Page 34

I slept in fits and turns, in part because of the excitement I couldn’t quell and in part because of my earlier nap.

At a little after six in the morning, I got up, feeling bleary-eyed but not sleepy.

I pulled on shorts and a fresh T-shirt, slipped my spare key into my pocket, and made a cup of coffee that I then carried downstairs so I could let Newt out to do his morning thing.

When I opened the back door, Newt dashed outside and trotted over to his favorite bush, where he promptly lifted his leg.

It amazed me that the bush was still alive, considering how many times Newt had christened it.

I stepped outside, but before letting the door close behind me, I gave my shorts pocket a reassuring pat to make sure the key was in there. I’d locked myself out before and knew it was no fun. It would be even less so now, because I didn’t have a cell phone to call Devon or Rita with so they could come and rescue me with their keys.

It was a beautiful morning, the air crisp with the first hints of autumn even though it was only late August.

I sipped my coffee and watched as Newt zigzagged through the small field behind the store in search of mice, moles, and voles.

He’d caught the critters a time or two, and had his vision been better, I suspect he’d have caught a whole lot more.

As it was, he hunted by scent and kept his nose low to the ground as he scoured the field.

After stopping to lift his leg a couple more times, he finally did a squat.

I kept a roll of poop bags in an old coffee can next to a small trash receptacle out back for just this purpose, but when I went to grab a bag, I remembered that I’d used the last one and hadn’t put out a new roll. I unlocked the door to go back inside, and Newt dashed past me. I grabbed a new roll of bags from a small cabinet by the door and told Newt to stay, tossing him a treat from a box on top of the cabinet. While Newt scarfed down his dog cookie, I went back outside, letting the door close and lock behind me.

After removing one of the bags from the roll, I dropped the rest into the coffee can and walked over to where Newt had done his business.

As I bent down to pick it up, I felt a shift in the air near me that made my hackles rise.

Newt’s hackles must have been at attention, too, because I heard him growl and then bark from inside the store.

Before I could holler out a reassurance to him or return to the door, I was hit by something big and knocked to the ground.

A second later a hand gripped one of my arms and yanked me to my feet as a dark hood was pulled over my head.

Just before the hood blocked my sight, I glimpsed a pair of white athletic shoes with bare legs above, and long black slacks with scuffed black shoes like a cop might wear. Something hard and cold jabbed into my ribs.

A low male voice spoke close to my ear, his breath hot even through the fabric of the hood.

“I have a gun and I’ll use it if you don’t cooperate.

Understand?”

“Yes,”

I hissed, adrenaline and fear making my breaths come so hard and fast that I sucked a little of the mask material in with each one.

I nodded to cement my answer just in case my verbal response had been muffled by the cloth.

The hand on my arm turned me, nearly making me trip over my own feet, and then it urged me forward.

Another slight turn and then I was shoved, my upper body landing hard on what felt like cheap carpet.

Someone grabbed my feet, and my body was hoisted inside a vehicle of some kind.

I heard a door slide shut and latch behind me, and another door somewhere near my head opened and closed.

The engine of whatever vehicle I was in came to life, and we started moving.

Off in the distance, I heard Newt’s frantic barking coming from inside the store.

I wanted to cry for him.

He didn’t like being apart from me, and I could only imagine how upset and worried he was.

He wasn’t the only one.

What the hell was going on?

The hood over my head came off suddenly, and I had to blink several times at the unexpected onslaught of light.

I pushed myself up into a sitting position and looked around.

I was in the cargo area of a van, and I scooted back to the sidewall behind me.

Across from me, sitting on the floor and leaning against the other sidewall, was a dark-haired, tanned man wearing a uniform and the scuffed shoes I’d briefly seen after the hood had been put over my head.

I studied the uniform, trying to figure out where this cop was from and then saw his badge.

He wasn’t a regular cop; he was a warden with the DNR, the Department of Natural Resources, the agency responsible for the enforcement of fishing and hunting licenses. He saw me staring at him and his hand moved in his lap, drawing my attention to the pistol he held there.

