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The lunatic was about to torch the house.

  I wore gloves. Barnacles, like glass shards, covered the pilings. I slogged and stumbled to the dock and heaved myself up. Wood pilings are sensitive to vibration. I forced myself to move slowly. Hopefully, there was time. In an enclosed space, gasoline, as an accelerant, explodes like a bomb. Diesel is different. Diesel fuel can be hard to light with matches. Maybe the guy didn’t know enough to soak a rag or a ball of paper first to reach the necessary flashpoint.

  I went up the stairs. Inside, the voices of Tomlinson and Delia were muffled, but I heard my pal say clearly, “Goddamn it, leave her out of this.”

  A string of distracted profanities suggested that their captor was getting frustrated. There was the odor of petroleum smoke but no crackling of flames. Perhaps it was the challenge of starting a fire with diesel. I used the noise he made as cover and attempted to open the door. It was locked on the inside. When I tried to pry it open, I heard the heavy clang of something falling to the floor—possibly an old-fashioned bolt on a string.

  The cabin went silent.

  So much for the element of surprise.

  In my pocket was an LED flashlight. I cracked open the door, drew my pistol, and stepped into the shadows of a room, where, on the floor, several sputtering rolls of toilet paper were struggling to burn. They had been arranged in an odd circular pattern. A six-volt lantern showed Tomlinson’s face in half-light. He was in a bamboo chair, wrists taped, legs free. Delia sat with her back to me, not bound, but her eyes were fixated on an interior door that had just closed.

  I crept closer, gun out. A haze of black smoke caused my pal to squint when he saw me. His eyes widened—a warning that made no sense until he yelled, “Behind you!”

  Too late. A withering impact drove me sideways. The flashlight went flying, but I held on to the pistol. I spun in time to duck beneath the path of what I feared was an axe but turned out to be a hammer. My attacker, a lanky silhouette, swung again. I juke-stepped back. It provided the microsecond needed to decide not to shoot the son of a bitch. Not yet.

  Delia hollered something frantic as I holstered my pistol. Hands free, I slipped under the arms of a man who was taller, but not as wide, and dislocated his elbow with a quick Come along cradle. The joint made a distinctive pop.

  The hammer tumbled to the floor.

  The man bellowed and charged. I dropped to my knees. A double-leg takedown, the move is called in wrestling circles, and this guy was no wrestler. Not much of a fighter, in fact. I hefted him briefly off the floor, then bulldozed him out the door and gave him a push. The deck railing there was kidney-high. The crossbeam shattered upon impact. The man clawed the air, falling backward, his scream cut short when he hit the water.

  I didn’t bother to look down. An accidental drowning could be explained. And the guy was welcome to try to outrun me in Tomlinson’s dinghy.

  A more pressing issue was the fire. A breeze from the squall and the open door combined had finally set the toilet paper ablaze—but manageably because of my gloves. To Delia, I yelled, “Are you hurt?”

  She hollered back, “No, but we’ve got to get him out of here,” meaning Tomlinson, who was on his feet but still taped to the chair. It was hard to breathe because of the fumes, and harder to see.

  Under the sink was a bucket. Dousing the flames would only cause more smoke, so I used the bucket as a basket. I gathered the burning rolls in a rush, carted them outside, and dumped them over the broken railing.

  The man had vanished.

  “Where’d he go?” Delia demanded. I had cut Tomlinson free and steered them both outside with the help of my flashlight. She coughed and shielded her eyes. “Are you a policeman? Thank god you found us.”

  She had yet to recognize me, I realized.

  “He’s in the water somewhere,” I told her, then asked Tomlinson, “The guy Deville—does he have a gun? If he does, both of you stay low until I say it’s okay.”

  Tomlinson replied, “It’s not him. I don’t know who the hell . . . No, Deville’s a lot bigger.”

  Delia argued, “How can you be sure? He was wearing that thing over his head—a stocking or whatever it was.” She turned from her biological father and finally recognized me. “Oh my god . . . Marion?” She was stunned. “How could . . . I can’t believe it’s you.”

