Chapter 21: The Ring

I ran out of the bank with my mother shouting my name behind me.

Mason stood on the steps with a trooper's hand on his arm.

The cuffs were gone from his bandaged wrists.

"Where's your boat?" I said.

"The town dock."

"He's taking the Marguerite out."

"I saw."

The trooper in the flat hat looked from one of us to the other.

"The Coast Guard cutter is twenty minutes away," he said.

"In twenty minutes he's in the open sea," Mason said. "I can reach the Ledge in ten."

The trooper hesitated.

"Captain," I said. "He pushed his wife off a boat. He is not going to stop for a cutter."

"Mrs. Langford, you're twenty-one weeks pregnant."

"I know what I am."

The trooper dropped his hand from Mason's arm.

"I'm coming with you," he said. "And so is my radio."

We ran down the dock, the three of us.

Behind us a small fishing boat cast off with the harbor reporter standing in the bow, holding her phone high.

Mason took the wheel.

I stood beside him with my hands on the console.

The Marguerite was a white bar on the bright water ahead, throwing a high wake.

She was going faster than a boat that size should go in a harbor.

"He's running for Pell Island," Mason said. "He'll go outside the Ledge."

"Can he?"

"Not in that tide."

He did not smile.

He put the throttle all the way down, and our hull came up out of the water and slammed.

I held on to the console with both hands and one thought.

I had been in this water a week ago.

The Marguerite grew in front of us, and I saw a figure at her wheel with no jacket on, looking back over his shoulder.

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