The Big Dark Sky (35)
27
Supplied by a river, Lake Sapphire did not rise with a tide, but only in the event that the outflow spillway could not cope with the volume of runoff produced by a major storm. The lake was stirred by currents, however, provided by the river running through it. The water ceaselessly licked the shore, chuckled among the dock pilings, and, in the boathouse, caused an eighteen-foot electric Duffy to wallow gently in its slip. The boat knocked against the cosseting rubber fender, and the taut belaying rope strained against the cleat with a whisper of a screech.
With the Duffy six or seven feet below him, Wyatt stood on the docking at the head of the gangway, which creaked and clicked with the barely perceptible, rhythmic rise and fall of the floating slip. Whether or not anyone had waited here for him the previous night, the high windows under the eaves now admitted more than enough light to confirm that he was alone this morning.
Some people might have been surprised that a billionaire and his family would choose a craft as mundane as the electric Duffy, with its open sides and its blue canopy trimmed in white piping, a boat that dawdled along rather than zoomed. Of course, this was ideal for cruising with two preteen children, and it was quintessentially Liam and Lyndsey; for all their wealth, they did not move with a flashy crowd.
As Wyatt was about to turn away, he saw something large glide through the dark water below, a phantasm as pale as the corpse of a leviathan from which death had bleached all color. It entered under the lakeside garage-style roll-up door, at least twice as large as a man, a torpedo shape broader at the front than at the rear. The creature was too quick and too distorted by the roiled water to allow Wyatt to discern identifying detail. The thing disappeared under the Duffy. In its wake, displaced water sloshed against the big door, rattling it in its tracks, and the boat wallowed gently.
Wyatt stood transfixed, waiting for the intruder to swim out from beneath the vessel. The water quieted and became as still as it had been before this apparition, and the thing did not reappear.
Here at the end of the dock, the lake wasn’t nearly as deep as it was farther from shore, maybe eight or ten feet. But the Duffy had a draw of perhaps only two feet, which left plenty of clearance for whatever had positioned itself beneath the boat.
In a body of fresh water as large as this lake, no fish existed as big as the thing that Wyatt had seen. No sharks. No manta rays. Just bass, maybe trout. When a fisherman hooked something here, he would expect to reel it in with little effort. The thing under the Duffy would snap an eighty-pound line as if it were spider silk.
When you endeavored to put your larcenous parents in prison, especially knowing they were capable of murder, you didn’t back away from a situation like this, or from anything. Whatever waited under the Duffy must be some kind of aquatic animal, and no damn fish could harm you—not a shark, not a piranha—unless you got into the water with it.
He descended the gangway to the teak deck. The port side of the Duffy was snugged against the built-in fenders on the slip, so that he could not see under the vessel. The boathouse offered two berths within the single U-shaped slip. He walked around the bow of the Duffy, to the farther finger of teak, beyond the empty berth.
From there he could see under the starboard flank of the Duffy, where something floated in the murk, ghostly pale. It appeared to be about ten feet long, but he couldn’t see anything significant of it, perhaps because the water here was deeper than he had thought. The dorsal surface of the creature had been pale when he’d seen the thing glide in from the lake, under the door, though all of the fish that he’d ever seen were pale on the ventral plane, not the dorsal—on their bellies, not their backs.
If this was a fish, surely it couldn’t remain still beneath the boat. It would need to move continuously in order to siphon oxygen from the water streaming through its gills. Yet there it floated like some immense seaweed bladder.
The light from the high windows did not fall directly on the water, which darkled into its depths. To get a better angle of view on the creature under the Duffy, Wyatt dropped onto one knee and craned his head forward, squinting with the hope of glimpsing some detail that would begin to define the beast.
The thing appeared to spasm, to dim and then brighten as if it might be vaguely phosphorescent, as were some creatures of the sea, and then it rolled in place.
This movement, seemingly timed to his attempt to gain a closer look at the thing, suggested its visit to the boathouse simultaneous with his inspection of the place was no coincidence. It was here because of him, for a reason he could not at once comprehend.
Abruptly, the thing breached under the Duffy, slamming it hard against the slip finger and boosting it more than a foot. The hull squealed against the rubber fenders. The taut belaying line thrummed a bass note, and the boat fell back into place, wallowing violently.
A wave washed across the empty berth and slopped onto the teak where Wyatt knelt. He quickly got to his feet and warily backed away, as the water clouded with bestirred silt.
The creature breached again, with greater power than before, still hidden by the boat that it heaved on its back. The Duffy rattled, twanged, thudded against the fenders.
The floating slip rolled under Wyatt. He staggered, regained his balance, and realized that the thing’s intention might be to pitch him into the water.
He hurried along the wet planking. He would have to get past the Duffy and around its port side to reach the gangway that led up to the main floor of the boathouse.