  Below us, the man—whoever it was—got the little outboard kicker started on his third try. From the shadows, Tomlinson’s dinghy appeared. It puttered slowly at first, then faster, but not at a speed equal to the two-stroke wail of the engine. For a few seconds, I followed the dinghy with the flashlight. I got a vague look at a tall, boney man wearing a black hood or stocking cap.

  He was driving east, away from the Intracoastal channel, possibly toward the only smattering of lights visible—the fishing village of Gumbo Limbo, where Hannah and Izaak lived.

  I said to Tomlinson, “Move, get your ass in gear. We’ve got to make sure the fire’s out, then I’m going to follow that lunatic.”

  When he tried to interrupt, I told him he could explain it all to a deputy sheriff after I’d taken them back to No Más. “Chris Bannister—you know him. Tell Chris what happened, and I’ll be in touch by VHF.”

  We were aboard the Pathfinder, planing toward the sailboat, when Tomlinson slid over and confided, “I don’t want to hang an attempted murder rap on the kid—whoever he is. He needs a psych ward, not prison.”

  Delia sat on the forward seat, her hair wild in the wind, unable to hear.

  “Kid?” I said. “Knock it off. The guy’s dangerous. You can’t ignore what just happened.” I’d just hung up the phone after another conversation with Chris. He was on his way, and had offered to get a department helicopter involved if needed.

  Tomlinson was serious. “Marion, listen. It wasn’t the same guy, but there has to be a connection. At least talk to him first. Find out, Deville and him, what do they really want?”

  “To kill you—that’s not obvious?” I said. “What I don’t understand is, why did you let him get on your boat to begin with?”

  “Let him?” Tomlinson snapped. “Whoa! Back off. The dude stowed away in the forward berth. Before we got aboard, he musta swam out to my mooring or used a canoe—I don’t know. We didn’t even know he was aboard until we came about off Captiva. That was two hours ago.”

  “Didn’t notice him on a forty-foot boat?” Police would be dubious. And so was I.

  “Yeah, man. Just off Captiva Pass. Suddenly, there he was. At first I was, like, be cool, be nice, the more, the merrier. The guy—his size, his hair—nothing like Deville this afternoon. He’d fired up the bong, but—wow!—things went south from there.”

  I almost laughed. “In other words, your biological son changed wigs, you got stoned together, and you two bonded before he tried to burn you alive. Stop trying to protect him.”

  “I’m not,” Tomlinson insisted. “The kid, his brain’s eaten up with demons, the kind cooked up in a meth lab. He went into this whole rap about ancient alien spirits. Animal deities. Rats especially—they talk to him at night. He never sleeps, so he gets cranky. Doc, you get him calmed down, he might open up to me.”

  Cranky? Only Tomlinson could redefine murderous intent with an adjective from Leave It to Beaver.

  “Then accuse him of grand theft and arson when you talk to the police,” I said, done arguing. If I was right about the fertility clinic murders, it would be enough to put the guy away. I didn’t want to hear any more details.

  “Save it,” I told him when he opened his mouth again. “I’m in sort of a rush.”

  * * *

  —

  In the bays of Southwest Florida, ribbons of imploded limestone form channels that are unmarked, known only to locals. The channels start and end without notice except for subtleties of surface tension—a swirling current, a sudden slick, an eddy coming off a ridge of o
ysters that can rip the bottom out of a boat.

  In the backcountry, a straight line is almost always a dangerous navigational choice.

  Tomlinson’s “troubled kid”—Deville, in my mind—had escaped east toward the nearest lights, unaware of what lay between the fish houses and the village of Gumbo Limbo.

  That’s the trail I followed, alone, in my fast open boat.

  Ahead lay a tangle of mangroves that appeared as a low lone wall of shadows. In truth, it was a slalom course of islands, mostly swamp. If the guy managed those, there were sandbars surfacing with this falling tide. And corridors of rock that funneled boaters into a little marina that wouldn’t open until dawn.

  In a space of only a few miles, there were plenty of places the man could hide—or ruin an engine. I didn’t care as long as Hannah and our son were safe. The odds of him stumbling onto them were slim, but it was possible. I had to get to Gumbo Limbo before Deville did, and he’d had a twenty-minute head start.

