Superior Storm (Lake Superior Mysteries) (35 page)

Jasmine’s black eyes glittered under her hood. She swore softly. “That fox. He’s good; freaking good. So how bad is it?”

“He’s not hit anywhere vital,” I said. “
But
his shoulder looks like raw hamburger. I don’t know how much action he’s capable of. Certainly, I would guess his right arm is basically out of commission. And whatever else he does is going to hurt him like
the
blazes.”

“What’re you, from 1955? No one says ‘hurt like
the
blazes.’”

“I just did.”

Jasmine surprised me by reaching up and kissing me gently on
the
cheek. “You’re good too, Jonah Borden. I never would have guessed.”

I still wasn’t sure if I had made the right decision, but at least I had got a sweet kiss on the cheek for my trouble. That was something to feel good about.

“So now what?” I said. “Do we try to get one of them up here with me, while you guys take out the other one down there?”

“I’m not sure,” she replied. “If what you say is true, it doesn’t change too much. Tony is still gonna have a hard time helping. I would guess he’s probably only got enough energy and pain-resistance for one try, and we don’t want to waste it.”

“On the other hand,” I said, deciding to at least proceed as if I was sure of Jasmine, “we’ve got two of the good guys
in one place here
. What can we do? Can we
get Angela up here by herself
while you and I are both down there? That would help our odds.”

“We could try,” she said. “Maybe I could send you back down. You could tell Angela that I said I didn’t see the point in having one of the hostages up here when one of us has to be here anyway. Maybe eventually she’d send Phil, or come up herself to relieve me.”

“A lot of ‘maybe’s and ‘ifs’ there.”

“Got anything better?”

“Well,
we’re
both here – the fox is watching the henhouse, so to speak. Why don’t we keep veering of
f
course? It’ll buy us time and maybe options.”

She thought about it. “But if we get too far off, they’ll realize that I had to be letting you do it. That blows my cover, for no purpose.
”

“
Give
me ten more minutes on this course
. They probably won’t know exactly how far off we were or how long it will take to get back. After ten minutes, we’ll
start coming
back to
the right
course, but
we’ll
take a
nother ten or fifteen to do it. I’ve already been doing this for a half hour so, that wins us almost an hour, total.”

“Why are you so concerned about time?” asked Jasmine. “I thought you said the Coast Guard was on the way.”

“They are, but who knows when they’ll get here.”

“They aren’t close?”

I
shrugged.
“It’s a big lake, bad weather – a lot of things could go wrong.”

“You have the makings of a fine agent.”

“I don’t think so. I’m allergic to hierarchy and authority.”

“Jonah, you’re a clergyman, for Pete’s sake!”

I laughed. It was pleasant to talk about something besides impending doom. “I’m not part of
that
kind of church.
There are a lot of churches and denominations, like mine, that use minimal, streamlined leadership and bow to local congregational authority.”

“You don’t have bishops a
nd such, telling you what to do?
”

I shook my head.
“Nope. I couldn’t function like that.
I truly have faith. But I recognize that over the years
,
a lot of nonsense has been said and done by church hierarchies. Thankfully, it’s easy enough to demonstrate that they weren’t following Jesus when they did those things.
”

“Huh.”

We stopped talking for a bit while we rolled on through the unsettled darkness. After another wave had crashed over the edge of the cockpit and soaked us up to the knees, Jasmine said, “
T
hat’s a lot of water.”

“We’d be in trouble if the companionway was open when that came in,” I agreed. “
Leyla says s
he’d fill up and drop like a rock.”

“The
Tiny Dancer
, not Leyla, right?”

“Right.”

I was tired right through to my teeth. I was so used to being cold that it
felt
more like an aching numbness. A sudden heave of the
great lake pushed me off my feet. I fell to the starboard and ended up sitting on the cockpit bench. While the wheel spun, the wind pushed our bow further to the east and we turned our stern to the waves and wind. The sail, out of sync with the new direction, flapped and shuddered.

I got up and grabbed the wheel just as Jasmine got there.

“Angela’s gonna come up and check. She had to feel that,” she said.

“Should we jump her?”

She grabbed my arm. “No. Phil’s still down there with Leyla and Tony. The best we get is a stalemate. But one of us could end up dead.”

It was
Phil
who
burst through the companionway door. “What’s going on?”

“A big wa
ved knocked Borden off his feet
and us off course,” said Jasmine, tapping the GPS.

A sudden inspiration hit me. “We’ll need to tack to get back on course,” I said. “We need Leyla.” A wall of rain and spray showered us all. Phil shivered. “OK,” he said, and went below.

A few minutes later
,
Leyla
came up. She looked at Jasmine
and at me. I reached out an
d pulled her to me, holding her
with my right arm, and
the
wheel with my
left
. After a moment we broke apart.

“What’s going on?”

“We’re pretending that we need to tack in order to get back on course
. Maybe we can fool around and delay things a bit.”

