Lethal (Lee Coburn)

“Doesn’t he know how you think, too?”

“Yeah, which is why we need to hurry. As we speak, he’s probably already trying to get a location on my cell number.”

“You didn’t give it to him. You said disposables were untraceable. You said?

?”

“Yeah, I said. But I don’t know everything,” he muttered.

Anxiously, she looked into the sky, where clouds were scuttling in off the Gulf. “Would he send a helicopter?”

“Unlikely. Hamilton would opt for something more covert, something that wouldn’t give us warning. Besides, there’s a storm coming. He won’t come by air.”

“Then why are you in such a hurry?”

He paused to wipe his sweating forehead with the back of his hand. “Because I could be wrong.”

But the harder they worked, the more hopeless it seemed. Honor suggested that they take their chances in the recently stolen pickup. “No one’s looking for that truck. You said so yourself.”

“Okay, and go where?”

“To my friend.”

“Friend.”

“A lifelong friend who’d give us a hiding place, no questions asked.”

“No. No friends. They’ll be watching your friends.”

“We could spend the night in the truck.”

“I could,” he said. “We couldn’t.”

Eventually she stopped wasting energy on trying to change his mind. She lacked his stamina and skills, but she applied herself to helping and did whatever he asked of her.

Emily awakened from her nap. She was chatty and excited by the activity. She got in the way, but Coburn worked around her with surprising patience. She stood on deck and called down encouragement to them as, together, they put their backs to the prow and pushed the unfettered craft off the bank into the water.

Coburn checked for leakage and, finding none, joined Honor at the controls. Her dad had taught her how to start the engine and to steer. But it had been years. Miraculously, she remembered the steps, and when the engine belched to life, she didn’t know who was the more astonished, her or Coburn.

He asked about fuel. She checked the gauge. “We’re okay. Dad was preparing for a hurricane. But the other gauges…” She looked at them dubiously. “I don’t know what all of them are for.”

He spread a yellowed nautical map over the control panel. “Do you know where we are?”

She pointed out their location. “Somewhere along here. If we head south toward the coast, we’ll become more exposed. On the other hand, one shrimp boat in a marina lined with them won’t be as obvious. Further inland, the bayous are narrower. There’s more tree coverage. Waters are also shallower.”

“Since we’ll probably have to bail out, I vote for shallow water. Just get us as far as you can.”

He traced their progress on the map. They chugged for about five miles through the winding waterways before the engine began to cough. The waters became thick with vegetation. Several times, Honor narrowly missed running over cypress knees that poked up through the opaque surface.

Coburn nudged her elbow. “Over there. It’s as good a place as any.”

Honor steered the boat closer to the marshy shore, where a dense cypress grove would provide partial concealment. Coburn dropped anchor. She cut the engine and looked at him for further instruction.

“Make yourselves comfortable.”

“What?” she exclaimed.

He folded the map and stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans, then checked his pistol and set it on the control panel, well out of Emily’s reach. “I’ll take Hawkins’s .357. You keep this one. It’s ready to fire. All you have to do is point and pull the trigger.”