tied off and waited.
Hopefully, the self-important bastard had overslept after a night of “sport” with the married mistress.
Maybe it had happened, but I doubted it. Around one a.m., still unable to sleep, I had carried a bottle of beer outside and saw that Seduci’s flybridge lights were off. A timer switch possibly, but it was more likely that Cressa had sent the man packing early. I didn’t believe that Tomlinson was her only extramarital conquest, but there was something calculating about the married mistress that told me she wasn’t an indiscriminate screw-around. True, Diemer resembled a Germanic Zorro. True, he was rich, connected, and met the requirements of a genuinely dangerous man. So . . . so what the hell was I thinking? Of course Cressa Arturo found him attractive! Hannah probably did, too.
Wrong again, Ford.
I flexed my jaw and continued wading the shallows, pretending not to notice that instead of oversleeping the Brazilian was already getting into my former skiff aided by the attentions of my former jogging partner, who was laughing about something. Some ingratiating remark, no doubt, about the Western-looking shirt Hannah wore or the length of her buckskin brown legs. And why should I care?
Stick to business, I reminded myself. Where the hell did those fish go?
Thirty yards away near the ruins of a long-gone fish house, that’s where. Concentrating on a bloom of nervous water, I moved to within striking distance after I’d checked my leader and lure—a Chico’s Deceiver: mylar and synthetic hair wrapped on a one-ought hook. I pretended to be unaware that Hannah and Diemer were to my left, idling away from the marina in pursuit of more sport. One or both would be watching me because fly fishermen are shameless voyeurs when it comes to evaluating the competition. So now would be a good time to show off my casting skills—if I were an ego-driven adolescent.
I’m not, yet I did it anyway. Couldn’t stop myself from unfurling forty feet of line with a roll cast . . . stripped off another fifty feet to float near my knees . . . lifted the rod to reduce drag while I single-hauled and popped the line free . . . edged a step closer to tighten my back-cast loop and waited, waited as the line deployed behind, loading the rod . . . then hauled again on the forward cast, which vaulted the line like a slingshot toward the fish, a hundred feet away, where the Chico’s Deceiver slapped flat on the surface, then sank, undulating like wounded bait.
Not a flawless cast, but so craftsmanlike I was tempted to steal a glance at two admiring gazes—how could my observers help it? I didn’t, though, even when Diemer’s laughter carried across the water and he commented to Hannah, “Tailing loop—typical of novices,” which was total bullshit. Well . . . my line hadn’t tailed as badly as usual, so his criticism was rooted in envy—had to be.
A Holocaust butcher, Bernie had said, was responsible for the genetics in the village where Diemer had been born—no surprise there. I was thinking that when I heard Hannah tell him, “Hold tight,” then throttled away at speed—she wasn’t interested, apparently, in whether I was on fish or just blind-casting.
I thought, Nazi prick! but then had to smile at my own childishness. Truth was, I found Vargas Diemer interesting. Intimidating, too—not physically, but because he assumed his various roles so naturally, each tailored to camouflage the dispassionate, manipulative brain that directed his moves from within.
The man was the superior actor, no denying that. A private contractor in an unusual craft who had gotten rich—no, richer—and who had the balls to brag about it to me. Whether he was in Dinkin’s Bay on vacation or on an assignment, I still didn’t know. The high profile he maintained suggested recreation . . . but the Sig Sauer with a sound suppressor was indicative of a hit man on a mission. The same was true, perhaps, of the way he had used me as a conduit to access Cressa Arturo. For all I knew, Cressa’s wealthy husband, or her father-in-law, or even Tomlinson or someone else I knew, might be the man’s actual target—if there was a target. Hannah Smith, though . . . that connection grated at me. I didn’t like the fact that she would spend the next three days alone in a small space with a professional manipulator whose hobby while on the road was seducing the local