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She gave him a quick peck on the lips. “You’re right on all counts except the raft part.”
“What?”
“After I pulled you in, I beached us. I’m not sure where we are.”
“You navigated through the rest of the spires? Heck, you should have been driving the whole time.”
“Dumb luck and desperation.”
“Sounds like a good name for a boat. How is it, by the way? The raft, I mean.”
“No leaks that I could find. We’re still seaworthy.”
“What time is it?”
“Just after midnight. Feel up to having a look around?”
More remarkable even than Remi having picked her way through the spires without suffering so much as a scratch was that she’d found the patch of shale beach on which the raft now rested. Measuring no more than ten feet deep and twenty feet wide, the beach narrowed in both directions to stone paths no more than two feet wide.
Once Sam was on his feet and had shaken out the cobwebs, they first set out to the south, but found the way blocked by a rock wall after only a few hundred yards. To the north they fared better, walking almost a half mile before coming across a rickety wooden stairway set into the cliff. They climbed to the top and looked around.
Here, high above the ocean’s surface, the brisk wind had driven the fog away, but far below, the ocean was still shrouded in mist. Using the compass, they got their bearings. Sam said, “Well, you either headed farther south of the estate or past it to the north. How long was it until you found the beach?”
“Twenty minutes. But I made several loops, I’m sure, so don’t count on that.”
“How was the current?”
“For the most part, choppy and almost dead on the bow.”
“Probably headed south, then.” Sam lifted the binoculars and started scanning. “Do you see the light—”
“In fact, I do. There it is,” she replied and pointed. Sam looked down her outstretched arm. “Wait for it,” Remi whispered.
A few seconds passed, then in the darkness a single white light pulsed.
“No more than two miles away,” Sam said. “We’re still in business.”
Ten minutes later they were back in the water and motoring north, taking care this time to keep within hearing distance of the waves hissing against the cliff face. It was slack tide now and the swells were slow and rolling, but still Sam and Remi were keenly aware that somewhere to their left were the spires. Ebb tide or not, neither of them wanted to risk another run through the labyrinth.
After thirty minutes of travel, Sam throttled down and let the raft coast forward. Remi looked over her shoulder, a questioning look on her face. Sam held a cupped hand to his ear and pointed off the bow and whispered, “Boat.”
The rumble of a high-powered engine at near idle echoed through the fog, seemingly crossing from left to right somewhere ahead of them. There came the squelch of a radio, then a tinny voice saying something neither Sam nor Remi could make out.
Ten seconds passed.
To their right, a spotlight glowed to life in the haze and began tracking over the water nearer the beach. After thirty seconds the light popped off and the boat began moving off, heading back the way Sam and Remi had come.
“Bondaruk’s guards?” Remi whispered.
“Or a Ukrainian navy coastal patrol,” Sam replied. “Either way, they’re someone we don’t want to run into. If it is part of Bondaruk’s security, we can take it as a good omen.”
“How’s that?”
“If we’d been spotted, they would have sent more than one boat.”
For the next hour they continued moving north along the coast while playing cat-and-mouse with the mystery patrol boat, which continued to move unseen through the fog around them, engines gurgling and spotlight occasionally glowing to life, scanning over the water, then disappearing again. Three times Sam had to use the trolling motor to circle slowly away from the panning light.
“It’s on a schedule,” Remi said. “I’ve been timing it.”