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kinda idea might that
be?”
    “One that might get us the hell out
of here before the army arrives.”
    “You don’t say.”
    “It’s a long shot.”
    “Always is.”
    “You do what I told you with them
drivers?”
    “I had somebody take care of it.”
Kehoe eyed him. “Why?”
    “Let the linen supply driver go.”
    Kehoe opened his mouth, but Driver
cut him off. “First, take everything out of the truck. Then hand
him his keys and stick him behind the wheel. Give me a call when
you’ve got him ready, and I’ll open the front gate.”
6

    He looked away from the wavering
water and wondered why he only imagined her in the mornings.
Something about the flat water of dawn always brought Meg’s face to
mind, as if the first silver sheen of the day was forever devoted to
her smile. He pulled on the wet line, bringing the float over the
rail and down onto his feet. Her childlike printing encircled the
white plastic: SALTHEART, Seattle Wa. 206-933-0881. He kept at it,
his breath steaming from his lips in the cold morning air as he
formed a circle of line around the bucket at his feet. When he looked
back, she was still there, laughing now, floating on the shiny
surface of the water like a mercury apparition. Corso shook his head
and returned to the task at hand, hauling hard on the bright yellow
line, taking up the slack until he felt the crab trap come loose from
the bottom. He used his long arms to hand over hand the trap to the
surface.
    That’s when he saw them coming.
Working their way from cove to cove, checking every creek and estuary
deep enough for a dinghy. A pair of those little Safeboat
twenty-seven-footers they made over in Port Orchard. Homeland
Security Boats. Coast Guard’s newest toy, an aluminum-hulled,
unsinkable boat, pro-No Man’s Land pelled by a pair of Yamaha 225s.
Stable as hell at sixty knots. Rumor had it they’d ordered seven
hundred of them at a hundred eighty-five grand a pop.
    Corso pulled the crab pot into the
dinghy, careful to keep the collection of slithering crabs and
dripping metal out of his lap. The six captive Dungeness crabs had
gnawed the turkey leg down to blue-tinged bone. One by one he checked
the crabs. Four female, two male. Careful to grab them from the rear,
where their pincers wouldn’t reach, he threw the females over the
side and dropped the males into the white plastic bucket in front of
the steering podium.
    The sky and the water were slate gray
and slack. The surface was smooth as glass; here and there patches of
fog slid along the surface like ghost ships. To the northeast, he
could barely make out the Wescott Bay Oyster Company at the far end
of the bay. He’d been buying a couple of dozen a day for the past
week. Throwing them on the barbecue until they cracked open, then
washing them down with cocktail sauce and a frosty Heineken. He shot
a glance at the Coast Guard boat; just as he figured, they were
headed his way. He heaved a sigh and picked up the crab bucket.
    He’d been moored in Garrison Bay
for a week. Other than emptying his crab pots and making his daily
pilgrimage for oysters, all he’d done was write, sleep and eat.
Crab omelets for breakfast, crab quesadillas for lunch and crab cakes
and oysters for dinner.
    Settling back into the seat, he eased
the throttle forward. The prop pulled the stern down into the water
for a moment, then, as Corso fed it more gas, began to lift the
inflatable up onto plane. Corso pushed the throttle lever all the way
forward and aimed the nose at Saltheart , floating, barely
visible through the morning haze a half a mile away on the east side
of Garrison Bay, just offshore of the English Camp.
    During the summer months, Garrison
Bay would have been thick with pleasure boats, but on this rainy
November morning, with the kiddies back in school and the temperature
in the middle thirties, Saltheart had the moorage to herself.
By the time he was halfway up the bay, the Coast Guard boat was
running parallel to him, its