Leyla looked meaningfully at me. “
Jonah
,” she whispered, cutting her eyes at Jasmine.

“Apparently
,
Jasmine is with us still,” I said. “She is double undercover.”

“Double undercover?”
Leyla’s
eyes were puzzled.

“Under two covers?” I suggested. “Under double-cover?”

“Never mind,” said Jasmine. “Just say
,
I have always been o
n the side of truth and justice
,
that is, on
your side
.”

Leyla looked at her doubtfully.

“It’s a long explanation,” I said.

“Okay,” she said
,
taking a breath. I loved how quickly she was able to adapt. “What did you want to do here?”

“Instead of coming back toward the wind, let’s go all the way around in a circle to get back on course. Maybe we can sort of take our time doing it.”

“Can’t we do anything else?”

“They’ve still got Tony,” said Jasmine. “This is a hostage situation. As long as they have the ability to kill someone if we misbehave, we have to play along, or at least,
appear
to play along.”

I wanted to hit something. Three of the four of us were at liberty. But we couldn’t do anything.
It struck me that
often, this
is how evil holds
G
ood captive. Good refuses to sacrifice the innocent; it always tries to save those who might be saved. But in so doing,
G
ood must often let evil run free
, at least for a time
. People often ask why a good God would allow evil to continue in this world. He was doing it for the same reason that we didn’t stop Angela and Phil
at this moment
– there was still someone that might be saved.
But God also promised us a day of reckoning, when evil
will
be called to account, when crimes left unchecked will be finally and irrevocably served with justice. I surrendered myself once more to trust that Good and Just God, and found in that trust, the strength to face whatever was to come.

We managed to waste
the better part of
an hour
turning
to starboard and coming almost in a complete circle to get back on the GPS course.
Leyla estimated that in that hour we made little, if any, forward progress along the course.

The weather settled into what
she
called a “fresh gale.” The wind ripped across the water, tearing white streaks into the dark waves, throwing rain and spra
y
at us in sheets. The waves seemed content to heave up to
twelve or fifteen
feet or so, with occasional specimens both lower and higher.
But at least it wasn’t getting any worse.

The night was old. It was too wet for my eyes to feel gritty, but my body knew I had been awake for most of the last twenty
-
four hours. I could sense the change before I could actually see it.
Slowly, dawn struggled into the thick atmosphere like a drunk waking up the morning after a binge. The light grew sullenly, and when it reached a dark
-
gray
,
reminiscent of a stormy late-afternoon, it seemed to give up, like that was the best it could do today.
With all the low light and flying water, v
isibility was less than half a mile.

“Take the wheel?” I said to Jasmine.

She nodded
,
and I moved over to where Leyla was tightening the jib sheet after our final adjustment. Leyla straightened and turned to me.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” I said to her.

She stepped over and embraced me. She held me tight. “I thought you were dead more than once during the past twenty-four hours.”

“I thought I lost you once tonight too,” I said. “I don’t want to have that feeling again.”

The storm was probably loud enough to keep Jasmine from un
derstanding our low voices, but she politely
looked away from us as we stood there, balancing together against the roll and s
way
of the boat.

“Ever read the
Chronicles of Narnia
?” I asked. “
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
?”

“I think I saw the movie,” she said.

“
Aslan came to Lucy in her darkest hour and spoke. He said, ‘
courage, dear heart
.’”

We were quiet, holding each other while the boat rocked us both.

“Courage
,
dear heart,” she said at last.

“Yes,” I said.

The hug was sweet, but after all, kind of wet. We let go of each other at last, shortly before Angela came up the companionway.

“Let me see the GPS,” she said to Jasmine.

Jasmine took it out of her jacket pocket.

“Not much of
a
morning, is it?” said Angela to no one in particular. She checked the unit as Jasmine handed it to her.

“Shouldn’t we be farther along?” she asked sharply.

“I’m no GPS expert,” said Jasmine. “These guys said the weather has been working against us.”

Angela glared at me. I shrugged. “I want to be done with this and go home as soon as possible. Delay doesn’t help me.”

She held my gaze a moment longer. “Fine,” she snapped. “Leyla, you get below.”

Leyla gave me a soft look, and then turned and went down the companionway. After a minute of simply staring out into the gauzy gray of the storm,
Angela
turned back to me. “Now you,” she said. “Don’t be thinking of trying anything on Phil
ip
– I’ll be right behind you.”

I went down the companionway. It was still warm
er than the cockpit
, since the heat came from propane rather than electricity
, but it was dark;
the dim light outside barely penetrat
ed
the narrow windows.

“Nice and easy Borden,” said Phil. “I’m holding Leyla
,
and my gun is in her side.” I could dimly make out their two figures near the front of the cabin.

“Okay,” I said.

Angela came down behind me, and I felt her gun grind into my right kidney. “I’ve got him covered Philip,” she said. Phil took another pair of plastic cuffs out and secured Leyla’s hands in front of her.
He helped her s
i
t on the starboard settee
,
and she shifted around the U.