Shark River (Prologue Crime) by Powell Richard

Author:Powell, Richard [Powell, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781440555404
Publisher: F+W Media, Inc.
Published: 2012-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

IF WE HADN’T BEEN HALFWAY PREPARED FOR SOMETHING nasty, we would have been crab bait before you could add one and one and get two corpses. As it was, we caught the gunman off balance. Joan was down out of sight in the boat and I was in the water, my outline blurring against the lines of the skiff, before he knew what was happening. His first slug went wild. He took more time with his second. It ticked the gunwale beside me and splinters burned my hand. That proved he didn’t pack a gun just so he could crack open clams with the butt. I didn’t wait for the third shot. I stumbled into deep water and gave the boat a final shove and dived.

The boat’s keel scraped across my back, and I heard the next bullet drill wood. The boat acted as a sound box and hammered the noise into my ears like a big, hard plug. I came up on the far side of the skiff, grabbed the bow, and tried to tow the boat away from shore. Water heaved gently against my shoulders. I had forgotten the eddy. It had saved Joan’s life once, but now it had other ideas. It wanted to swing us around in front of that beach like tin ducks in a shooting gallery. I couldn’t tow the boat against it. Slowly and with a horrible robot persistence the current shoved us back toward the shallows. A fourth, fifth and sixth shot, neatly spaced as blows of a pile driver, crashed from shore. Each time wood splintered. The killer on shore was methodically combing the boat with slugs. By the law of averages he would get the gas tank soon. Or Joan.

I panicked suddenly. I hadn’t heard a sound from the girl. “Joan,” I gasped.

A voice quavered, “I’m all right.”

“Jump!” I cried. “We’ll swim for it. The current’s taking us back.”

I wasn’t sure we could make it swimming either. Swimming against the tide felt like paddling in glue. And if we couldn’t make it, the boat would be gone and our heads would bob above water like tin cans waiting to be sunk with a twenty-two. Except, of course, the killer had something bigger. A thirty-eight, maybe. That was nice. I would have hated to be knocked off by a boy-sized twenty-two. I waited for the splash of Joan diving into water, but it didn’t come. Instead the seventh and eighth slugs ripped the boat. The guy had reloaded.

“Jump,” I yelled. “He’ll get you! We — ”

“Hang on,” Joan cried.

As she yelled, the engine spat like a big, mad cat and the skiff surged forward and almost ran over me. I hung onto the bow rope, half drowned. Water piled against me, scrubbed my body against the boat. I couldn’t yank myself up. Through the pounding of the engine and the foaming of water in my ears, I heard an angry stammer of shots. The guy on shore was mad. We were moving his shooting gallery out from under him.

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