The fog had moved out some more, exposing a tide he’d never seen, so dark and full of menace in its almost mirror-like calmness. He sensed they’d crossed into a place where the doors one came through would quietly be locked behind. The tide would begin to come in, at first lapping playfully against your legs until it grew into merciless waves that took you and pulled you under and out to a swaying black forest of kelp where your mind might still sense through clouding eyes the variety of creatures eagerly gathering to disassemble you.
“Come on,” Ann said, grabbing his hand.
Wading through belly-deep water, they came to a three-story wall of steaming rock. Ann stuck her hands under the water and felt for the starfish-rimmed opening she recalled from years before. They could hear the Russians shouting at one another. It sounded as if they’d split up to look for them.
“What are you doing?” James asked.
“Stay still. We have to wait for the water to recede.”
Just as they heard the Russian slapping around the last slimy edge of rock, the water they stood in began to draw back, and the passage Ann remembered from long ago began to appear.
“Quick. Before the water flows back.” Ann bent down and plunged through the hole. James followed, and when he emerged on the other side he climbed after Ann up a ladder of broken rock and mussel outcroppings to a ridged lookout above. By the time he reached the top his shoulder was on fire. Ann pulled him down next to her in a smooth hollow pasted with feathers. The rock was dry and slightly warm, but they would need much more to stop them from shivering in their wet clothes.
“You’re going to die out here,” the Russian shouted from the other side. “Tide is coming back in. Give yourselves up. We won’t hurt you if you give yourselves up.”
They listened to their pursuer slosh through the tide pool. He had no other route to reach them unless he swam around the wall in one of the deeper pools where the risk of a strong undertow was likely. Ann slid on her stomach to the edge of the rock and saw a hand groping the side of the hole they’d climbed through. She took out the.38 and waited for the water to recede again.
“No,” James whispered in her ear. When he tried to put his hand over the.38, she jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow and he rolled away in agony. She turned and set the gun against the rock between her outstretched arms.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Ann said.
“He said he wouldn’t hurt us,” James replied.
“He just tried taking pot shots at us in the fog. Not exactly a friendly gesture.”
“I’m just saying. We should talk to him.”
When Ann looked back down again she saw the bloodshot eyes of a man flicking up at her. Dark stubble covered his face except for the pink welts of old scars creasing his lower jaw and throat. He’d only made it halfway through the hole and looked like a burglar frozen in spotlight. He kept his left arm tucked up beneath his chest and it worried her.
‘It’s not too late.”
“What do you want?”
“Tell me where you’ve hidden the money and I’ll leave.”
“No.”
“Listen up bitch because I’m not going to repeat myself. I know everything. So, no more games, understand? I’m not here on vacation.”
From this angle he can’t tell that I’m armed, she thought. He thinks he’s got the upper hand. “Then maybe you should just swim back to Russia when the tide comes in.”
When the man began to laugh Ann could sense in his seething overconfidence an underfed appetite for sadism. His eyes wandered toward the slate sky, pretending to focus on something behind her and attempting to distract her. But Ann had kept her attention zeroed in on his body language, had watched the subtle stirring of his left shoulder blade below the leather jacket.
When she saw his arm shoot out from under his chest she lifted the.38 above the lip of rock and fired. Fragments of shell and ancient basalt exploded and the man sprang back through the hole, screaming. Ann lay her arms down on the rock and waited, her heart pounding her ribs against the rock below her. She felt faint for a moment, then washed over by cold chill. She heard her grandfather’s voice, warmed by an afternoon of sipping whiskey on the back porch while watching Ann shoot down tin cans set out on old tree stumps. If you have to shoot at somebody don’t shoot to injure, Ann.
They listened as the hurt man splashed across the tide pool, shouting his partner’s name until his voice was drowned out by a surge of larger waves. It wouldn’t be long, Ann knew, before she and James would be completely cut off. She’d spent much of her life watching the sea roll in and roll out. For natives it became something you felt inside, as steady as the ticking of a grandfather clock. People unfamiliar with the tide or the speed in which it moved often made the fatal error of believing they had plenty of time to crawl off an exposed seamount or avoid being trapped in coves carved by waves. But if you sat down next to the water’s edge and really watched, you could actually see it edging toward you.
“They’re going to come back to kill us now for sure,” James said.
Ann sat up and rubbed her throbbing temples. She felt sick to her stomach now, worried she might throw up. “I don’t think so. Unless they plan on swimming.”
James pulled a half wet cigarette from his pack and frowned before tearing it in two. He stuck the dry end in his mouth. “Well you had me worried a second there, Ann. Then the plan is to just wait until we drown?”
“The tide isn’t going to reach us.”
“You’re smoking crack. Have you forgotten where we are?”
“I’m serious. My uncle used to come here to fish.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true. I’m surprised your dad never told you. He and my uncle Jack did a lot of fishing and crabbing together back in the day. But Uncle Jack was a daredevil type, did stuff the other boys shied away from. During low tides he’d come up here alone and fish all day until it went back out and he could walk home with a bundle of perch. Drove my grandmother crazy with worry. In fact one time the tide didn’t go back out far enough and he had to wait through another cycle before he could wade back to shore.”
“So what makes you think the tide today isn’t going to be higher than anything your uncle Jack saw?”
“I looked at the tide table yesterday morning. I was showing a couple who came into the store how to read one.”
James lit his salvaged cigarette and inhaled deeply. He stood up for a moment and stared toward the shore before sitting down next to her.
“Jesus Ann. I can’t believe you shot at him.”
“I was thinking about what he did to Tami and how mad I was. I wanted to take him out, was sure I could do it. Then something made me move at the last second.”
James slid closer. “You’re shivering.”
“I know that.”
“You remember what hypothermia is, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
He slipped a hand inside his jacket and came out with the flask. Ann glanced at it and nodded and he smiled and unscrewed the lid for her. Her hand was shaking as she brought the whiskey to her lips and felt it glide down hot like those unexpected rays that cut through a frigid spring fog and sent steam curling off the sand. The whiskey was a little gritty but not worth spitting it out. James fingers kneaded her shoulder before working their way up to the tense chords of her neck. She closed her eyes and tried imagining his face.
“Have another drink,” he said when she tried to hand the flask back to him.
Chapter 30
“What can I do to help, Sheriff?” Coach Burns asked.
“I need your car. And any guns you’ve got in the house.”
“Whatever for?”
“Because it’s finally happened. God, you remember the movies don’t you? How they’d drop out of the sky like monkeys with machine guns? Blowing away every American they saw until some redneck locals banded together and fought back? I never thought we’d actually see the day…”