The breeze from across the sound was soft with humidity, tangy with brine. In the water below, two crabs fought for supremacy, swinging claws like switchblades in the murk of the pilings. Henry watched by the glow of the light at the end of the dock. Without it they would have been standing in darkness. The new moon was a mere sliver, and the only other illumination came from a distant thunderhead, popping like a flashbulb out over the Atlantic.
Anna gazed off toward the sea. She was quiet now that they had reached the point of departure for their final destination. Somewhere out in the blackness was Audra’s island, and from across the chop they now heard the rising whine of an outboard engine, right on schedule.
“Do you think that’s the boat?”
“Don’t know why anyone else would be out there at this hour.”
“God, these mosquitoes!” Anna brushed at her arms.
“Maybe that’s what we’re hearing. The mother of all mosquitoes.”
Then they saw the running lights as the boat appeared from around a stand of saw grass. The man at the helm wore black jeans and a black T-shirt. Given the momentous feel of the occasion, Henry half expected to see his face smudged with antiglare blacking, like a commando on a night raid. His hair was slicked back, his muscles chiseled. More bodyguard than waterman by all appearances. The boat was no-frills, about fifteen feet with a small cuddy cabin and an open rear deck. The boatman looped a line around a piling but didn’t bother to tie up.
“Hop aboard,” he said. “There at the stern.”
Anna went first, Henry followed. They joined him at the wheel, partly out of curiosity, since he was their first human contact with Audra’s insular little world.
“How long is the ride?” Henry asked.
The man shrugged, turning the wheel as he set his course.
“Maybe ten minutes. Light chop tonight. Nothing to really slow us down.”
“Do you work directly for Ms. Vollmer?” Anna asked.
He teeth showed in the darkness.
“Not to be rude, but I’m not paid to answer questions.”
The teeth flashed again and he looked straight ahead. Henry headed back to the stern and sat along the port side, letting the wind scour off the last of the bugs. Anna joined him.
“Well, that was pleasant,” she said in a lowered voice.
“I guess Audra’s people operate by the ‘need to know’ doctrine.”
“Old habits die hard.”
They settled in for the ride. Henry thought he noticed something glide beneath the hull, like a ray or a large fish, but it could have been a trick of shadows from the running lights. He hadn’t realized until now how cut off they were going to feel. By daylight it probably would have been quite pleasant, with views in all directions and other boats within sight. Maybe Audra had insisted they arrive after sunset to make an impression. If so, she’d succeeded.
“Doesn’t this strike you as odd?” he asked. “A powerful woman like her, holing up like this? It’s usually men who do that. Howard Hughes, Salinger. Charles Foster Kane.”
“Emily Dickinson, Greta Garbo. And Kane was a movie character. Next you’ll accuse her of being a dotty old cat lady.”
They huddled closer on the seat as the boat rounded a point. Just ahead was a lighted dock. Beyond it, a row of trees and then a white clapboard house on stilts. It was of modest size, well lit and well maintained.
“Not as gloomy-looking as I feared,” Anna said.
“Still…”
“What?”
“This whole business of having us arrive after dark. Look, I know you think I’m being melodramatic, but promise me one thing. If she shows as much interest in the first tape as she does in the one about Gilley, do me a favor and pretend we never listened to it.”
“Why? Because that’ll mean she must be Tempest?”
“Just humor me, will you? The less she knows about what we know, at least on the topic of the Pond, the better.”
The boatman deftly secured the bowline to the dock. They scrambled ashore just as a brindled cat darted in front of them and disappeared into the night.
“Don’t say a word!” Anna hissed.
A welcoming committee of mosquitoes arrived. The house was eighty yards ahead, across a trim lawn via a slatted boardwalk with footlights. Beyond were several outbuildings. One was as big as a barn, with concrete walls and a pitched roof of corrugated metal.
“This is quite the compound.”
“She has to have somewhere to keep all the cat food,” Anna said, but Henry was too nervous to laugh.
They climbed the steps to a screened porch. Henry was a little surprised Audra wasn’t there to greet them.
“Maybe she’s an invalid,” Anna said, as if reading his thoughts.
At the door, he gestured for Anna to do the honors. She took a deep breath and knocked.
Brisk footsteps. The rattle of a knob. The door opened onto another hired hand in black, except this one wore a sport jacket with a bulge, undoubtedly from a handgun. Henry wondered if Anna noticed.
“Anna and Henry?” the man inquired.
“That’s us,” she said. “And you are?”
“Come with me.”
He led them through a modestly furnished living room with a telescope on a tripod, aimed through a bay window toward the sound. They turned up a short hallway where he knocked at a heavy oaken door. A woman’s voice answered from within.
“Show them in, Lloyd.”
Lloyd opened the door and stood aside.