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There was a whir of movement that raised the dust, and a sound of chopping, a rapid-fire whap! whap! whap! whap! and what had been Brittney’s body was in pieces—arms cut off and then cut in two. Legs off and then chopped into three pieces. Torso hacked into random chunks. There was no blood. It was as if Brianna were chopping up an embalmed corpse.
That thought bothered Brittney. How could she be alive with no blood? What was she?
“Want to watch?” Brianna asked.
She grabbed Brittney’s hair, lifted her up, and set her on a flat rock. The first effort failed, and Brittney’s head rolled off. But Brianna was finally able to settle Brittney’s head atop the rock so that Brittney could see her body lying in a couple dozen bloodless pieces.
The pieces were already twitching toward one another, extending tentacles, attempting to rejoin. And things that had been female were becoming male as Drake slowly reemerged to discover he was in very bad shape.
With a look of distaste Brianna began to pick the pieces up and toss them a distance away. “I can’t have you putting yourself back together, Brittney . . . Ah! Wait, is that Drake coming back?”
Brianna performed a short happy dance and stepped—perhaps accidentally—on a piece of flesh that Drake would miss.
“Perfect. So much better this way. Hello, Drake. So glad you could make it. I’m just going to start moving your pieces farther apart. Much farther apart. Then I’ll have Sam go around and fry each piece. And then I believe that’ll be it for you, Brittney slash Drake. I believe we’ll have seen the end of both of you. And your little whip, too.” She patted Drake on the head. Then she picked up a foot and a shoulder section, one in each hand. With a wink she was gone, leaving a trail of dust.
Quinn was rowing back to shore. It was a point of pride for him that he always carried his share of the hard work, in fact more than his fair share, because if you were boss, you started off by setting a good example. So even though he had gotten a hook caught in the back of his arm and had had to cut it out and as a consequence was bleeding through a salt water–soaked bandage held with a strip of duct tape, he pulled at the oars.
No one on his crews ever claimed Quinn was lording it over them or saddling them with too much work. Well, sometimes they did, but it was in the nature of long-running jokes.
“You’re pulling to your left, Captain,” Amber said.
“At least I’m pulling,” Quinn said, and the two of them lifted the oars, leaned forward, dipped the oars, and pulled in long-practiced unison.
“You know, if you’re feeling weak you could let Cathy take over,” Amber said, grunting with the effort. “What with your boo-boo and all.”
“I’d have to be missing an arm before I rowed as weak and spastic as Cathy,” Quinn teased.
For her part, Cathy, seated in the stern and guiding the tiller, said, “Just a good thing we didn’t catch much or we’d never make the marina.”
“Yeah, a good thing,” Quinn said, unable to keep the worry from his voice. “Barely enough to feed us, let alone the whole town.”
He glanced up at a cabin cruiser in the out there. He was a long way from getting used to the fact that he could see the outside. It was weird. Nothing had changed in his daily life except for the fact that he could now see out of his prison. Still a prison, but now the prison had a view.
Two women in bikinis were on the bow, and two much older guys were in the stern of the cabin cruiser, with their fishing rods in rod holders, chilling with bottles of beer. The captain seemed to be of a different breed, a thirtysomething man with salt-bleached clumpy hair and red skin and wraparound glasses. He was watching Quinn’s boats with interest.
The cabin cruiser was throwing up a bow wave Quinn admired and envied. What must it be like to fish from a power boat?
“Give ’em a wave, Cath,” Quinn said. So Cathy did, and the captain gave them a sort of salute. And then one of the women on the bow took off her bikini top.
“Well, I didn’t expect that,” Quinn admitted.
“Drunk,” Amber said.
The cruiser captain, obviously displeased, turned his boat sharply, which threw the woman off balance and would foul the men’s lines if they weren’t quick about reeling in.
Quinn could see the men yelling at the captain, and the captain stoically ignoring them as he motored away. The last Quinn saw of him he was shaking his head in an I can’t believe these people kind of way.
At the dock they unloaded the catch—not impressive—and hauled out their gear for mending. Salt water was hell on nets. By now Quinn knew just about every submerged rock or old wreck that could snag a net, but they still needed checking and mending every day.
He was excused by mutual agreement from this part of the day’s work because he was the one who had to go and meet with Caine, a task no one else wanted.
He trudged up the slope toward the town plaza, torn between missing the businesslike and practical Albert and cursing him at the same time for being a treacherous, cowardly weasel. Dealing with Caine was always difficult. Caine was not a businessman: he had a tendency to believe that threatening Quinn would produce more fish. Other times Caine could be self-pitying or grandiose or even depressed. Until very recently Albert had managed Caine, but in these last couple of days Quinn was starting to fear that in some way the care and feeding of the temperamental “king” had fallen to him.
It was therefore with mounting joy bordering on giddiness that he made out the face of Edilio sitting at Caine’s outdoor desk. Virtue was with him, and kids were coming and going, evidently getting instructions from Edilio.
Once, long ago in what felt like another life, Quinn had derided Edilio as a wetback, an illegal alien. Now he could have kissed him.
“Tell me you’re in charge,” Quinn said after he had mounted the steps.
