A Superior Death

“Got it,” Damien replied, with such boyish earnestness that A

On some level she knew she should let Patience escape, knew she worked without backup, endangered Tinker and Damien, knew, at best, she was courting a tort claim against the National Park Service by enlisting the aid of noncommissioned employees, SCAs-scarcely more professional by legal standards than tourists. But A

And Patience Bittner was not going to get away with it.

The green blip lost focus. Half a dozen yards ahead the Belle Isle’s spotlight illuminated the ghostly outlines of a boat’s stern. In the soft green tones of folding money, the name Venture was blazoned across it.

A

“Here.” A

“Pull back the throttles, put her in neutral, and wait,” Damien repeated dutifully.

“Hand,” A

She placed her hand over his and opened the throttle all the way. The Belle Isle surged ahead, came alongside the Chris-Craft, her port gunwale less than a yard from the smaller boat’s starboard side.

Trading action for thought, A

Using the seven feet of deck to get a ru

The dream came to an abrupt end when the toe of one foot caught the Belle’s gunwale. The rushing black water came up. Throwing her arms forward, A

The ache in her shoulder pried between the bones, letting what strength had returned after the exhaustion of the swim leak away. The lake was reclaiming her. The drag of the water, the pull of the Venture cutting through it, was ripping A

Slowly, she loosed her grip, let the water and momentum pull her back along the gunwale toward the boat’s stern. The jets of water where the wake turned under made a last try for her, but A

She landed on Patience’s cast-off dive suit and fins. Damage and noise were somewhat alleviated. But the revolver was gone, dropped in the cha

“Shit,” A

For a moment she stayed where she’d fallen, watching the twin Plexiglas windows in the rear of the cabin. No alarmed face appeared, no concerned head peeked out of the cabin door. Either the noise of her arrival had been masked by the roaring of the engines, or Patience had assumed the thump was due to the flapping of unstowed fenders or a sideswipe by the Belle Isle.

A

Now A

No gun, no way off the boat: it was not a good corner to have painted oneself into. Surprise was on A

And the thought of facing even a tiny murderer without a revolver was nearly as daunting as the thought of all the government forms she would have to fill out explaining how she lost it.

Perhaps Patience would give up without a struggle, bend to the will of the law as personified by Ranger Pigeon. It could happen. “Yeah,” A

In addition to Patience’s dive gear, the pockets along the gunwales just above deck level had the usual maritime paraphernalia. There were several hundred yards of line, scrub brushes, a fish gaff on a long wooden handle, and cleaning supplies: detergent and something blue in a plastic bottle with a metal spray-pump top.

A

It crossed A

The engine slowed. The Venture was nearing the end of the cha

The customized Evinrude engine that propelled the small boat was housed in an engine box to the rear of the stern deck. A

The engine coughed once and died. In the ensuing silence A

Bent double to avoid the windows, A

Surrounded by an insulating blanket of fog, the sounds from the cabin were at the same time very clear and quite unreal, as if they were happening inside A