Red Tide (Billy Knight Thrillers 2)

She waved it off, refusing to meet my eye. “I’ll fix it later,” she said, and I was pretty sure she would. In any case, I knew she’d rather get out and push her boat than ask for help in fixing the engine. “Beer?”

“It’s a little early,” I said.

She wiped a river of sweat off her forehead. “So?”

She had a point. “Sure. Thanks.”

Betty went down the hatch and I followed. It was even hotter below with no air moving through it and after the bright glare of the sun it seemed dark. Betty took two bottles of Molson’s Ice from a small refrigerator under a counter and handed me one, angling her head at the small table. “Sit,” she said. I sat, taking an experimental pull on the beer. It tasted okay, even this early. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was because I was about to crash and burn.

“What’s up, Betty?”

She turned on a small fan and sat down across from me and took a long pull on her beer. “I need a hand,” she said.

I stared at her in astonishment.

“I can pay,” she added quickly. “You’re not doing any fishing and I thought you could maybe use some extra money.” She looked so defensive I didn’t know what to say. “Besides, Nancy can’t miss you if you’re hanging around.”

I’ve never known how the marina grapevine worked so quickly. But every now and then I got my nose rubbed in the fact that it did. The guy on the next boat probably knew more about your wife’s feelings for you than you did. “Maybe you’re right,” I said. “But I need to talk to her first.”

She turned her head and looked at me, really looked me over the way only a woman can look—thoroughly, disinterestedly, and without missing anything.

She shook her head. “Your problem is you want to suffocate a woman. You get into a relationship and you think everything is settled.”

“I thought it was.”

“It’s never settled, Billy. Nothing’s ever settled. A relationship is alive. It needs to breathe, to grow and change.”

“And end?”

She shrugged. “If that’s what happens.”

“I thought Nancy wanted something steady. I thought that’s what most women wanted.”

“Sure—if it’s on their terms. But if it’s coming from you she’ll feel crowded, trapped, pushed into something that isn’t to her advantage. A woman has to feel liberated now, and that means free to choose, and that means the traditional options are all suspect.”

I took a long pull from the beer and set the bottle down empty. “Pretty deep.”

“You mean for a leathery old broad who lives on a boat? Yeah, I know. But I studied it. Right after Howie-the-son-of-a-bitch left me I went to the community college. I don’t know what I was thinking, just kill some God damned time. Maybe learn to paint or something. Instead, I ran into this woman teaching the Women’s Studies classes. We ha

d coffee. She seemed nice. I took her classes. I started thinking about that kind of thing. Women’s issues.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong.”

The small fan on the wall behind her was turning back and forth, blowing a steady stream of hot air that hit me in the face and made me blink every twelve seconds. I blinked again. I didn’t know what to say. Betty had asked me to stop by and suddenly we were talking about me. It was not something I was good at.

“You said you needed a hand,” I said finally.

Now she blinked. “That’s right. I’ve got a couple of sailboats over at Dinner Key in Miami. Salvage jobs from Andrew. I need to bring ’em down.” She raised her bottle in an ironic toast to herself. “My new charter fleet.”

“I’m not a great sailor, Betty.”

She waved that off. “You’re a great boater. These boats have engines. You want to motor the whole way that’s fine.”

“I don’t know.”

“Fifty bucks a day, plus expenses.”

“If I can do it, I’ll do it for free.”

“Fifty bucks a day, Billy, that’s final.”