Florida Bay had a brisk chop; no rollers to make the travelers queasy. Still, Shiner’s cheeks took on a greenish tinge, and there were dark circles under his eyes.
“You all right?” Amber asked.
He nodded unconvincingly. The pudge on his arms and belly jiggled with each bump. He steered gingerly; the Black Tide lady had popped his dislocated thumbs back into the sockets, but they remained painfully swollen.
“Stop the boat,” Amber told him.
“I’m OK.”
“Stop it. Right now.” She reached across the console and levered back the throttle. Shiner didn’t argue because she had the gun; Chub’s Colt Python. The tip of the barrel peeked from beneath the chart.
As soon as the boat stopped moving, Shiner leaned over the side and puked up six of the eight Vienna sausages he’d wolfed down for breakfast on Pearl Key.
“I’m sorry.” He wiped his mouth. “Usually I don’t get seasick. Honest.”
Amber said, “Maybe you’re not seasick. Maybe you’re just scared.”
“I ain’t scared!”
“Then you’re a damn fool.”
“Scared a what?”
“Of getting busted in a stolen boat,” she said. “Or getting the shit beat out of you by my crazy jealous boyfriend back in Miami. Or maybe you’re just scared of the cops.”
Shiner said, “What cops?”
“The cops I ought to call the second we see a phone. To say I was kidnapped by you and nearly raped by your redneck pals.”
“Oh God.” Noisily Shiner launched the remainder of breakfast.
Afterwards he restarted the engines and off they went, the hull of the Reel Luv pounding like a tom-tom. Amber was still trying to sort out what had happened on the island. Shiner hadn’t been much help; the more earnestly he’d tried to explain it, the nuttier it sounded.
This much she knew: The woman with the shotgun was the one the rednecks had robbed of the lottery ticket.
“How’d she find you guys all the way out here?” Amber had wondered, to which Shiner had proposed a fantastically muddled scenario involving liberals, Cubans, Democrats, commies, armed black militants, helicopters with infrared night scopes, and battalions of foreign-speaking soldiers hiding in the Bahamas. Wisely Shiner had refrained from tossing in the Jews, although he couldn’t stop himself from asking Amber (in a whisper) if her last name was actually Bernstein, as Chub had raged.
“Or d’you make that up?”
“What’s the difference,” she’d said.
“I don’t know. None, I guess.”
“You’d still marry me, wouldn’t you? In about ten seconds flat.” Amber winking at her joke, which had caused Shiner to redden and turn away.
That was after Chub had been shot and the colonel had been knocked out and Amber had fixed herself up and put on some clean clothes. Then the black woman and the white guy had collected the militia’s guns—the AR-15, the TEC-9, the Cobray, the Beretta, even Shiner’s puny Marlin.22—and heaved them one after another into the bay. The only thing that didn’t get tossed was a can of pepper spray, which the black woman placed in her handbag.
Afterwards she’d told Shiner and Amber to take the stolen boat back to the mainland. The black woman (JoLayne was her name) had marked the way on the chart and had even given them bottled water and cold drinks for the journey. Then the white guy had pulled Shiner aside, into the woods, and when they’d returned Shiner was ashen. The white guy had handed Chub’s Colt Python to Amber with instructions to “shoot the little creep if he tries anything funny.”
Amber didn’t have much faith in the big revolver since it had misfired once already, but she didn’t mention that to Shiner. Besides, he looked too sick and dejected for mischief.
Which he was. The white guy, JoLayne’s friend, hadn’t laid a hand on him in the mangroves. Instead he’d looked the kid square in the eyes and said, “Son, if Amber doesn’t get home safe and sound, I’m going straight to your momma in Grange and tell her everything you’ve done. And then I’m going to put your name and ugly skinheaded picture on the front page of the newspaper, and you’re going to be famous in the worst possible way.”