CHAPTER TWO

Bill Reichert was sleeping soundly. Morgan Hannah leaned up on one elbow and looked at him. He had a good body, although there was a little softening, a bit of extra thickness around the middle, which had developed over the three months since their first encounter. His breathing was steady, but his eyes moved frantically beneath their lids. What they were seeing? They began to flutter and gradually opened. Her own eyes had, in that unexplained subconscious way that everyone experiences, awakened him. The nipple of her breast touched his chest. He reached up and filled his hand with the other.

“You have beautiful breasts,” he said with a smile and closed his eyes.

“I’m glad you approve.” She leaned forward and made the nipple available to his mouth. He pulled it in gently. “That feels good,” she said. He kept at it, circling his tongue around the areola as he suckled her, then pulling harder, biting the nipple gently. She closed her eyes. He knew where this was leading, and there wasn’t time to get involved again even though his body was telling him differently. He let his mouth relax and his head fall back on the pillow.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Want me on top?” She was playing with him, knew he had to get back to town.

“I don’t think I could get it up if you tried,” he said, grinning at his own humor.

“Wanna bet?”

“You destroy me, Lady.”

“I’m glad,” she said. “I just wish you didn’t have to go.” It was her game. She knew she couldn’t expect more. Afternoons such as they had just shared and an occasional trip when he could come up with an iron-clad reason for going out of town were all she wanted or needed.

“Well, I do and you know I do, so quit trying to make me feel terrible,” he said as he sat up and pulled her to him. He kissed her deeply, feeling the puffiness in her lips and the heat in her mouth.

“I felt something move,” she said when he released her.

“Involuntary muscle spasm,” he said and got out of bed laughing.

Morgan watched him as he got dressed. “Not gonna shower?” she asked.

“When I get home. I don’t have time right now.”

“I think I’d know.”

“Know what?” he asked.

“If my man came in the door freshly fucked,” she teased, knowing he found it attractive. Morgan Hannah had mastered the art of being bawdy and a lady at the same time. She exuded femininity and class and used it. She could also let it go.

“Such language.”

“You bring it out in me, and thank you.”

“For what?”

“This afternoon; it was lovely,” she said, then laid back on the bed.

“You’re more than welcome. Just another service of Covington County National Bank. Many banks have branches; we have roots.”

“I like yours.” Bill Reichert felt himself blushing.

“Call you later?”

“Make it tomorrow, but not quite so early?”

Bill Reichert had become a different man over the last two years. He no longer discussed banking as though it were his sacred mission. He was more confident and self-assured. It was a quality Isabel Reichert could have admired ten years earlier; now it was suspicious. For years they had been reluctant partners. No, not partners, she was just an appendage, but, one way or another, he was in for a surprise. She would see to it.

The charade had gone on long enough. The few women friends she considered close had asked time and time again why she put up with Bill, why she didn’t leave him and take him for everything he owned. She certainly had motive. She never had a real answer. Pride maybe? Covington was a small town. People had gossiped about her marrying below her class. Revenge? Possibly. She did enjoy the times she made him sweat, though they were rare. She had accused herself of weakness, which she hoped wasn’t true. But, she had to admit, she had done nothing but look the other way.

She had a difficult time accepting that for all those years there was, perhaps, hope for the marriage. That a part of her, despite everything, still felt love for Bill Reichert, the most illogical and indefensible of motives. The last few months had changed that. Not because of the screwing around, but because he appeared truly happy, something she had never seen before. She could not allow that. It negated any rational excuses she could find.

Isabel spent the afternoon searching the house for a clue to her husband’s behavior. She knew about his lover out on Sangaree Island. The woman was of no consequence, just the latest in a long chain of affairs. With Bill, it was any time, any place, anybody. There was something else though, something bigger. She trusted her intuitions. There would be no rest until every possibility was checked and eliminated.

At four o’clock she went to the bank. Bill was out as she expected, but, as always, ever covering his backside, he had told his secretary that he would be back within the hour. After some pleasant, meaningless chit-chat, she went into his office ostensibly to make some calls. Isabel knew it irritated the secretary when she acted proprietary about her husband’s office— hallowed ground.

After closing the door for privacy and taking a cursory glance around the room, she went to the telephone on his desk and hit the recall button. She recognized the number: Charley Clay, their attorney. Nothing of consequence there; Bill spoke with him regularly on bank business. It was a good trade-off. All of their personal legal matters were handled without fee in return for the bank’s business, as well as mutual referrals. Bill had received offers from larger banks, but always brought up Charley Clay as one of the perks of being president of a locally-owned bank, regardless of its size.

