The Ocean Dark

38

Josh had torn the net off the Ping-Pong table and now lay stretched out on top of it. With the doors closed, the temperature in the rec room had gotten more than a little uncomfortable as the day wore on. Elevated by the Ping-Pong table, he was perfectly situated to catch every breeze that came through the open windows. He had shut the lights off and gotten a cold soda out of the machine, and he lay with the can pressed against his throbbing face, keeping his breathing steady, trying to let himself slip into a meditative state so that the passage of time wouldn’t drive him nuts.

It wasn’t working very well.

Angie had seemed frightened by the prospect of going to prison, but he had little confidence in the woman. When it came time to betray her captain, her crewmates, and the guy she’d been screwing, would she have the guts to do it? Josh wasn’t sure. If he was being honest with himself, he wasn’t sure of much these days. Despite his better judgment, he had let himself fall for Tori, all the while knowing that in order to do his job he would have to betray her. He would do whatever he could, short of becoming a criminal himself, to help her, but he knew that would mean nothing. She must hate him now, and that certainty tore him up inside. He wasn’t accustomed to feeling ashamed.

Meanwhile, all he could do was hope that Angie cared more about saving her own ass than she did about Dwyer. All she had to do was trigger the PLB. Not break him out, not even bring the beacon to him. If she could find it, she could signal Voss and have the FBI, Coast Guard, and ICE here in a couple of hours at most.

But that was a big “if.” And if she got caught, or the Rio brothers even suspected she was trying to help him, Angie would end up in the rec room with him.

“Shit.”

Josh rolled onto his side and swung his legs off the Ping-Pong table. With deep regret, he set down the soda can. It had started to lose some of its chill, but still his battered face throbbed painfully the instant he took the cold metal away. A couple of hours ago, it had been so swollen that it almost felt like the skin would split. In comparison, the pain didn’t seem quite so bad now.

He cracked the Mountain Dew can and took a long drink, gulping down half the can in seconds, then rested it on the table again. Quietly, he walked to the corner of the room and pressed his face to the louvered shutters, trying to get a glimpse of whoever had been posted as his latest guard.

At first he thought the door had been left unattended, but then he heard a low sigh and readjusted his position so that he had a slitted view of the walkway in front of the door. Anton Pinsky lay stretched out, eyes hidden behind sunglasses, five days’ stubble instead of a beard, and a tall plastic bottle of water by his head. Anton was a little guy, no more than five foot six, with eyes that always seemed to hint he’d rather be elsewhere.

Josh knew he could get past Anton. He had planned to wait until dark to try something stupid, but if Angie didn’t at least get some kind of word back to him in the next couple of hours, something stupid might have to be bumped up on his list of things to do.