Tom paused, studying Darryl. Not for the first time, Darryl was struck by the big man’s eyes. An odd shade of gray, they were, pale rather than slate. He’d inherited them from his mother, Darryl knew. Darryl had never cared—not in the least—for the supercilious look he’d always thought he detected in the mother’s eyes. Icy, her eyes were. But in the son, the color was simply very clear. Darryl trusted those eyes.
“He rattled you, didn’t he?” Tom asked. “Shook you some.”
Darryl swallowed. “Yeah, he did. He just . . . I dunno. Hard to explain. He just always seemed so calm, like. No matter what I said or did to him.”
Tom nodded. “Part of that’s his faith. Most of it’s just him.” He turned his head and studied the slowly moving Thames, now gleaming. The sunshine was back. Autumn sunshine, to be sure, but sunshine nonetheless.
“Any world I can think of, Darryl, I think that man will rattle it. Shake the bars of its cage the same way he did those of another world. So, push comes to shove, I think I’d much rather have him on my side than anywhere else.”
He gave Darryl a sidelong glance. “Hell, who knows? He might wind up in Ireland yet. Would you rather he went there with or without you?”
Darryl pondered the same river. “No contest,” he pronounced firmly. “Just gotta make him a good hillbilly first.”
When Darryl told Gayle he’d decided to give up his feud with Cromwell, she smiled.
“Oh, good. That’ll save us some hassles. I think I’m starting to get sweet on him.”
“Gayle!”
* * *
At the same window, another decision was made. As soon as Rita came up to him, risen from her nap, Tom gave her a smile. It was the same serene smile he’d given Darryl earlier, and he silently thanked the young Irish-American for that serenity. Thrashing through another man’s confusion had enabled him to resolve his own.
“You’re right. We’ll do it the way you wanted.”
Rita blew out her breath. “Thank God. For a while there, I was afraid you were gonna turn all fucking upper-crust on me.”
Tom chuckled. “You do realize, don’t you, that you will have to watch your language around her? The ‘gonnas’ won’t cut it, much less the four-letter words.”
Rita’s grin was as broad and sun-filled as the river, and Tom fell in love all over again. He did that about four times a day, and hoped he would for the rest of his life.
“Sure. So fucking what? My language could use a lot of improvement. I don’t mind at all—wouldn’t have then, either—if she’ll just be nice about it.”
Chapter 40
“Jesus!” Eddie Cantrell snatched desperately at his seat to keep himself in it as the Outlaw heeled in a sharply angled, sliding turn to port. “You’re gonna kill us all, Larry!”
Larry paid him no attention. In fact, it was extremely unlikely that he’d even heard Eddie in the first place. The big cruiser was smashing across the lively outer waters of Wismar Bay at a speed of over forty miles per hour. That had never seemed particularly fast to Eddie driving a pickup truck down a well-paved road. On a chill, gray October afternoon in the Baltic, with white water flying back from a knifelike prow like huge, angry wings and icy spray lashing his cheeks while the shock of the big boat’s collision with each succeeding wave slammed through him like a train wreck, it seemed extremely fast.
He sat in one of the bench seats at the rear of the cockpit, watching Larry hunch over the big chrome wheel while the huge, twin inboard engines howled against Eddie’s spine. At that particular moment all he wanted to do was to strangle his friend. But that would have required him to climb out of his own seat, which was something he had no intention whatever of doing just now.
Larry straightened the wheel, and the boat snarled around onto a new heading. At least there was plenty of open water, so it wasn’t like they were likely to run into anything, Eddie consoled himself. And Jack Clements was perched in the left-hand seat, watching Larry like a hawk. Now if only the hawk would take the wheel back from the lunatic sitting behind it!