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Theodosia hung up and crawled to the back of the boat.
“You want to take over?” Drayton asked. “Please?”
She moved into Drayton’s spot while he edged away.
“I’ve been following best I can,” Drayton said. “He hasn’t outrun us, but I don’t seem to be getting any closer either.”
The killer was weaving in and out, pulling close to shore, then heading out again. Zigzagging his way around several of the small islands.
Seconds later, they lost sight of him.
“Where’d he disappear to?” Drayton cried.
“Doggone it,” Theodosia said. “I think he somehow outfoxed us.”
“Maybe he pulled into shore and is hiding among some of those big mangroves.”
“I don’t know, Drayton.”
Theodosia cut the motor and let the boat drift soundlessly for a few minutes.
“You hear anything?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Drayton said. “Just nighttime chirps and trills.”
“That boat’s got to be around here somewhere.”
“He’s gone. Like a haunt in the night.”
“I don’t believe in haunts,” Theodosia said.
“Even out here where there’s all sorts of fluorescent apparitions that can’t be explained?”
“Swamp gas,” Theodosia said. She pushed her hair—which seemed to have expanded to twice its size due to the high humidity—out of her face and looked around. “What we need is...”
Like a buzz saw starting up, a boat came zooming around the corner of a nearby island, heading straight for them.
“Sweet Fanny Adams!” Drayton yelped.
There was a loud BANG and then a ZING as a bullet flew past!
“Get down!” Theodosia cried. “He’s shooting at us!”
Drayton dove under the front hull of the boat while Theodosia crouched down behind the gunwale. One more shot banged off the prow of their boat, then the shooter corrected his course and bore down on them with all the power he could muster from his engine.
“Hang on!” Theodosia yelped as the offending boat sped toward them. “He’s going to hit us!”
A cataclysmic clash rent the night as they were rammed broadside. Earsplitting, high-pitched squeals of metal against metal rose up as their boat rocked violently and began to tip sideways.
“We’re going to capsize!” Drayton shouted in panic.
“Not if I can help it,” Theodosia cried, hastily shifting her weight to counterbalance the unnatural upending of the boat. “Help me, Drayton. We’ve got to heave our boat back over.”
“We’re taking on water,” he shouted as the offending boat buzzed away from them.
“Doesn’t matter, we can do this,” Theodosia grunted. “Grab the gunwale and lean into the high side with me.”
Scrambling, hanging on for dear life, Theodosia and Drayton put all their weight on the upended side of the boat and slowly, painfully, eased it back over until there was a loud plop and they were righted again.
