A Long Reach Back

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Excellently crafted

Keeps you on the edge of your seat

Simi-Gen

Starve The Devil

Quick-witted writing style

Keeps nails short and edges of seats warm

EbooksNBytes

"Not sure what worries me more, that I can actually

see something like this happening in the world today, or

that I understand the president’s action and partially agree."

Roundtable Reviews

A Long Reach Back

by Noel Carroll

Published by Noel Carroll on Smashwords

ISBN 978-1-4660-0246-3

Also available in print under ISBN: 978-0-9658702-9-0

Copyright © 2011 by Noel Carroll

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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Cover by KC Creations

Photo courtesy of NASA

What we refer to as modern man sprang into existence some forty thousand years ago. These ancestors of ours entered a world dominated by Neanderthals, a hardy bunch, stronger than we and equally as smart. How we managed to survive and the Neanderthals did not is a story that has never been told.

Until now.

PROLOGUE

Florida Straits

Two thousand feet beneath the sea, the earth began to rumble. Reluctantly at first but then with greater determination as if suddenly getting the idea what was expected of it. In short order, a world of rock and sand was swaying rhythmically to the tune of some unseen concert master, in the process turning hard-packed silt into fluid quicksand. That far down, there was no one to see the tons of rock being wrenched from the sides of underwater cliffs, no one to hear the dull thud of their impact on the ocean floor, no one to take pity on the marine life too slow to get out of the way.

Although duly recorded on seismographs all over the world, the event was universally dismissed as minor in scale and non threatening to either man or his environment. What interest was shown, and this only in passing, revolved around its location, a part of the Florida Straits previously regarded as geologically stable. But had observers been on the scene, their interest would have quickened. The weakened sand allowed an ancient capsule to escape its grip after eons of imprisonment beneath the ocean floor.

Immediately assaulted by a sea that would not easily calm, the capsule bounced without purpose for a number of minutes before beginning a slow rise to the surface a half mile away. At first it moved only upward, but once above the underwater cliffs protecting it from the rapidly-moving Gulf Stream, it was pushed northward toward the Bahamas. In time, it came close enough to the surface to be teased by a few tenacious rays of light, its first such exposure to the sun in more than forty thousand years.

CHAPTER 1

Nassau, Bahamas

Calm down, miss, I understand.

I don’t think you do! I came within an inch of being killed! This guy Rick was seriously pissed and aiming a gun at my head like he meant to use it! Then, while I’m leaning over the side of the boat waiting to have my brains scattered all over the ocean, he whirls around and starts firing at nothing—I can tell you, that first shot did funny things to my digestive system!

And what was your impression of Rick during all this?

Well, I didn’t like him very much!

No, no, did you see his eyes; were they wild? And did he say anything?

His eyes were popping out of his head! And he kept shouting ‘no way.’ He’d yell that out then fire his gun at an empty patch of ocean.

What was he doing just prior to this?

I just told you; he was getting ready to shoot me!

No, I mean was he rational?

Hey, maybe it’s just me, but I don’t regard anyone who’s about to put a bullet in my brain as ‘rational!’

"Miss, please! We need your help. These people deal in illegal drugs. They’re dangerous and need to be caught and put away. Now why did he want to kill you, and why did he suddenly decide against it?"

Call me ‘Niki,’ not ‘miss,’ okay? Anyway, he wanted to kill me because I was in his way. He stopped trying to kill me because he saw Tan.

Tan?

Yeah, the naked guy we found floating off the bow of our boat. I told you about that.

You didn’t tell me his name.

Look, let me explain. When Rick spotted a naked man treading water more than seventy miles from the nearest shore, it blew his mind. Blew mine too; sent me into a netherworld.

Huh?

"A netherworld. That’s where it makes sense for you to be saved from being fish food by a good-looking naked guy having a swim in the middle of the ocean! Come on, if that happened to you, where would your mind be?"

Point taken, but then what?

Well, Rick mumbled something like Tan—we didn’t know his name yet—was baggage he didn’t need.

‘Baggage.’

Exactly! You have to understand, …uh, Carl is it?

Karl with a ‘K.’ DEA. My quiet colleague here is CIA. His name’s not important.

CIA? I thought you guys had to stay clear of the domestic scene.

Niki, we’re in the Bahamas.

Yeah, there is that. Anyway, Karl with a ‘K’, you have to understand that Rick was as paranoid as they come. He likely thought Tan was a plant by the Feds.

