Jenna felt stuck in place, caught in the flypaper of too many things happening all at once, but Noah broke her from the inertia with a shove that rolled her onto her side. She saw him lift up on hands and knees, his back to the agents, his body in between her and their weapons.
“Run!” he shouted again.
Something warm and wet sprayed across Jenna’s face. She blinked and twitched her head involuntarily, and when she opened her eyes she saw…
“No!”
The scream came unbidden. Noah’s T-shirt, just below the silk-screened silhouette of the Kilimanjaro, was stained bright red.
Noah was grimacing, but his eyes never left her. “Run,” he repeated, but this time it was only a whisper.
Behind him, the agents had stopped shooting and were moving forward, guns still out. The one named Cray locked stares with her. “We’re not going to hurt you,” he promised. “But you have to come with us.”
Jenna ran.
6
Flight.
It wasn’t what her gut was telling her to do, not with Noah’s blood drying on her face.
As she sprinted along the side of the bait shop, Jenna heard Cray shouting after her, repeating his assertion that he intended no harm to her. She had no reason to believe him, but if he was telling the truth, she might be able to get close enough to fight.
But Noah had told her to run.
Not federal agents…must not let them put my daughter in their vehicle.
The realization almost stopped her in her tracks. She could almost get her head wrapped around the idea that Carlos Villegas was trying to kill them, but how did the rest of it fit?
She was missing something, something that Noah had figured out before he…
Jenna refused to let herself finish that thought. Noah had told her to run, and that’s what she was going to do. She rounded the corner and kept running.
The boardwalk that connected the marina to the bait shop was crowded with firefighters, deputies and curious spectators. She considered running to one of the deputies, or trying to lose herself in the crowd, but she rejected the idea. The bogus agents had not hesitated to use violence against law enforcement officials, and she didn’t think they’d let the danger to innocent bystanders stop them either. Noah had told her to run, but he hadn’t told her where.
Yes he did.
If we get separated, for any reason, go to Mercy.
Jenna veered away from the ramp leading down to the dock and vaulted onto the handrail that ran the length of the boardwalk. It was about twenty feet to the water below, which did not seem very far, until she was looking down at it. Her momentum overcame any uncertainty, and as the oily surface rushed up, she straightened her body and brought her hands together ahead of her. She felt a warm slap, and then the murky green enfolded her.
She turned her palms out and arched her back, leveling out, swimming parallel to the surface without rising. As the water absorbed the initial energy of the dive, she continued propelling herself forward in a graceful underwater breaststroke until she reached the shadows beneath the nearest pier.
There was no sign of pursuit, but she stayed where she was, peering up at the blurry outline of the bait shop and the barely visible figures moving in front of it. The water felt soothing against her skin, and the simple act of holding her breath forced her to remain calm, when she felt like screaming.
Go to Mercy.
She turned and swam deeper into the darkness below the moorage. A splash warbled through the water, and her gaze was drawn to the shattered remains of the Kilimanjaro resting on the harbor floor more than thirty feet below her. Figures were moving through the water above the wreck: a pair of rescue divers checking for survivors inside.
With their masks, the divers would have no trouble spotting her if she got too close. She thought about the two deputies and the two men who had claimed to be agents, and decided it was better to avoid being seen.
She had to get out of the marina unnoticed, and the only way to do that was to stay in the water, swim out of the marina and make for one of the island’s beaches. It would be a long swim, but the real challenge would be avoiding detection. She would have to swim near the surface to breathe, and that would put her in view of anyone watching from the bait shop, including the killers who knew that she was in the water.
I could swim underwater, she thought. The SCUBA equipment in the Kilimanjaro’s aft locker had probably survived the explosion, but with rescue divers crawling all over the wreck, there was no way to reach it.
Then it occurred to her that there were other places to get diving gear.
The idea of stealing from one of her neighbors was so foreign to Jenna that, for a few seconds, she could almost believe that a little cartoon devil on her shoulder had whispered it into her head.
I could never do that. Noah would kill me for even considering…
The thought slipped away, not because of the grief that it might unleash, but because she knew she had it completely wrong. Stealing someone’s dive gear to get out of this mess was exactly the kind of thing Noah would want her to do — not the Noah she thought she knew, but the man who seemed to know all about how to survive a bomb blast and how to kill a man with his bare hands. The Noah who could sense danger, told her to run and gave his life to make sure she got away.
A spasm in her chest reminded her why she needed a self-contained underwater breathing apparatus, and she slowly rose to the surface to fill her lungs, staying close to the hull of one of the parked boats and well out of anyone’s line of sight. Just as quickly, she dove back down, staying beneath the dock where no one would see her.
At least half of the boats in the marina had dive gear, but even with the distraction, Jenna didn’t think she could make it aboard any of them unnoticed. She had a different destination in mind.
She swam the length of the pier, coming up for air twice. When she reached the end of the long dock, she swam down until she felt the urge to pop her ears, deep enough she reckoned, for the water to hide her from surface view. She leap-frogged to the next row of boats. From the end of the second pier, she could make out a converted houseboat at the far edge of the harbor, and the weathered, hand-painted sign with the familiar red and white ‘diver down’ flag. It had yellow letters that read: Dive ‘n’ Moore SCUBA Shop.
John Moore’s dive shop was a regular stop for Noah and many of the other charter operators on their way out into the Gulf. It was a last chance to rent equipment and a place to pick up tourists eager to put their freshly minted PADI certifications to real world use. There would be plenty of gear in John’s storeroom, and with the attention of nearly everyone else in the marina fixed on the emergency response, the odds were good that she could slip in and out without attracting any notice.
She made the crossing to the pier where the dive shop was permanently moored. She lingered just below the houseboat’s deck for a moment, checking to ensure that no one could see her, then pulled herself up and out of the water, before crawling close to the exterior wall.
So far, so good.
The main entrance to the dive shop was situated on the side that faced out toward the marina, but there was a second, private door that opened closer to the pier. From the corner of the structure, Jenna could see the door and the long dock that led back toward the bait shop. There were a dozen people scattered along the dock, all staring across the harbor at the unfolding drama. To reach the door, she would have to risk being spotted, but given the distance, it was doubtful that any of them would recognize her, much less realize what she was doing.