“Gonna get me one of those,” Regio said, as he watched it go. “Fuck a condo down here. You could live on a boat like that and wouldn’t cost you anything like a condo.”
“That boat cost anywhere between a buck and a half and two when it was new,” Cattaneo said. “You can get a damn nice condo for that price.”
They were talking condo prices when Rae’s phone rang: she took it out of her pocket, looked at it, frowned, and answered. A man’s voice, artificially cheery: “We’re calling to alert you to an opportunity to insure your car against...”
Rae said, “Fuck you,” and punched off.
Cattaneo laughed and asked, “What was that?”
“He wanted to alert me to an opportunity,” she said. She felt a chill crawl down her spine, but forced a skeptical grin. “Like Willy and his Salvation Army pot.”
“Got a cousin up in Jersey doing that, phone work,” Lange said, faking a shudder. “You know what they say when somebody listens to the pitch and then declines the offer? They say, ‘Fuck you very much.’ The guy who’s listening never picks it up. They think you’re saying, ‘Thank you very much.’”
“Another bit of garbage information from the brain of Matthew Lange,” Cattaneo said.
Rae: “I’m getting a little chilly, I think I’ll get my wrap.”
She went below and got a zip-up cotton sweatsuit top, carried it back up to the cockpit, handed it to Regio, and said, “Hold this, help me get it on.”
He held it so she could get her arms in it, and helped tug it up over her shoulders. “Thanks.” She zipped it. “How much longer?”
“Thirty minutes,” Cattaneo said.
Ten minutes later, Cattaneo’s phone rang. He looked at the screen and said, “Uh-oh. Trouble. It’s the boss. Ally, if you want to go up on the bow or down below, this might be kinda private.”
“Sure,” she said. “Go ahead and not trust me.”
She dropped down the ladder into the salon, then stepped into one of the cabins. Davenport’s call had been an alert to warn ofpossible trouble. She’d gotten the sweatsuit top, and had asked Regio’s help with it, so that he would have hefted it, and would know that there was nothing in the pockets. Nothing heavy, like a gun.
She had an edge now, something like fear, but maybe not quite there. Apprehension. Trepidation.
Moving quickly, tense but not in a panic, she ripped the tape from her ankle to free the Sig, made sure there was a round in the chamber, that the weapon was cocked and locked, and stuck it in her sweatsuit pocket. She moved over to the cabin door and tried to hear what was being said. The phone call was apparently over, but the three men were talking in low tones—or Cattaneo and Regio were. Lange was louder, and it sounded like he was objecting to something, his voice intense.
Trouble, all right, Rae thought.
Cattaneo called her:“Hey, Ally?”
She hesitated, then stuck her head out the cabin door. “We there?”
“Not quite, but we’re getting close. Could you come up and help spot?”
“’Kay.”
Rae climbed upto the cockpit and Cattaneo said, “Probably best if you’re on the deck...”
“Gimme a flashlight, I’ll flash him,” she said.
Cattaneo dug around in his equipment bag, then handed her a compact Maglite.
Rae climbed up on the deck and turned, and saw Regio had a gun. “Hey. What the fuck you guys thinking about here?”
Cattaneo said, “Ally, I’m sorry, but we’ve had a major problem.”
Rae’s hand was in her pocket, gripping the Sig, flicking the safety. Regio was smiling at her, Lange had his face turned away, and Regio started to bring the gun hand up.
Rae slipped the Sig from her pocket and shot Regio twice in the heart, two flat shockingbangs with spark-like muzzle blasts.
She knew she hit him in the heart because Regio was only six feet away and she could almost reach out and touch him. Regio, astonished, looked down at his chest and then dropped straight into the cockpit with a butcher shopthump.