  I had switched out my running lights, all electronics off save for the radio when I left No Más behind. Now I was doing fifty-plus in good water, thirty-five in thin areas where crab traps littered the flats.

  Night vision allowed me to see what Deville could not.

  Hillocks of mangroves blurred past—Little Wood Key, Josslyn, and Part Island. A squall wind sparked overhead. A lone cloud the size of a sailing ship slowed and strafed me with pellets of rain.

  The rain intensified, then was gone. The cloud plowed a black comet’s tail that scarred the water’s surface at a speed I could not match. Inside Rat Key, I turned north toward the high palms of Gumbo Limbo and didn’t shut down until I had a clear view of Hannah’s dock.

  I felt some tension go out of me. Hannah’s refurbished cruiser, where she’d lived before having a child, was moored in darkness. It lifted and rolled when my wake surfed shoreward. There was no yellow dinghy tied nearby.

  Across the road, built atop a high shell mound, was the house where Hannah had grown up and now lived. A room had been transformed into a nursery. Her mother—a likable but contentious eccentric—had moved into a tiny guest cottage at the back of the property. The wraparound porch was dimly lit.

  I shifted into neutral with the indifference of a man who wasn’t spying on his ex-girlfriend.

  On the porch were silhouettes. Two people stood alone, perhaps face-to-face, but at a distance it was impossible to be sure. In the shell drive, parked next to Hannah’s SUV, was an unfamiliar car—foreign, a midsized sedan, white or possibly silver.

  Her friend, after delivering mother and child safely home, had been allowed to stay.

  It was 1:35 in the morning.

  In my abdomen, a residual tension returned. The silhouettes embraced—a kiss, then a longer kiss. The people parted. Porch lights blinked out. The silhouettes, vague as smoke in the moonlight, seemed in a rush to rejoin.

  Maybe they did. I turned my back and continued on to the marina. The docks there catered to commercial fishermen, not the yachting set. A sailboat dinghy would have stood out.

  No luck.

  The channel into the basin is a limestone corridor, rocks on both sides. A few years earlier, I’d witnessed a fatal boat crash here. A dangerous stretch. Easy on the throttle, all running lights bright.

  I left Hannah and her new friend behind and didn’t switch off the lights until I had cleared the rocks and turned toward the fish houses. They were two miles away, screened by mangrove shoals. A rhythmic blue halo above the trees told me that Deputy Bannister had found No Más.

  Good. No matter what Tomlinson claimed, there was evidence of arson. That would attract more police boats and possibly the chopper Chris had mentioned.

  I reached to make contact by VHF, then caught myself. Deville—whoever he was—had to be somewhere nearby. I was in no mood to be sent home by my deputy friend, so why not poke around on my own for a while?

  It was an obvious rationalization, but the odds were on my side. Deville had probably run aground. He was hurt. I’d heard his elbow pop when I’d locked him in an arm bar. The man was not only lost, he was in pain.

  So where was he . . . ?

  At night on the water, inexperienced adults regress. The instincts of a child take over. They panic and try to outrun storms. In the darkness, they steer toward the nearest lights without a thought to the hazards that lie between.

  I dropped off plane and drifted. You don’t have to be a madman to think like one. Behind me, Gumbo Limbo sparkled through a veil of palm fronds. Shallow water had probably barred the man’s access, so the next closest haven would be . . . ?

  My eyes searched from south to north. On the horizon, incandescent balloons marked the strongholds of habitation. There were several, all too far for a dinghy-sized vessel save for one—Useppa Island. It was a hundred acres of pre-Columbian shell mounds and shuttered vacation homes.

  A man who was hurt and haunted by ancient aliens might find Useppa a calming sanctuary.

  And if he didn’t?

  That was okay, too.

  NINE

  The yellow dinghy was on the east side of Useppa Island. Deville had run it onto the beach rather than bother with the big commercial dock that years ago had been a popular spearfishing spot for local kids.

  Maybe it still was. Water was deep there, boat traffic rare. A forest of pilings attracted the biggest of many species, including bull sharks and hammerheads from nearby Boca Grande Pass.

