The Water Keeper(64)

In thirty seconds, as the sheriff’s deputies appeared in the driveway, the helicopter was airborne again and disappeared over the rooftops. Summer appeared to my left, hanging on my arm. Her face posed a question her lips did not articulate.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. We may have been too late.”

The sheriff’s deputies had been prevented from entering the grounds by a locked front gate. While they worked to open it, I began to focus on the next few minutes. They would want a statement from us, and I knew I didn’t want to give it. No time. So I turned Summer and Ellie around and pointed. “Boat. Now.”

They understood. We returned down the walkway to the dock, loaded into Gone Fiction, and untied her ropes. Reversing quietly, I backed out of the dock and then slid the stick forward. By the time the deputies made it through the house and into the backyard, we had cleared the pilings and were moving back toward the IC. The nearest deputy, some jacked guy wearing shades and SWAT gear, ran to the water’s edge and told me not to move any farther. I slid the throttle to full and we shot forward into the ditch and out of his line of sight.





Chapter 28


Once into the open water, I dialed Colorado. He answered after the second ring. I told him what had just happened and asked him to call the local sheriff’s office, explain who I was, and tell them we’d be at the hospital if they wanted my statement. I also asked him to find out what he could about the girl in the helicopter and where they were taking her. If she lived, I wanted a few words with her.

He hung up, and I returned to Summer and Ellie, who were both huddled on the back bench, riding in silence with stunned looks on their faces.

Summer sat staring at a silver chain draped over her right hand, at the end of which dangled an odd-shaped piece of honeycomb. One hand was holding the other. Both were shaking. As was she. She was close to cracking. She was holding Angel’s Jerusalem cross. The one I’d seen her wearing when we met in the chapel.

“Where’d you find that?”

She spoke through tears while looking in the direction of the helicopter, which was now little more than a speck in the sky. “In the hand of that girl.”

I returned north. Ellie appeared on my right side. Hanging on to the T-top with one hand, the envelope with the other. “Did you save that girl’s life?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

She touched her nose. “What did you give her?”

“It’s called Narcan. When someone uses heroin or hydrocodone, any kind of opioid, the drug binds to receptors in their brain. It blocks pain. Slows their breathing. Calms them down. In the case of an overdose, it can be fatally calming because they quit breathing. Become unconscious. The drugs I gave her reverse that and kick the drug off the receptors. Waking them up.”

She pointed at the AED.

“That allowed me to shock her heart back to work. Sort of like jumper cables for the human body.”

Her face spoke of earnestness. “You always carry this stuff in your boat?”

I shrugged. “I have for several years—although the drugs and technology are always changing.”

“How many times have you used all this?”

I shrugged. “Some.”

“Does it always work?”

I stared across the bow. “No.”

She didn’t take her eyes off me. “What now?”

I pointed at the now-disappeared helicopter. “You mean for her, or—” I looked straight at Ellie. “You and me?”

“Both.”

“If she wakes up and can talk, I’d like a few minutes with her. As for you and me, that’s up to you.”

She clutched the envelope to her chest. The events of the last hour had shaken her. When she spoke, she turned her face away. “Could we stop for a second?”

Palm Beach lay to the east. West Palm Beach proper to the west. Our cutwater had just entered the Lake Worth Inlet. I cut the throttle, navigated around Peanut Island, and ran the boat aground in the shallows of the low tide sandbar just north of the island. Given the outgoing tide, the water was shin deep. Forty or fifty boats had done likewise. The weekend had started early. The air smelled of suntan oil and rum, and was filled with the sounds of Bob Marley and Kenny Chesney. Off to our left, a dozen college kids floated a Frisbee through the air while one optimistic dog ran back and forth.

I cut the engine. She laid the envelope flat across the console. In front of me. Her hands were shaking again, so she crossed her arms and buried her hands in her armpits. “Will you?” She stared at it. Then me. Her lip quivered. “Please.”

While I’d looked at Ellie, I’d not really studied her. Although she tried hard not to be, she was stunningly beautiful. Like, take your breath away. Maybe here and now, having suffered the violence of what she’d just seen, her walls were crumbling. Of if not crumbling, at least the gates were opening.

Summer appeared at my left shoulder. The three of us formed a semicircle around an envelope that as far as I knew had not been opened in thirteen years. I opened the clasp, folded back the top, and emptied the contents onto the seat next to me.

One item appeared. A letter.

I unfolded it. It was printed on official letterhead from the Sisters of Mercy convent in Key West.

Like the envelope, the letter was dated thirteen years prior.