There was nothing on the desk. It was clean, not one piece of paper, and the drawers were locked, as was the five foot tall mahogany filing cabinet. It had been custom made when he was elevated to president, the youngest in the bank’s history. Even the waste basket was empty. “You’ve surely changed, you son-of-a-bitch,” she muttered as she looked around the room once again. There was nothing to indicate that the space was even used. Isabel had never seen his office so pristine.

There was nothing to be accomplished and it frustrated her. He wasn’t that perfect. Nothing had changed financially as far as she could tell, no unusual withdrawals, no liquidating of assets. In fact, she had noticed on the last statement that there weren’t as many checks being written on their joint account as usual.

Isabel Reichert felt like the only kid in class from whom everyone else was keeping a secret and laughing behind her back. It was humiliating. She left the office in a fury though she tried not to show it. At a loss for ideas, she got in her car and started toward home, a large antebellum structure two blocks off Main Street in Covington’s historic district. It was more realistically their house; it hadn’t been home in a long time. There was no alternative for her, nothing else to do.

At times Covington itself felt as claustrophobic as the house in which she lived. The town closed up after nine o’clock in the evening, even on Fridays. There were a couple of small bars down along the river, but the clientele was so consistent, they were like private clubs. No one bothered someone unusual coming in; they just didn’t acknowledge them. The town existed within its own cocoon, untouched. It’s size was not indicative of its power. It was the landlord, and the residents were the tenants, regardless of their station in the community. Yet, it did embrace its tenants, held them close, gave them a comfort zone of familiarity that allowed them to become an integral part of the whole.

The houses along Main Street, grandiose, historic mansions, columned and white, looked out over the Chester River. Huge and ancient live oaks, gnarled and heavily draped with shrouds of Spanish Moss, lined the river’s edge. Coming across the Marion Bridge from Matthew’s Island, seeing the picturesque town, the adjacent yacht basin crowded with cruising class sailboats and the sentinel manses, one could easily imagine driving into a calendar photograph.

As she pulled into the driveway, small droplets of water began to collect on the windshield of her car. It would be another night like the night before and the night before that. Her husband was out fucking and she was left to her own devices.

She went in the house, left her bag and briefcase in the foyer and went to the liquor cabinet. It was becoming a ritual. Tonight, she decided, would be different. She would consider possibilities.

By the time Sam Larkin finished cleaning up his work site, putting his tools away and stowing the wood scraps in a barrel under the soon-to-be bedroom deck, only a razor-thin edge of the top of the sun was visible, sinking fast, as if it were being extinguished in the brackish waters of the marsh.

It had been a long day, but the euphoria of physical labor and visual accomplishment subjected any exhaustion the long hours created. He went to the kitchen, opened a beer and began putting together a dinner that could cook while he showered. A chicken breast covered in salsa, sliced bell peppers, onions and artichoke hearts were put in a cast iron skillet rubbed with oil, covered and put on low heat on the top of the stove. He cooked it slow so the salsa would burn and caramelize on the chicken. He put long-grain rice on to steam. Sam covered spears of chainey briar, a local wild asparagus he had cut a few days before, with water. It would be ready to cook when he got out of the shower.

Larkin ate on the deck. It was the best time of his day. He looked out over the marsh and silently thanked Providence or whatever power brought him to this place. The sky was beginning to darken; there would be rain before the night was over, but if he were asked, he would predict sun for the morning.

After dinner, he was sitting in the sun room sketching when the telephone rang. He looked at the wall clock. It was close to nine, an unusual time for anyone he knew to be calling.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Larkin?” It was female and the formal address precluded anyone he knew well.

“Yes?” his voice was quiet and resonant, not an affected telephone voice that many people use to hide their insecurity.

“This is Karen Chaney.” Pause “Environmental?” His warning systems went on alert. The earlier visit by the law enforcement officers had been hiding in a corner of his mind ever since they left. “Out at your place with Ray Breslin this afternoon?”

“Yes?”

“I hope I didn’t disturb you. I realize it’s late and you don’t know me at all. I’m sure this is presumptuous.” She was talking a mile a minute without striking a period. Nervous, which made him nervous.

“Not at all. How can I help you, Officer?” Give away nothing. Calm. Unemotional.

“Karen?” she said, offering him the familiarity of a first-name.

“Okay, Karen. What can I do for you?” Yes, she was presumptuous.

