The Water Keeper Read online

  Dedication

  To Johnny Sarber

  My brother

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Discussion Questions

  About the Author

  Praise for Charles Martin

  Also by Charles Martin

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Three miles distant, the trail of smoke spiraled upward. Thick and black, it poured from the twin supercharged diesels housed in the engine room. Orange and red flames licked the smoke against a fading blue skyline, telling me the fire was hot and growing. When the heat hit the fuel tanks, it would blow the entire multimillion-dollar yacht into a zillion pieces, sending fragments to the ocean floor.

  I turned the wheel of my twenty-four-foot center console hard to starboard and slammed the throttle forward. The wind had picked up and whitecaps topped the two- to three-foot chop. I adjusted the trim tabs down to bring the stern higher in the water, and the Boston Whaler began skidding toward the sinking vessel. I crossed the distance in just over three minutes. The 244-foot Gone to Market sat listing on her lee side, adrift. The hundred or so bullet holes across her stern explained her loss of rudder and engine. And possibly the fire.

  They also told me that Fingers had made it to the boat.

  Waves crashed over the bow and water was pouring into the main-level galley and guest rooms. The stern was already lifting in the water as the bow filled, pulling her nose dangerously toward the bottom of the Atlantic. Whether by explosion or water, she wouldn’t be able to take much more. I ran the Whaler up her stern, beaching it on her swim platform. I rigged a bow line loosely to a grab rail and jumped onto the main-deck lounge, where I found three bodies with multiple bullet holes. I climbed the spiral staircase up one level to the bridge-deck lounge, finding two more bodies.

  No sign of Fingers.

  I kicked open the ship’s-office door, tripped over another body, and ran into the bridge, where I was met by a wave of salt water pouring through the shattered front glass. Anyone in there had already been washed out to sea. I climbed to the top floor and onto the owner’s-deck lounge. Victor’s wife lay awkwardly across the floor. She’d been shot three times, telling me Fingers had gotten to her before she got to him. But the gun in her hand was empty. Which was bad. I pulled an ax off the wall and cut through the Honduran mahogany doors into Victor’s stateroom. Victor, also shot three times, lay twisted with his neck forcibly broken. Suggesting he’d suffered pain on his way out. Which was good.

  The vessel rocked forward, telling me she was reaching the tipping point. Telling me I only had moments to find Fingers and the girls and get off this thing before she dragged us down with her or blew us into the sky. I descended the stairs and turned aft into the engine room, but it was flooded. I waded fore through waist-deep water into the crew cabins, past Victor’s prayer shrine, and toward the door of the anchor room where the water had turned red.

  And there I found Fingers.

  Actually, I heard him before I saw him. The gurgle of his breathing. When I turned the corner, he smiled but the laughter was gone. He held his Sig Sauer but couldn’t raise his hand even though the pistol was empty. I cradled his head and started to drag him topside, but he pointed at the anchor-hold door. All he could muster was “There . . .”

  Water poured through the crack beneath the door, proving the room had flooded. I pulled on the latch, but pressure from inside made opening the door impossible. I waded back into the engine room, swam to the far side—trying not to breathe the toxic and eye-burning smoke—lifted a wedge bar off the wall, and returned to the anchor hold. I slid the tip in against the lock mechanism and pulled, using my legs as leverage.

  I heard laughter behind me. “That all you got?” Fingers choked, splattering me with blood. “Pull harder.”

  So I pulled with everything he once had. When the pressure from the inside and my leverage on the outside broke the lock, the door slammed open, pinning Fingers and me against the wall until the water level balanced out. As it did, I could hear girls screaming, but the sound was muted by the water. Fingers pointed at the scuba tank just inside the door. Next to it hung an assortment of weights and gear, including an underwater spotlight. I checked the regulator, fed my arms through the straps, clicked on the light, and swam down the stairs leading into the dark belly of the ship.

  There I found seven scared girls in a tight group breathing the last of a trapped air bubble in the now-submerged nose of the bow. With a little prompting and a quick comment about the Titanic, we formed a daisy chain, and I led them through the dark water and up the stairs. When the girls saw daylight, they swam out and started climbing up the now-inclining keel toward the main-deck lounge and the Whaler.

  Each of them was scared, shaking, and mostly naked. Marie was not among them. I swam back into the dark hole but Marie was not there.

  I returned to Fingers, who was nodding off. I shook him. “Fingers! Fingers!” His eyes opened. “Marie? Where’s Marie?”

  He tried to speak.

  I leaned in.

  He shook his head. The admission painful. “Gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  He uncurled his hand, and an empty pill bottle splashed into the water. A tear filled his eye. “Overboard.” He paused, not wanting to say what happened next. “A weight tied to her ankle.”

  The picture haunted me. The finality crushed me.

  I got Fingers’ arm around my shoulder—which is when I felt the entry hole I had not seen. I ran my hand around his chest, only to find Fingers’ right hand covering the exit hole. He shook his head. The bullet had entered to the side of his spine and exploded out of his chest.

