Chapter 5: A Million for a Ghost

I swam along the foot of the cliff with the waitress cap gone and my apron dragging at my legs.

I ripped the phone pouch off the apron strap and knotted it to my belt, then I tore the apron off and let it sink.

Behind me, two speedboats came out from the chapel jetty.

Each one carried four men and a rolled fishing net.

I dove and swam under the first boat's bow, and the net came down on the water where my head had been.

They were not trying to shoot me.

They wanted me alive, with the phone.

I surfaced for air and heard an engine from the other side.

A low grey dive boat came around the point at full speed, with an old man at the wheel.

Santo stood in the stern with one hand out over the water.

"Swim!"

I swam.

He hauled me over the gunwale by my belt, and I landed on the deck with my wet hair in my eyes.

"The phone?"

"Right here."

I slapped the pouch on my belt, and he nodded once.

"Hold on."

The old man at the wheel opened the throttle, and the boat jumped.

"Where are we going?"

"Into the cliff."

I looked ahead.

The headland was a wall of black rock, and the water ran straight at it with no beach and no gap.

Then I saw the dark slot at the foot of it, barely wider than the boat.

"Santo, that is not a harbor."

"It is a sea cave. It goes under the headland and comes out on the next bay. The tide is half out."

"If the tide is half out, we won't fit."

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