“Nothing major and please don’t misinterpret this, but I’m going to be out in the boat on my own tomorrow and wondered if you’d like to come along? Officer Breslin showed me places, but I’d really like to get familiarization from a different perspective. From someone who lives in the area I’m working.” There was silence on the line. “I thought maybe since it’s a Saturday you could help,” she added.

Larkin weighed the possibilities. Spending the day on a boat with Karen Chaney was not the worst of all possible prospects. Perhaps it would put his paranoia about the earlier visit to rest.

“Sounds like it might be fun,” he said. “It would be good to be in a real boat for a change. I guess you saw what I drive.” Larkin’s boat was an old, inboard-outboard that on the outside appeared to have seen much better days. Only he knew what was on the inside. “Tell you what, I’ll ice down some beer in the cooler, and—”

“Whoa!” she interrupted. “We’re gonna be in a state boat.” He stifled a laugh. Then she laughed, too. “Guess you got me on that one, Sam. May I call you Sam?”

“You already did, and I’m calling you Karen.”

“’Bout nine?”

“I’ll see you on the dock.”

“If I can find it. Good night. And thanks.” He liked the sound of her voice and didn’t have a doubt she would find his dock.

“Good night, Karen.”

The day would require some caution. Questions about Karen Chaney rolled around in his mind. It was curious that the primary officer in the area was being replaced by a woman. He also wondered why Ray Breslin had given the new kid on the block the familiarization tour; he didn’t work the area. Most puzzling was she had called. Her excuse didn’t wash in his mind. There had been few women and fewer friends in his life since he arrived in Covington. A couple of casual encounters, nothing more. He wasn’t looking for a relationship; life was quite good as it was. However, Karen Chaney, Law Enforcement Officer, might prove interesting.

When the rain began pelting the glass in the skylights above his head, he was just finishing a sketch of a shrimper pulling in his drag nets. He put the work down and walked out the sliding doors onto the deck. There was a four-foot overhang from the peaked roof that allowed him, without getting wet, to stand and watch the rain cover the marsh and the creek. The overhang was a requirement when he designed the house. There was no music more sweet to him than the sound of rain on water, a singular rent in the night silence.

He knew where each species of bird and animal would go in such weather and what they would do for cover and protection. It was a life study for him. He visualized them in the landscape he was seeing and knew that they were safe. There would be no wars on this night.

They were listening and watching even as he was doing.

The rain would stop before morning. Years in the outdoors provided immutable insights to nature and its ways. Insights into the ways of man were a different ball game. He stepped out from under the overhang and let the rain take its pleasure with him, the prickles of cold water like so many tiny electrical shocks on his face and arms brought to his skin a new freshness and washed his mind clean. Without stars and with the moon buried opaquely behind the low cloud cover, the darkness beyond Sam Larkin’s deck was dense and impenetrable. An absence of light.

He took off his clothes and let the rain bathe his entire body. It was a cleansing he required on occasion. He didn’t know how long he stood there—oblivious to everything except the feeling of the rain on his skin—before the chill of the night air prompted him to pick up his clothes and go back into the house. He took them to the laundry room, dropped them in the washer, dried himself briskly with a coarse towel and went to bed. There would be no hot shower to wash off the softness of the rain.

Turner Lockett had just finished eating a fried baloney sandwich and was opening his fourth Budweiser when he heard footsteps outside his trailer. He was sitting in the threadbare easy chair facing the small television set which was on but at very low volume. It was the way he watched it. Too much volume and you could miss something.

Something like he just heard. Footsteps. Even though it was raining. He prided himself on having an animal’s hearing, vision and instincts. He considered himself closely linked to the animals. It was the way he survived.

Footsteps were not a sound that he welcomed. Living where he did, there was no reason for anyone to be at his trailer at midnight unless it was Jared Barnes or someone come to do him harm. His shotgun was in a corner on the far side of the room next to the table where he reloaded shotgun shells and concocted fishing lures. A skinner’s knife lay on the counter next to the TV and a piece of lead pipe two and a half feet long with black electrician’s tape around one end and a cap on the other lay next to the chair in which he was sitting. Once he had started accumulating money, he made up his mind never to be more than arm’s length from a weapon. If someone did come to do him harm, they would pay for it.

The rap on the door was firm, accompanied by Jared Barnes drunken voice.

“Turner? You in there?” Barnes pulled on the door handle. “It’s me, Jared.”

“I know who the hell it is,” Lockett responded as he moved to unlatch the door. When he opened it, Barnes, disheveled and wet, was sitting on the steps. “Jared, what the fuck are you doing wandering around out here in the rain?”

