“I saw them on the radar first.” His voice rang with the pride of a child who’d found the prize in the bottom of a cereal box. “I think they’re about four or five miles out if I’m reading that thing properly.”

  Spencer realized that he was still holding his binoculars and joined Rob, who had moved to the railing. He didn’t need the radar to tell him that the boat was closer to their coordinates than Rob had estimated. Spencer’s heart was already thumping away in his chest thanks to the abrupt wakeup, but now his veins were pumping with adrenaline and a little fear. So far, their encounters with other boats at sea hadn’t gone very well. And this new boat was already too close for Spencer’s comfort. After the latest incident, he wasn’t taking any chances, regardless of the sport fisher’s intentions.

  Spencer made it back to the helm station in a couple of strides and began taking action. The boat was a sport fisher, an old Bertram or something like that, from what he could tell. He couldn’t make out much detail at this range, and he’d just assume to keep it that way. Spencer had no desire or need to know anything about the vessel off their port side. It was afloat and under power, so there was no one in distress, unless he counted the distress everyone was in.

  Unlike with the cruise ship, Spencer and the others were in a position to help the crew aboard the sport fisher if they needed rescuing, but it was obvious they didn’t. And Spencer didn’t need anything from them. The temptation to approach the vessel for information was very real but very dangerous, so he quickly dismissed the idea as foolish and far too risky for what might be gained. They’d all find out what conditions were like on land soon enough. And there was nothing the crew of the other boat could relay to him that would make him change his plans. Spencer was going ashore, and come hell or high water, he intended to reach Kate’s parents’ house before this day was over, even if he had to swim the rest of the way.

  He set them on a new course that would avoid the sport fishing vessel without sending them too far out of their way. Any deviation from their direct route to Saint Lucie Inlet was too much, in Spencer’s opinion, but the inconsequential amount of distance and time added to their trip was well worth the effort if it meant avoiding the other boat. Whoever was on it, Spencer was sure they were doing their best to avoid the aftermath of the EMPs and the ensuing chaos. The sport fisher was headed east, and he thought it was very possible the boat was making for the Bahamas.

  Spencer kept one eye on the old fishing boat while he unrolled one of the charts he’d brought aboard from Restless. He was still having a hard time accepting that he’d slept for nearly four hours. Not only was falling asleep for that long irresponsible, but it was a little scary to think about what could have happened. He also felt like he’d let Rob and his family down by not being alert at the wheel. It was time to put a little trust in the man and let him take a turn at the wheel.

  “So what’s the plan?” Rob kept his eyes fixed on the other boat. “Oh, sorry about not coming up to relieve you sooner.” He shrugged. “I guess we all needed some rest after that storm.”

  “It’s fine.” Spencer was embarrassed that Rob had caught him sleeping, and it wasn’t fine. Leaving their fate to chance for almost four hours was unacceptable, and Spencer vowed never to do that again.

  “So what’s the plan?” Rob asked.

  “We’ll go around. Just keep an eye on them, if you would, and let me know if they change course. They don’t need our help, and we don’t need theirs,” Spencer reasoned.

  He had to admit his words sounded cold when spoken out loud, but it was the truth, and he was in no mood to soften the facts as he saw them. The headache he’d woken up with wasn’t helping his current outlook, either.

  Rob nodded in agreement. “Yep. I’m with you there.”

  “Tok… tok… tok.” Ciro rocked back and forth before flexing his wings and shooting out the open door like a feathered bullet. The shiny black bird sailed along the air currents effortlessly, keeping pace with the trawler several feet from the pilothouse until eventually gliding into position atop the single-point boat davit on the foredeck.

  Spencer went back to examining the chart, opting to leave the boat’s instruments untouched while he satisfied his curiosity in determining where the boat might hail from. The sport fisher could have been from anywhere. But when Spencer transferred the bearing measurement generated by the radar to his laminated chart, he made an educated guess that the boat off their port side had originated from the West Palm Beach area.