“You would do good to behave because if you don’t, this will be your end,” he said.

The fact that he’d removed my hood and let me see his face suggested that my end was coming regardless.

They just needed a good place to dump my body.

“We’re going to be at the marina in a minute,”

the man went on, “and you’re going to board our boat like a good little girl.

Understand?”

I nodded.

Maybe that was why they’d removed my hood.

They couldn’t very well walk a hooded person through the marina and onto a boat without attracting attention.

Getting on a boat also answered the question of where they planned to dump my body.

The deep, cold waters of Lake Michigan would provide the perfect solution, particularly if they weighted me down.

I squeezed my eyes closed, hoping like hell that they would kill me before they dumped me overboard. A gunshot sounded like a much nicer way to die than rapidly sinking to the lake bottom and drowning.

“Can I ask where you’re taking me?”

I asked DNR Guy, suppressing a shiver.

“You’ll know soon enough.

Behave and you’ll be fine.”

I didn’t believe that for a second, yet I let his words cheer me for the briefest instant.

Then reality kicked in.

This was no time for complacency.

If I didn’t think of something soon, odds were I’d be dead before lunchtime.

A thought came to me then, and before I had a chance to calculate the wisdom of what I was about to say, the words burst out of me.

“You killed Marty, didn’t you?”

“That grizzled old fool with the nice boat?”

he scoffed.

“Got a bit too nosy for his own good, that one.”

He paused, looking thoughtful.

“The old guy was tougher than he looked, though.

I’ll give him that.

I had to shoot him and use his dinghy to divert attention away from where his boat would be found.

Shooting him kept us from using him as monster fodder.”

“Monster fodder?”

DNR Guy stared at me for a moment and a cold reptilian smile crept over his face.

“Never mind,”

he said.

“You’ll figure it out soon enough.”

I had most of it figured out already.

My subconscious mind had known the truth of it for a while, even if I had clung to the hope of finding a real lake monster for longer than I should have.

I decided to test the waters.

“You found Napoleon’s gold, didn’t you?”

The look of surprise on DNR Guy’s face, the rapid disappearance of that hideous smile was all the answer I needed.

In the periphery of my vision, I saw the guy up front turn around and shoot a look at DNR Guy.

The driver was blond, blue eyed, tanned, and muscular.

I pegged him as being in his thirties.

Something about the look on his face as he stared at DNR Guy made me continue with my revelations.

“The gold was beneath the wreck of the SS Plymouth, wasn’t it?”

I said, deciding to go for broke.

“In the Rock Island Passage.

Who would have thought to look for it there? No one, that’s who, because the last known location for the Plymouth was miles from there.

But her captain decided to risk the storm rather than stay where they’d been abandoned by the tugboat, and she ended up sinking near Rock Island.

And she sank right on top of Napoleon’s gold, didn’t she? Four hundred million dollars’ worth of gold.”

DNR Guy’s poker face was terrible.

He struggled to conceal his surprise, but it wasn’t his reaction I was interested in just then.

The driver shot another look at DNR Guy, his own shock apparent on his face.

“Is she right?”

he asked DNR Guy, slamming on the brakes when he finally looked forward again, making me nearly topple over sideways.

“Don’t worry about it,”

DNR Guy said.

“You’ll be paid well for your services.”

“You’re using some kind of submersible to get at the gold, aren’t you?”

I said.

“Where are you storing it?”

DNR Guy glared at me and whispered, “You’ve just sealed your fate, missy.”

That grin returned, reptilian and cold, but before he or I could say anything more, the van came to a stop.

“We’re here,”

Driver Guy said.

DNR Guy brandished his gun one last time, just in case I’d forgotten about it.

Then he draped a beach towel over his arm and hand, hiding the weapon.

“Behave or I’ll shoot you where you stand.

Don’t think I won’t.

Our boat is at the ready, and by the time anyone reacts to the shooting, we’ll be halfway to Canada and well on our way to disappearing.”

