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MOORE WAS CHOKING for air, tu head-over-heels down into a reen walls of the sea; he was captive in a liquidfroht into darkness
You&039;ve left them alone, his voice shrieked at him You&039;ve left them alone and they&039;re afraid and they don&039;t knohat to do
The water had his
They&039;re afraid they&039;re afraid
He braced his shoulders against the sea, straining, fighting it; he kicked upward, encu yellow and bulky on his body The foul-weather slicker He kicked again, clawing at the sea, fighting upward against it, the air ebbing from his body with each second Don&039;t leave theive th, let me, let me please this ti in only a small bit of air before the water crashed down over hi about wildly in the darkness There was a screahtingwave, heeling sharply to port, the water pouring in sheets across the deck He could see the out for hi the shriek of the stor them out into space He reached out his hand but then the wave ca stone, and he watched it, horrified as it crashed down over the them down in a spray that exploded with the shards of what had been a teak deck He could only see them an instant more, frozen in the stucco of foam and black walls, and when he heard his name cried out he wanted the sea to sweep down his throat and take hi section of transo to it It lifted hiht and on and on; before him he could read the red letters, the name that seared his brain as if each letter were a point of flame: Destiny&039;s Child
Please don&039;t leave them alone they&039;re afraid please please
"please," he said, opening his eyes and feeling the pinprick beads of cold sweat on his eyebrows A soft night breeze wafted in through the open terrace doors Palently just outside, and he could see their shadows, like fingers, in the pale ivory ht that painted one wall of his bedroo A cockatoo cried in the jungle, a sad and ht Moore put his face into his hands, waiting God, he breathed God Sohts they were so real he couldn&039;t shake them, and they laid back yet another layer of raw flesh This one he&039;d had before, though they were all variations of the sa pills Dr Maxwell had given him for some time, because he always convinced himself he could sleep soundly without theh in the little ah the rest of the week He lay there for a few more moments, and when he wiped his face he realized his eyes were irl beside hiht his ar fully awake
"It&039;s nothing," he told her "Go back to sleep"
She stared at hiainst the tint of her flesh Her hair was cut short - like they earing it in Kingston and easy to e, she had said when he complimented her She drew her knees up, lifted her purse froarette, found one, and lit it He sat beside her on the edge of the bed, and she traced a line down the center of his back with a fingernail Her name was Claire, she was froenerous as this one and she could pay a freighter for passage to Trinidad "Come on," she said "I&039; to the roll of the ocean
After a while she stabbed her cigarette out in an ashtray beside the bed and stood up, her lean, firht She took the clothes she&039;d folded over a chair and began to dress Moore sat where he was "I&039;d better go," she said "I don&039;t like sleeping in a strange bed"
"Neither do I," he said quietly
"My sister&039;s going to get hten his mood with some casual conversation "She&039;s a dental receptionist" She narrowed her eyes at his back, struck by his defenseless, un and had seemed okay when they&039;d met at the Landfall Tavern that afternoon, but noas so detached and distant "Wasn&039;t everything as you wanted it?" she asked him finally
"Yes" He wiped the ot a striped terry-cloth robe out of his closet and put it on When he turned back he saw the sea shih the terrace doors Thein the center of pendulous, free-form clouds From its position in the sky Moore estiaze moved, as if drawn, to the dark line that lay just outside the sheen of the harbor He could see the flashes of white breaking around the reef&039;s exposed bo black shape lying across the reef It seeht in the same position it had been in when he&039;d looked last He was afraid the surf would eventually beat the hulk free, but it was still angled toward the sky, the sea foa its hull
The hulk, dappled with e, sent a slol up his spine How the hell did it come to be buried beneath the sand? he wondered And, more importantly, whose boat was it? British? A of the girl&039;s skirt across the roo the deep currents, here in the placid Caribbean? It looked like a dark coffin recently exhue quickly; but he couldn&039;t shake a strange idea he&039;d had all day, soet to the Landfall Tavern, down a few coht ahead
It was al out underwater; he had known he was approaching his diving limits and he shouldn&039;t have been that deep He had this feeling he&039;d been lured there, enticed by that periscope jutting fro the submarine; rather, it had somehow found hi her blouse, still watching hiain, offer her a bit more money He was an attractiveway that had nearly succeeded in exciting her
Suddenly he turned fro to eat before you go," he told her
She closed the last button "I can&039;t eat in the
He shut the terrace doors and waited until they were out in the corridor before he switched on the lights They descended a stairway, and when they got to the front room Moore turned on a pair of lalow Claire squinted a fraction through sleep-swollen eyes and smoothed her skirt down over her hips because she knerinkled "I don&039;t look too good in the light," she apologized
Moore gazed at her; she was a pretty girl, very young, hardly out of her teens, but already the lines were showing Very feomen were able to keep their looks after a few years under the searing Caribbean sun, and she would be no exception But he s for a compliment "I think you&039;re very attractive Sexy How about a cup of coffee?"
She gave a half-nod and sat down in one of the wicker chairs She put her purse,table made of a solid piece of driftwood, sanded and oiled Across the bare wood floor there was a rug of woven seagrass; there were book-lined shelves, most of theroup of pris, done in wild and vivid splashes of color by soh a connecting doorway down another corridor to a kitchen; he , rather sweet, island brew and brought one of them to her He crossed the room and took a decanter from a shelf to pour a stiff shot of dark ru it light up his insides and chase the bad drealih one of the listened on the sub it shadowy teeth
"Too early for that," Claire said, indicating his cup "You drank a good bit down in the tavern"
He shrugged offhandedly and sat down in a chair across fro but his dream and the events of the previous day He had filled out some forms at the constable&039;s office and Kip had witnessed them He was uncertain about procedure on a etting soo: contacting the Coast Guard to have the boat towed off and possibly sunk in deeper water, or sending out feelers over the radio-telephone to the two nearest large islands Jamaica was approximately two hundred miles to the northwest and Haiti one hundred to the north Kip had a cousin working for the police in Kingston, who could probably fill the would be aboveboard and legal If anyone wanted a look at the boat the ould get out Moore had decided to wait on inforreed, for as long as he could placate Mayor Reynard Then he cautioned Moore against anyin that damned Abyss - at least until thecoistering what she&039;d said "What thing?"
"I saw you lookin&039; at it, upstairs, and then out theThe boat"
"Underwater," he said "Other than that I don&039;t know"
The girl was right: It was too early for rum You&039;re older and wiser and this only compounds the sickness Or so the doctors had said Tiht suddenly, it only et the name of your illness And as it called? There was a medical term for it that Moore didn&039;t remember The layman&039;s label was much si the eazed down "It&039;s a big one Theabout it in the taverns"