A naked man popping up seventy miles from shore is perceived by him to be a ‘plant’?

Crazy isn’t it?

But not so ‘crazy’ that it kept you from inviting this guy on board.

Well, as I said, he wasn’t bad looking.

The ‘naked’ had nothing to do with it?

Hey, I’m kidding. The man was in trouble. It was hands-across-the-sea, literally in this case.

The picture of nobility! Was Rick your lover?

That’s not a proper question, and you know it!

Was he dressed when he died?

Jesus, man, cut me some slack. I don’t make it a requirement that guys have to shed their clothes to come aboard. Rick was there only because he wanted my boat alive and me dead!

To use it to run drugs.

He didn’t exactly say that, but I think it’s obvious.

And you weren’t party to that.

"Think it through, Karl! Rick was about to kill me!"

Well you did say he was poised for a little romance when Tan appeared.

He made one sexually-explicit remark, and this while he was holding a gun on me.

What brought him to do that, make a crack, I mean?

Hey, I’m 28 and single. And in case you haven’t noticed, I don’t exactly have to beg men for attention. Whatever else Rick was planning, he noticed—yeah, I’ve seen that smile before; you guys are really enjoying this.

I’m smiling at your naïveté in thinking we accept your protestations of innocence while entertaining two naked men.

"I did not say Rick was naked!"

Was he?

What the hell difference does it make, the guy’s dead! Look, Rick was presentable at all times. And before your warped cop minds think to ask, except for the very end, I was presentable too.

That I can easily believe, but did you have any clothes on?

Very funny! But this is getting us off track. You guys obviously don’t appreciate what I’ve been through.

You did try to sell the drugs.

Oh, come on! I tried to sell them back to their previous owners, the same creeps who tried to do me in. And that was because if I didn’t do it, Charles would have killed Tan and me both!

Okay, I’ll bite, who the hell is Charles?!

Rick’s boss. We’re coming to that.

I sure hope so. So far this is just a jumble of unrelated facts.

Well you’re the one asking the questions! Try organizing them a little!

Okay, I’ll give you that. Let’s focus on Tan. Tell me again about your initial meeting.

"Well, first I should clear the air about why I was out there. I was not running drugs and I was not sitting in the middle of the ocean waiting for a naked guy to come up and introduce himself."

Focus on Tan, Niki! Start from the moment you spotted him.

It was he who spotted me. I was seventy miles southwest of the Berry Islands when suddenly this hand came out of the sea and started waving.

And you didn’t think that odd?

"You’ll forgive me for not having all my thoughts lined up, but this happened just as a nasty drug guy was trying to spill my brains all over the ocean!

How did he seem to you, this Tan?

I told you, he wasn’t bad looking. A little skinny, but otherwise a great body!

I mean, was he … different in any way?

Well, the worst you could say about him was he needed a little time in the sun. His skin was pale to the point of being white. I guess you could say he acted childlike, but everything else was pure man. As time went by and my nerves settled down I really noticed.

‘Childlike?’

Yeah, he came across as if he had one foot stuck in the cradle. I had to teach him everything.

I can believe that.

"Hey, be nice. The poor guy was really out of it.

But a fast learner?

I’ll say!

Niki!

Oh, lighten up! If I dumped this on you without laying a proper foundation it would just confuse. A lot happened in those first few minutes, a lot I still don’t understand.

Okay, okay, but let’s get on with it!

Well, as I said, I was sitting in the middle of the ocean wondering which would come first, rape or a bullet to the brain, when up jumped some naked guy hitchhiking his way through the Gulf Stream, something you see every day.

* * * * *

Seventy miles southwest of the Berry Islands

As the sun’s rays wrapped around more of the submerged capsule, they exposed an egg-shaped vessel, its transparency suggesting it was made of glass. Further sunlight revealed what was inside: two seats, one unoccupied but the other supporting what looked to be a human being, a man. Suggesting a long time without exposure to sun, the man’s tall, slim body was exceptionally pale, the look accentuated by bushy hair that was on the light side of blond. His position was an awkward one, knees crushed to chest as if the capsule that held him was meant for a smaller person. With clothes tattered to the point of nonexistence, he looked to have suffered trauma of some kind.

