Blood Tide by Robert F. Jones

Author:Robert F. Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781634500197
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2014-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Back on Lázaro, Billy Torres walked casually out onto the dock where Sea Witch lay moored. He was whistling softly to himself, soothingly, trying to walk as nonchalantly as a tourist on an afternoon stroll. Torres did not like dogs.

Brillo watched him from the shade of the wheelhouse, head between his paws. Silent.

Why do I always draw the shit duty? Torres asked himself. I could have taken Hughes out in the boat, checked him out and all, while the commodore searched Curt’s sailboat. Dogs love the commodore. They’re always coming up to him to be scratched behind the ears. They don’t like me. They know. And I can’t even shoot the fucker if he comes for me. Then the kid would know someone’s been aboard her. Why shouldn’t he know? He’s working for us, isn’t he? We could say some Tausuq thief did it.

He stopped at the gangway leading onto the cockpit. The dog was still silent, not even watching him now that he was behind it. One ear was cocked back at him, though. He put a foot on the gangway. The dog didn’t move. “Good boy, hey, you’re really a good doggy, aren’t you boy?” Nothing. No movement, no growl, just that ear, twitching once as Torres spoke. He took a step. Another. Watching closely.

“You’re a good pooch, aren’t you, boy?” Torres lied. He knew the dog knew he was lying, even though it still hadn’t moved.

He was across the gangway, onto the main deck, at the head of the companionway. “Good boy, atsa good doggy!” He was onto the ladder. Piece of cake—

Then the dog was there—so fast that Torres caught only a red-brown blur—there at the head of the ladder. Filling the sky. All eyes and hair and teeth—very long, white, sharp teeth. The dog growled once, low and ugly, deep in its fire hose of a larynx. Torres bolted into the cabin and slammed the door, shot the bolt, staggered back and jabbed his kidney hard against a sharp edge of the mess table. He was hyperventilating, his heart pounding like an M60 machine gun with an endless belt of ammo. . . .

But he was there, down in the cabin, where the commo said he had to go. Plenty of time for a thorough, leisurely search that would leave no traces. Plenty of time to take rolls of film with the Minox, if there was anything to photograph. More time than he could ever use.

How the fuck do I get out of here?

* * *

It took Curt only five steps to realize he’d made a grave mistake. He should have worn the brush chaps. Thorns, nettles, vines that sucked at his legs like leeches even as they bit—he was ripped and stinging from his shorts clear down to where his Topsiders were filling with blood. Maybe it was just mud—there was plenty of that. And leeches, too. Real ones, not lianas. The commodore snapped them off his own arms and neck as he strode along, breaking trail.

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