“Soon. We’re getting close now. Don’t forget the radio, and keep your eyes peeled for sandbars.” Spencer shrugged. “I’m not sure what the tide is doing.”

  “Okay. Give me a minute. I’ll check in with the girls and then get back up to the bow.” Rob threw the spotlight into his backpack and clipped the radio to his belt before disappearing down the ladder.

  Spencer turned his attention to the radar monitor and took one last look before turning the unit off. There was so much interference now that he could hardly make out any discernible features. And if there was a boat sitting in the inlet or nearby, it didn’t much matter because there was only one way into the river.

  Sewall Point Bridge was located around four miles from the inlet and about a mile short of Tom and Debbie’s place. They had to cross under this bridge both ways; there was no choice in the matter. The only saving grace was the bridge’s height; the section of bridge directly over the channel boasted a sixty-five-foot vertical clearance off the water’s surface. Spencer remembered that from the time he and Kate came through on the Hunter. That should be a strong deterrent for even the most ambitious would-be boarder. But they were also a bigger target now in the trawler, with plenty of open deck space to aim for if a person was desperate enough. Not to mention, the pilothouse of the trawler was much higher off the water as well. The drop to the weather deck around the bridge, or even the roof over Spencer’s head, would be only thirty-some feet from the overpass.

  The more he thought about it, the less comfortable he became with the prospect of squeezing the trawler through the tight channel at the bridge. The other option would be to anchor on the south side and use the skiff to run the rest of the river to Kate, but Spencer liked that idea even less. The radios barely worked from the bridge to the bow; he couldn’t imagine them being able to communicate over a few miles, and not in these crazy conditions.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Spencer was glad to see Rob making his way up to the bow, although he couldn’t help but feel a little guilty about the man getting stuck with the outside work. At least Rob had found his tote full of fishing gear and grabbed one of the buffs. Kate made fun of him for ordering a twelve-pack of the things, but they’d come in handy now. The thin material of the sun buffs was meant to prevent sunburn, though, not the inhalation of toxic smoke and fallout, but it was better than nothing.

  Rob waved his hand when he got into position on the bow. Spencer watched him pull the spotlight from his bag as they neared the mouth of the inlet and began to ease back on the throttle. Sailfish Point, which consisted of golf course homes and resort condominiums along the oceanfront side of the expansive property to their north, was in ruins, with most of the structure fires still going strong. In dozens of places, bright yellow flames shot up from the ground like geysers, well over twenty feet into the air, which Spencer attributed to ruptured natural gas lines.

  The lingering effects of the EMPs were worse than he anticipated, and his heart sank as the devastated shoreline revealed itself through the fouled air. There were several houses left intact on larger lots. A couple of them had sprinkler systems currently running, and some even had lights on. Whole-house generators were a common residential feature in Florida, though, thanks to yearly threats from tropical storms and hurricanes. Damon had saved his house in a similar fashion, and like Damon, the people using their lights would attract unwanted attention.

  Spencer saw the flash of the spotlight reflecting back off the ash-filled sky. “We should only use the spotlight in short bursts. And I wouldn’t keep your headlamp on, either. Over.” He flipped the switch on the console, bathing the bridge in a dull crimson light.

  Up on the bow, Rob was a target with his headlamp on, negating any advantage that came from operating without the trawler’s running lights.

  “Copy that. Looks like the water’s moving pretty fast through the inlet. Over.” Rob extinguished his headlamp, and for a moment, Spencer lost sight of the man through the streaks of ash.

  “I see that. We’ve got a pretty strong outgoing tide. Over.” Spencer was hoping they’d get lucky and show up at high tide—or at least an incoming tide—but that wasn’t going to be the case.

  He pushed the throttle forward, gaining speed against the flow of water rushing out toward the ocean. They didn’t have to be as careful here; this would be the widest part of the channel, meant for multiple boats to exit and enter the inlet at the same time. But once they were farther upriver, that would change.