When finally the capsule broke the surface, it vibrated for a moment as if attempting to restart some long-dead engine, then summarily opened to the sea. Proving it was not programmed for water, it immediately began to sink, inviting its charge to sink along with it. But contact with the sea, something avoided to this point, sparked movement in the man. At first the demand placed on muscles long out of practice made for slow going, but then a primordial instinct for survival kicked in to encouraged greater effort.

The inflow of seawater was as quick as it was unyielding, and soon there was no part of either man or capsule that was not submerged. Struggling to survive, the man was crippled by a confusion born of only partial consciousness and a constitution that had had no demands of any kind made on it for a very long time.

CHAPTER 2

West End, Grand Bahama Island

I guess you could say it started at Mindo’s bar in West End, a place tourists either haven’t yet found or couldn’t care less about. The time was late afternoon and I was sitting on one of Mindo’s tired, wooden stools, elbows propped up on a bar that hadn’t seen a coat of varnish since Columbus left. As often happened when loneliness got to me, I had my eyes glued to Mindo’s butt, not that great a sight unless you’ve had something to drink. Mindo is not a fling or anything, just a body to occupy my eyes while waiting for something better to come along.

West End is a small but harmless town on the western tip of Grand Bahama Island. Mindo’s, which sits about a hundred feet off the water, attracts mostly locals, and since I’d been playing homeless vagrant for more than a year, I felt I could lay claim to local status. With a number of slow-moving electric fans pushing back against the summer heat, it’s a good place to sit and booze away a lazy afternoon when loneliness and doubt are setting in, when you begin to wonder if getting away from all the things that drove you crazy isn’t making you even crazier.

That was what my life had become, a 28-year-old dropout from a disagreeable past. Some say what I’ve become is my own fault, that I have an attitude problem, but I say if they lived my life they’d be whistling a different tune. My world is not theirs. My world was against me from the start.

Charles was in here looking for you, Niki.

I looked up from my carefully nurtured liquid affairs with an expression that told Mindo I didn’t appreciate the interruption. "Yeah? What’d he want?’

Mindo’s face said, ‘I don’t ask; I don’t tell.’

Charles was the local business man, his main product being drugs. His wanting to see me lowered me a notch or two in Mindo’s eyes.

Charles is part East Indian and part African, and his hair shows this. Black but not kinky, it drops straight down to his shoulders. He’s about five feet ten, a little on the thin side and travels around in brightly patterned shorts. I think the shorts are a little conspicuous for a drug dealer, but arguments like that carry no weight with Charles. He figures he’s a big dog in the Bahamas with no one able to touch him, certainly not the law. Even his name reflects his ego, Charles, not Chuck. Call him Chuck only if you want to see one really cold stare.

Anyway, getting back to what brought me here, my mother died when I was too young to understand. In my eyes she left because of me, something I did, something she didn’t like. Even though I know better now, I’m used to using that as an excuse for my antisocial behavior. It’s like an old blanket, badly in need of a cleaning but works for me.

Hey, Niki.

I jumped at the sound of the voice coming over my shoulder. I didn’t particularly want company, but seeing Charles’s face aglow with pleasure at the sight of me was an ego boost I sorely needed. Normally I wouldn’t have more than a few words to say to Charles, but I was in the mood for a hug, both physical and psychological.

Charles was, as I said, a little left of the law, but I figured that was none of my business. And since he looked a good sight better than Mindo, I didn’t mind having a new focus for my lonesome eyes. By the time we were into our second drink I was unloading on Charles like a drunk with verbal diarrhea.

I know how you feel, Niki. My mother ran away when I was a baby.

I had just told Charles about my mother; he was trying to tell me it didn’t matter. I smiled, though I took care not to let him know why—Charles was not what I would call well-adjusted. Yeah, well I became a grouchy kid, the kind that doesn’t win friends easily. At times I really tried, but it never lasted; my friends would leave me just like my mother left me.

How ‘bout boyfriends. You gotta have had them, a pretty girl like you.

I did not much like the look on Charles’s face as he said that. As I say, he’s not too hard on the eyes, but considering what he did for a living, probably damaging people big time when they got in his way, I didn’t want to get too close. The boys came but they didn’t stay. And as this happened I became more convinced that the only one I could really depend on was my dad.

A dad can’t give you everything.

(Another of his predatory looks!) But even as I knew where Charles was going with this, I felt I had to defend the one person in my life who stuck around. Yeah, but he understood what was going on in my head. I shrugged before adding, "Even if he didn’t have a clue what to do about it. His idea of therapy was to find more things for us to do together. That helped, but a side effect of this was to make me even more paranoid about losing him. I became as protective of him as he was of me.