  The sport fisher had seen them by now, for sure. A boat the size of the Black Bird would be hard to miss out here in these relatively calm waters. Spencer abandoned his chart, letting the laminated map roll itself back up as he returned to the trawler’s chartplotter. They’d covered another forty-three miles, according to the ship’s instruments, and they were still making just above ten knots.

  Nat’s voice rose up from the galley below. “Rob, can you give me a hand?”

  Spencer nodded at Rob. “Go ahead. I’m good, but I do want to take a look around below deck before we get there.”

  “I’ll be right back.” Rob started for the ladder, then stopped, glancing back over his shoulder at Spencer. “When do you think we’ll get to Stuart?”

  Spencer tilted his head toward the chartplotter. “If that’s accurate, right around seven. Depends how many more boats we have to avoid.”

  “I’m sure they’ll want to know.” Rob’s response was less enthusiastic than Spencer had expected, but it dawned on him in that moment what landfall meant for the man and his family. The trio had nothing to gain from reaching Stuart and possibly everything to lose if Marathon was any indication of what they should expect at their next port. They needed to get to Jacksonville. Anything additional was pure risk for them.

  As Spencer watched Rob disappear below deck, he made a decision right then and there not to include Rob or Nat in his efforts to reach Kate and her parents any more than absolutely necessary. That meant leaving the family behind on the trawler if conditions forced him to navigate the Saint Lucie River in the skiff. He couldn’t ask the couple to risk their lives going ashore when they had Maya to take care of. Of course, staying behind on the trawler while she was anchored outside the inlet was no safe bet, either. Rob and Nat would have to stay alert and be ready to defend the boat.

  With all this time on his hands, Spencer couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought about this scenario yet, but if he did run the river to Hoggs Cove in the skiff by himself, that meant leaving the others on the trawler alone. His concern was unwarranted, wasn’t it? Rob had saved his life, after all. But Spencer barely knew them. He was inclined to trust Rob and Nat, and his gut told him he could. But he’d be lying if he didn’t admit the thought of the couple taking the trawler and heading to Jacksonville on their own hadn’t crossed his mind.

  “That’s crazy.” Spencer rubbed Finn’s head and forced the ridiculous idea and unwarranted fear from his thoughts.

  He was being paranoid. The sleep he’d managed to grab was needed, but obviously not enough to help him think clearly. After the cruise ship debacle, however, he was pretty sure Nat wasn’t exactly his biggest fan.

  “Looks like they’re holding their course,” Rob said as he climbed the ladder. “I’ve been keeping an eye on them from the galley.”

  Spencer felt a wave of heaviness pass over him as he wondered if Nat had been cooking again.

  “Sorry about that. I promised Nat I’d help her haul some trash up through the hatch. She’s been keeping us all busy down there ever since we woke up. Oh, here. She sent this up for you.” Rob handed Spencer a bottle of cool water and a water-stained manilla envelope.

  “Thanks.” Spencer felt bad for automatically assuming the worst, especially now that he knew the others had been cleaning up below deck while he was up here sleeping instead of keeping an eye out for other boats.

  Rob glanced at the envelope. “She said you’d probably want to see that.”

  Spencer took a drink, then set the bottle down on the console so he could unwind the string holding the envelope closed. He wasn’t sure what to expect. Hopefully it wasn’t more proof of how terrible the former captain and crew were. Spencer didn’t care to learn any more about the former occupants. As far as he was concerned, he already knew more than he wanted to. But as he slid the papers out of the envelope, a smile crept over his face.

  “What is it?” Rob asked.

  “It’s the certificate of registry.” Spencer didn’t waste any time emptying the contents of the musty envelope and spreading the documents out on the console.

  “And what is that, exactly?” Rob’s tilted head reminded Spencer of Finn.

  “This should tell us everything we need to know about the Black Bird. All the specs for the boat should be listed here. Look.” Spencer ran his fingers over the paper, starting at the top. “She’s a 1991 Robinson modified monk trawler, seventy-four feet long, with a fifteen-foot beam. Ha, I was close.” Spencer continued reading the specs to himself, glossing over most of the information quickly in his search for the most important detail.

