I had told Lex we would meet up with her. I waited five minutes before moving on.

The city was dead quiet as we passed under the downtown bridges. A few cars passed on streets parallel to the river. Each time I held my breath, terrified that it might be them. But even along Riverwalk, there were only a few solitary couples far too wrapped up in themselves to pay us any mind as our creaky oars pulled us downriver.

Lex would be fine. She was a survivor, I told myself. Then I remembered the last time I had heard that.

XXIV

We didn’t say a word to each other. I didn’t know what Sunny was thinking, but I was wondering what I would find at my place. Nervous as I was about what I would find, my hands were grateful as the Gorda came into view on the river. The red ovals on my palms would surely puff up into nasty blisters soon.

Sunny had nodded off, slumped over in the stern of the dinghy. The wet suit rode up so that the shoulders were at the level of her ears, but the arm holes still gaped at her waist. She’d tucked herself inside, turtlelike, crossing her arms over her breasts. I tapped her on the knee to wake her and lifted my finger to my lips, motioning her not to speak.

After tying the punt’s bowline off to a piling, I climbed on the dock and gestured for Sunny to stay in the boat. I whistled very softly, not wanting to scare Abaco. I heard her get up from her spot in the bushes, a low growl beginning in her throat, but then she saw me and trotted over jumping up on me to be petted. I motioned for Sunny to reach up and let the dog sniff her hand.

Peering through the crack in the gate, I saw the dark shadow of a vehicle parked out in the Larsens’ driveway. I slipped through the gate and, crawling on my hands and knees, made my way to the drive. When I lifted my head to have a look, I saw a black El Camino, B.J. slumped over in the front seat.

I made my way around to the driver’s side of the car. The window was rolled down. I didn’t know if he was asleep or unconscious or worse. I reached in and shook his shoulder.

He started awake, wide-eyed and alert. “Uh... what?”

I held my fingers to my lips. “Shh.”

“You okay?” he whispered.

“Yeah.” At that moment I heard a car start down the street. “B.J., duck, hide.”

I made my way to the front of B.J.’s truck, where I couldn’t be seen from the street. The car, the same dark blue Camaro with tinted windows, slowed to a stop at the Larsens’ drive. I could hear the radio tuned to a rap music station, and then Cesar’s deep voice. “See anything?”

“Nah, it’s too soon, man.”

The car moved on, making a U-turn and then coming back past the house once more before leaving the neighborhood.

I slid back around to the window. “Come on. Let’s go out back.” He sat up and opened the door. The noise it made when he closed it made me cringe. I hoped they were well down the street. We hurried back through the gate, and I led him down to the dock, where Sunny still waited in the boat.

“Help her up, will you?”

Sunny reached up one arm, and he lifted her out of the boat.

“I don’t think we ought to go into my house. Let’s go into the Larsens’ place.”

“Good idea,” B.J. said, and went for the key hidden by the back kitchen door.

Food smells lingered in the kitchen when B.J. opened the door.

B.J. reached for the wall plate, and I grabbed his hand. “No lights.”

Sunny leaned against the wall, her arms wrapped around her midriff, her glazed eyes staring into space.

“We need to get her into a warm shower. She’s been too cold too long.”

“You, too,” B.J. said. “You need to get out of those wet clothes. You’re shaking.”

I hadn’t even noticed it, but he was right. Taking her by the hand, I led her through the dining room to the downstairs guest bedroom and bath. At first she didn’t want to take a shower in the dark, but once I explained the situation to her, she agreed. I found huge, thick towels folded in the closet, and I set one out for her and another for myself, then turned down the covers of the queen-size guest bed. She didn’t speak to me when she got out, just toweled off and crawled under the covers.

The clothes I peeled off stank of the river: rotting vegetation, oily street runoff, and sewage. The clean hot water felt good, but it restored feeling to my limbs and body, which had been pleasantly numb. Now the many aches returned. In the dark I ran my fingers over the little barnacle cuts on my belly and thighs, the bumps on my head, the deep bruise in my shoulder, the raw blisters on my hands.

After toweling off my wet hair and combing it out, I wrapped myself in a huge white bath sheet and went in search of B.J. I found him standing to one side of the unshuttered entry window, keeping watch over the front of the house.

“Any sign of them?”

“They’ve driven by twice so far. Now they’ve parked. See, down there by the stop sign.”

“What happened to the cops who were out there?”

“They left around seven o’clock. I guess they gave up.” B.J. continued to stare at the vehicle down the street. “I bet they’re talking right now, saying you’ve probably gone somewhere else tonight, but they know you’ll eventually be back. They’ll just wait. And they’re right.” He turned to face me. “You can’t hide in here forever.”

“No, I know that.” I looked around the front room. “Any idea what time it is?”

“It’s just after two. I saw a clock in the kitchen.”

“So we have some time before daybreak. The Larsens shut off the phone when they’re out of town. So I have to sneak over to my cottage and call Mike Beesting in a bit. I know why Neal was out there that day on the Top Ten. We’ll take Gorda out in the morning.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I know what Neal was diving for out there, and I know why people are getting killed.”

He reached out and ran his hand over my slick wet hair. He felt the old bump from the fire extinguisher and then the new one from when they pushed me into the closet.