  Spencer was disappointed to see so many fires burning. He’d hoped things would have died down by now, but there was some benefit to the natural gas torches jutting skyward when it came to visibility. The orange and yellow refractions of light dancing on the water’s dappled surface allowed him to identify the coquina rock jetties that marked the edges of the channel. Their port side was dark in contrast to the firelight coming off Sailfish Point. Under normal circumstances, Jupiter Island stretched for as far as the eye could see, and the state park and designated wildlife sanctuary extended all the way down to Hobie Sound. But tonight, there was no indication of anything existing beyond a couple hundred yards.

  “Rob, I need you to find me the end of that jetty off the port side. There’s an exposed rock about five hundred yards off the south jetty. Over.” Spencer was worried about cutting the corner too close due to their southern approach to the inlet. He remembered a shoal at the outer edge of the Jupiter Island side and wanted to make sure they didn’t run aground before they’d even begun.

  Rob flashed the spotlight for a few seconds at a time, illuminating the main jetty first, then working his way out across the choppy water toward the channel. Conditions were getting worse as they neared the mouth of the inlet, the water growing more turbulent in the swift-moving tide.

  “A little farther out, I think. Over.” Spencer was worried, though; the red and green buoys that marked the inlet’s entrance should have been flashing.

  It took Rob three more attempts to locate the shallow extension of submerged coquina jetty, but he eventually found the unlit marker. The green buoy with a black number three on its side leaned hard against the rushing tide as it reflected the spotlight. Spencer saw that they’d clear it, albeit by a narrower margin than he was aiming for. He spun the wheel to starboard and gave them a little extra room to compensate for the current.

  Spencer was long past the point of needing to sell himself on the benefits of the Black Bird over the Hunter, but for the first time, he was genuinely happy he had the boat and its 450 horsepower at his disposal. Pushing in through the opening of the two jetties in this ripping current would have been much more difficult in the underpowered Hunter.

  He bumped the throttle forward with the palm of his hand and brought them deftly into the inlet, giving the exposed rock a wide berth. He thought back to the one and only time they’d been through this waterway and tried to remember its nuances. The south bank, off the tip of the wildlife sanctuary, was thick with sandbars. He recalled the perfect little one-foot barrels that formed off the Hunter’s wake as the miniature waves broke across the flats, just like he could hear them breaking now. He was tempted to favor that side of the river and take advantage of the darkness, but it wasn’t safe, and unfortunately, these conditions wouldn’t last very long before they came into a residential area past the sanctuary.

  He could already see the fires up ahead on the opposing shoreline. He doubted that he’d need Rob on the bow anymore as he spotted the next solar-powered green light of the channel marker coming up off their port bow. Then he found the red marker off the other side. A second later, Rob’s left arm shot up over his head and then dropped sideways toward the starboard buoy. Spencer wasn’t sure why the lights on these channel markers were working and the ones at the mouth of the inlet weren’t, but he hoped the working buoy lights continued as they moved upriver.

  “Got it. Over.” Spencer would call Rob up to the bridge once they passed Jupiter Island. It was disheartening to admit, but there’d be plenty of light to navigate the river.

  Spencer had hoped to use the cover of darkness to their advantage and make a stealthy approach to Tom and Debbie’s, but with plenty of fires still lighting the shoreline, speed would be their best bet. He wasn’t sure he could call ten to twelve knots “speed,” though, and against the outgoing tide, they might be going even slower.

  Rob flashed a hazard marker off their starboard side, causing a moment of panic as Spencer checked their depth.

  “Fourteen feet deep here. We’re good. Over.” Spencer assured Rob they were still in the channel but thought it best to confirm that.

  He’d left the chartplotter powered up for its display of metrics, but their route to Kate’s parents’ house was no longer showing consistently on the monitor, along with many other details of the river. Spencer wondered if the GPS-powered equipment was losing its signal due to the heavy amount of particulate falling from the sky. He was convinced that was what had done the radar in.

