“We’re going to be in about three seconds,” Jenna replied, and in her head, an involuntary countdown started. Three alligators…two…
“We’ll swim out.” He pointed into the dark water below. Jenna didn’t look where he was pointing though. Her gaze was fixed on the enormous gash that stretched across his forehead, streaming blood down into his eyes. “Jenna, focus. You have to follow me. Keep your head down. Don’t let him see you. Do you understand?” He shook her arm. “Jenna, do you understand?”
She nodded.
“If we get separated, for any reason, go to Mercy.”
“Separated?”
“Time to go.” Without further explanation, Noah let go of her arm and half-slid, half-crawled down the tilted deck until he was in the water. She saw how he kept himself pressed flat against the floor, staying low to avoid detection. His movements seemed automatic, like second nature.
Who are you? she thought, but the question felt wrong. She knew who he was, at that moment. Who he’d been for a long time. The real question is, who did you used to be?
Jenna put the mystery out of her thoughts and did her best to imitate him. She splashed into the water beside him, and then, at his signal, she took a deep breath and plunged her head under the surface.
The water stung her eyes. It was full of diesel fuel and battery acid and who knew how many other chemicals leaking from the ruined yacht, but below was the lukewarm salty soup of the Gulf. She saw Noah swimming through the green murk, diving down deep into the shadows beneath the First Attempt’s keel. She twisted her body around, and kicked after him. She looked back just once and saw the remains of the Kilimanjaro, slowly sinking toward the bottom of the harbor.
Noah angled his body upward and surfaced under the wooden pier that ran alongside the First Attempt. Jenna came up right next to him and slowly exhaled. She could hold her breath for two full minutes, so the short swim had hardly been a warm-up.
Rays of sunlight slipped through the gaps between the boards overhead and cast surreal stripes across Noah’s craggy, blood-streaked visage. For a moment Jenna felt as if she was looking at a stranger.
“Stay here,” he said.
He took a deep breath and arched his body in preparation to dive, but Jenna caught hold of his arm before he could slip beneath the water again. “Where are you going?”
“Emergency services are probably on their way. He’ll have to bug out soon.”
He? Noah was talking about the sniper on the roof of the bait shop, but Jenna failed to see how that was any kind of answer. “So let him.”
He offered a smile that was both patient and very, very cold. “Someone just tried to kill us, Jenna girl. I’d like to know who that someone is, wouldn’t you?”
Jenna was surprised to find herself in agreement. For the first time since discovering the bomb, her instincts were telling her that it was time, not to flee, but to fight. When Noah plunged beneath the water once more, she was right behind him.
4
Jenna edged out from under the pier just far enough to peek up at the sloping sheet metal roof of the imposing structure that looked down on the marina. She and Noah had always called it ‘the bait shop,’ but it was several different businesses under one roof: the marina offices, a general store, several tour operators and a few gift shops and restaurants. Movement drew Jenna’s eyes. Someone was on the roof, just beyond the peak. A man wearing a tropical print shirt. She couldn’t make out his features, but she recognized the shirt.
“It’s Ken,” she whispered. Ken Soebel had been one of their clients for the day’s fishing trip.
Noah gave her a dark look. “I told you to stay put.”
She didn’t respond. Her thoughts were occupied with the question of how she’d spent the last eight hours in close-quarters with someone who had been planning to kill them, and had not sensed a threat from the man. Not even a hint. So much for listening to my gut.
“Do you think he’s working for Carlos?” she asked.
Carlos Villegas, a Cuban-American thug who had, along with his brother, come aboard the Kilimanjaro one week before, for a day of SCUBA diving on the reefs near Dry Tortugas. He had in fact been interested in recruiting Noah to smuggle drugs across the Gulf of Mexico. Carlos’s brother, Raul, had been interested in something else: her. The situation had escalated to the point of a violent confrontation, and Jenna had seen a very different side of her father.
Afterward, Noah had told her that they would not speak of it again, but Jenna’s instincts — her gut — told her the brothers would want payback for bruises to both their bodies and their egos. Who else could possibly want to hurt them?
Noah shook his head, but whether it was an answer or from frustration, she couldn’t tell. “What else do you see?”
She looked up again, but there was no sign of Ken. “He’s gone.”
“Damn it.” Without further explanation, Noah broke from the cover of the pier and heaved himself up out of the water and onto the wooden deck. He moved so quickly that Jenna didn’t have time to ask what he was doing. She let out a reflexive gasp as she realized that he was now in the open, exposed to the sniper, but then just as quickly realized that the sniper — Ken — had gone and was not coming back.
Noah must have realized that, too.
Jenna pushed off one of the upright pilings and swam out from under the floating dock. The wooden platform was only about two feet above her, but for a moment, it seemed unreachably high. The section of dock that ran along the mooring slips was lower, closer to the water’s surface, but swimming back would have put her further from her goal, requiring her to waste time she didn’t have. She tried to recall how Noah had surmounted this obstacle. Her father had made it look almost effortless.
She reached up as high as she could and then kicked furiously, like a dolphin trying to launch out of the water. The maneuver got her up high enough to grasp the edge of the dock with her fingertips, but that was as far as she got. She hung there, straining to pull herself up, but at the same time feeling the wood slipping away beneath her fingers.
Jenna kicked again, pulling herself up with all her strength, and before she knew it, she was rising, the dock chest-high. She kept kicking, her feet now merely splashing water, and she wriggled forward until she felt the edge of the platform biting into the exposed skin of her abdomen. Her customary uniform — a bikini with an oversized blue Conch Republic T-shirt, knotted at the waist — was the perfect attire for a day-trip aboard the boat, but for life-and-death struggles and clambering around on creosote treated docks, not so much. Her flip-flops were gone. She had kicked them off during the swim. Now her bare toes could find no purchase on the algae-slick pilings. With a final thrust of her legs, she propelled herself forward and rolled onto the dock.
For a moment, she could only lay there, savoring the small victory, but then she glimpsed Noah, sprinting up the ramp that connected the moorage to the boardwalk in front of the bait shop. Getting out of the water was step one. She still had more steps to take, though she hadn’t really figured out what they were, aside from follow Noah. She sprang to her feet and took off running after him.
A slowly dissipating black cloud hung above the marina, and a foul smell, like burning tires, filled the air. Gawkers lined the docks, gazing in astonishment at the debris-strewn hole in the water where Kilimanjaro had been just a few minutes before. She saw a few people that she recognized — faces only, boat operators and residents that she passed every day but had never exchanged words with — and heard them muttering names: Flood, Kilimanjaro, Jenna.