  “What’s a monk trawler?” Rob asked, but Spencer was too busy to answer at the moment.

  “There it is—draft. Seven feet five inches.” Spencer repeated the measurement under his breath a few times while returning to his laminated chart.

  “Is that good?” Rob moved to the console, taking Spencer’s spot, and began perusing the paperwork for himself.

  “Well, it’s not bad. It’s going to be tight through a couple spots, but overall good news, I think. It means we can take this rust bucket through the inlet and most of the way to Kate’s parents’ house.”

  “That is good news,” Rob agreed.

  Spencer dragged his finger along the channel on the laminated chart from the mouth of the inlet to Hoggs Cove, noting the depth readings along the way. Saying the route would be tight was a bit of an understatement, but considering the alternative, it was a risk Spencer was willing to take, trust issues aside.

  They’d have to anchor in the channel but could motor to her parents’ dock in the skiff without losing sight of the trawler. Spencer wanted to keep Rob and Nat out of harm’s way as much as possible, and now that he knew he could take the trawler all but a few hundred yards from their destination, it put his mind at ease a tiny bit. There’d be some thin spots going up the river in a boat that drew nearly eight feet, and there’d be absolutely no room for error when it came to keeping the seventy-four-foot trawler between the navigational buoys and the dead center of the channel, but he preferred that risk to the other option.

  Leaving the Black Bird anchored outside the mouth of Saint Lucie Inlet seemed like an open invitation for trouble, something he hoped to avoid but certainly wouldn’t count on. And whatever challenges they encountered, they could face them together.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Spencer abandoned the charts and stepped to the radar, where he checked the sport fishing boat’s position against the Black Bird’s. The smaller vessel was maintaining its course, as Rob had stated, and appeared to have no interest in them whatsoever. Good. Spencer eyed the paper strewn out across the console. He was eager to learn all he could about the Black Bird, but for the moment, he was busy imagining the route upriver to Tom and Debbie’s house. He’d only navigated the river once before in the Hunter, and that experience would hardly compare to this one. Restless drew just over four feet with her fixed, twin keels; the Black Bird’s draft was almost twice that. There was no question they’d be pushing the limits of the upriver channel in some areas.

  Spencer hated to consider further delays, but they just might have to wait until high tide, if they could. They’d departed Marathon on an outgoing tide, but even if he wasn’t too mentally exhausted to do the math, it wouldn’t have yielded an accurate answer on what tide they should expect this evening at the inlet. And without access to one of the weather channels on the radio, he’d just have to wait and see what the conditions looked like when they got there. Thankfully, they’d have an hour or two of daylight left, although he wouldn’t count on having great visibility.

  The air was already thickening as they neared the coast. Even at over thirty miles from shore, Spencer was beginning to pick up hints of soot and charred debris in the air. The toxic smell they’d left in Marathon was slowly returning, and with it came the realization of what they were willfully exposing themselves to by heading back into a situation most people were trying to escape. It was a lot easier to discount the impending danger, or at least ignore it, when they were farther out to sea. But now that they could smell the fires burning and see the undeniable increase of airborne pollutants, the reality of what lay ahead struck home.

  Spencer wished they were there now, not just because he was anxious to reach Kate but because there was too much time to dwell on what they’d find in Stuart. He could busy himself with prepping for the rescue mission—which, at this point, was exactly what they’d be attempting. He wasn’t taking Tom’s skills as a former Marine for granted, but Spencer couldn’t shake the images of destruction and civil unrest that had been seared into his mind.

  Tom was a capable man but no longer the young, go-hard Marine he used to be. He was fit for his age, and he and Debbie were both active, so Spencer had no doubts they were capable of surviving just about anything. But this was something different; these EMPs had brought their worst nightmares to life.

  “Wow, this really tells you everything about the boat. Forty-eight hundred gallons of diesel? That’s a lot of fuel,” Rob remarked.