  He flipped on his headlamp briefly to better read the chart he’d laid out on the table, forgetting that Ciro was even here. The raven let out a squawk, hopped down from his perch, and strutted around on the chart. Spencer did his best to ignore him and identified the hazard as a submerged boulder before switching off his light.

  According to Spencer’s paper chart, there would be two more warning markers along their starboard side before the channel veered south and made a slight curve. That was good information to have as he resumed his duties behind the wheel. But the hazard buoy was a reminder that they couldn’t let their guard down. A reminder neither of them needed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Spencer found the next buoy, its red light flashing a couple of hundred yards off the port bow. This was the beginning of a very tight section of the channel. He’d been dreading this section mostly because of how shallow it was. Some sections of the channel through here were between eight and nine feet deep. Not much of a buffer when he took into consideration the Black Bird drew seven and a half.

  His fingers tightened around the smooth, polished wood of the wheel as he swung the big boat around the western tip of Jupiter Island and left the calm darkness of the wildlife sanctuary behind. There was no room for error here. He was putting a lot of faith in the data he’d found in the certificate of registry. In a matter of minutes, he’d know just how accurate the numbers were.

  But the shallow and extremely narrow channel that would lead them from this point on to the section of river behind Kate’s parents’ house presented other concerns beyond running aground. And those concerns were their soon-to-be close proximity to land.

  Sewell’s Point was a high-density residential area that ran southward, separating the Saint Lucie River from the much larger Indian River. The peninsula brimmed with oversized houses on postage-stamp-sized lots. Spencer never understood why people would pay that kind of money to live only ten feet away from neighbors on two sides. But it came as no surprise when he saw what looked like the entirety of the development on fire or smoldering. The opposite bank of the Saint Lucie was no different, except for a small municipal airport and several golf courses. In addition to the houses—or what was left of them—the river was fraught with sandbars from here on out.

  At least the channel marker lights were working for the most part. And that was good, too, because so many other things were working against them, like the two- to three-knot outgoing tide.

  “I think you can come back up to the bridge now. Over.” Spencer figured there was enough light coming from the fires for him to navigate, and if Rob had to, he could spotlight from the weather deck outside the bridge.

  “You sure about that? Over,” Rob’s garbled voice came back.

  “Buoys are lit. Over.” Spencer set the radio down quickly, reluctant to occupy himself with anything but steering the heavy trawler and searching for the next marker.

  “Copy that. On my way. Over,” Rob reported back.

  Spencer watched as Rob hustled across the foredeck and disappeared from view. He didn’t think he needed Rob to find his way through the channel anymore, but he had an ulterior motive: with them running so close to shore, he was afraid that Rob was an easy target up on the bow.

  Spencer hoped his premonitions about running into trouble were simple paranoia, but he wasn’t willing to risk Rob’s life to avoid running aground. If they bottomed out on a sandbar and got stuck out here, then they really would be a target, if not tonight, then tomorrow in the daylight for sure. But that was something he’d rather not think about.

  Spencer heard Rob enter through the mess deck door at the base of the ladder, but he didn’t come up to the bridge right away. He was probably checking in on Nat and Maya, and Spencer couldn’t blame the man. He felt bad about suggesting the girls and Finn stay below deck for the trek upriver, but he’d rather err on the side of caution than be surprised and have everyone scramble for cover in a panic. Ultimately, it was the couple’s call, but he wasn’t sure it was a good idea for Maya to see what he was seeing anyway.

  The homes here weren’t built much differently than the homes in the Keys: stucco-covered concrete blocks and either tile or asphalt shingles, none of which were especially flammable on their own. But it wasn’t the exteriors of the homes that were failing. With the surge of electricity that Rob had described taking place in their room back at the resort, the fires would’ve started inside the homes, where there was no shortage of consumables to burn.

