when I settled against the wall again, confident that Erik was bluffing. We hadn’t traveled that far, but the guy, tied up in the cabin, probably didn’t know that, and more than that, he didn’t know we’d hugged the coast rather than heading straight out to open water. With the door closed, no one would hear him, but the shotgun was another story. And Erik, if he used the shotgun, would not only blow off the guy’s foot, he’d open a hole in the hull.
Relief flowed over me. I tried not to let it show too much.
“I…shit…my name isn’t Tony…it really is Ernie Fishbeck. Damn! A guy hired me to do a couple of jobs for him.” The words were practically tripping over themselves, he was so eager to get them out.
“Tell me,” I said. “Tell me about this guy. Tell me what jobs.”
“He told me…he wanted a couple of people paid back. Mess up a restaurant, make sure the owners had some trouble they wouldn’t forget. Stake out a house, figure out the best way in and out. Watch a guy, find out his movements.”
“What guy?” I said, a chill crawling down my spine.
“The guy with that house. There’s another picture…in my shirt, in the pocket.”
Erik reached over and fished it out carefully. He examined it, looked at me, paused, then handed it to me.
The image was grainy and out of focus, as well as smeared with Ernie’s blood. It was Brian. It was taken while we were in Hawaii, because he was grinning, showing off the rash he had on his belly from surfing. But the angle was off; it was different from the picture we had at home.
Someone had been watching us while we were on vacation.
As unreal as the rest of the evening had been, a cold numbness rushed into my joints now. My peripheral vision vanished and I could only see the filthy, broken face in front of me.
“Who told you to do these things?” I said. “Where is he, how do you contact him? How long have you been following us around?”
“Fuck off.” Ernie was smirking. In spite of the beating Erik had given him in the restaurant, the shotgun pointed at him, the son of a bitch still had it in him to be amused by me.
I grabbed him by the shirt. “Tell me, goddamn it!”
“Emma.” Erik’s voice was low.
“He needs to tell me—”
I didn’t realize I’d raised my hand to hit Ernie until I couldn’t move it: Erik had clamped his hand around my wrist. He was fast, he was strong, but he hadn’t hurt me.
“Emma. I have another idea.” He waited until I nodded, and then released me. “I don’t want to spend all night here, and neither do you. Let’s end this now. Go over to the other cabin. In the locker. There’s a spare anchor there. Bring it here. And some rope.”
The smirk was gone from Ernie’s face now. “What are you going to do?”
Erik shrugged. “You won’t talk, you’re no good to us.”
“You can’t…you’re not going to throw me overboard!”
“Why not?”
“I’ll drown!”
“You break into my home and place of business, lay hands on my wife, and you think I’m going to let you go? You’re out of your mind, mate. Furthermore—” He leaned over and began to whisper into Ernie’s ear; the other man blanched under the mask of blood.
I left. I was grateful to Erik for giving me a task to focus on. When I got to the cabin, I found the anchor and rope, but I also realized I was still clutching the picture of Brian in my hand. I looked at it for a moment, carefully smoothed it out, and put it into my pocket, then picked up the stuff Erik had asked for.
On my way out, I paused. Another object beckoned to me. I reached out, drew my hand back, then finally picked it up and stuck it through my belt.
By the time I got back to the cabin, Ernie was sobbing quietly on the bunk.
“Good job,” Erik said. “Now there’s got to be a certain order of operations here, and we should make sure we know what we’re doing before we get into the middle of it. Don’t want to find out we’ve done it backwards. I don’t want to untie him from the bunk until we’ve got the anchor around his ankles. But of course, that will make carrying him that much harder.”
Then Erik looked up at me. “Emma, we don’t need