LITMIR.BIZ

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and oiled and squinting at him through the harsh sun. He looked out at the water where his fish was taking a breather, hiding behind a rock, probably hoping this was all just a terrible dream.

      ‘I’m ready for something new,’ Thorn said. ‘I’ve got an itch.’

      He cranked the reel, brought the fish a foot closer to the boat. Then another foot.

      ‘I think this is the end, Thorn.’

      ‘The end?’

      ‘Of you and me. Our romance.’

      He gave her an uncertain smile.

      ‘Because I want to go to the islands?’

      ‘No,’ Casey said. ‘It’s been coming for a while. It arrived just now.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘The end. The end of our affair.’

      He cranked the fish closer. It seemed to have given up. Just a dull weight now.

      Casey said, ‘We’re different. I thought it would work out, you being how you are and me being who I am. But it hasn’t.’

      ‘It’s working for me.’

      ‘You like me because I’m shallow, Thorn.’

      ‘You’re not shallow.’

      ‘Hey, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s who I am. How I was raised. I don’t have a complicated view of the world. I don’t have dark places. Brood over stuff, get all tangled up in my thoughts. You like me because I’m easy. A lick and a dash and you’re on your way.’

      Thorn looked out at the bright water. His eyes hurt and his shoulders were tired from hauling in the damn fish on such light tackle. Casey was right. There was no reason to be sporting when all you were doing was catching your supper. Just put ten-pound test on the reel and haul them in as efficiently as possible and be done with it.

      ‘Are you listening to me, Thorn?’

      ‘Oh, yes. I’m listening.’

      ‘You’ve just been using me to relax. I knew that. My girlfriends told me from the beginning. All the women you’ve been with, what they were like. I’m not like any of them. But I thought I’d give it a try. And sure, it was fun most of the time. The sex was fine. But we’re not the same. We’re just not. It’s pretty simple when you get down to it. We have fun, but we don’t exalt each other.’

      ‘Exalt each other?’

      ‘Maybe it’s not the right word. I don’t know. But you know what I mean. We don’t push each other up the incline. We’re just hovering in the status quo.’

      Thorn cranked the sea trout up to the side of the boat. He climbed down from the platform and used the scoop net to bring the fish aboard. It lay inert on the deck, all its fight gone. Thorn squatted down. He withdrew the barbless hook from its lip and eased the sea trout back over the side and washed it back and forth through the water till it was revived. When he let it go, the fish hesitated a moment, sinking several inches through the water, then with a couple of flutters of its tail it was gone.

      Thorn looked out toward the small mangrove island, at the bright water stretching beyond it, the vast silvery plain that ran for miles up toward the mainland.

      ‘You sure, Casey? I like you a whole lot. I’m very happy with you.’

      ‘Happy isn’t good enough, Thorn. Sorry.’

      ‘It’s not?’

      ‘Happy is pretty low on the joy scale.’

      She reached over and picked up her yellow blouse and slipped it on and buttoned it. She looked at him for a moment, then looked out at the water again.

      ‘Tell me the right words. I’ll say them.’

      She smiled at him.

      ‘At a time like this, one chance is all you get. It’s over, Thorn. But don’t worry. You’ll find somebody else. That’s how you are. A week, two weeks, you’ll be on to the next thing. Making some other girl all swoony.’

      As they motored south the western sky turned pale gold. Along the horizon it was shot full of purple streaks and eddies of red. To the north, out over the Everglades, the sky was bluish-black with thunderstorms – a late cold front stalled just north of Miami. Thorn guided the boat around the shallows and Casey sat in the fighting chair drinking wine and looking back at the froth of their wake.

      They were maybe ten miles southwest of Flamingo, the primitive national park that covered the extreme southern tip of the state, about as far from civilization as it was possible to go and still be in Florida waters. Thorn pulled open the tackle box and drew out the .357. He held it in his right hand, steering with his left. Behind him Casey was still facing the wake, sipping her wine. Thorn gripped the pistol by the barrel, and without ceremony, he hurled it over their starboard bow. More heavy metal added to the seabed. An empty gesture. It proved nothing, ended nothing. If the bad shit started again, he could always go buy another gun. He’d tossed the thing away but felt not one bit better about anything. Still stuck in his own tight skin. Cramped by his own mulish ways.

      Before him the water lay flat with a spreading scarlet sheen. The twilight air was mellow and seasoned with the tang of barnacles and muck clinging to mangrove roots. The red sun was a smudged thumbprint a few inches above the horizon. Maybe an hour of light left.

      Thorn had his face in the wind, steering them around a small mangrove island rimmed with white sand, when he sensed something off to the northwest, and turned to see the silhouette of the jet, a black cutout against the crimson sky.

      Casey felt it, too, and swiveled the fighting chair halfway round and stiffened. Thorn pulled back on the throttle. The plane was growing larger by the second.

      ‘Please tell me that’s a fighter jet going back to Homestead Air Base.’

      Thorn shook his head.

      ‘Wrong color, wrong shape.’

      It was skimming very close to the water, headed in their direction, maybe a mile or two away. A 747 or 767, he wasn’t sure. But big, very big, and closing fast. A great blue heron wading on a nearby sandbar squawked once and untangled into flight. To their south a large school of mullet splashed the surface and quickly disappeared.

      ‘Hear that?’ Thorn said.

      ‘I don’t hear anything.’

      ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Engines are dead.’

      ‘Shit!’ Casey dropped her wineglass on the deck, stood up.

      The Heart Pounder was too old and slow to dodge anything hurtling that fast. Anyway there was nowhere to hide, and no way to be sure he wasn’t putting them even more squarely in the jet’s path.

      Thorn shifted the engine into neutral and watched it come.

2

      Minutes after takeoff, Captain Kathy Dubois was still holding at three thousand feet, just passing beyond the southern tip of the state, when she felt the first jolt. No more than a hard buzz in her sinuses, then a quick double blip in her pulse. Miami Departure was keeping them at three thousand because of a jam-up of inbound traffic from the south at five thousand. The Departure controller was sending everyone south over the Everglades to dodge the line of level-five thunderstorms to the north. A dark, roiling mass parked over Fort Lauderdale, extending ten miles out to sea and halfway across the state.

      ‘You feel that?’

      Mark Hensley, the copilot, was staring down at the instrument panel.

      ‘Just a fritz in the system,’ he said. But he didn’t sound so sure.

      She glanced over at him.

      ‘A

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