Chapter 65 - The Traitor's Scent
By three in the morning, the rain had turned into a thick, low-lying coastal fog that crept up from the mudflats like grease.
Julian’s fever was rising. His forehead was burning against my palm, his speech beginning to wander into fragmented memories of his time in the navy, of engine rooms and burning fuel. He needed intravenous antibiotics, a surgical drain, and a clean bed, or the sepsis would take him before Arthur Vance even found our trail.
I went through the survival kit again, finding an old hand-cranked VHF marine radio. I could broadcast a Mayday on Channel 16, but every scanner along the coast was undoubtedly being monitored by Arthur’s tactical team. The wreck on the Devil’s Teeth wouldn't hold them forever; they had backup boats, private helicopters, and the local county sheriff had been on the Vance payroll since before I was born.
There was only one frequency Arthur wouldn't be listening to: the private business band used by the old oyster dredge fleet out of Port Judith.
I clicked the switch, turned the dial to 156.425, and held the mic to my mouth.
"Blackwood oyster dock, this is Whaler Six-Niner. Calling Caleb. Caleb, if your ears are on, pick up."
Static hissed through the speaker. A long, agonizing minute passed. I cranked the handle again, charging the internal capacitor, and repeated the call.
A click. Then a voice, rough as rusted wire, thick with the drawl of an old coastal mariner who had buried three wives and five boats: *"Whaler Six-Niner, who the hell gave you this number? This line is dead."*
"Caleb, it's Clara. Clara Vance."
A sharp intake of breath hissed over the radio. *"Clara? Jesus, girl, the whole county's on fire. Sheriff’s cars have been screaming up and down Route 1 all night. They said you stole an outboard from the marina and shot your sister."*
"Hannah shot at me, Caleb. And Arthur Vance is alive."
Total silence on the line. Then a low, violent curse. *"Arthur? Arthur's in the deep dirt twenty years, Clara."*
"He's standing on a forty-foot interceptor with half a dozen hired killers. Caleb, Julian is with me. He took a bullet through the shoulder. We’re at the old quarantine station on Sentinel Island. He’s going septic. I need a hull that can move in twelve inches of water, and I need a doctor who doesn't ask questions."
Another pause stretched so long I thought the batteries had died.
*"The quarantine pier?"* Caleb finally muttered. *"You're trapped there, girl. The tide is running out. By four-thirty, that cove is four miles of knee-deep blue mud. You won't get a skiff in or out until dawn. And there’s a private cutter anchored off the western mouth right now. They've been running searchlights across the channel for an hour."*
"They're waiting for the fog to lift," I said, my heart dropping into my stomach.
*"They're not waiting for the fog,"* Caleb rasped. *"They just put two Zodiacs in the water. I see their running lights from my wheelhouse. Clara... they aren't looking for you in the marsh. They know you're on Sentinel. You have twenty minutes."*
I lowered the mic.
How? How could they possibly know? The Whaler had run blind through the reefs without a single navigation light, the engines had died two miles out, and the quarantine station was invisible from the main channel behind sixty feet of spruce bluffs.
I looked down at the iron lockbox sitting in the mud at my feet.
The lock was heavy iron, nineteenth-century make. But along the back seam of the lid, nestled into the rust-pitted hinge, a pinprick of green light was pulsing once every five seconds.
A micro-transponder. Fresh. Sealed with clear silicone.
Arthur hadn't tracked the boat through the storm. He had let us steal the lockbox from the carriage house. He had wanted me to take it. He had wanted me to gather every scrap of evidence into one place, run to the most isolated spot on the coast, and wait like a rat in a bucket.
"Clara..." Julian breathed, his fingers reaching out weakly, catching the hem of my jeans. "Run. Leave the... leave the box."
May you like
"No," I said, staring at that tiny, blinking green eye in the dark. A terrifying, ice-cold clarity settled over me. "I'm done running from bills I didn't rack up."
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