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He’s speaking fluent Greek, but I’m pretty sure he’s something else; call it a hunch, woman’s intuition. He slides his gloved hands around my waist, grips me just above my hips. I give a shivery gasp, immediately try to hide it by starting the engine. With neither headlight nor sunlight, it’s dangerous to be on the open sea in any kind of small craft, especially one of these. Good job I’ve been handling jet skis since I was fourteen. I take us out slow, conscious of the estuary’s low water-line.
Once we’re out in the chop, I throttle up, but slowly. Enough to skim the waves rather than jump them... He doesn’t protest, which gives me confidence. Night-lights along the coast appear to bob up and down with us as we ride the swells. It has an odd tranquilizing effect, and reminds me of some of the earliest boat rides I ever took with Papa, around the harbors of Zakynthos and Kefalonia after sunset, when he’d bring me an ice-cold can of 7-Up lemonade and let me steer for as long as I wanted, sometimes till well after bedtime. Then we’d sleep on the boat, Papa and me, and go snorkeling the next morning. We were so close back then, when I was little, before I realized what a cruel son of a bitch he could be, had been, with Mama. It took me a long time to forgive him for that, for the dark
side of his staunch Greek tradition. Maybe I never really have. But I’m glad I finally came home in time to patch things up with him. I’d beaten myself—and him—up for long enough on that wayward journey to a family-less nowhere. Before the end, we more or less saw eye to eye, Papa and me, and I’ll always be grateful for that.
Tonight I almost got even for you, Papa. Tonight I almost killed...for you.
As we get nearer the lighthouse, the whiny drone of rotor blades drills through the sky overhead. A single helicopter flies by, its spotlight slithering across the choppy water on its way to Valdez’s side of the bay. Whether it’s looking for a boat or not, it glides past us as though we’re invisible—but I feel more exposed than ever in this dress that’s barely holding together in the face of a wicked headwind.
The stranger lets go of my hips, and I hear the click of a weapon. For one brief horrible moment I anticipate a point of cold steel pressing against the back of my head; but it doesn’t come. He grips my waist with one hand instead, and in the rear-view mirror I can see his gun arm outstretched, pointing behind us. Thank God the bullet isn’t for me. Well, at least not yet.
“What is it?” I call back. “Is someone following us?”
“I think so. Head in at the next cove, but slow it right down,” he replies, “and keep to the middle of the channel. There are sharp rocks on either side.”
My approach to the jetty and the timing of my stop is a neat bit of piloting, synchronized with the heavy swell so that the stranger is perfectly in line with the ladder when we reach it. He fastens the Jet Ski’s mooring line to the cleat, hops off, and then helps me climb up the ladder.
There’s another vessel moored here, a sleek-looking cruiser, big, expensive, macho as hell. The cove is secluded, with a sheer, craggy cliff on either side. A forest of acacias rings a house partway up the hillside. There’s no beach, but stone steps lead to plenty of smooth rock ledges at various points up the hill and the cliffs. This place has been well thought-out, by someone who celebrates his privacy.
“You go wait in the boathouse, Athena,” he says. “And stay out of sight.”
“We were definitely being followed?”
“Maybe... I can’t be sure. Just lie low till I get back.”
“Where are you going?”
“To get you a change of clothes—didn’t count on having to smuggle two out.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
He sighs, nurses his ribs. “What the hell were you doing there anywhere?”
“It's same as you. Only you got to him first.”
He towers over me, cocks his head to one side, glowering down. “You were going to ice Valdez?”
When I don’t answer, he shakes his head, points me to the boathouse.
I folded my arms instead; stand as tall and straight as I can on one leg. “Not until you tell me who you are.”
“It’s best that you don’t know. Trust me.”
“I do trust you, but it’s your fault I’m here. You owe me—”
“And it's my fault? Owe you? Lady, I just saved your idiot life.”
“You killed him right in front of me! My way would’ve at least given me time to get out safe. No one would’ve suspected a thing; he’d have died hours later. But your way—he just dropped. What did you think was gonna happen?”
He blurts a cruel, mocking laugh. “You’re instructing me on how to assassinate someone? You mean, in that dress? Damn, you are a peach and a half, sweetheart.”
“And you’re a dumb, knuckleheaded...bogeyman.” Not my finest insult, I admit; it just popped in there.
“You really want to know who I am.”
“Yes.”
“Then come to the boathouse.”
