Circle of Bones (19 page)

7:25 p.m.

Cole opened one eye and the searing pain in the back of his head and behind his eyeballs made him squeeze it shut again. Light, bright light. Where was he? He reached up and touched the back of his scalp.

“Ow.”

“Wake up,
Bob,
or whatever your name is. I didn’t hit you that hard.”

When he heard her voice, he remembered. He was on her boat. That woman. Citrus scent. Riley. He swam out to get the coin, but it wasn’t where he’d left it. He’d started to search the salon and then decided to see where she lived, where she slept. Bad move.

He grew aware of the rest of his body beyond the center of pain that throbbed at the back of his head. He was sprawled on the floor, his cheek and chest pressed against something cold and hard. Wood. Opening one eye again, he rolled onto his side, careful not to press the back of his head to the floor. She was sitting on a bunk, her bare feet dangling above him, and a fluorescent light on the overhead behind her made it impossible for him to see her face. How did she get aboard?

Raising an arm to shield his eyes from the glare, he said, “That light up there’s killing me.”

She twisted her torso around and he heard a click, followed by another and the overhead light went out. The cabin was now lit by the softer glow of the bunk reading light. At least it wasn’t shining in his face.

“Thanks,” he said as he rolled over and curled up into a sitting position. As he bent his bare legs in front of him, he realized that he was again confronting this woman almost naked. He had swum out wearing only his Speedos. “What did you hit me with, Magee?”

She lifted her right hand. In it was a long black Maglite flashlight, and she slapped it into the palm of her other hand like a beat cop with his baton. “If I’d known it was you, I might have hit you a little harder.”

Cole’s fingers explored the painful lump on the back of his skull. “Any harder and you might have killed me.”

“Stop whining and get up.” 

She slid off the bunk, her firm thighs brushing his shoulder, and she walked aft through the main salon to the galley, turning on an overheard red-colored light. Sailors used them to move about without impairing their night vision. She knew the bright light hurt his head right now and she was being kind to him. That was a good start. And now, watching the way she moved — silky, like a panther stalking its prey — he didn’t care how much it hurt. He didn’t want to close his eyes anymore.

After filling the tea kettle from the sink, she lit the burner, then looked up at him. “Come on, off the floor and onto the seat. There.” She pointed. “You’ve got some explaining to do.”

This woman always seemed to be ordering him around. He picked himself up off the floor, his body stiff and sore, and he hobbled his way into the salon. He looked at the neat, tufted-velvet upholstery. “My swimsuit,” he said, rubbing his hand across his hip and feeling the wet nylon fabric. 

She stepped out of the galley, cocked her hips to one side, placed a hand at her waist, then threw a dish towel hitting him on the side of his head. He spread the towel on the edge of the cushion and perched, wishing he had at least worn swim trunks over the Speedos. If she kept moving her body like that, things could get embarrassing real fast. 

He needed to get his mind onto something else. Reaching back he probed the lump on the back of his head. The pain had slowed to a dull throb. He needed to get back on track. Forget the woman he told himself. Stop thinking about her. He peered around the boat’s interior. He hadn’t found the scrapbook where he’d hidden the coin, so had she moved it?

She lifted two heavy white mugs off hooks and dropped teabags into them. “So? What do you have to say for yourself?”

He looked up at her and shrugged. What could he say? That he’d broken into her boat to steal back the gold coin that was the key to the location of a sunken treasure? He was pretty sure he knew how
that
would go over. 

Before he could come up with some clever retort, she said, “I should report you to the police for breaking and entering.” 

He felt like he was back in eighth grade and Mrs. Laughlin was threatening to report him to the principal for cutting school to go fishing. Riley sure as hell didn’t look like Mrs. Laughlin, though. The thought struck him as funny, and he began to smile.

“You think this is funny?”

He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. Well, yeah, he wanted to say. She had just slid a potholder shaped like a shark over her hand, and the fish now looked like it was trying to bite a chunk out of her hip. He couldn’t help it. He tried to stifle the laugh, but it bubbled up the back of his throat until he sounded like he was choking on something.

Stepping out from behind the galley counter, her feet planted apart like any good sailor, she glared at him. She was wearing some very short navy cargo shorts, and it took all his strength to keep looking at her face and ignore those legs as she advanced on him, taking another step with each point she made. 

