Page 151 of The Session

“We have a raft. I could wait out here on that,” Lightman suggested.

“And if I get arrested, what good does that do you?” Mark asked.

“I’m just providing options,” Lightman replied.

“I appreciate that. Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll dock the boat. I think I can manage something this size. Probably. The dockmaster should be there waiting, so I’ll have help. Then we start fueling. I’ll probably have to go pay for it in the store. If you see anything weird—anything suspicious, anybody besides me or the dockmaster—approach the boat, untie as quickly as you can, and take off without me.”

“You should take the controls from here in case he’s watching with binoculars,” Tru advised.

Marnie and Tru went below and turned out the cabin lights.

Mark took the wheel and spent a moment staring at all the gauges. This was the largest boat he had ever piloted, but he had taken out smaller watercraft on lakes and knew the key was to take it slowly and not overcompensate—better to drift in carefully and have the dockmaster assume he was being cautious because of the limited light than pretend he really knew what he was doing.

Raiding Party

The lights of the harbor grew brighter, and Mark could make out the fueling station. He throttled the boat down even more, giving it just enough propulsion to keep it from drifting. The seas calmed significantly as he entered the small bay, which helped. He made slight adjustments to the wheel to get a sense of how much the boat would drift when he corrected course.

A man wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and a large-billed baseball cap walked out onto the dock and waved to Mark, pointing toward the fueling station.

Mark throttled the engine all the way down, walked to the stern, grabbed a line, and tossed it to the man. The man caught it, wrapped it around a cleat, then moved to the front deck, grabbed the bow line, leaped onto the wooden planks, and wrapped the other end around another cleat.

The harbor was on the small side. Three sailboats were anchored at the far end, and a few smaller boats were tied off on the opposite dock.

The lighting was dim. Lampposts spaced too far apart along the dock created pools of light between valleys of shadow.

The darkness made Mark uneasy.

“Are you Good Vibrations?” the dockmaster asked.

“Yes,” Mark replied. The stern of the boat was pointing the other way. If the dockmaster asked about that, he was prepared to say he’d confused it with his last boat.

“I’m going to need a credit card,” the dockmaster said. “About how many gallons do you think you’re going to need?”

Mark realized he had no idea how many it would take—and that he was terrified of what that much fuel would do to his credit card.

“Sure, one second,” Mark said, avoiding the question. “Let me get it from the cabin.”

Mark stepped down into the cabin. Marnie, Tru, and Max were nowhere to be seen in the living room. He went down the steps to the master suite beneath the bow, but it was empty too. He realized he’d forgotten to ask Tru where all the hiding places were.

“Six hundred,” Tru whispered, her voice coming from somewhere Mark couldn’t see.

Mark pulled his wallet from his pocket and headed back to the upper deck.

“Found it. Six hundred gallons,” he said.

“Let’s run that through the machine, and then we’ll get you fueled up,” the dockmaster said.

Mark followed him down the dock toward the small office, which doubled as a bait shop and general store.

“I’m Trevor. I didn’t catch your name,” the dockmaster said.

“Mike. Thanks for staying open,” Mark replied.

Mark deliberately gave a name that he could easily correct later if Trevor noticed the discrepancy. He didn’t know whether an APB had already gone out, and anything that delayed recognition felt worth it.

“Why are you out so late?” Trevor asked.

“I had a couple friends with me on the trip over who got a little too seasick and decided to fly back. So I have to do it solo,” he explained.