Elusive Charity by Wayne Stinnett

Author:Wayne Stinnett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wayne Stinnett
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Charity woke before the first hint of daybreak, her decision made. Before leaving Wind Dancer, she ate a protein bar and put a banana in the pocket of her hoodie for later. If there was to be a confrontation, she was going to initiate it, and she wasted no time in getting ready.

After what Chyrel had told her the night before, she felt almost certain that if Martin was in Apalachicola, it was by chance. She’d said that she’d been talking to Jesse one day about six weeks ago, when she’d gone to Bimini, and he’d asked confidentially if she knew where Charity was and what she was up to. Charity trusted Jesse completely and didn’t have any problem with Chyrel telling him that she was in the Florida Panhandle.

But Chyrel suspected that Martin might have overheard them, as he’d appeared at Jesse’s office doorway a moment later.

Charity barely knew DJ Martin, but she knew the sort of background he had. Besides being one of Armstrong Research’s undercover operatives, Martin was a former spec-ops soldier—a staff sergeant if she remembered correctly. He’d lost a leg in Iraq to an IED.

She didn’t want to hurt the guy, but she wasn’t going to let anyone from her past find her first.

Rather than go to the Haverstocks’ house and drive over into town, Charity decided to take her dinghy across Apalachicola Bay. It would get her there faster, even at just over planing speed, and it would keep Martin from knowing her car. And cars were pretty limited forms of egress if she had to get out fast.

She’d decide what to do about DJ Martin after seeing the man.

Dressed in dark pants and the hoodie, Charity climbed down into her RHIB and started the outboard. Looking around, she got her bearings, spotting the line of lighted channel markers in the ICW and the glow on the northern horizon that would be Apalachicola.

With her head only a few feet above sea level, anything beyond two miles was over the horizon and the distance to town was twice that.

Crossing a navigable waterway the size of Apalachicola Bay in a small dinghy was ill-advised, except in good conditions. Darkness added even more danger. And her dinghy had no lights. But the little boat was quick and maneuverable and there weren’t any sandbars or shallows to worry about.

She untied the painter and settled onto the back bench seat where it was attached to the starboard pontoon. Pointing the bow toward town, she put the little outboard in gear and twisted the throttle until the little boat began to plane out.

The water was as flat as any inland pond, and she pushed her speed up a little more. The only real danger would be encountering another boat, but the channel was clearly marked, and she saw nothing else in sight.

It had been a new moon just four days earlier, and the waxing crescent wouldn’t rise until about half an hour after the sun. So, all she had to

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