“Another bit of garbage information from the brain of Matthew Lange,” Cattaneo said.
Rae: “I’m getting a little chilly, I think I’ll get my wrap.”
She went below and got a zip-up cotton sweatsuit top, carried it back up to the cockpit, handed it to Regio, and said, “Hold this, help me get it on.”
He held it so she could get her arms in it, and helped tug it up over her shoulders. “Thanks.” She zipped it. “How much longer?”
“Thirty minutes,” Cattaneo said.
Ten minutes later, Cattaneo’s phone rang. He looked at the screen and said, “Uh-oh. Trouble. It’s the boss. Ally, if you want to go up on the bow or down below, this might be kinda private.”
“Sure,” she said. “Go ahead and not trust me.”
She dropped down the ladder into the salon, then stepped into one of the cabins. Davenport’s call had been an alert to warn of possible trouble. She’d gotten the sweatsuit top, and had asked Regio’s help with it, so that he would have hefted it, and would know that there was nothing in the pockets. Nothing heavy, like a gun.
She had an edge now, something like fear, but maybe not quite there. Apprehension. Trepidation.
Moving quickly, tense but not in a panic, she ripped the tape from her ankle to free the Sig, made sure there was a round in the chamber, that the weapon was cocked and locked, and stuck it in her sweatsuit pocket. She moved over to the cabin door and tried to hear what was being said. The phone call was apparently over, but the three men were talking in low tones—or Cattaneo and Regio were. Lange was louder, and it sounded like he was objecting to something, his voice intense.
Trouble, all right, Rae thought.
* * *
Cattaneo called her: “Hey, Ally?”
She hesitated, then stuck her head out the cabin door. “We there?”
“Not quite, but we’re getting close. Could you come up and help spot?”
“’Kay.”
* * *
Rae climbed up to the cockpit and Cattaneo said, “Probably best if you’re on the deck . . .”
“Gimme a flashlight, I’ll flash him,” she said.
Cattaneo dug around in his equipment bag, then handed her a compact Maglite.
Rae climbed up on the deck and turned, and saw Regio had a gun. “Hey. What the fuck you guys thinking about here?”
Cattaneo said, “Ally, I’m sorry, but we’ve had a major problem.”
Rae’s hand was in her pocket, gripping the Sig, flicking the safety. Regio was smiling at her, Lange had his face turned away, and Regio started to bring the gun hand up.
Rae slipped the Sig from her pocket and shot Regio twice in the heart, two flat shocking bangs with spark-like muzzle blasts.
She knew she hit him in the heart because Regio was only six feet away and she could almost reach out and touch him. Regio, astonished, looked down at his chest and then dropped straight into the cockpit with a butcher shop thump.
Rae was already pointing the pistol at Cattaneo’s head and she snarled, “If Matt or you makes a single fuckin’ move, I’m gonna shoot you in the fuckin’ head, Jack, and I’m not going to miss, and then I’m gonna shoot Matt if I have to. I’m faster than either one of you assholes, so keep that in mind.”
Lange was freaked, looking down at Regio: “What! What! You killed him!”
“That’s right,” Rae said. “He shoulda been quicker. But he was a dumbass, he wanted to enjoy himself, looking at me, seeing the fear.” She was talking street because she wasn’t yet sure she should announce herself as a marshal. If they thought she was street, they might still think they could talk their way out of their problem.
The muzzle of her Sig never moved from Cattaneo’s forehead. “Now, here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m gonna move off to this side . . .” She tipped her head. “. . . and Matt’s gonna move up the other side where he can pull Willy out of the water.”
She added, “While he’s doing that, this gun is pointed at your head, Jack. From this distance, I could choose which eye to shoot you in. You’re the boss and you better tell your boy not to be fuckin’ around, because if he fucks around, I’ll deal with you first thing, and worry about him one second later. Then you both be dead. But you first, Jack.”
“We can talk this out,” Cattaneo said.
“Maybe we can, maybe we can’t,” Rae said. “Whatever happens, we gonna want more than the pea bag full of cash. We gonna want a couple of those cans that Willy’s bringing up.”
“Deal. Don’t point the gun at me anymore.”
“What, you think I’m stupid? I’m pointing at your left eyeball until I’m on that fuckin’ dock.”
* * *
Virgil saw them coming. Twenty minutes earlier, the wedding cake powercat had gone by, a few hundred yards toward shore, making twenty knots. Now Cattaneo’s boat was coming up, bow lights coming right at him. He flashed his light at them, got a return flash. Cattaneo cut the power and the boat glided up, barely moving when it got to him. As it came up, he saw Rae standing to one side, Lange to the other, with no sign of Regio.
Virgil swam to the boarding ladder, looked up, and said to Lange, “Gonna be heavy. Got eleven cans in the two bags.”
On the first two nights, the recoveries had sparked minor celebrations. This time, Lange said nothing except “Hand me the lines.”
Virgil: “Everything okay?”
Rae shouted: “Fuck no. These motherfuckers were gonna shoot us. Marc, he’s dead. I’m pointing a gun at Jack. If Matt gives you any trouble at all, you yell and I shoot Jack in the fuckin’ eyeball. Then I shoot Matt.”
“Fuck me,” Virgil said. He passed up the lines for the lift bags and Lange struggled to get them on board, and Cattaneo came hurrying to help, Rae shouting warnings at him. When the second bag went over the side, Virgil unbuckled the backplate harness and the tanks went on board, followed by his fins. He got his feet on the ladder, and Rae shouted, “Matt, you go way up on the end of the bow, away from Willy. Get up there.”
Lange moved to the bow and Virgil climbed the ladder. Rae was calling him “Willy.” That meant that she’d kept her fake identity, and for whatever reason, he should as well.
When Virgil was on board, Rae said to Cattaneo, “Willy gonna come over by you. Willy, get down in the cockpit, reach under that asshole’s body and you find a gun. Jack, you make one fucking move toward him and I kill your sorry ass. I got my eye on you too, Matt.”