  The interior walls and trussed-roof systems were made of wood—kiln-dried southern yellow pine, to be exact. Growing up, Spencer had enjoyed many bonfires on the beach. The fuel they used consisted of scrap wood from his dad’s construction sites. He also remembered starting those bonfires with nothing more than a match thanks to the veins of sap that ran through the knotty sections of the material.

  With the interior load-bearing walls and other structural components of the houses burning from the inside out, a good ninety percent of the homes lining the river had been reduced to nothing but blackened concrete shells with flames and smoke rising from inside. He’d seen it in Marathon, although a lot of the fires were just getting started as he was leaving, but not here. This was two days’ worth of unbridled destruction, and it was ugly.

  Dozens of million-dollar sportfishing boats sat at their moorings but no longer floated, their fiberglass hulls melted to the waterline. Spencer could hear the distant hum of generators and he wondered which would last longer: the gas to keep them running or the fires that continued to burn. If the remaining homes lost their ability to douse themselves in water every so often, they’d eventually succumb to the flames as well. Most likely, when all was said and done here, there’d be nothing left of the place. But right now, there was only one house Spencer cared about.

  Rob’s footsteps betrayed him, and a few seconds later, he appeared at the top of the ladder. He was still wearing his buff and holding one for Spencer. “Figured you’d want a clean one.”

  “Thanks.” Spencer took the thin neck gator and stuffed it into his pocket for now. “Why don’t you get one of those set up for Nat? I want to leave her with as many magazines as we can. They can all come up to the pilothouse when we go ashore. They’ll have a good view in every direction from here and the best chance for decent radio reception.” He began to lay out his plan, although calling it a plan was a bit of a stretch.

  Once they got the boat anchored, he and Rob could get to work getting the Hewes into the water. Based on how long it had taken them to get the skiff into the cradle, he was allowing them ten minutes—fifteen tops—before they’d be motoring into the dock. And as far as Spencer was concerned, that was when the clock would really start to tick. If they were spotted leaving the trawler, it would send a clear signal to anyone interested in trying to take advantage of their situation.

  Rob pulled a dozen thirty-round magazines from under the high-top bench seat and laid them out across the cushion. Half of them were already loaded full.

  “We’ll leave both of those for Nat to use.” Spencer nodded toward the two AK-47s in the rack, including the modified version with the fifty-round drum magazine.

  “She’s got the little Glock for backup.” Rob had lost the casual expression he usually wore.

  “They’ll be all right. We’ll be in and out in no time. Believe me, I do not want to hang around here any longer than we have to.” Spencer looked out over the dystopian hellscape that Stuart had become for a quick second before returning his gaze to the channel ahead.

  As he navigated a wide bend in the river and rounded the peninsula, they headed north against the running tide. Rob loaded magazines, starting with the replenishment of rounds to the big drum, while Spencer concentrated on finding the next set of markers. He was reluctant to take his eyes off the water, but it was hard not to. They both worked in silence for the next few minutes, trying to take it all in. And now that they were in the midst of it all, Spencer was having a hard time accepting the grisly scene as reality.

  The canal-based housing community off their port side had been completely razed. The houses were situated so close together that the fire must have torn through the development at lightning speed. The subdivision had finished burning long ago, leaving behind neat rows of smoldering rubble and streets peppered with scorched vehicles.

  Kate’s parents weren’t wealthy. They’d done all right for themselves with Tom’s pension and benefits from the Marine Corps, but they probably wouldn’t have been able to afford a place on the water here if the house hadn’t been in Debbie’s family. She often joked that he’d only married her for a place to keep his boat. Tom would plead the Fifth jokingly, and they’d all have a laugh, but nobody was laughing today.

  Spencer could feel the tension building as they closed in on Tom and Debbie’s. The house was in an older development, though, and that meant the lots were bigger, unlike the subdivision they were currently cruising past, where you could practically pass your neighbor a roll of toilet paper from one bathroom window to the other.