  I stuffed a portion of his shirt in the exit hole, tucked his Sig behind my vest, and dragged him through the growing smoke and up to the main-deck lounge. While I dragged him, he eyed his worn Sig and said with a smile, “I want that back.” He coughed. “If that pistol could talk . . .”

  The waves were tossing the Whaler around like a bobber. With all seven girls safely aboard, I lifted Fingers on my shoulder and timed my jump to the bow platform. We landed, rolled, and one of the girls threw off the line as I slammed the throttle forward. We had cleared a quarter of a mile when the
explosion sounded. Fingers turned his head as a fireball engulfed the Gone to Market and a zillion pieces of super-luxury yacht rained down on the Atlantic just off the coast of Northeast Florida. Fingers rested in the bow, filling the front of the Whaler with a deep, frothy red and laughing with smug satisfaction. I cut the wheel toward shore, killed the engine, and beached the keel on a sandy paradise Fingers would never see.

  He was having trouble breathing and couldn’t move his legs. How he’d held on that long was a mystery. Patrick “Fingers” O’Donovan had been both hard as nails and tender as baby’s breath from the day we’d met. Stoic. Wise. Afraid of nothing. Even now he was calm.

  My lip trembled. Mind raced. I couldn’t put the words together.

  Fingers was having trouble focusing, so I started talking to try to bring him back. “Fingers, stay awake. Stay with me . . .” When that didn’t work, I used the only word I knew would rouse him: “Father.” Fingers had been a priest before he started working for the government. And if you pressed him, he would tell you he still was.

  Fingers’ eyes returned to me. He feigned a smile and spoke through gritted teeth. “Was wondering when you were gonna show up. ’Bout time you did something. Where the heck you been?” Everything about him was red.

  It was never supposed to end this way.

  Fingers reached for and then pointed to a worn, orange Pelican case tied to the console. He never traveled without it, which was why the box alone had logged several hundred thousand miles. Whenever I thought of Fingers, the image of that stupid orange box wasn’t far behind. And while he and I seldom talked about our work with anyone, he was—if caught in the right mood—oddly vocal about two things: food and wine. Both of which he protected with a religious zeal. Hence, the crash-rated, watertight, drop-proof box. He fondly referred to it as his “lunch box.” No one, not me, not anyone, ever got between Fingers and a meal or a glass of wine at sunset. Some people marked memorable moments in their lives with a cigar or cigarette. Fingers marked them with red wine. Years ago, he’d converted his basement into a cellar. Visitors were routinely treated with a tour and tasting. A total wine snob, he’d often hold his glass to the light, swirl it slightly, and comment, “The earth in a bottle.”

  One of the girls loosed the bungee cord and brought me the box. When I opened it, Fingers laid his hand on the wine and looked at me.

  He was asking me a question I didn’t want him to ask, and one I certainly did not want to answer. I shook my head. “You’re the priest, not—”

  “Stop. No time.”

  “But—”

  His eyes bored two holes in my soul.

  “I—”

  He pushed out the words. “Bread first. Then wine.”

  I tore off a small piece of bread and mimicked the words I’d heard him say a hundred times, “. . . the body, broken for . . . ,” then I laid the bread on Fingers’ tongue.

  He pushed it around his mouth and tried to swallow, which brought a spasm of coughing. When he settled, I pulled the cork, tilted the bottle, and rolled the wine up against his lips. “The blood, shed for . . .” He blinked. My voice cracked again. “Whenever you do this, you proclaim the . . .” I trailed off.

  He spoke before letting the wine enter his mouth. The smile on his lips matched that in his eyes. I would miss that smile. Maybe most of all. It spoke to the deepest places in me. Always had. The wine filled the back of his mouth and drained out the sides.

  Blood with blood.

  Another spasm. More coughing. I clung to Fingers as the waves rocked his body. One breath. Then two. Mustering his strength, he pointed at the water.

  I hesitated.

  Fingers’ eyes rolled back; he forced their return and they narrowed on me. Calling me by my name. Something he only did when he wanted my attention. “Bishop.”

  I pulled Fingers over the gunnel and into the warm water. His breathing was shallower. Less frequent. More gurgle. His eyes opened and closed. Sleep was heavy. He grabbed my shirt and pulled my face close to his. “You are . . . what you are, what you’ve always been . . .”

  I walked out into the gin-clear water up to my waist while Fingers’ body floated alongside. The girls huddled and said nothing, crying while a trail of red painted the water downcurrent. Fingers tapped me in the chest and used one hand to make the numbers. First he held up all five fingers, then quickly tucked three, leaving two. Meaning seven. Without pausing, he held up all five only to tuck two. Meaning eight. Then he paused briefly and continued, making a seven followed by a zero. His cryptic motions meant 78–70.