I believed him.

When the van door slid open, I scooted out and followed Driver Guy, while DNR Guy fell into step behind me.

We boarded a boat a little bigger than Marty’s, and once we were on board, DNR Guy dropped the towel and tucked the gun into the waist of his pants.

Then he removed a zip tie from a tackle box and secured my wrists behind me before pushing me down onto one of the padded benches at the back.

A quick look around the boat revealed a rack of scuba tanks secured to one side with bungee cords and a high-end sonar device attached to the ceiling in the pilothouse.

This boat was rigged for some serious underwater work.

The zip tie was uncomfortably tight, and I twisted my hands in a futile effort to relieve the pinch of it.

In doing so, the side of my hand scraped up against a tiny but sharp protuberance on one of the boat’s interior metal braces.

I winced as I felt it slice into my skin; then I froze, realizing what a stroke of luck it might be.

DNR Guy sat across from me, while Driver Guy started the engine and motored us out of the marina.

The boat bobbed its way over the waves, giving me the perfect cover, and I began rubbing the zip tie against that sharp little point, going up and down with the motion of the boat.

Though I thought I was being subtle, I didn’t like the way DNR Guy kept looking at me.

I needed to distract him.

“Why all this ridiculous subterfuge with a fake lake monster? Why not just claim the gold and bring it up?”

I asked him.

“Do you have any idea what a hassle that would cause?”

he said, leaning toward me, his voice low.

He glanced toward Driver Guy, probably to make sure he couldn’t hear him.

“There’d be claims and lawsuits lasting Lord knows how many years.

It’s not a finders-keepers game and four hundred mil is a lot of money.

France and America could both have claims.

Descendants of the ship it was on might have claims. Shipping companies, ecological societies, and museums would all get in the fight. I’ve seen it happen before with other sunken treasures. It would get tied up in the courts for years.”

He paused, shaking his head, his lips compressed in a determined line.

“Nope.

I’ve come too far to deal with that.

That gold is mine.

Half of it anyway.”

“Only half?”

Something shifted in his eyes, and he leaned back with an awkward, halfhearted shrug.

“Technically, I could claim it all, since I’m the one who found it, but I had to partner with someone that could fund the retrieval.

It’s harder than it looks, particularly if we want to do it in a way that avoids attracting attention.”

“Well, it seems you failed on that account,”

I said, “though the deer and fish carcasses were a nice touch.”

He smiled.

“How did you know about my involvement?”

I asked.

“I mean, aside from Marty, I thought I was way under the radar.

Did you figure it out when I hit upon the spot you were working in yesterday?”

He laughed, shaking his head.

“We knew about your so-called involvement from the moment that dumb-ass Flanders guy thought about hiring you.

We tried to talk him out of it, even threatened to file a complaint if he used police funds to pay for it, but he was determined.

Used his own money even.”

I tucked that little revelation away for later consideration.

Now that we were far enough out from shore, Driver Guy increased our speed, steering us through Green Bay and toward the western side of Washington Island and Lake Michigan.

The waves grew choppier once we cleared Gills Rock and entered Death’s Door, and that enabled me to work a little harder on the zip tie, though my movements were also less precise.

I prayed that the little metal defect wouldn’t break off, knowing that with every minute that went by, with every mile of water we covered, time was running out.

I had a plan, albeit a desperate one, and when the boat sped up even more as we came abreast of Washington Island, I picked up the pace of my sawing motion, taking care to move only my hands and wrists and not my upper arms.

At the same time, I started breathing fast and shallow, hoping that if DNR Guy noticed it, he’d chalk it up to panic, which wouldn’t have been a totally wrong assumption. I had no doubt those guys intended to kill me, and that scared the hell out of me.

DNR Guy was staring at me again, so I stirred things up some more.

“How much of the four hundred million are you getting?”

I yelled at Driver Guy.

“Shut up!”

DNR Guy seethed, shooting another worried glance in Driver Guy’s direction.

