Chase

Thirty-Three

Gordon kept the boat idling about sixty feet offshore.

“You’re working for them,” Jeff said to the man.

He turned and smiled. “Yep. We’ll just wait here a few minutes until Daggert arrives.”

They could have jumped out of the boat, but what good would that do? It wasn’t as though they could outswim a craft with eighty horsepower strapped to the back of it.

“Please let us go,” Jeff said. “Please.”

“Sorry, kid. You sit there and don’t give me any trouble.”

Chipper and Jeff exchanged glances. Jeff looked like he was losing all hope, but Chipper wasn’t ready to give up. Maybe he could try a very simple strategy.

Attack Gordon.

No high-tech gimmicks. No supersonic sounds. He’d just leap at Gordon and bite him. Clamp his jaws on the man’s arm and bite down hard, like he did with Simmons. If he could hurt the man, maybe he and Jeff could push him overboard. Chipper was pretty sure Jeff would be able to drive the boat. It wasn’t very complicated.

Yes, that’s what he’d do. He’d—

Gordon turned the wheel hard, edged the throttle forward, and headed the boat back into shore. Chipper and Jeff turned their heads in unison to see Daggert striding out to the end of the dock. He gave Gordon a beckoning wave. He was still in his fancy suit and his eyes remained hidden behind his pricey sunglasses, but his right pant leg was ripped, and he was limping. Even from out on the water, they could see dark blood stains.

Jeff bet that when Daggert was running back down those stairs in the old train station, he went through one of them. He wished the injury gave him reason to be optimistic.

Once the bow was a foot from the dock, Daggert, as delicately as a cat, leaned forward, stepped onto it, and pushed his foot against the dock to propel the boat back out. He stepped over the windshield and planted a foot on one of the two cushioned bucket seats. To Gordon, he said, “If that dog starts yawning, put your fingers in your ears.”

“Got it,” he said.

Daggert gave Jeff and the dog one of his devilish smiles. “That was pretty good back there,” he said to Chipper. “That’ll be one of the first things we deactivate when we get a chance. In the meantime, Gordon, you got some tape?”

Gordon reached under the dash and pulled out a roll of duct tape.

Daggert said, “Wrap up that mutt’s snout so he doesn’t have a chance to make us go deaf.”

Chipper growled as Gordon pulled off a two-foot length of tape, but when he saw Daggert pointing his weapon at the boy, he allowed Gordon to wrap the tape around his jaws.

Once finished, Gordon asked Daggert, “Where to?”

“Bailey and Crawford have taken the SUV north to Canfield. We’ll follow the lake up that way, then take the dog off your hands.”

“What about the boy?”

Daggert surveyed the landscape. “We got a whole lake to drown him in.”

“Okay. You’re the boss.”

Gordon turned the steering wheel as far as it would go until he had the boat lined up to the north. As he nudged the throttle forward the engine roared into action. The bow began to lift as they accelerated.

“Jeff!”

The scream came from behind and to Jeff’s right. He whirled around and there, about ten feet behind the boat and just off to the side, was Emily in her small aluminum craft. She had it running flat out and was coming up alongside, but as soon as Gordon gave his boat more gas, they’d leave Emily behind.

“Jump!” Emily shouted as her tiny boat came up beside them.

Daggert and Gordon glanced back to see what was happening. Daggert shouted to Gordon, “Go!”

But Jeff had already scooped Chipper into his arms and had one foot on the edge of the boat, ready to leap, when Gordon hit the throttle.

There was no time to think about it.

He jumped. He tumbled hard into the middle of Emily’s small boat. He and Chipper hit the bottom with great force, Jeff taking most of the impact on his back. He released Chipper, who leapt over the middle seat to greet Emily. He wanted to give her a big lick, but with his snout taped shut had to settle with nuzzling her with his nose.

“What have they done to you?” she asked, using one hand to pick away the tape while steering the outboard motor with the other. She swung it hard, nearly tossing Jeff back out of the boat again. But it instantly put a lot of distance between them and the speedboat, which was speeding away in the opposite direction.

The speedboat started to turn.

Jeff was thrilled Emily had come out of nowhere to help them, but it was going to be a short-lived rescue. Trying to get away from Daggert and Gordon in her boat would be like a turtle trying to outrun a racehorse.

It wasn’t going to happen.

Jeff righted himself and dropped his butt on to the middle seat, facing backwards so he could see Emily and their pursuers.

She had the tape off Chipper and flicked it off her fingers, the wind taking it away.

“Thank you!” Jeff shouted. “But what now?”

Emily kept a strong grip on the throttle. Her jaw was set tight and her eyes were fixed on something in the distance. Jeff turned to see what she was looking at, but there was nothing but open water. He’d only turned away for a second, but in that time the speedboat had gained on them, big time.

The bow was getting so close that it obscured the view of Daggert and Gordon. It looked to Jeff as though their plan was to run them right over. Maybe Daggert had decided it didn’t matter if he got the dog back in one piece. Better to kill them all.

“Emily!” Jeff screamed, pointing.

She didn’t look back. She was either really, really fearless, or really, really stupid. Chipper was barking non-stop. Jeff wondered if he’d make that horrible sound again. But would it have any impact over the din of the motors?

The speedboat was only twenty feet behind them.

Chipper had his front paws on Emily’s seat to give him a better view of the situation. Jeff took a look at his phone. If Chipper had any great ideas, he was keeping them to himself.

Maybe there was only so much you could expect from a dog. Even a dog like Chipper.

“They’re going to hit us!” Jeff shouted.

This time, Emily turned around. But not, as it turned out, to see how close the speedboat was getting to them.

Emily did something that seemed completely, totally and absolutely insane.

She grabbed hold of the back of the motor with both hands and pulled forward, tipping the motor’s propeller, which was spinning at about a million miles per hour, out of the water.

It made a roar so loud it drowned out the speedboat for a second.

“Emily, what are you do—”

And then Jeff realized. He looked off to the left, and there was the red buoy.

It was the six-foot-tall metal marker that indicated the location of the rock wall just below the surface of the water.

They skimmed right over the submerged wall without touching it. If the motor had been down, there would have been one huge crashing noise and the boat would have come to a jarring halt.

As soon as they’d cleared the underwater fence, Emily dropped the engine back into the water and they kept on going.

Daggert and his friend, however, didn’t fare quite so well.

The speedboat crossed over the wall at high speed. Chipper and Jeff could barely believe what happened when that eighty-horsepower motor struck the rocks.

The front of the boat kept going. The transom — the back end of the boat — was ripped clean off.

Daggert and the driver pitched over the bow — flying through the air like a couple of massive seagulls — and disappeared into the water. No sooner had they landed in the drink than the front of the boat plowed right over them. The back end exploded. Flames and black smoke shot skyward.

“You did it!” Jeff said to Emily. “You did it!” Jeff was on his feet, arms in the air in victory. Chipper’s tail was wagging so vigorously it was making his entire body shake.

Emily steered the boat in a wide arc, heading back in the direction of Shady Acres, while Jeff kept his eyes on the wreckage, waiting to see if one or two heads would bob up above the surface of the water.

They did not.

Chipper barked at Jeff, which he took to mean he had been sent a message. He looked at his phone and saw that Chipper did, in fact, have something to say.