Ocean Prey (A Prey Novel, Band 31) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

John Sandford is the pseudonym for the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp. He is the author of twenty-nine Prey novels; four Kidd novels; twelve Virgil Flowers novels; three YA novels coauthored with his wife, Michele Cook; and three other books.

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The Muggers

Lucas Davenport used his phone's flashlight to illuminate the cut through the knee-high wall, and from there, to the path that led down to Fort Lauderdale Beach. Early-morning traffic down Beach Boulevard was quiet, the subdued hum of small SUVs and sedans. The cars turning left off Sunrise Boulevard played their headlights across his back as he walked, throwing his shadow on the white sand.

Out on the Atlantic, he could see a bare hint of the coming dawn. Lucas walked across the sand until he was a dozen feet from the water, where the smell of seaweed pressed against his face like a hand. He sat down, took off his shoes and socks. He sat there for a while, as the eastern horizon grew brighter. Not much was going through his head-the light, the smell of the seaweed, the sound of salt water breaking up the beach.

A breeze sprang up with the dawn, but was barely strong enough to push the six-inch rollers ashore. After a while, he noticed that the world was beginning to light up. His phone rang. He dug it out of his jacket pocket and turned it off without answering, or even looking at it.

At some point, the rim of the sun broke the edge of the horizon, a brilliant arc throwing rippling orange slashes across the water. A sportfishing boat went by, a half mile out.

Then the muggers showed up.

Two men, one Anglo, one Hispanic, both thin, dark-haired, wearing worn dark clothing, their faces weathered from life on the street, like driftwood boards. Lucas knew they were muggers by the way they approached, a certain crablike walk, a phony confidence, an attitude that could turn in a moment from friendliness to naked aggression and then possibly to retreat, if Lucas should turn out to be something unexpected.

They checked him out, a guy in a sport coat barefoot on the sand, maybe shaking off a drunk? A gold watch on the left wrist, right hand in his lap. He looked at them and said, "Hey, guys."

The Anglo said, "Nice watch you got."

Lucas: "Got it from my wife for my birthday. A Patek Philippe. Twenty-eight thousand dollars, if you can believe that. I told her we should have sponsored some hungry kids somewhere. She said that we already did that and I should have some nice things."

The guy in back stopped and hooked his friend's elbow to slow down his approach; the feral sense that something was not right.

"You okay?" the lead mugger asked.

Lucas said, "No."

He slipped his right hand out of his lap, and held it straight up in front of his nose; he was gripping a black Walther PPQ.

One of the muggers said, "Whoa."

"Why were you guys going to mug me? Don't bullshit me, tell me the truth," Lucas said. "You gonna stick something in your arm? Stick something up your nose? Or what?"

They stuttered around for a moment, looking like they might run, but there was no place to hide on the empty beach and running through the sand would be slow. Much slower than a bullet. The Anglo guy said, "Mostly looking for something to eat. Ain't had nothing to eat since yesterday morning."

"Okay." Lucas sat motionless for a few seconds, the muzzle of the gun straight up to the sky, between his hands, as though he were praying, and then he fished in his jacket pocket for his wallet, extracted a bill, folded it into quarters, and tossed it across the sand. "Pick it up," he said.

The Anglo looked at his friend, then eased carefully forward, stopped, and picked up the bill. "Fifty bucks."

"Fifty bucks," Lucas said. "Go get something to eat."

They backed away, watching him, then turned and moved away more quickly. Before they were out of earshot, Lucas called, "Hey. Guys."

They stopped and looked back.

"When I get up from here and walk down the beach, if I see you jumping someone, I'll fuckin' kill both of you. You understand?"

The Hispanic guy said, "Yes, sir." And the two of them hotfooted it down the beach path to the street and out of sight.

Lucas looked back out at the ocean. The sun was halfway above the horizon now, the orange burning off, going to yellow.

Another day.

Wasn't going to be a good one.

July

Chapter

One

Five years earlier, the high school guidance counselor sat Barney Hall down and said, "Barney, you're bright enough, but you're not college material. Not yet." He was looking over Hall's standard test scores and other accumulated records from thirteen years in the Lower Cape May Regional School District. "You're not mature for your age. If you hadn't been sent to detention once a week, you wouldn't have done any studying at all."

Hall was a cheerful, good-looking, middle-sized kid with broad shoulders and bright white teeth, who must have said a hundred times in his life, "Watch this-and hey, hold my beer, willya?"

He had a girlfriend named Sue, whom he'd known since fourth grade, who was happy to hold his beer, most of the time, and then apply the bandages afterward. Hall worked after school and all summers as a mechanic in his dad's yacht salvage yard, or junkyard, depending on who was doing the talking.

"I'm trying to do better, sir," he told the counselor.

"Don't bullshit me, son. Would I be correct in believing that you were drinking beer at Toby Jones's wedding last weekend and got drunk and fell off the dock and damn near drowned?"

"I'm a good swimmer, sir. There was no danger."

"That's not the point, Barney. Anyway, if you want to do anything in life, you need to get serious, and right quick. Knowing you, looking at these records, I'm thinking your best course would be the military. The military would give you responsibility from day one. If you don't come through, they'll slap your ass in the brig. You need that discipline. Mind, I'm not saying the Marine Corps. You're way too smart for that."

"I wasn't thinking college, not right away," Hall said. "I've been talking with Sue, and . . . how about the Coast Guard, sir? There're some Coasties that hang out at my dad's place and I like listening to them talk. I've been on the water and working on boats all my life."

The counselor poked a finger at him: "That's the smartest thing I ever heard you say, Barney. You do a few years in the Coast Guard, get yourself some rank and responsibility and they'll even send you to college when you're ready. God help me, you could wind up an officer."

"Whoa. That'd be awesome, sir."

"And do me a favor, son. Get rid of that T-shirt." The T-shirt featured a basketball-sized, full-color image of a bantam rooster, with the legend, everything's bigger in texas.

Hall looked down at the T-shirt. "It's just a chicken, sir."

"It's a cock," the counselor said. "You know it and I know it. I don't want to see it in this school again."

Hall married Sue the June after high school graduation, joined the Coast Guard at the end of a glorious summer, and after boot camp and advanced training, was stationed in Fort Lauderdale.

Sue Hall went to Broward College and became a registered nurse and started working on a bachelor's degree in nursing. Hall found the boatyards of Marina Mile to be the most amazing places he'd ever been. When Sue got pregnant with their first one, he got off-duty work rebuilding diesel engines in one of the Marina Mile engine shops. The extra work would get them childcare money so Sue could finish her BS degree.

At night, they'd drink PBR under palm trees in their trailer park, until Sue got pregnant, when they switched to ginger ale, and she'd say, "Barnes, we're gonna do good in...