Accelerated by Vaughn Heppner Read Free Book Online

again, and saw a little more. I needed to get out of here. Rising, I stumbled into my cabin. They’d put the box on my bed.
    I wanted to rip off the tape and see what was inside, but I waited. I needed to get out on the water for several reasons, not the least of which was to dispose of the two bodies. There was another reason to wait. What if the box contained something bad ? Bad as in a bomb, contraband or a supervirus? What if I was supposed to open it? What if Kay had hired these thugs to make me over-curious?
    Too much had happened today. It made me extra-paranoid. For all I knew, cops were already on the way, a SWAT team or someone worse like a Shop clean-up crew.
    I tore off my bloody clothes and shoved them into a plastic garbage bag. Then I showered and put on fresh clothes. For the next twenty minutes, I unhooked the water hoses, waste and electrical lines and removed the mooring lines. Afterward, I fired the twin diesels and backed out of slip C-11. I had to wait for a huge yacht named Cerberus to work its way out of the marina ahead of me.
    As I waited, I hurried down to my cabin and took a palm-sized locator from a hidden floorboard. Turning it on, I let it beep, searching for radio signals, for hidden bugs. I found one, and crushed it with my heel.
    After putting the locator away, I waved at the captain of the Cerberus . He was a huge man with an admiral’s cap, and there were efficient sailors briskly manning his boat.
    As the yacht’s wake washed against my hull, I let my engines rumble and began to ease out after him. In time, I pushed the twin throttles and felt the surge of power. The breeze was low today, the waves were small and the Alamo thumped over them. I soon passed under the Golden Gate Bridge and enjoyed the view of the Presidio. Then I entered the Pacific Ocean. Japan waited on the other side. The waves increased and I quickly left the seagulls behind.
    My tension eased. No cops had appeared, which was surprising now that I thought about it. People must have heard shots. Why had no one investigated?
    I shook my head. I had plenty of questions but few answers. I wanted some answers, and wondered if Kay’s box would supply some.
    I waited until San Francisco was a smudge on the horizon. Then I turned off the engines, threw out the anchor and took a deep breath. It was solitary out here, peaceful, with the hypnotic sound of waves slapping against my small island of wood, plastic and steel. The motion, the sway, relaxed me so I yawned and felt my eyelids grow heavy. The cold breeze felt good on my skin and the cloud cover brought blessed relief to my eyes. Despite my sunglasses, they were more sensitive than usual.
    It was time to work, however. I went below and brought up the bodies. They both lacked wallets, but both had compact guns that lacked any metal parts. They should have come out of the cabins at me firing. I fired one of the pistols now. The bullets seemed ordinary enough. After I was finished shooting, I pitched them overboard, watching each one plop into the sea.
    The one body had more smudged prison tattoos on his person. They reminded me of the needle-man’s tattoos on his neck. As I thought about it, it also reminded me of the purse-snatching junkie. The connection seemed to be ex-cons, bikers or druggie losers. The corpse with the shiny jacket, how was it connected to the others? It was white, stark white, just as the junkie had been a tan-less white.
    Who used bikers or ex-cons? That didn’t fit with high-tech weapons. Well, there had just been the one: the flashlight blaster. The hypo-attacker had been practiced. Maybe he was a professional kidnapper and a home invader. Those were nasty trades practiced by evil people.
    I brought up a pair of binoculars and scanned the sky and the ocean. There was a big cruise liner on the horizon. Otherwise, I was alone. I brought up rope, cut off the needed lengths and tied each line around a corpse. Next, I attached several twenty-five-pound