  Having learned this rudimentary code from him years ago, I knew Fingers was quoting the Psalms, which he knew by heart. The numbers 78 and 70 were a reference to King David and how God “took him from the sheepfolds.” In short, Fingers was speaking about us. About the beginning of my apprenticeship. Twenty-five years prior, when I was a sophomore at the Academy, Fingers had pulled me out of class and said the strangest thing: “Tell me what you know about sheep.” We’d walked a million miles since. Over the years, Fingers had become a boss, mentor, friend, teacher, sage, comic, and sometime father figure.

  Life had been different with him in it.

  Over the course of his career, Fingers had been in multiple places where making noise could get him killed, which is why he learned to communicate with numbers corresponding to the Psalms—earning him the nickname “Fingers.” The trick meant whoever he was talking with either had to know the Psalms as well as he did or have access to a Bible.

  As Fingers’ life drained out into the ocean, he pulled me toward him and forced out, “Tell me . . . what you know . . . about sheep.”

  We had started this way. We would end this way. I tried to smile. “They tend to wander.”

  He waited. All of these were lessons he’d taught me. Each a year or more in the learning.

  “They get lost often.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they can.”

  “Why?

  “Because the grass is always greener . . .”

  “And that’s called?”

  “Murphy’s law.”

  “Good.”

  “They’re easy prey. The lion is never far.”

  A nod.

  “They seldom find their way home.”

  He prompted me. “So they need . . .”

  “A shepherd.”

  “What kind?”

  “The kind who will leave the warmth of the fire and the safety of the flock to risk the cold, the rain, and sleepless nights to . . .” I trailed off.

  “To what?”

  “Find the one.”

  “Why?”

  I was crying now. “Because . . . the needs of the one . . .” The words left me.

  He closed his eyes and laid his hand flat across my chest. Even now, he was taking me to school—showing me the reason he lay dying in my arms. He’d gone after the one and turned her into seven.

  He pulled himself toward me. One last moment of strength. “Need to give you—” He reached inside his shirt and pulled out a blood-soaked letter. The handwriting was hers.

  He placed it flat against my chest. “Forgive her.”

  I stood incredulous. “Forgive her?”

  “She loved you.”

  Blood spilled from the corner of his mouth. The flow was deep red. He shook me. “To the end—”

  I held the letter and forgot how to breathe.

  He spoke through the gurgle. “We’re all just broken children—”

  I stared at the paper. The weight of hopelessness. Tears spilled out of my eyes.

  He reached up with his one working hand and thumbed them away. He was crying too. We’d searched for so long. Gotten so close. To have failed at the end was . . .

  He tried to smile and then to speak, but his words were failing. Instead, he wrapped his fingers around the chain hanging around my neck. The weight of his arm broke the chain, and it spilled over his fingers; the cross he’d brought me from Rome swayed wit
h the movement. “She’s home now. No regret. No pain. No sorrow.”

  A moment passed. He closed his eyes, floated, and whispered, “One more thing . . .”

  My hands were warm and slippery from the water and the blood. I could no longer feel his pulse. I knew what he wanted, and I knew it, too, would hurt. Not able to let him go, I just pulled him to my chest and held him while the life drained out and the darkness seeped in.

  He whispered in my ear, “Spread my ashes where we started . . . at the end of the world.”

  I held back a sob while my tears puddled. I stared six hundred miles south in my mind’s eye. “I can’t—”

  He crossed his arms, the chain still dangling. He was smiling just slightly. I looked out across the water, but my heart had blurred my eyes and I couldn’t see a thing. I nodded for the last time. He let go and his body lay limp in my arms. His words were gone. He’d spoken his last. Only his breath remained.

  I leaned in, managed a broken, “I’ll miss you.” He blinked. It was all he had left. I rallied what little strength of my own remained. “You ready?”

  His eyes rolled back, then he drew a last surge of energy from the depths and focused on me. While he may have been ready, I was not. The words of his life were draining off the page, black to white. From somewhere, he mustered a final word. With his eyes closed, he tapped me in the chest, murmuring, “Don’t carry her. That one’ll kill you—”

  With one hand beneath his neck and one hand covering the hole in his chest, I spoke out across the water. Echoing what he’d taught me. “In the name of the Father . . . the Son . . . and the . . .” He blinked, cutting a tear loose, and I pushed him beneath the surface.

  I held him there for only a second, but it was long enough for his body to go limp as the last of the air bubbles escaped the corner of his mouth and the water turned red.

  Though bigger than me, his body felt light as I lifted him. As if his soul was already gone. When he surfaced, his eyes were open but he wasn’t looking at me. At least not in this world. And the voice I’d heard ten thousand times, I could hear no more. I dragged him to shore and laid him on the sand, where the waves washed over his ankles. That’s when I noticed his hands. His crossed arms lay flat across his chest, and yet his fingers were speaking loudly enough for heaven to hear: “2–2.”