River Bound by Judy K. Walker

Author:Judy K. Walker [Walker, Judy K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781946720047
Publisher: Judy K. Walker

10

I gasped and looked down in a panic, my paddle smacking against the canoe as I clutched my midsection. But I wasn’t bleeding, at least no more than I had been before.

I may not have been shot, but the canoe wasn’t so lucky. Water poured into the hull through a dime-sized hole at a rate comparable to my wide-open kitchen faucet.

“Sonofabitch!” Emmett said, looking from the gun in his hand to the punctured canoe hull. “Shit!”

“Syd, are you okay?” Mike yelled.

I nodded, but my ears were still ringing and I couldn’t find words. Sure, I was grateful that I wasn’t the one leaking, but it was too surreal, watching our vessel fill up with water while a man still held a gun pointed in my general direction. Minus only one bullet, with a few more to go.

“Fuck!” Emmett continued, lifting his feet gingerly as though his sneakers would dissolve in liquid.

“The canoe won’t sink,” Sharkey said.

“That’s easy for you to say, sitting in the goddamn dry one,” snapped the man who’d shot a hole in a formerly dry one.

“It won’t,” Sharkey reassured him, voice weak and cracking with the effort. “You can’t see them, but there are flotation tanks in the ends. It might get uncomfortable, but I promise it will not sink.”

“It will get more difficult to paddle, as it fills and submerges,” Mike said. “That’s an extra eight pounds of weight for every gallon of water. Sydney and I should switch canoes. She’s a novice, and it’d be easier for her to handle this one.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Emmett yelled, now waving the gun toward Mike. “Just shut the fuck up and let me think for a minute.”

I dipped my paddle gently back into the water, using steady, deliberate motions, not wanting to antagonize the man but not wanting us to ram anything else either. Who knew what he’d shoot the next time? At least the dog had shown good sense, swimming back to shore. He climbed the gentle bank and shook himself vigorously, then stood with head and tail held high, before resuming a course parallel to ours on dry land. It was easy to track his yellow vest, now that I knew what it was. Or what it was supposed to be…

I’ve seen a fair number of embarrassed-looking canines in flotation devices on St. George Island’s dog-friendly beaches, and this dog’s vest hadn’t floated right. Was its purpose something other than buoyancy—storage, perhaps? Of whatever Emmett was searching for, whatever it was that he thought Sharkey had. What better place to hide… I didn’t know, but when in doubt, drugs… than in the lining of a big dog’s life vest?

No wonder Sharkey hadn’t called the dog to him. Whoever Emmett worked for only needed Sharkey as long as they didn’t know where he’d stashed their stuff. With that information, their cost-benefit analysis might suggest they kill Sharkey, and any other loose ends (aka us). Unless they wanted the man around to make an example of him.

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