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menacing voice startled him, and when he yanked his leg back, he lost his balance and toppled onto his backside. 

CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    Aboard the Bonefish
    March 25, 2008
    12:50 p.m.
     
    “Thanks for picking me up. I really wasn’t sure I was gonna make it to shore.” Cole looked back at the island, his left hand at his throat, his thumb caressing the coin.  
    He had been almost a mile offshore already and still swimming hard by the time their dinghy rounded the point. They had searched the coastline for almost an hour, but they never turned around, looked behind, never figured he’d head out to deep water. 
    He turned to face the woman. She looked to be in her early thirties, maybe five foot five, and with a body that showed she worked out often. But there was something different about her, too, like a cool air of competence. 
    “Where you headed?” he asked her.
    “The capital, Pointe-à-Pitre.” She’d been looking at him with a guarded stare since he’d let out that little laugh, but now she pointed at the small GPS chart plotter affixed above her compass. “It’s a little over thirty miles. I can drop you off in town once I clear customs and immigration.”
    “I sure would appreciate that, Miz Maggie.” After all the years he’d spent on the Outer Banks, he could imitate their southern speech and manners. Given that he hadn’t a stitch of clothing, there was little else he could use as a disguise. “And after you clear in, where you headed?”
    She engaged the autopilot, set her course, and then climbed back down the companionway. He could see her wariness. She didn’t trust him. Smart woman. 
    “The Saintes, probably, for a day or two,” she said. “It’s where most cruising boats go. And please, it’s just Riley.”
    He nodded, then looked back at the island. There was no sign of the boat or the men. For now.
    “Don’t know many women who go by their last names. Especially when they got such a nice name as Miz Maggie Magee.”
    The woman had disappeared into her cabin and she didn’t respond. In her absence, he checked out her boat. He didn’t know much about sailing , but he knew boats well enough. She kept a tidy ship. A handheld VHF radio sat in a bracket within reach of the helm, she had jack lines for securing her safety harness, and a pod of navigational instruments surrounded the helm. Up on the foredeck, a canister containing an inflatable life raft was bolted to the deck. From the water, as her boat approached, he had noticed the radar, wind generator, and the insignia on the mainsail: a large letter C with the number forty.
    She reappeared in the companionway with a first aid kit and was about to hand him the box when she paused, set the box down and took out the bandages and a tube of antibiotic cream. She tossed them to him .
    “For your hands and feet,” she said. 
    “Thanks.” He knew what she was thinking. She didn’t want to give him the box because it contained sharp implements.  She was very savvy for a civilian. Surely, they wouldn’t have thought ahead and sent a woman? No, they were good, but not that good. Besides, his instinct told him she was not one of them .
    When he rested his ankle across his knee, he saw the sole of his foot was criss-crossed with white, puckered lacerations. Most of the bleeding had stopped, but his feet still left faint pink footprints on her white decks. It stung like hell when he massaged the cream into the cuts. He began to wrap his foot with the white gauze bandage. Walking was going to be a bitch for a while.
    She was standing on the companionway ladder, her elbows resting on either side of the hatch, watching him.
    “What kind of boat is this?”
    “A Caliber 40.”
    “That’s a lot of boat for one person to handle.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Must be nice just sailing around the Caribbean without a care in the world.”
    “Yeah, must be.”
    She turned to look across the water toward the point they were approaching. She crossed