Watchers

light forward. Jesus, he was really making a break for it.
     
     
    By the time they unpacked all one hundred canvases, hung a few, and carried the rest into the unused bedroom, they were starving.
    “Garrison’s probably having dinner now, too,” Nora said. “I don’t want to interrupt him. Let’s call him after we’ve eaten.”
    In the pantry, Einstein released letters from the Lucite tubes and spelled out a message: IT’S DARK. CLOSE THE SHUTTERS FIRST.
    Surprised and unsettled by his own uncharacteristic inattention to security, Travis hurried from room to room, closing the interior shutters and slipping the bolt-type latches in place. Fascinated by Nora’s paintings and delighted by the pleasure she exhibited in their arrival, he had not even noticed that night had arrived.
     
     
    Halfway toward the mouth of the harbor, confident that distance and the engine’s roar now protected them from electronic eavesdroppers, Garrison said, “Take me close to the outer point of the north breakwater, along the channel’s edge.”
    “Are you sure about this?” Della asked worriedly. “You’re not a teenager.”
    He patted her bottom and said, “I’m better.”
    “Dreamer.”
    He kissed her on the cheek and edged forward along the starboard railing, where he got into position for his jump. He was wearing dark blue swim trunks. He should have had a wetsuit because the water would be chilly. But he thought he ought to be able to swim to the breakwater, around the point of it, and haul himself out on the north side, out of sight of the harbor, all in a few minutes, long before the water temperature leached too much body heat from him.
    “Company!” Della called from the wheel.
    He looked back and saw a Harbor Patrol boat leaving the docks to the south, coming toward them on their port side.
    They won’t stop us, he thought. They have no legal right.
    But he had to go over the side before the Patrol swung in and took up a position astern. From behind, they would see him vault the railing. As long as they were to port, the Amazing Grace would conceal his departure, and the boat’s phosphorescent wake would cover the first few seconds of his swim around the point of the breakwater, long enough for the Patrol’s attention to have moved on with Della.
    They were heading out at the highest speed with which Della felt comfortable. The Hinckley Sou’wester jolted through the slightly choppy waters
    with enough force to make it necessary for Garrison to hold fast to the railing. Still, they seemed to move past the stone wall of the breakwater at a frustratingly slow pace, and the Harbor Patrol drew nearer, but Garrison waited, waited, because he didn’t want to go into the harbor a hundred yards short of its end. If he went in too soon, he would not be able to swim all the way out to the point and around it; instead, he would have to swim straight to the breakwater and climb its flank, within full sight of all observers. Now the patrol closed to within a hundred yards—he could see them when he rose from a crouch and looked across the Hinckley’s cabin roof—and began to swing around behind them, and Garrison could not wait much longer, could not— “The point!” Della called from the wheel.
    He threw himself over the railing, into the dark water, away from the boat.
    The sea was cold. It shocked the breath out of him. He sank, could not find the surface, was seized by panic, flailed, thrashed, but then broke through to the air, gasping.
    The Amazing Grace was surprisingly close. He felt as if he had been thrashing in confusion beneath the surface for a minute or more, but it must have been only a second or two because his boat was not yet far away. The Harbor Patrol was close, too, and he decided that even the churning wake of the Amazing Grace did not give him enough cover, so he took a deep breath and went under again, staying down as long as he could. When he came up, both Della and her shadowers were well past the mouth of the harbor, turning south, and he was safe from observation.
    The outgoing tide was swiftly carrying him past the point of the northern breakwater, which was a wall of loose boulders and rocks that rose more than twenty feet above the waterline, mottled gray and black ramparts in the night. He not only had to swim around the end of that barrier but had to move toward land against the resistant current. Without further delay, he began to swim, wondering why on earth he had thought