Lethal (Lee Coburn)

“I found these.” She handed him the folded pair of khakis and a T-shirt. “They were in one of the storage compartments. The pants will be too short, and they smell moldy.”

“Doesn’t matter. They’re dry.” He peeled off Eddie’s LSU T-shirt and replaced it with one that had belonged to her father, then began unbuttoning the jeans.

She turned her back. “Are you hungry?”

“Yeah.”

She went back down the steps and flicked on the lantern only long enough to locate the food she’d set aside for him. By the time she returned to the wheelhouse, he had swapped out the pants. She set the foodstuffs on the console. “You forgot to get a can opener.”

“I got cans with pull tabs.”

“Not the pineapple. And of course, that’s what Emily wanted.”

“Sorry.”

“I found a can opener in a drawer under the stove. It’s rusty, so we may get lead poisoning, but she had her pineapple.”

Using his fingers, he ate his meal of canned breast meat chicken, pineapple slices, and saltine crackers. He washed it down with another bottle of water that Honor fetched from below. She’d also brought up a package of cookies to appease his noticeable sweet tooth.

He was sitting on the floor, his back propped against the console. She sat in her dad’s captain’s chair, which had suffered the ravages of the elements like everything on the boat.

The silence was broken only by the pelting rain and the crunch of cookies.

“It’s raining harder than ever,” she remarked.

“Um-huh.”

“At least the rain keeps the mosquitoes away.”

He scratched at a place on his forearm. “Not all of them.” He took another cookie from the package and bit off half.

“Will they find us?”

“Yes.” Noticing that his blunt answer had startled her, he said, “It’s only a matter of time, depending largely on when Hamilton kicks things into full gear. He probably has already.”

“If they find us—”

“When.”

“When they find us, will you…” She searched for the word.

“Go peacefully?”

She nodded.

“No, I won’t.”

“Why?”

“Like I told Hamilton, I’m not quitting until I get this son of a bitch.”

“The Bookkeeper.”

“It’s not just an assignment any longer. It’s one-on-one, him against me.”

“How did it work, exactly? The business between him and Marset?”

“Well, let’s see. Here’s a for-instance. Each time a truck passes from one state into another, it has to stop at a weigh station. Have you seen these arms that extend over the interstate near state lines?”