“Come out to see you. Come by last night, but you wudn’t home. Waited till near ’bout twelve o’clock. Where was you? I thought maybe you’d gone to see one of them girls on Wallace Street, but your truck was here. Cain’t go see ‘em by boat.” He giggled. “You got anything to drink?”

Lockett reached down, grabbed him under the armpits and lifted him into a standing position.

“Come on, Jared. Yeah, I got something to drink.”

“Not beer. Cain’t drink no beer. Makes me burp and fart. Why ‘on’t we go on in to Wallace Street. I could use me a little pussy.” He laughed. “Course, don’t know what I’d do with it. Not tonight leastways.”

“I hope you ain’t plannin’ on spendin’ the night here, you sorry son-of-a-bitch. I was just gettin’ ready to turn in.”

“Ain’t gone stay long. Jus’ wanted to check an’ make sure you was all right. I come by last night.”

“You already said that.”

“Oh yeah. Where wuz you?” Barnes asked with a sneaky smile. “You wuz out doin’ somethin.”

“Settin’ a trotline. You want that drink? I picked up some good last week.”

“All of it’s good.”

Lockett went into the kitchen area and came back with a clear glass jar filled with colorless liquid. He handed it to Barnes, who held it up to the light.

“I bet this come from Georgia. Clear as a bell. They got the secret over there.” He removed the two-piece canning lid, raised it to his lips, took two big swallows, leaned back and yelled.

“Hoowhee! That is good stuff! Smooth as a new mama’s milk.”

“Like it?”

“Man, whatchu talkin’ about. Gone have me another.” He lifted the jar.

“You had your drink now….”

“Yeah, but you ain’t answered my question.”

“Ain’t goin’ to, Jared. And you best keep your mind in your own bidness.” Lockett was staring at the floor. It was time. Everything was in jeopardy. It had worried him for weeks and he was tired of worrying. If Barnes started shooting off his mouth, it would all be over. The sweet life would be gone. The others would let Turner Lockett hang. Lawyers and doctors and such as they were, they were smart enough to cover themselves; ol’ Turner wasn’t and he knew it.

“We friends ain’t we, Turner? Cain’t you share what you got goin’? I know it’s somethin’ and I’m pretty sure I know what. Hell, you can trust me, man.”

“Time for you to go, Jared.” Lockett moved toward him. “Come on. Get up.” He reached out to help the man.

“You throwin’ me out?”

“Sure as hell I am. Now come on. You come back when you ain’t been drinkin’ and maybe I’ll tell you all about it. Might make you rich.” Barnes smiled.

“I knew you had somethin’ goin’. Knew it. Smugglin’, ain’t it? Bet it is. I’ll be beholdin’, Turner, swear I will. Get me outta this place. Go somewhere nice. Hell, we could go together.” The man’s breath was sour; Lockett could feel his stomach turning. He felt like he was going to puke, but it wasn’t because of the bad breath. He got Barnes down the two steps and into the yard.

“We gone live on high ground, Turn.” He was laughing. “Yessir, high ground. Me and you.”

He turned toward Lockett just as the lead pipe was winging toward his head. He never felt the blow. At the last second, Lockett closed his eyes, but he heard the dull thud and felt flesh and bone give way as the pipe made contact with Barnes head. He also felt a warm, liquid spray hit his face.

Barnes was down. He had done it. It was over. Then he heard the moan and knew it wasn’t finished. The baloney sandwich was coming up and he couldn’t stop it. He bent over and let go, gagging. When the heaving stopped, he looked down at Jared Barnes and raised the pipe above his head. It was too late to stop; the road to hell was already paved.

Lockett took off the man’s clothes and dragged the body down to the boat. Between the alligators, gar and other predators there would be nothing left of Jared Barnes to find. He went back to the clothes, put them in the fire hole and covered them with wet ashes. They would be burned in the morning. He got some baling wire and a couple of cinder blocks from under the trailer and took them to the boat.

Lockett was beginning to feel sick again and he wanted to cry, wanted someone to hold him, forgive him and tell him it was all right. Wanted to feel safe. He was shaking uncontrollably, like a seizure. He felt his bladder go, looked down at the spreading wet spot on the front of his pants and sobbed. Barnes brought it on himself. His pain turned to anger. Barnes forced him. Thoughts were cascading through his brain with the speed of a spinning kaleidoscope. He couldn’t focus, couldn’t remember untying the boat or moving out into the creek, but that’s where he was with a naked body in the bow. He headed inland into the backwaters.