I softened a little after college, got a job, made some friends, even met a guy I liked—actually, I liked him a lot. He had an apartment that was small but a neat place to meet, and I guess I met him there often, sometimes staying for days. Although sad at losing even that much of me, Dad was okay with that, even helped my guy find a job in his office.

So why you floatin’ around the Bahamas on a sailboat.

You mean what did I do to turn the guy off?!

Come on, Niki, you know I didn’t mean it that way.

Yeah; I know. I’m just a little sensitive on that subject.

Hey, you don’t wanna tell, you don’t gotta.

No, it’s no problem. It’s history. Anyway, one day I got a call out of the blue from the police telling me Dad had died of a heart attack while sitting at his desk. It turned my whole world upside down. Even more so when I learned he had just been told he had to take early retirement. And that his job was being handed over to my boyfriend.

Seeing that I was fighting tears, Charles went quiet. It made me think he might have a sensitive side. "It was more than I could take. The father I wanted so much to protect, the only person in my life I could really count on, was dead. And as much as my head told me otherwise, I saw myself as having been the instrument of his death. The guy I brought home had stolen his job—there was no way I could see it other than that, even as my boyfriend pleaded with me that it was not his doing, that he was only trying to be good at his job.

"I reverted back to the bitter person I had been for most of my life. I left work without so much as a goodbye to anyone and refused to even answer my phone—not that there were all that many people ringing. I settled Dad’s estate, used what was left to fix up the live-aboard sailboat he and I had spent a lot of happy hours sailing, then took off in search of a world I could live in.

So you got nobody waitin’ for you at home.

Now that comment I liked even less than Charles’s sexual innuendoes! Considering what this man did to put food on his table, it held the kind of meaning that gave me a chill. It reminded me that I could drop off the face of the earth and nobody would even notice.

There are the friends I made at work. They check up on me now and then.

Yeah, but you said you don’t answer their calls. The smile on Charles’s face said he knew I was lying, which, of course, I was.

In truth, I was alone, really alone. Running away just wasn’t doing it for me. At the beginning I saw sailing the tropics as positive thing, more a romantic odyssey than a retreat from life, something others only dream about. Even the name of my boat fit: "Sinbad," a mythical sailing legend, what I thought I could be in a few years. At forty-one feet and with the knowledge of how to sail it drummed into me by my dad, I could single-hand it to any place on the globe. I could live gloriously off the sea, maybe take the odd job when I needed cash—as long as this didn’t drag me back to the ugly world I left behind.

But that argument had worn thin long ago.

I knew the game was in the second Inning when Charles began laying words on me about how smart I was, not only in book learning but how I handled myself in the wild, which is how he described his world.

Your boat and you knowin’ how to handle it could be a real help to the locals, help that’d be well rewarded.

Locals to Charles meant him and his drug business. Knowing he had the kind of clout that could get people hurt made me cautious about how I said it, but I made it clear that coming down on the wrong side of the law was not what I considered a good way to get out of my funk. It’s too late anyway Charles. I’m setting sail in the morning for points south.

I made that decision on the spot, coaxed there by the realization that my situation with the locals was starting to get heavy. Even so, I began to like the idea of moving on. Hell, why not? It was part of my original plan, and I was doing myself no good moping around West End. By God, I would do it!

Not long after that Charles left, leaving in his wake a smile that made me feel like a bug about to be squashed. Charles does not like to be turned down.

* * * * *

Somewhere in the Florida Straits

The few ragged bits of clothing, which was all that was left of whatever covering the man once wore, were gone, a victim of the relentlessly moving water. He was facing a sun that bore down on him without mercy, assaulting eyes unaccustomed to so much light. His muscles were uncoordinated, and even the slightest movement produced pain. Even so, the naked man kept hands and legs moving, aware of how quickly the uncompromising water could claim him if he did not. In time staying afloat became less painful and he was able to put more effort into trying to extract from a confused mind why from horizon to horizon there was only liquid.

He had arrived in an alien world with no memory he could rely on, not even enough to tell him how long he had been here. It was as if a nightmare were ending by his becoming part of it, with the distinction between dream and reality in no way clear. There were only bits and pieces, flashes of one thing then another, nothing he could organize into coherent thoughts. The impenetrable darkness, a half-empty capsule, rocks falling all around, a rush of liquid, all of it illusive and fragmentary, none of it offering so much as a hint of meaning.

