The water glittered in the darkness like spilled jewels under the erratic, cloud-touched moonlight as Quinn peered out over the ocean, looking towards the shadowy mass of rounded shapes that made up the coastline. She knew that if it had been daylight she would have been able to see tree-covered hills, golden sands and dozens of scattered holiday homes. But now, at whatever dead hour of night it happened to be, the only sign of civilisation was the occasional distant gleam of streetlights and the lonely, rhythmic blinking of a red beacon atop the highest of the hills. While her mind worked furiously, Quinn kept her eyes affixed to that beacon as steadily as she could manage. She had never cared much for boats or the ocean, but she remembered reading that seasickness could potentially be averted by keeping one?s eyes focused on some distant, stable object. In the absence of anything else that matched this description, the beacon would have to do.
Of course, at this precise moment seasickness was not at the top of her list of priorities. True, she could feel the first queasy fingers of nausea kneading her stomach, but right now her number one concern was the pair of handcuffs that stretched from her wrist to the boat?s iron railing. She had contemplated the gleaming silver chain for a good few minutes, searching for any sign of weakness, hoping for a literal weak link, but there was none. There wasn?t even a hint of rust, no sign that the sea air had started its work of corrosion; clearly the cuffs were not standard equipment on this boat, but rather something that her captors had brought with them.
That made sense, she thought despondently. These were men who came prepared.
The railing itself, however, was a different matter. Years of service had covered it with a heavy patina of grime and rust, and in the flickering light cast by the boat?s single inadequate globe, Quinn could see several places where the iron had started to flake. Slowly, surreptitiously, she reached out a hand (not the one currently adorned by the handcuff?s heavy bracelet, she didn?t want an errant jangle to remind the men of her presence) and firmly grasped the railing. She gave an experimental tug. There was quite a lot of give in it, and she thought she could feel the decrepit metal creaking against the ancient bolts that held it in place. This was something worth considering.
Quinn turned her gaze back to the beacon and watched as it drifted past slowly, inexorably. She thought she should at least try to conjure up some worry for Malcolm, but she couldn?t quite manage it. There was something about the young man that deflected worry and made concern for his welfare seem faintly ridiculous. Partially it was his easy-going nature and blatant refusal to acknowledge fear and doubt as things that had any relevance in his world, but mostly it was the simple fact that he had survived so much already. Quinn supposed that he wasn?t actually invincible, but in the time she?d known him he had made her wonder about that on quite a few occasions.
Okay, so he?d been thrown from the boat into a pitch-black sea. And okay, the boat had been at least a few kilometres offshore at the time. For Malcolm, that was probably not much more than a brisk pre-dawn swim, just enough to get his blood pumping. By now he had most likely made it to shore and was already formulating some sort of cunning plan to rescue her. Maybe it would come to that, but she suspected not. Malcolm had something of a knight-in-shining-armour complex, but she had never really been the damsel-in-distress type. When crunch time came, Quinn preferred to rescue herself.
She glanced eastward, hoping for a sign that the sun might not be too far off, but she knew that this was desperately optimistic. The night already seemed impossibly long, but the rational part of her brain told her that sunrise was still hours away. Quinn tended to trust the rational part of her brain. After all, it was her oldest and most reliable friend.
She looked towards the front of the small craft, where the three men huddled around the steering wheel (or is it called a rudder in a boat? Or the helm? she wondered distractedly). They were dressed in dark clothes, and in the dim light they were little more than shadows. They were big men, and if the casual way in which they had deflected Malcolm?s struggles was any indication, they were strong. Also, she couldn?t discard the possibility that they carried guns. In fact, she was tempted to call it a certainty.
So, she thought, assess the situation: It?s dark and will remain so for a while yet. Malcolm is - almost certainly - on shore by now and running around in his haphazard, thoughtless way, and I?m on a boat headed to who-knows-where, escorted by men who carry handcuffs as a matter of course and aren?t averse to throwing people into the ocean. In my favour I have a rusty railing and maybe, just maybe, the strength to break it free. And? that?s about it, really.
