Read Online Flashback by Nevada Barr - Free Book Online

derring-do, had staged this whole disappearance for the twisted fun of it-a ranger version of Munchausen's syndrome-crossed Anna's mind.
    They reached the buoy marking the southwestern boundary of the park. Anna cut her engines and showed Teddy how to work the searchlight, moving it in slow arcs aimed low to pick up shadows of anything floating on the water's surface. Then, engine just above idle, they started the painstaking process of searching.
    Twice they spotted floating objects. Both were lobster traps. Outside park boundaries, lobster fishermen laid their lines; traps on the ocean floor tied one to another with floating buoys to mark where they lay. Storms, faulty lines and ships' propellers routinely set the traps and buoys free to drift into park waters. Anna dutifully hauled them onboard. Disposing of them was problematical. Already Fort Jefferson had a pile the size of a Sherman tank in one of the casemates. The only way to get rid of the Styrofoam floats was to get somebody to haul them to the mainland. Cliff and Linda weren't anxious to add garbage scow to the Activa's resume.
    Lobster traps were the sum total of excitement until they'd worked north past Loggerhead and a faint green-gray light on the eastern horizon suggested sunrise. Then they got a call from Danny.
    "Got something," he said succinctly.
    "What?" Anna radioed back.
    Never particularly disciplined on the airwaves, Danny replied: "A whole shit-load. Oil. Flotsam. We're about three-quarters of a mile west of East Key. Better get on over here. We'll flash our light."
    "Oh, God," Teddy murmured. Her stoicism evaporated and, with it, Anna's doubts about the veracity of Bob's disappearance. Had the Shaws planned a bit of theatrics, oil and flotsam obviously hadn't factored in.
    "Easy," Anna said. "We don't know what Danny found. Could be a spill from a passing tanker." Lame, she thought and pushed the throttle forward heading east. Within minutes, Teddy spotted Danny's light flashing. Anna adjusted her course accordingly. Over the radio, just under the burr of engine noise, she heard Danny calling Mack to make sure he and Linda had gotten the message.
    As they neared the Curious, she slowed to a crawl and told Teddy to work the searchlight. Faint and iridescent, a sheen of oil spread across the water, breaking into toxic rainbows in the wake of the Reef Ranger. Pieces of flotsam running with petroleum-induced colors floated in the mess, as did other, less identifiable bits of what had presumably been a boat.
    "Holy smoke," Anna muttered. "It didn't just sink, it was blown to kingdom come."
    Teddy had her knuckles shoved in her mouth to stop her emotions from bleating forth. In the backwash of the light Anna caught the liquid glitter of tears. Teddy's eyes glowed, large and unsettling, like an animal's in the night.
    Anna put the engine into reverse and stopped their forward motion. The engine stilled, she took the searchlight from Teddy and began slow, sweeping arcs across the greasy black water. From Danny's boat Linda let her searchlight follow Anna's, doubling the wattage. The sheen of oil was thin and would dissipate in an hour or more, scattering itself till it would be detectable only to sensitive instruments. That it was still obvious to the naked eye could be accounted for by the fact that sea and sky were preternaturally still. The disturbance from the Reef Ranger's arrival continued to move under the mess, though at a greater distance now, like ripples on a pond.
    "Not much left," Danny said of what they were assuming had once been a boat.
    Though the Reef and the Curious were fifty or sixty feet apart, in the absolute silence he sounded so close Anna's skin twitched like a horse's when a fly alights.
    "Not much," she agreed.
    The lights were picking out only hits and fragments: fiberglass, wood. A ship's line, made to float and bright screaming yellow, caught the light so suddenly it seemed to snake through the oil.
    "Line," Linda said