Red Tide (Billy Knight Thrillers 2)

The engine hatch stood wide open. A pair of legs stuck out, splotched with grease. “Rick,” I called.

The engine roared, then fluttered to a throaty growl. I called again. “Hey, Rick.”

The legs kicked, flopped for a grip, and Rick pulled himself out of the engine. He blinked a couple of times, shading his eyes with a hand, and finally focused on me.

“Hey!” he said. “Billy! Whoa, great, what’s up?”

“You said if I ever needed a favor, just ask,” I said.

“Uh, well, yeah,” he said, climbing unsteadily to his feet. “What, uh, what do you need?”

“Your boat,” I said. “I need to borrow your boat.”

He stood blinking at me for a minute. Nicky came out the dock and stood beside me, then Deacon. Rick looked at the two of them, then at me.

“Uh,” he said. “Can you tell me about it?”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Rick’s boathouse had a large workbench in it, covered with metal filings, dried globs of fiberglass and paint, old oil, and small machine parts. A large fluorescent strip light hung over the table and a rack of power tools stood beside it.

A chest-high metal filing cabinet with eight thin drawers took up one corner and Rick slid open a drawer and took out a stack of charts. He spread them out on the table.

“Okay,” he said. “I made this run two, three years ago. You’re bucking current on the way down, and probably wind, if there is any. This time of year the weather can turn on you pretty quick, too. And if you don’t pick him up before dark, you’re kinda screwed.”

“You won’t pick him up by dark even if you got Joshua stopping the sun for you,” Deacon said, leaning in to look at the chart. “That’s a big ocean out there, buddy, and a mighty small boat.”

“I’ll find him,” I said.

“We know where he’s headed,” Nicky objected. “He’s going to Haiti. He’s on a straight line between here and Haiti.”

Deacon shook his head. “Even if he stays on it, that straight line can be ten, twenty miles wide. Visibility in any kind of sea is going to be a mile or two at best.” He raised his head and gave me a look that might have knocked me over if I wasn’t leaning on the table. “And there ain’t anyway any kind of guarantee that he’s going to Haiti.”

“He’s going to Haiti.”

“He’s got to be,” Nicky insisted. “Where else?”

“Anywhere else,” Deacon said. “He’s grabbed the girl and he’s running. No reason he should run right where we can find him.”

“Plenty of reason,” I said. “He’s safe there, and anyway he’s not running.”

“I don’t care if you call it advancing to the rear,” Deacon said. “He’s running.”

“No, listen,” I said, and he paused and cocked an eyebrow at me. “Nobody’s done anything to try and stop him so far. He’s killed a couple of hundred people, and we know he’s watching his back trail, and we can guess that he’s got antennas out in a lot of directions. But everything tells him he’s safe, nobody’s after him.”

“Except us,” Nicky said.

“Except us. And so far we haven’t been very scary. So he’s watching but he’s not worried. And I think he wants me to catch up with him.”

Deacon spat at the large metal trashcan. “Spare me the psychological profile, buddy. The killer wants to be caught so he can be punished? That’s a load of bull and you know it. This guy don’t want to be caught.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

Deacon spread his arms wide. “Well then what are you saying? Because whatever it is, it don’t make sense so far, and we got a bad guy getting away.”

“I can find him.”

“Wishful thinking. You’re going to get out there in the Stream and run out of gas, or capsize, or get run down by a tanker, and we’ll lose you, too.”