What is this place?

Startled by the sound of his own voice crying out to an empty and alien world, the man paused to hear evidence that someone or something had heard. Why he was concerned, he did not know, but a knot of fear had begun to build in his gut.

So much water, as far as the eye can see and a considerable distance beneath me as well.

Surely this was not where he was meant to be. Even the temperature was not right. It was warm, too warm.

He wondered how he knew that. How cold was it supposed to be? And if he were so sure it should be colder, why couldn’t he remember why he was so sure?

Even his appearance was confusing. A pale body devoid of covering—if the water had been the temperature he remembered he would be in even worse trouble.

Why would I leave my body so completely exposed to the elements?

He remembered scraps of material clinging to him as he left the sinking vessel. What had this once been? How long had he been in that capsule that his clothes had devolved to tatters?

What if the cold returns?

He knew if that happened that it would be necessary to slow down life functions in order to survive, and that would make it much more difficult to sort things out.

A head injury of some sort?

He ran a hand slowly over his skull, palpitating each section to see if pain would result. Nothing, not even a slight discomfort.

But something must have happened or I would know where in this vast universe I am!

Why couldn’t he at least remember that? This planet was not his own, of that he was sure.

Closing his eyes, the man struggled to pull back, to relax. Allowing frustration to mingle with whatever else had invaded his system was unwise. He mentally withdrew support from one part of his body after another until all muscles not employed in the act of keeping him on the surface were at rest. Then he sought out something plain and unchallenging on which to focus, hoping in this to free his mind of unproductive thought. A smile crossed his lips as he realized that something plain and unchallenging was not all that difficult to find. There was nothing here but slowly moving water.

The atmosphere! Interest quickened, he raised his face to the sky to better consider its composition. A deep breath, slowly taken, told him it was rich in oxygen. There were elements trapped within it that he had trouble identifying, but they spoke of an abundance of life. Wherever he was he had company.

Little evidence of such life was obvious at the moment, but he was experiencing flashes of animals, hairy beings with unsophisticated coverings.

And, he realized with an explosive burst of enthusiasm, they walked on solid ground! They were not inhabitants of this ubiquitous liquid!

How did he know of such beings if he did not know who or what he was supposed to be? He tried to hold on to the images, but they were darting in and out of his mind like a tease. There, then not there, or there obscured by fog. Collectively, however, they were leaving him with a feeling of warmth.

And guilt!

Why guilt? What had he done that his subconscious now found so distasteful? The images were of primitive beings, though similar in physical structure to himself. He could not believe that he would have intentionally harmed such creatures.

Similar to us—how similar? And who is ‘us’?

The creatures walked on a solid surface—what surface? Where was it, and what did it look like? Was it abundantly vegetated? Was it mountainous? Colder, yes, but how much colder?

Even more demanding than his need to know was how he was going to survive whatever it was he had gotten himself into.

Maybe I was not intended to survive.

Not a good thought, but it would at least lend meaning to that persistent feeling of guilt.

The man closed his eyes in renewed concentration. How much could he say he knew, really knew? Whatever this place was, it had life and water—the latter painfully obvious! Some of its inhabitants were hairy and muscular. And smaller.

I was a head taller than the tallest of them.

They were gentle people, at least when one got to know them. Intelligent as well, though far from developing that intelligence beyond the basics of creature survival.

A sense of presence interrupted the man’s reverie. Something was out there and not far away. It was as long as he was tall, and it was approaching with what appeared to be a mixture of caution and excitement. Drawing on instinct rather than conscious thought, the man reached out to mentally caress the approaching creature, surprised when what came back was strength and efficiency—this creature was a survivor. As its shadowy form came into view, the man watched it turn to begin a circling pattern, its caution now more obvious. It was a thing of beauty, perfectly adapted to a water environment. Its teeth, which occupied a disproportionate amount of its body, suggested two things: that it sustained itself by consuming other creatures, and that other creatures still occupied this planet.

The man watched as a subtle change occurred in the animal’s posture. Its back arched slightly and the fins jutting outward from the lower part of its body drooped. The caution it had displayed upon its arrival was apparently about to end.

