No good deed goes unpunished.
When Martin
Billings and Ugly Bill come across a yacht stuck hard on French Reef in
the Caribbean, they lend a helping hand, rescuing Donna Devro, the young
woman on board, and getting the boat safely into harbor.
Now
the authorities have found the boat's owner dead in the cabin and Donna
Devro has disappeared, leaving Martin and Bill to work out what sort of
trouble she’s in (or up to), and find a way to keep from getting
involved in whatever that trouble is. Fat chance.
Martin
Billings left behind a shining career as an officer in the SEALs for
this mess? All he wanted was a chance to make an honest living hauling
cargo among the Caribbean islands on his freighter IRREPARABLE HARM.
Now,
instead of hauling cargo, Martin and Bill are trawling for trouble, and
Donna Devro isn't eager to simplify their lives — nor is her husband.
"You’ve been a busy boy,” he said. “Amazing how busy a person can be and still get almost nothing done.”
“I got a lot done,” I said. “Just nothing I wanted to do.”
Now
Bill turned his attention away from the boaters and fixed it on me.
“Think of this for a moment, if you will, Junior, so long as it doesn’t
hurt what passes for brain in that salt- and rum-soaked head of yours.
Ponder this question: If you were running away from someone wanting to
kill you, crazy or not, and clearly not stupid, would you use a
professional killer’s credit card to escape to a tropical island where
the killer knew you had a friend on a boat nearby?”
“Doubtful,” I said.
Bill
was swept up in his theory now. He waved at Sally for two more beers.
“Montana, which was even more nearby her location, has far more corners
to hide in than she’d find here — there’s more sheer room, and more wide
open empty spaces, if that’s what you prefer.”
“Under blue skies that aren’t cloudy all day,” I put in.
“Right…
and she could hitchhike there and not leave a trace. Going to a tiny
island, one that she had to buy a ticket to get close to, one a
determined man can walk in a few hours if he ain’t been drinking more
than is good for him, a place where showing a photo around and telling
his sad story of the woman needing help, would produce any number of
leads don’t make sense. Thus, St. Anne, lovely as she is, would not be
the prime choice of most intelligent life forms as a place to hide.”
“The weather is better here.”
“Yes,
and the rum is cheaper, but those might, possibly not, be her primary
concerns when fleeing a professional killer, or even an abusive husband.
And in our brief encounter, the woman didn’t strike me as mentally
deficient.”
“So, you think she is lying.”
“Well,
we know for certain she lied, and my bones, and common sense, suggest
she still is. Of course, that don’t mean this Nate guy is telling the
whole truth neither ways.” He grinned. “Which is why things have evolved
into such a fine mess.”
“By which you mean it gets everything gooey and hard to untangle.”
Bill snorted. “That is perzactly the way things be, Captain.”
“Perzactly?”
“Yup.
See, the way I see things, we got us a situation that features two,
maybe three potential killers, along with one proven killer or maybe
two. Now this show doesn’t have a program so we don’t have a clue who is
playing the bad guys, which makes it hard to pick them out of the
players on stage. That’s not a good place to be.”
Comments
Post a Comment