Morning broke bright and sunny, as Sam suspected it would. By seven o’clock, the sun was already beginning to remove the night chill, and, according to the last weather report, it would reach the mid-eighties before day’s end. Pulling on his shorts and putting on his shoes for his morning run, he was looking forward to the day ahead.

After stretching out his leg muscles against the steps that led down from the entrance to his house, he began his morning routine. The run was painful until heavy sweat began to run into his eyes and soak the tee shirt he was wearing. From that point on, his rhythm became smooth and fluid. He seemed to glide just above the surface of the pavement, barely making contact. A feeding deer, grazing by the side of the road, raised its head as Larkin passed but didn’t move, just looked. After two and a half miles, he slowed to a cool-down pace as he approached his house. Fifty crunches, twenty minutes of light lifting, and he would be ready for a hot shower and coffee.

He was finishing a bowl of fresh fruit when he heard the twin Mercs in the distance. It was almost nine. Karen Chaney was punctual. He took a last sip of coffee, lit a cigarette, which always seemed hypocritical after a workout, took several drags, extinguished it and went into the kitchen to fill two traveling mugs of hot coffee before she docked. He returned to the deck and saw the Cobia moving up the creek. She cut the engines to slow forty yards out and eased the sleek craft into the floating platform. He was impressed.

“Good morning,” Karen Chaney called out as she jumped on the dock and tied the boat off. She was shining. The sun caught the blonde of her hair and blended it, like so many gold strands, with pins of light on the water. Instead of her uniform, she was wearing denim shorts and a navy blue sweat shirt, with the collar of a lighter shirt exposed around her neck. Sam waved from the deck and started down the stairs.

“Good morning,” he said as he approached her. He handed her one of the traveling mugs. “Didn’t know if you used cream and sugar, so I put in a little bit of each.”

“Thanks.” Her voice held a note of surprise.

“Got a good morning,” Sam said as he looked over the boat. “You people sure know how to travel.” The Cobia wasn’t like any other state boat he had ever seen in this area.

“This is a loaner; I’m sure I’ll get a standard issue in the next few days.” Karen stepped back into the boat. “You drive. You know where you’re going.”

“You’ll have to tell me what you want to see. I don’t know where Breslin took you.”

“He didn’t show me much of anything except fishing docks, waterside bars and Sam Larkin’s place. Other than that, we just rode around. In circles, I think. I don’t believe he was much impressed with me. As an officer, I mean.”

“How much time do you have?” he asked as he untied the bowline and stepped aboard.

“All day,” she answered then felt chagrined. “I don’t mean you have to spend all day showing me around. I just meant there’s no rush.” Larkin gave her a smile. Serene, confident, reassuring with just a touch of pleasant condescension at what she had said. “I don’t want to ruin your day.” He enjoyed her nervousness.

“I won’t let you ruin even part of it,” he said. “Been a long time since I’ve driven a boat like this, and there’s nothing better than spending a sunny day on the water.”

“Just let me know when you’ve had enough; I don’t want to intrude.”

“You won’t,” Larkin said and hit the starter. The deep-throated sound of the engines energized the whole craft. He eased away from the dock and out into the channel. After what he said about the boat, Chaney sat down and held on to the rail, expecting him to go full throttle when they got to deep water. Instead, he accelerated only enough to slowly move to the main creek from which his tributary originated.

There was little talk in the beginning. Larkin took her through connecting branches and small water courses, pointing out landmarks he thought would be helpful to her, told her who lived in the ramshackle houses and trailers, including Turner Lockett’s, laying half-hidden in the waterside growth. He also showed her Cobb Palace, a plantation house built at the turn of the seventeenth century, the house a shock of white amid the natural colors that surrounded it. It was huge, with smooth columns, a large gallery and a massive lawn leading to the water.

“Did Breslin bring you here?” Sam asked.

“He pointed in this direction and said it was over here, but we didn’t come in close enough to see it. He doesn’t seem to have much use for blue bloods as he called them.”

“Not many locals do, except the other blue bloods, but they do like the money they spend. It’s not much different than anywhere else. Even people who have lived here for twenty years are still considered outsiders by the insiders.” Karen Chaney laughed. “I’m going to take you by the Sangaree Island Marina in a few minutes; I assume he didn’t take you there either. Out in this area, it’s the place to go if you have trouble.”

“That gives me two places,” she said with a cautious grin. “He did point out how to get there, but he said I probably wouldn’t have much cause to patrol there. I think he was anxious to get rid of me.”

