Tate looked down at the crude map he’d drawn earlier in the day and stared off into the darkness. The paths weren’t marked this far from the lodge, but the landmark—and the turnoff he was looking for—was a palm tree with most of the top sheared off. In the dark, though, nothing looked familiar.
He stopped the cart once, got out, and played his flashlight over a palm tree, but on closer examination, he discovered it was not the right tree. He heard a noise on the path behind him. Moonpie whimpered. Tate ruffled the fur on his neck. “It’s okay, buddy, probably just an armadillo bumping around out here in the dark like the rest of us.”
He got back in the cart and traveled another five hundred yards before spotting a palm tree he was sure was the right one. The flashlight confirmed it, so he veered hard right when the road forked.
“Gettin’ close, buddy,” he told the dog. He was so close to the water now, he could hear waves lapping on the shore.
Finally, maybe half a mile down the path, he sighted the strip of his own white T-shirt that he’d tied to the branch of a hunk of driftwood on the left side of the path. He stopped the cart, got out, and stretched.
From out of the darkness he heard a faint humming noise, then nothing. Moonpie whimpered and got out of the cart, his tail raised as though he were flushing a quail.
“Stay, boy,” Tate told him, grasping the dog’s collar. He took a few steps away from the cart and played the flashlight over the path, but could see nothing, except a couple of tree toads engaged in what looked to him to be toad-humping.
“Nothing there but a couple horny toads,” he told the dog, grinning at his own pun. “Come on, let’s see if she’s still here.”
Tate walked to the edge of the path, to the point where the oyster shells seemed to merge with marsh grass. He felt mud squishing beneath his sneakers, then water seeping up to his ankles. Holding the flashlight over his head, he shone it in the direction of the marsh.
“Jackpot!” he said smugly.
There, snagged in the trunk of a dead tree, was an old aluminum johnboat, maybe fourteen feet long, that he’d spotted bobbing in the water earlier in the day at high tide. From where he’d stood then, it had appeared that the boat was snagged on something beneath the water’s surface. And now, at the ebb tide, he could see that, yes, the boat was still there, and, yes, its bow appeared to be wedged into the crotch of an old dead tree on a sandbar.
He took a deep breath and looked back at Moonpie, who sat very straight, looking out at the water. “You stay here,” he told the dog. “Don’t let those toads steal our cart.”
“Let me give you a hand there, old buddy.” A woman’s voice came out of the darkness, startling him so that he dropped the flashlight into the water.
“Oopsie,” the voice came again.
He whirled around but could see nothing in the now total darkness.
“Dammit, Reggie, is that you?”
“Yup.”
“You made me drop my damned flashlight.”
“So I see.”
He fished around in the knee-deep water but, finding nothing, let out a stream of colorful expletives.
“You always talk that way around an impressionable dog?” Gina called.
“If Moonpie could talk, he’d say a lot worse,” Tate yelled. “Dammit, this was my one chance to grab that boat.”
“You could come back in the morning,” she suggested.
“It’ll be high tide in the morning. I’d have to swim out—and that’s only if it’s still here. It’s snagged on something, and I’m afraid it’ll float away by then.”
“If you had another light, say right now, could you get to it?”
“Hell, yeah.”
A tiny beam of light hit him in the face. He put his hands in front of his eyes to shield them.
“Great,” he said. “How about bringing the flashlight out here to me?”
“In the water?”
“It’s only knee-deep.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Afraid you’ll drown?”
“I don’t like snakes. Or alligators. This place looks like it could be crawling with both.”
He sighed. “If I come back up there, you’ll give me the flashlight, right?”
“We can discuss it.”
He muttered another string of colorful phrases, but slogged slowly back through the marsh muck until he reached the shell bank.
“Give me a hand up,” he said.
She considered it. “You wouldn’t pull me down into the mud, would you?”
“The thought hadn’t entered my mind,” he lied.
“I’ll bet.”
She stuck her hand out, and helped him up the bank.
“Hi,” she said.
“You followed me here.”
“No, I was just out for a midnight joyride and bumped into you and your dog out here in the middle of nowhere.”
He took the flashlight out of her hand and flashed it in her face. Her eyes were huge, her face flushed. She had a loony grin on her face that was most un-Reggie-like.
“Are you on some kind of dope or something?”
She blinked. “It’s not dope. I was trying to stay up so I could research and get myself ready to whip your butt tomorrow, but I was tired, so Lisa gave me a can of her Red Bull.”
“Red Bull. That’s all?”
“Well. It’s sort of a college cocktail the kids all drink when they’re studying for exams. Lisa calls it a Raging Bull.”
“What else is in it?”
“NoDoz.”
“NoDoz and Red Bull? Jesus H. Christ on a crutch, Reggie. That’s a heart attack in a hurry. You mean to say you drank some?”
“Just one can.”
He shook his head. “I want to beat you fair and square, but I can’t do it if you’re dead.”
“I’m fine,” she insisted. “Finer than fine.”
“You’re amped out of your gourd. You just up and followed me out here in the dead of night? Didn’t even put the headlights on in the golf cart?”
“I wanted to see where you were going. Find out what you were up to. And now I have.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “What do you intend to do now?”
She gave it some thought. “I’ll hold the flashlight and shine it on the boat, while you go out and drag it back here.”
“And then?”
“And then tomorrow, we’ll go out in it and catch some nice fresh fish.”
“We? No. No way. It’s my boat. I found it, and I’m gonna go out there and drag it back up here. And that’ll be the end of it.”
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll just take my itsy-bitsy old flashlight and go home.” She grabbed the flashlight back and turned to leave.
“Wait,” he called. “Let’s see if we can figure this out.”
“We?”
He swore quietly. “You and me. I’ll play fair. I swear.”