“First,” she said, “you disappear off my boat leaving me to try to explain to the French Immigration authorities what happened to the American man I claimed I had brought into the country.” The shark oven mitt bit her second finger. “Then, I find you gave me a fake name. After that, of course, the French authorities accused me of trafficking in illegal aliens and took away my passport. And let’s not forget that you stole my only handheld VHF radio.” The tea kettle started whistling, but she ignored it as she continued advancing on him. “Then you have the nerve to come back and break into my boat and go rummaging through my things. And every damned time you come on my boat you seem to forget your clothes.” She was standing just in front of him by now, the shark oven mitt scrunched up into a fist.

“Please, lady,” he said, widening his eyes and holding his hands up in mock surrender. “Don’t hit me with that fish.” 

She looked down at her half-cocked arm, then she seemed to hear the squealing kettle. For just a second, a look of disappointment flashed across her face before she stepped to the galley and turned off the gas. Damn, he thought. She really
was
going to hit me.

As she poured the steaming water over the tea bags, he could hear her breathing, trying to get herself under control. He took the moment to scan the books behind the settee opposite him. He didn’t see it there. He wondered if he had just missed it in the chart table because of the dark.

When he glanced back at her she was stuffing the shark oven mitt into a cabinet. “That true?” he asked. “They took your passport?” 

She nodded while she continued to work.

He watched her face with fascination. He knew that getting caught aboard her boat should be a major setback for him. It was all about the coin, decoding the journals, the submarine, but he had to admit it — he was glad to have another chance to watch her lips move when she talked to herself or how she used one finger to tuck a short strand of hair behind her ear.

The silence stretched out as she collected spoons and a sugar bowl and placed it all on the table. She sat at the end of the dinette table and looked at him through the steam as she blew across the top of her mug.

“I’m sorry I caused you so much trouble,” he said.

She took a slow sip of the hot tea before she answered.  “You should be.”

Man, he thought, she had this tough guy act down pat. He wondered how long she had been using this routine to keep the world at arm’s length. He watched her ramrod-straight posture, lips pressed together in a tight line, the graceful way she held her arms when she lifted her cup. He suspected if any man could get past the Marine sentry, she could be one hell of a woman.

“Would it help if I told you I had my reasons for doing the things I’ve done?”

“Probably not.”

“Listen, Magee, things aren’t always what they seem. Please, just hear me out on this. We think we know what reality is. We think we understand the world and know right and wrong, black and white. Then we learn something that changes everything. You know, people once thought the world was flat and then ol’ Chris Columbus came along.”

“So you’re going to tell me that’s your name now? Chris Columbus?”

“No,” he said. “But Columbus did have to break a few rules to do what he did. Like me.” He took a deep breath, then tried again. “Is there anything I can do now to make you forgive me?”

“Could start with your name. Your
real
name.”

He stood up and with an exaggerated flourish bent over in a deep bow from the waist, his arms bent across his body fore and aft. When he stood up again, his head throbbed anew where she’d hit him, but seeing the faint crinkle of laugh lines around her eyes made it worth it. “Let me introduce myself, Captain Maggie Riley. My name is Cole Thatcher.” He held out his hand.

Before she could take his hand, the
Bonefish
heeled over and began to rock and roll so violently, Cole almost landed in her lap. She was too quick, though, and before he regained his balance, she was up the ladder and out into the cockpit.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Îles des Saintes

March 26, 2008

7:45 p.m.

Spyder watched as the old island fishing boat plowed through the anchorage throwing up a three-foot wake. Starting at the outer anchorage and continuing right up to the sailing dinghies just off the wharf, he heard the sound of hatches slamming open, swearing in all different languages, and rigging creaking and clanking as the waves spread out and spars swung in crazy arcs through the sky. He had to give this Thor dude credit, man. Fucker could make an entrance.

The face behind the glass at the fishing boat’s inside steering station was lit up as the old guy at the wheel neared the yellow phospho lights on the wharf. Guy looked like one of the rummies you saw hanging out around the fish market and the main town waterfront back in the capital. Dude’s boat looked worse than he did: peeling paint, weed and moss all along the waterline, and the smoking exhaust had stained the entire back half of the hull almost black. And the fish stink was stronger than the stench of diesel. Spyder smiled at the thought of the tight ass Thor dude having to spend several hours on that old tub.