“Uh-huh.” Ray Breslin’s intelligence dropped a few points in Larkin’s estimation.

The marina was different from anything else she had seen out in her territory. It breathed wealth and pretensions of wealth. Gingerbread, three-story houses barely one room wide, painted in pastel greens, yellows and blues with white scrollwork trim, a marine store, restaurant and bar, gas pumps, a large parking area and dry dock buildings formed a commercial compound lying against the water. It was a piece of upper-class Florida retirement dropped, out of place, in the natural lowcountry environment that surrounded it.

“This is the poor side of the island,” Sam said. “Houses on the beach are much larger, a million or more. You hungry?”

“Not yet. I brought some lunch in case we were out that long.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Least I could do with you giving up your Saturday morning,” she said. “This is quite a place.”

“Nice to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live here.”

“From the looks of it, I might.” Sam turned to look at her and headed back out the creek into the main channel.

“Where to now?” he asked.

“You’re the guide.” Chaney leaned back and felt the full sun on her face. It was actually hot when they were moving slowly.

“So what did Breslin tell you about the lowcountry?”

“Not much of anything. He talked about himself mostly, what a tough job it was to patrol these waters, how to catch illegal shrimpers, and the proper procedure for arresting drunks during Water Weeks. Oh, and I forgot, some people I’m not supposed to arrest.”

They spent another hour traversing the creeks and waterways that crossed and re-crossed and intertwined like a new hatch of snakes in a nest. Names such as Wineau, Palachocola, Utchee and Coftacheque rolled off Larkin’s tongue and then around in Karen Chaney’s head. They were as confusing and unidentifiable in their locations as they were to pronounce.

As he maneuvered the craft through marshlands with no apparent landmarks, years of experience showed in the casual, off-handed manner with which he chose his paths. By one o’clock, without warning, and miraculously in her eyes, he brought them back to his dock.

“Now how about that lunch?” he asked when the boat was secured.

“I’m starving,” she answered and retrieved a cooler from the stern.

After a quick tour of the house, Sam opened a couple of Coronas and pushed a wedge of fresh lime down the neck of each, as Karen Chaney watched. He escorted her to the deck to sit while he got place mats for the table. When that was done, he went back into the kitchen, put the sandwiches, potato salad, chips and a small jar of olives she had brought on a tray and carried them out to the deck.

“You go fancy, don’t you?” she asked when he joined her.

“No, just civilized,” he said. “I once made a pact with myself that I would never eat another meal without at least the minor graces.”

“You’re a tough one to figure, Sam.”

“I hope,” he said, unloading the tray and putting the plates and food on the table.

“It is truly beautiful here, she said.

“That’s why I came.”

“Not to teach school? Breslin said you taught at the high school.”

“Didn’t plan on that, but things don’t always go the way you plan. I put too much money in the house and had to do something to put grits on the table. Teaching’s okay. Gives me my summers.”

“You don’t complain much, do you?”

“You just said it: it’s beautiful here. How could I complain?”

“Most people have something to complain about or they come up with something.”

“I’m not most people.”

Karen shook her head. “That’s for sure,” she said. “Seems funny, I’ve been with you all morning, and I don’t know anything about you.”

“It’s kind of hard to talk with two Mercs blasting away. And there’s really not a lot to know.”

“I find that hard to believe,” she said with a skeptical grin. Sam shrugged his shoulders. “As you said, you seem to have a good life.”

“I do. If I didn’t, I’d change it.” He took a bite of his sandwich. “I appreciate the lunch,” he said. “What about you? Where did you come from, and how did you wind up here?”

“I’m from Alabama, but I’ve worked in Florida. I wasn’t coastal in either place, and that’s what I wanted. This seemed like a good place.”

“Pretty tough duty to get, I’d imagine. How’d you manage?”

“Friends,” she said. The vague answer bothered him.

They finished eating and the conversation lagged. Although any day out on the water was a day of contentment for him, this one had been a better than he expected. As far as he was concerned, they could have stayed on his deck the rest of the afternoon without talking; it wouldn’t have bothered him in the least.

She rose from her chair and looked at him. “I guess I’d better get back to my little rented hovel and see what I can remember to write down. Let me help you clean this up.”

“No need. I’ll take care of it. I enjoyed this morning.”

“I’m glad you did.”

Sam followed her down the steps to the dock.

“We’ll have to do it again sometime. I’m sure there’s a lot more to learn.”

“More than you or I will ever know,” he said. “It’d be my pleasure.”

He stood on the dock and watched her head the boat back out to the creek.