The Guardian. Bethany Campbell

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      The kayak looked like a long, glorified floating banana to Kate. It was made of polystyrene and seemed no more substantial than a child’s toy. She had no desire to get into such a flimsy craft nor to float over the mysterious, brackish water.

      Hawkshaw’s catalogue of hideous things that dwelled in the water was as intimidating as it was lengthy: water snakes, eels, sea slugs, rays, barracudas, alligators, sharks and poison jellyfish. Each item on the list enchanted Charlie as much as it repelled her.

      Kate sat moodily on the deck, watching the man teach the boy to tie a hook onto his line. Charlie still wore the black Secret Service cap and had colored sunscreen on his nose.

      Maybelline had deserted the scene of all this male bonding and lay beside Kate’s chair. Kate stared out at the brooding water and the dark mangroves and was haunted by two sinister lines of poetry:

      Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs

      Upon the slimy sea.

      Yet, she had to admit the place had a strange beauty, somehow both dangerous and serene.

      When the phone rang at precisely noon, she tensed and automatically rose from her chair. But she was supposed to wait for Hawkshaw. She was not, under any circumstances, to answer the phone herself.

      At the first ring, he came bolting up the stairs at remarkable speed. The man’s reflexes, she marveled, were hair-trigger. He slammed into the kitchen with her and a panting Charlie at his heels. He himself was not an iota out of breath.

      He snatched up the receiver and leaned almost languidly against the counter. “Hawkshaw here,” he said, his voice so level it seemed emotionless.

      He listened for a moment, keeping his face impassive. Then his mouth crooked down at the corner. “Ask her yourself,” he said.

      His expression blank again, he handed the receiver to Kate. “It’s Corbett,” he said. He touched Charlie’s shoulder. “Come on, kid. Let’s fish.”

      Charlie beamed as Kate took the phone, but his grin wasn’t for her. He had eyes only for Hawkshaw. The two of them went out, and the screen door banged behind them.

      Kate, an orderly person, winced at the sound. “Hello,” she said into the phone. “We made it. We’re here.”

      “I know,” said Corbett. “He phoned me last night as soon as he saw the two of you get off the plane. Didn’t he say?”

      Kate blinked in surprise. “No. He hasn’t told me much at all. Including that.”

      Corbett chuckled. “That’s Hawkshaw. He plays it close to the vest.”

       He doesn’t wear a vest, Kate wanted to retort. He wears hardly anything.

      Instead, she said, “You didn’t tell me you were sending us to the Great Dismal Swamp. This place is precisely in the middle of nowhere.”

      “The middle of nowhere is where you need to be,” Corbett said. “How are the accommodations?”

      Kate glanced ruefully around the cluttered kitchen. “‘Primitive’ might be the word.”

      “And your host?”

      “‘Primitive’ might still be the word. I think I can teach him to say, ‘Me Tarzan.’ I’ll pass on telling him ‘Me Jane.’”

      Corbett laughed again. “He said after twenty years of suits, ties, and protocol, he was going back to nature again. Sounds like he did.”

      “More than I can tell you,” said Kate, not in admiration.

      “He deserves it,” Corbett said.

      “I offered to clean up his house and he nearly bit my head off,” Kate said. This was an exaggeration, but when she’d raised the subject, Hawkshaw had been curt.

      “You’ll get used to him. How’s Charlie like him? Just fine. I bet.”

      “Just fine would be putting it too mildly,” Kate said from between her teeth. “Charlie’s—quite taken.”

      “Oh, yeah,” Corbett said, “he’s great with kids, always was. A legend in his time.”

      “Doesn’t he—” she hesitated, curious but not wanting to appear so “—he doesn’t have any of his own?”

      Hawkshaw was in his early forties by her reckoning; he might well have children who were grown up by now. Even grandchildren, she thought, rather shocked at the idea.

      “No, he never did,” said Corbett. “Damned shame.”

      She chose her words with care, said them as casually as she could. “But he’s been married?”

      “Hawkshaw? Lord, yes. Most married man I ever knew.”

       What’s that mean? she wondered in bewilderment. “But he’s alone now? What happened?”

      “Divorce,” Corbett said. “It goes along with the territory too often, with the Secret Service. But it’s not my place to talk about his private life.”

       But you told him all about mine, Kate thought rebelliously, then was ashamed of herself. Corbett was an honorable man who had done everything in his power to help her.

      She said, “Where are you calling from? A pay phone?”

      “Yes.”

      She suppressed a sigh. The stalker knew so much about her that Corbett believed it was possible the man could be tapping into phone lines, even Corbett’s own. To be safe, Corbett had been keeping in touch with Hawkshaw through pay phones chosen at random.

      Squaring her shoulders, she said, “Any leads, Corbett? I’d love to call this trip off and come home.”

      “Sorry, Kate. If the stalker knows you’re gone, he’s given no sign. You need to stay put for the time being. You’re in good hands.”

       I don’t want to be in anybody’s hands. Except my own.

      But she forced herself to be calm, businesslike. “You’ve checked my apartment? Nothing on my answering machine?”

      “Nothing out of the ordinary. An insurance salesman. A call from some woman named Mitzi, says she’s in your reading group.”

      Kate winced. Her reading group, which met once a month to discuss a current book, had been the only adult social life she’d had left. But she’d skipped it for so long that it already seemed part of a distant past.

      “Any significant mail?”

      “Mostly junk,” said Corbett. “A notice from your vet. Maybelline’s due for some kind of shot and checkup.”

      “Drat,” she said. “I forgot. She’s got a bad hip and a weird allergy. She has to have her shots or she gets all achy and itchy. I’ll have to find a vet here. If I can find one that doesn’t specialize in alligators.”

      “Let СКАЧАТЬ