  “Yeah, that’s pretty typical for a monk trawler. Single-screw, fuel-efficient, long-range yachts, capable of ocean voyaging. I imagine she can travel quite a ways on a full tank,” Spencer reasoned.

  Rob continued reading the documents. “Built in 1991, but it says here in an addendum she was retrofitted in 2010, whatever that means. I guess remodeled, sort of. The Caterpillar diesel makes 450 horsepower.”

  Spencer eyed the fuel gauge and did some rough math, although he was reluctant to share the eight-thousand-mile range he was coming up with. “We’re probably good on fuel for a while, as long as that gauge is accurate. I’ll have to show you how to do a sounding on the fuel tanks so we can figure out how much diesel we actually have without relying on the gauge. If I can find the stuff to do it, that is.”

  “Just say the word.” Rob looked up from the documents strewn about the console and eyed the fading sport fishing boat.

  Spencer needed something long and flexible he could drop down into the fill tube, which he would then retrieve carefully as he watched for diesel residue. He’d done this in the Coast Guard with a flexible metal tape measure on a reel, combined with a color-changing paste to indicate the fuel level. He wouldn’t find the paste, but this boat was a lot smaller than the 210-foot Reliance-class cutter he was stationed on, and he thought he could get away with a regular tape measure he’d noticed on the small workbench in the engine room.

  “Better to do it inshore or at least when we don’t have these rollers. We won’t get an accurate reading in these conditions,” Spencer stated.

  “I’m up for anything and ready to help. I know I’ve mentioned this already, but you really don’t have to hold back, man. Just tell me what you need done. I’m a pretty handy guy to have around,” Rob offered.

  Spencer nodded. “I appreciate it.”

  Of all the things that concerned Spencer, running out of fuel wasn’t one of them. They easily had enough diesel to reach Stuart and Jacksonville Beach. Assuming a diesel burn rate of between eighteen and twenty-four gallons per hour at the high end of their speed, twelve knots, Spencer wasn’t even sure they’d need more fuel to reach his parents in Buxton.

  But there were too many variables to be that confident without some hesitation. His numbers could very well be off, and so could the gauge. If an opportunity presented itself to take on fuel, he wouldn’t pass it up. What they had wouldn’t last forever, even if the Black Bird did boast a pretty incredible range. Fuel was something he wouldn’t have had to worry about on the Hunter quite so much, but Spencer wasn’t about to complain.

  “How are you feeling, by the way?” Spencer asked.

  “Better… Much better after I, ah… got it out of my system.” Rob dropped his chin and went back to reading the papers in front of him.

  “And the girls?” Spencer asked.

  “Nat’s good, and I think Maya did better than all of us.” Rob laughed, then paused for a second. “Is that kind of weather normal? I mean, is that going to happen a lot? Because that was pretty wild.”

  “No. That was out of season, for sure. It’s not to say it can’t happen again, but I wouldn’t count on it.” Spencer checked the radar again and clocked the old fishing boat at just under seven miles and counting.

  Rob sighed. “Good.”

  “And I’d say our friends are headed south with no interest in us.” Spencer dipped his head toward the boat.

  “Want me to take over for a while?” Rob offered. “You said you wanted to check things out below.”

  “Ah, yeah. I guess I could do that.” Spencer looked around, making sure they were on course, and decided to set the target alarm on the radar. He’d turned it off when they ran through the storm to avoid listening to all the false reports.

  “If you need me, don’t hesitate,” Spencer reminded Rob as he started down the ladder.

  “Yep. Don’t worry, man. Take your time.” Rob moved to the bench and sat down with his binoculars just as Finn was getting motivated to follow Spencer.

  The lazy dog sat up reluctantly, stretching his body out before dropping to the floor in a cloud of fur and dust that hovered in the sunlight fighting its way through the darkening sky. Finn was panting loudly and probably needed a drink. Spencer hadn’t noticed the water tank’s capacity in the registry, but there’d be time to look through the documents more thoroughly later.