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There was a terrible, crusty grinding sound and the boat slammed to a stop, hard aground on the shoal.
Doyle lurched, dropped me, and fell to his knees. I landed on my feet, knees braced. Moving as quickly as I ever had in my life, I took a half-step and kicked into Doyle’s face as hard as I could.
He straightened. Blood spurted from his nose. Through the blood he smiled at me. I kicked again.
Doyle caught my foot and threw me backwards. I hit the frame of the companionway and lost my breath.
As Doyle stood I rushed him. My shoulder caught him in the sternum and he grunted, but then he had those terrible hands on my neck.
I slammed my head forward with all my strength. My forehead smashed into his already broken nose. I did it again, and again.
Doyle grunted and threw me down, hard. He raised a foot to stomp down on me and I rolled in the crowded
cockpit, just enough to make him miss. The deck rang as his foot slammed down.
I clawed my way up the steering wheel to my feet. Doyle paused, looking at me. Lightning flashed behind him, outlining him in fire. The blood ran across his mouth and his fair hair stood out, giving him an eerie corona.
Very deliberately, Doyle placed his gun on the seat. Then he stepped forward.
Okay, he was saying. He’d give himself a little challenge. Test his limits. That’s all I was to him, a light workout before dinner.
It was not even arrogant. It was a statement of how things were. If he got those hands on me again, I knew it would be over. I had to stay away, find some way to even the odds.
My thoughts flickered to the Windshadow. I had a couple of good knives on board, and some other tools that could do damage. For that matter, even a sturdy fishing pole could cut him up.
So as Doyle crouched and moved in on me, I jumped for the transom. One hand on the edge, I vaulted over the side into my battered skiff.
Quicker than I would have thought possible, Doyle followed, and the skiff lurched under his weight as I scrabbled for my tackle box.
The sailboat’s engine was still grinding away, kicking up a small surge of water and sand, which had pushed the Windshadow up onto the shoal in about a foot and a half of water. Even though the sailboat was hard aground, it was deep enough for the skiff, and we bobbed and pitched as we scrambled for position.
I had one hand on my tackle box when Doyle jumped. I stumbled back just ahead of him, falling backward over something that shouldn’t have been there.
My hand closed on the obstacle—my guide’s pole. Carl had not secured it properly. It was lying loose on the deck, one end of its eighteen-foot boron length sticking over the transom beside the ruined engine.
I jumped up, holding the pole. Doyle grinned and waited for my move. It was a savage grin this time, the blood from his nose turning his teeth dark.
I swung. Doyle ducked easily and the pole whistled past him. I brought it around again in a backhand as fast as I could, but he was ready.
He caught the pole and got both hands onto it. Grunting slightly, he lifted and my feet left the deck. Before I could let go he flipped me straight up into the air.
I was ten feet up, over the water. I let go. As I fell towards the shallow shoal water, Doyle swung the pole and smacked me in the head, hard.
I landed on my back and went under. It was only eighteen inches to the bottom and I scrabbled sideways hard and fast to get away from the grinding propeller of the sailboat. But before I could make it to the surface the pole came down on my chest and pinned me to the bottom.
I looked up through the wavering haze of the water and saw Doyle standing far above me like some nightmare giant, rippling as the water churned. He was backlit by flashes of lightning as the storm moved closer.
I fought to get clear but he leaned forward, putting all his weight on the pole until I felt sure it would burst through my ribs and pin me to the bottom.
I knew I was fading fast. I had maybe one last chance. Doyle weighed about two twenty-five. The pole was no more than ten pounds. I could bench-press two fifty, three or four times on a good day. Simple. I told my hands to swim over and grab the pole just above where it was grinding my chest into dim gravel. My hands fluttered, a pale imitation of a breaststroke. Come on, I told them, mildly annoyed. This is for all the marbles.
The lightning flickered around nightmare Doyle. He was leaning harder now, probably bored and wanting it to end so he could pull the wings off some other fly.
My hands were very close to the pole now, but they were telling me they didn’t much feel like gripping. I was losing consciousness, fighting to keep the blackness back—
But why fight, really? One small part of me was screaming not to give in, but the rest wasn’t listening, was telling me to relax, let it go.
After all, wasn’t it better this way? Wasn’t it better to admit I had totally screwed up my life and just let it go, move to the back of the line, start over again? Besides, if there really was anything at all to this afterlife stuff, I’d get to see Jennifer and Melissa again. They’d be waiting for me, just the far side of the beautiful blue light.