I kept at my rapid breathing and sawing, my growing panic making the first part easy and making me not care anymore if DNR Guy saw my arms moving.

“What makes you think your fate won’t be the same as mine?”

I went on, yelling at Driver Guy.

“He just told me that he’s splitting that four hundred million fifty-fifty with whoever’s financing this gig.

That doesn’t leave much for you, does it?”

“I told you to shut the hell up!”

DNR Guy shouted, taking his gun from the waist of his pants and aiming it in my direction.

“Okay, okay,”

I said, hyperventilating even more, as much out of fear as from any planned attempt at escape.

I squirmed, sawing frantically at my restraint, feeling the stickiness of blood on my hands.

Panicked that time was running out, I strained my arms to add tension on the tie.

I squirmed some more as if trying to get comfortable and turned my head away from DNR Guy and the gun, looking out the back of the boat instead.

What I saw made my heart skip a beat and I blinked hard, unsure if I was imagining things.

Once I was convinced it was real, I said, “Oh, look.”

It wasn’t a planned utterance, but it came at a timely moment because the zip tie broke just as DNR Guy looked that way.

I desperately wanted to shake and move my hands to get my circulation going again, but I gripped the broken zip tie and kept my arms behind me, buying every second I had.

“Better not shoot me now,”

I said, jutting my chin toward the boat behind us.

“You’ve got witnesses.”

Driver Guy turned to look, throttling down the engine in the process.

It was now or never.

I stood and flung myself over the side into the water.

I was prepared for the cold shock of it that time, though the water there was warmer than the water I’d been dumped into yesterday.

The bay waters can reach temperatures in the eighties at the peak of summer, and the spot we were currently in was one where bay and lake waters mixed.

What I wasn’t expecting was the impact.

Even though Driver Guy had throttled down, the boat was still moving at a good clip, and I wasn’t prepared for how unforgiving the water would be when I hit it.

I managed to stifle my gasp and not take in a mouthful of water, but only because the wind was knocked out of me.

Momentarily stunned, I let my body sink into the cool depths of the water.

Then I had an image of a bullet zipping a path through that water and into my heart, and it spurred me to action.

I rolled into a prone position and swam deeper for a few seconds, stroking and kicking as hard as I could.

When I thought I was deep enough, I paused and looked up, seeing the undulating glint of sunlight on the surface waves above.

The boat’s wake was visible in the patterns, and after orienting myself in what I hoped was the right direction, I swam as hard as I could while beginning a slow ascent with each stroke.

The hyperventilation I’d done beforehand would give me about two minutes before I had to surface.

I listened for the sounds of both boat engines—one moving away, the other moving closer—and aimed for the approaching boat.

When I finally burst through on the surface, my lungs were screaming for air.

I gulped in a couple of quick breaths in case I had to go down again, and spun myself around in the water, trying to rapidly assess my situation.

The approaching boat was coming at me at a frightening speed, and I realized they likely couldn’t see me in the water.

DNR Guy’s boat was moving away fast, headed toward Boyer Bluff.

Making a run for it.

I thrust my arms into the air and waved, yelling as loud as I could at the oncoming boat.

I couldn’t do it for long, though, because having my arms in the air impaired my ability to tread water.

Every time I tried to wave, I sank.

The boat showed no sign of slowing, and as it drew closer, I saw a Coast Guard insignia on its side.

I waved my arms and yelled some more, kicking my legs as hard as I could not only to keep from sinking but to propel myself a little higher out of the water.

A quick look around eased my panic because I saw that the coast of Washington Island was only a mile or so away—an easy swim if the Coast Guard boat passed me by.

After one more hard kick, wave, and holler, the patrol boat finally began to slow, and I saw someone on board waving back at me.

Relieved, I lowered my arms and treaded water as the boat circled around me.

Someone tossed out a flotation ring, and I swam to it, then let them pull me in.

I was nearly to the boat when I realized that the person pulling on that rope was Jon Flanders.