Frenzy

“Easy, mate,” a voice growled.

Tucker raised his head to look around. There were two other men in the boat. Both were badly wounded. One in the chest. The other—the one who had rescued Tucker—was a young blond giant with a nasty head wound.

Tucker realized that he himself was bleeding. His blood was turning the water sloshing around the bottom of the dinghy a deepening red. He raised a hand to touch his head, probing for damage.

He was frightened by what he felt.

He heard the persistent drone of aircraft and knew the Stukas were returning. Would they sink the fishing boat? Would they consider the dinghy too small and unimportant to strafe? A waste of ammunition?

Of course it is! Of course! It’s nothing but a bleeding rowboat!

The drone of the engines grew to a roar. Changed tone as the planes dropped lower and flattened out their trajectory.

Tucker carefully raised his head again and saw an aircraft approaching alarmingly low over the water. Coming straight at the dinghy.

His breath swelled cold in his chest and he prepared to die.

But there was something different about this aircraft. It didn’t have the awkward gull-like wings of the Stukas and, unlike the Stukas, its landing gear was retracted.

The plane waggled its wings and Tucker now clearly saw its markings—RAF markings. As it flashed overhead, the craft assumed the familiar silhouette of a British Hurricane fighter plane. Off in the distance, dark specks circled and climbed and dived in the sky. The Hurricanes had engaged the Stukas. The German planes were dive bombers and not fighter planes. Tucker felt some satisfaction in thinking they wouldn’t escape the Hurricanes. Not all of them.

One of the other two men in the dinghy began to shout, then stood to cheer. It was the blond giant. Tucker could see the inside of his skull behind his left ear. The other man remained unmoving and silent.

Within a few minutes the sky was clear of all but one Hurricane, which circled protectively over the dinghy.

The water around the tiny dinghy was unbroken. There wasn’t even debris floating to show where the Sondra had sunk.

The silent man in the dinghy’s bow looked dead to Tucker. The blond giant who’d cheered and shouted was still excited. He stared at Tucker with u

“Don’t be crazy,” Tucker said. “We’ll never make it all the way to England. If we just drift, one of the other boats might pick us up. That Hurricane’s marking our location.”

“It’ll run low on fuel and have to leave,” the man said.

Tucker hadn’t thought of that. It was a possibility.

As if its pilot had overheard their conversation, the Hurricane waggled its wings again, then flew away toward the direction of England.

“Pick up a bloody oar and row!” the blond man in the boat said.

Tucker figured he should do that. The man was twice his size and might throw him overboard if he didn’t comply.

He worked his way up to a sitting position, and was behind the big man and couldn’t take his eyes off the back of his head. It was a wonder he could even sit up, considering the terrible wound that he seemed not to know about.

Tucker sat facing France and rowed in the direction the Hurricane had gone, toward England, praying his head wound wasn’t as bad as the one he was looking at.

Far away, to the north, it was clouding up as if a storm was brewing.

11

New York, the present

Qui

The lake began moving with a private tide. The dock began to creak. Water lapped at wood. One by one the thick cross planks were lifted and flung away, like boxes being opened and their lids tossed aside.

And when the box containing Qui

Qui

Pearl lay sleeping beside him, covered with a light sheet. The curvature of her form beneath the thin material, the rhythm of her breathing, reassured Qui

He glanced at the glowing numerals of the alarm clock beside the bed. Only 3:00 A.M.

Faint recognizable sounds made their way into the bedroom from beyond the tall windows. Some of them were barely loud enough to hear. The city that never slept, resting. Human sounds. Death seemed far away.

Reassured, Qui

He dreamed again of Maine.

When Qui

“One fun day after another,” she said, observing that he must not have gotten much sleep last night. “Except for the occasional disembowelment.”

Qui

Renz had sent her around, not as a spy, but because he, like Qui

“I hear you’re working on the big one,” Helen said. She stood near Pearl’s desk and crossed her arms. “Six victims.”

“So far.”

Each knew the other was sure the killer would try to take more victims. Otherwise, Helen wouldn’t be here.

“I don’t think he’s a mass murderer on purpose,” Helen said. “Mass murder wasn’t his plan when he entered the hotel.”

Qui

Helen moved farther into the office and perched with her haunches on the front edge of Pearl’s desk. She was wearing blue-and-white ru

“My guess is that he didn’t realize the schoolgirls and Andria Bell were all staying in one interco

Qui

“That’s how I see it,” Qui