  I tied up to the dock and used the infrared LED to search the beach. The dinghy was a mess of mud and mangrove detritus. A bent propeller proved the motor had been abused. I’d been right about the guy running aground.

  Deville had had a long, tough night. And he had to know it was nearly over. Another police boat had found No Más to the south. Blue lights bounced off clouds that sailed the squall closer. Low, in the east, a laser beam scanned the water. A police helicopter was speeding our way.

  This was another opportunity to make radio contact. I should have done it. Should have called Chris, my deputy friend, and admitted that I had found the fugitive. But VHF is a public conveyance. Every cop listening would hear, and the whole scrambled force would ascend on the island. How would a madman respond to a cavalry of noise and flashing lights?

  Deville, with his crippled arm, was beaten, probably exhausted. I decided to go it alone—quietly. “Try to reason with him,” Tomlinson had urged.

  Okay. I would try. After securing my boat, I took the precaution of pocketing my keys, then walked down the shoreline to the dinghy. As a second precaution, I disconnected the dinghy’s fuel hose and opened the cap of the plastic gas tank.

  An elegant whitewashed stairway led uphill to the Collier Inn, a fishing lodge built in the early 1900s. Banks of windows, three stories high, reflected a silent bolt of lightning as I ascended. The wind freshened. To my left was a patio shaded by ficus trees. To my right was the entrance to the dining room and bar. In the breeze, the door swung wide. Broken glass suggested that Deville was inside.

  No. I found him several minutes later, curled up, naked and weeping, on a lounge chair by the pool. He shielded his eyes from my flashlight. “You’re the man who broke my arm,” he bawled. “I hate you. Don’t hurt me anymore. Please. I don’t want to fight.”

  It was the voice of a child.

  Beside him on the deck was a pile of towels. He’d stolen a bottle of vodka and gone for a swim in the pool.

  “You mind showing me your hands?” I asked. I didn’t say it gently, but there was no need to spook him by shouting orders.

  “What?”

  “Both your hands. I want to make sure you’re not hurt.”

  He mumbled a slurred profanity but did it, fingers spread wide.

  I holstered my pistol. “What’s your name?”

  Again, his response was childlike. “Jayden. What’s yours?”
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  “Get your clothes on,” I told him. “You’re going for a boat ride. I’ll stay here and keep you company until it’s time to leave.”

  “Too tired,” he said, and lay back.

  Finally, I did the smart thing. I called Chris Bannister on my cell and got voicemail. While I left a message, Jayden began to babble about his clothes. He didn’t want to put them on. They were filthy, diseased, he said, infested with bugs that had eaten his flesh. “Those fuckers have to be burned. Seriously, man.” He sat up abruptly. “The disease, once the bugs get in your ears, they eat right through to your brain. Chlorine”—nervous fingers waved hello to the swimming pool—“is the best way to kill them. But they don’t die. Not really. Fire’s the only answer. What I should have brought was a pipe bomb. I’ve still got two in my car, but they’re too damn, you know, hard to hide.”

  Pipe bombs? If true, this was enough for police to suspect he was involved with the attacks on the fertility clinics.

  I got my first clear look at the man. He had a haggard oval face, curly black hair. Mid-twenties, tall, not lean or fat, but soft, an adolescent pudginess. Tattoos snaked up his arms, a geometry of symbols intersected by lines. Aside from his height, I saw no genetic similarities to my friend.

  “What makes you think Tomlinson’s your biological father?”

  “Who?”

  I repeated the question, and added, “What’s your last name?”

  He responded, “That’s a big negatory, man. But my test tube daddy was a monster just like him. We call them all that—Daddy-O. All of us, we’re experimental units, test tube brats. But we are the chosen ones. Oh, trust me, the world will understand one day.”

  Jayden’s eyes communicated a feverish certainty.

  “Then why try to kill him?”

  “Why not? Tomlinson—that’s his name, right? He poisoned the DNA of a friend of mine. Same thing—spawn monsters, all of the Daddy-Os. And we’ve, like, finally united to become the King Slayers. King of Thrones—that show’s reality, you know. We were all placed here by the same galactic creator. You probably didn’t know that either.”