Standing by ready to take a line, Spyder soon realized that Thor was the only passenger and the old rummie captain seemed to want him off his boat ASAP. The captain spun the boat around so he wouldn’t have to bother with tying up. He put his aft quarter up against the dock and Thor stood on the bulwark, his small duffel tucked under his arm and the strap of a computer case across his chest. He tossed the duffel at Spyder, then jumped onto the wharf. A black cloud of exhaust rose as the water roiled at the stern. The rummy goosed the throttle and the fishing boat took off into the night.

Spyder thought about tossing the dude his duffel bag right back. He wasn’t this guy’s boat nigger. He had a bad feeling about this dude — was beginning to wonder if it had been such a great idea for him and Pinky to get mixed up with these freaks Thor and Caliban. He didn’t want nothing to mess up this chance to score.

It had started back home in Buxton out on the Outer Banks. Pinky was working as a busboy at Teach’s down at the marina in Hatteras and one Sunday afternoon when he was filling the bar bins with ice, he heard these two guys talking ‘bout a wreck. Pinky’s ears pricked up when the drunk one whispered the word
gold
. Pinky went back to the kitchen and called Spyder on the phone inside the manager’s office, told him to get his butt over here and sit next to the tall, skinny nigger at the bar and listen to everything he and the drunk dude said. Spyder’d been working as a deckhand on a sportsfish right there in the marina, but they didn’t have no charter that day so he was there in five minutes. He slid onto the empty stool next to them, nodded and asked about the weather. Then, he bought them a round of rum, followed by another.

Soon Spyder learned that the drunk one was named Dr. Thatcher, but he wasn’t the kind of doctor that give out pills and such. The tall, skinny black dude was the deckhand on his boat, but it seemed to Spyder that Doc was treating him pretty decent for a deckhand. In all Spyder’s years of working boats on the Outer Banks, he’d never once had the owner buying him drinks in the bar. 

The Doc couldn’t hold his liquor. The deckhand was an uptight island dude, and he kept trying to get his boss to leave, but Spyder kept the rum flowing and soon, the Doc was on a roll. He started shooting his mouth off about this famous submarine that got sunk in the World War with a ton of gold down in the Caribbean, and ‘bout how they was fixin’ to go on down there and get it. He never said so, but Spyder just knew he had a map or something that was gonna show him to the gold. Finally, the island dude just about dragged him oughta’ there, but Spyder had heard enough. He knew he was gonna stick to this guy like mud on a pig.

When the island dude paid the bill with the Doc’s credit card, Pinky took a side trip on the way to the cashier, went into the back and took his name and numbers. First thing Monday morning, they were at the library on one of the computers, and Pinky found out just about everything there was to know about that guy, including the name of this boat he had and where he docked it over in Oriental. Him and Pinky both quit their jobs in Buxton, moved to Oriental, rented a room and started digging around for every bit they could learn about the guy and his submarine, but it wasn’t long before the Doc caught on to the fact he was seeing them around. Pinky still blamed him for that one.

“Report,” Thor said as he moved out of the glare of the wharf lights and into the shadows. 

“Guess you missed the last ferry, man.”

Thor stretched his arm out and looked at his watch. Spyder thought the dude looked pissed. Must not have liked his stinky boat ride. 

When they’d first met the other dude couple of weeks ago, him and Pinky figured they’d found themselves a pretty good gig. They’d been watching Thatcher from a bar in the marina in Guadeloupe when this guy got up from another table, came over, introduced himself with a stupid-ass fake name — Caliban, and said he was looking to hire a couple of local fellows for a job. They were supposed to follow and get some coin off this Thatcher guy. Spyder’d been about to tell the rich asshole that it would be easy seein’s as how they already knew the Doc from back home, but when he looked at his brother’s face, it was like he had them light-up letters on his forehead with the words
Shut Up
written there. It was a good deal getting paid to do the exact same thing they woulda’ been doing anyways. Leastwise, it was until last night when this Thor dude showed up.