The charge was slow at first but the creature picked up speed as it sensed no resistance. In seconds it was upon its prey and ready to deliver a killing blow with a skill born of many such encounters in the past. As the man watched with seeming indifference, the predator covered its eyes with a white protective lid, opened its sizable mouth to expose rows of razor-sharp teeth, then clamped down hard on the first mouthful of food it had encountered in close to a week.

CHAPTER 3

West End, Grand Bahama Island

Relief oozed out of every pore in my body as I stepped into the cool night air outside Mindo’s. A major decision had been made, offering new promise for a life that was going nowhere. But the good feeling did not last. By the time I reached the place where Sinbad was docked, my insides were being tortured by a cocktail of waning alcohol and building fear. Not that I thought Charles would come down on me that night. It was more that I knew in my heart that if I did not get out of Dodge, I would soon see his unhappy face in mine.

There wasn’t much to do in the way of packing; everything I owned was already on board. So I filled the water tanks then stumbled through the untying of lines holding Sinbad to the dock. The darkness was almost total, but even so I pulled out without flipping on running lights, the memory of Chucky’s smile still driving my thoughts.

I felt a little better once I raised enough sail to slip quietly through the marina toward the open ocean beyond. A few people saw me leave, but it wasn’t that much of an oddity that they would lose sleep over. After all, I was just a woman single-handing a big sailboat and stealing away in the dark without bothering with either engine or lights—so much for Chucky not hearing about it till morning.

Once clear of land I got both sails going in full, wanting to make West End a distant memory as soon as possible. My spirits picked up in direct proportion to how quickly that little town faded into the night behind me.

It was a nice evening for sailing, with a shy moon peaking above slowly moving waves and a sky blazing with stars. I turned the wheel to take maximum advantage of the wind, sipped a coke as I waited for the speed to build, then engaged the autopilot. I was off and running; to where, I had no idea.

By early morning I was twenty-five miles closer to Nassau, my first intended stop, and relaxed enough to be grabbing fifteen minute naps—the autopilot and the alarm on the radar made that a reasonably safe thing to do. When the rising sun crept far enough above the water to keep me awake, I went below to get coffee and breakfast going. I didn’t exactly feel safe, just safer than I would have been had I stayed tied up at the dock in West End. In any case, what comfort I felt didn’t last.

I wasn’t below more than a minute when I heard the faint sound of an engine. Someone was coming, someone in a big hurry. More curious than alarmed, I ambled up the galley steps to check it out. Now it’s not uncommon when one boater spots another on the high seas for him to pass close enough to send a greeting, but when I picked up my binoculars and saw standing at the wheel of a sleek, fiberglass motorboat my former friend Charles, calm changed to dread.

He was not alone. There was another man beside him, a big white guy with lots of hair, a thick, black mustache and a face only a fellow druggie could love. So big was he that I almost failed to see Juli sitting on a bench behind him.

Juli is Charles’s girlfriend, at least most of the time (last night he tried to make me believe I could be her replacement). She’s a nice-looking black gal, a few years younger than I. I didn’t like Juli much, not only because she was still in her twenties and I was about to leave them, but because she and I competed for the same guys. She’s small and slim and so sexy that she makes me feel like a horse at times. It didn’t help when I saw she was wearing fiery-red shorts that hugged her like a coat of paint.

I had no illusions that this was a coincidence, that we were just fellow boaters enjoying the sea. The look on Chucky’s face, which was all too easy to see through the binoculars, was the same look he left with me the previous night, a smile that said he wasn’t smiling. Rather than his trademark patterned shorts, Chuck had on a plain black tee shirt and jeans, both too large for his medium-sized frame. I guess he saw himself as bigger than he really was, but to me he looked geeky. I decided not to tell him that.

I had almost no chance of fending them off. I owned a 22 caliber pistol, but it was more to make me feel good than scare away bad guys. Besides, having already pissed Charles off once, pointing a gun at him now did not strike me as the best way to renew our friendship.

They motored up to my port stern then, without so much as a nod, began tying up. Giving up any thought of pretending this was a friendly visit, I asked with a face that did not hide my displeasure, Why are you here, Charles? I had come to the stern hoping he would take the hint and stay in his boat.

In silence, he finished securing the lines, switched off his engine then looked up to award me a blistering stare. You weren’t so nice to me last night, Niki.

What do you mean; I didn’t call you Chuck once. (So much for my resolve not to piss him off.)

His reaction was what I should have expected, one of his trademark frozen stares. "Look, we had drinks and a nice talk. Neither of us wanted more than