It wasn?t much, but it might be enough. In any case, she wasn?t inclined to calculate odds at this stage. Instead she sketched out a vague plan in her head (the less concrete the plan the more room for improvisation, as her father had often said) and then, without hesitation, she put it into action.
She started by closing her eyes.
Two minutes later, eyes still closed, she vomited noisily over the side of the boat and began groaning. She collapsed to her knees, one hand grasping the corroded railing for support. She heard a sigh and a muttered expletive from the front of the boat and then, almost inaudible over the sound of water slapping at the hull, footsteps approaching. Then a voice very near her head exclaimed sarcastically, ?Hey! You okay? Not gonna die on us, are you??
Time for the commencement of stage two.
Bracing herself with her right hand on the deck, Quinn pulled on the railing in her other hand, sending all her strength into one mighty effort. It was almost too easy. One end of the railing snapped, and at the other end the bolts, really little more than flaking mounds of rust, pulled free with barely a protest. Quinn came within a heartbeat of losing her balance, but instead she converted the sudden momentum into an upward swing of her left arm.
Now, finally, she opened her eyes.
Her vision, now adjusted for darkness, saw everything with a relatively dazzling clarity. She saw the man?s face above her, she saw his contemptuous smile start to shift towards alarm, and then she saw the rusty iron bar make sudden, brutal contact with his cheek.
As he fell, Quinn rushed forwards and smashed the iron bar through the boat?s solitary globe. Now, she knew, she had a momentary advantage. Her eyes had already adjusted, but it would take the two remaining men a number of seconds to accustom themselves to whatever scant moonlight their eyes could discern.
The boat was small, and it took her no more than three strides to reach the place where the two men were still standing by the wheel. She could just barely make out one of them reaching into his jacket. That, she decided, probably meant he had a gun, which made him the priority target. With a deft one-two she lashed out at his elbow, then the side of his head. The man sank to his knees and then a quick knee to the head laid him out.
The third man seemed to be a little slower on the uptake. He had one hand on the wheel, peering blindly into the darkness, trying and failing to understand the source of this sudden confusion. Quinn almost felt a moment?s reluctance as she swung a final glancing blow at his temple. The iron bar rebounded off his skull with a hollow clang and the man crumpled to the ground.
Less than five seconds had elapsed since Quinn had opened her eyes.
Now she took a moment to survey the scene around her, and to spit the bitter taste of bile from her mouth. The vomiting had not been pleasant, but it had been a valuable part of the deception, and as a bonus her burgeoning seasickness was now gone. A minor silver lining, perhaps, but she?d take it.
Two of the men were now silent, unconscious shadows on the ground. The third, the one who had been her first victim and had been so sarcastically solicitous of her health, was moaning softly. She supposed he would have to be dealt with first. She walked towards him, wondering if perhaps he had another pair of handcuffs on him, or at least the key to the pair that still shackled the iron railing to her wrist. Hopefully she?d have time to give them a taste of their own medicine, and she?d be a damn sight more careful than they had about choosing a suitable item to cuff them to.
She was kneeling over the man when the voice, cold and hauntingly familiar, came from behind her.
?That?s enough,? said the voice. It sounded amused. ?Turn around, slowly, if you please. I don?t want to kill you, but I imagine a bullet in the foot would prove to be both non-lethal and a rather effective deterrent to further trouble. I don?t think either of us wants to find out just how right I am about that.?
Quinn turned slowly, as directed. I guess, she thought bitterly, even a small boat like this might have a cabin or a below-deck space or some other sort of hiding place. I probably should have checked, huh?
She looked at the shadowy figure before her, and she saw the gun in the figure?s hand, gleaming with lethal beauty. And then Quinn saw something else: impossibly, bathed in moonlight, gliding just ahead of the boat, was a large, silent bird. It was a swan.
Now, Quinn thought, things get interesting.
