9

Jack felt a chill.

“What girl? What dock?”

“Remember that hallucination I told you about? That was it. I’m not exactly sure where the real left off and the unreal began.”

“Tell me.”

“It was in Saint George’s. When we were gassing up. I was standing on the aft deck, minding my own business, when out of the blue this girl, this local teenager, starts talking to me.”

“What do you mean, ‘out of the blue’?”

“I didn’t see her coming. I just look up and she’s there, standing half a dozen feet away on the dock.”

An uneasy feeling crawled through Jack’s stomach.

“What’d she say?”

“Some nonsense about throwing it back in the water, but never said what ‘it’ was.”

The uneasy feeling had graduated to gripes.

“Did she—?”

Tom waved a hand. “Wait-wait. That’s not the crazy part. Here’s where I think I lost it: For no reason at all she pulls up her shirt.”

“She flashed you?” Jack felt a faint tinge of relief. “I see where the hallucination comes in. Who’d want to flash you?”

Tom didn’t laugh, didn’t even smile. “She wasn’t showing me her boobs, she was showing me her belly. And…” His voice trailed off.

“And?”

Tom looked away. “And she had a hole through her—clear through her.”

Jack felt as if he’d been hit with a bucket of ice water. He’d seen someone with the same thing not too long ago.

“Where—where was the hole?”

Tom jammed his fingers into a spot a couple of inches to the right of his navel.

“Right about here. I tell you, Jack, it was the weirdest goddamn thing. I swore I could see right through her.”

Jack felt himself swaying, and not because he was at sea. He closed his eyes.

“Did she have a dog with her?”

“Yeah. Ugliest mutt I’ve ever—”

In a flash Jack found himself next to Tom, grabbing his wrist and shouting.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

Tom blinked at him, startled. “What’s with you?”

“That was a warning, asshole!”

“From a teenage girl? Cut me a break!”

“That was no ordinary teenage girl. What did she say?”

“I told you—”

“Her exact words.”

“Let go, for Christ sake. How’m I supposed to think with you grabbing me?”

Jack released Tom’s wrist but didn’t back off.

“I’m waiting.”

“All right. She had this Jamaican accent and she said… let me see… I t’row it right back in de water, me.’ Yeah. That was it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

In the past sixth months four women with dogs had crossed his path—three of them old, one about his age. He’d gathered that they were all linked, but to what, he didn’t know. Some had got him into trouble, others had warned him of trouble to come. He didn’t know their agenda, but to a woman they all knew more about Jack’s life than they should. And the last one, who’d called herself Herta, had had a tunnel through her, front to back, just like the one Tom had described in the black teenage girl—a girl with a dog.