Devil's Keep - By Phillip Finch Page 0,1

the first time. Rasul sensed that the look was not friendly. Instinctively, Rasul pushed the tiller, turning the banca away from the speedboat, and cut the engine down to idle.

He watched with JoJo as the big man dumped out the fourth bucket and put it down. The water was alive now, the fish in a frenzy. Their silvery flanks flashed in the sun as they attacked the food.

The foreigner could have easily scooped up a boatload of fish with a few dips of a hand net. But he didn’t; he just put down the bucket and went forward to the wheel, throttling up the engines. The speedboat made a throaty burbling sound. It pulled away quickly, leaving a broad wake as the foreigner turned the wheel and cut back toward where he had first appeared. In less than a minute he was gone, vanishing around the point.

The patch of sea where he had spilled out the buckets was still alive with the feeding fish, the surface almost boiling now with greedy movement.

And that clearly was the most amazing sight JoJo and Rasul had ever seen: a feast of fish left for the taking.

Rasul didn’t hesitate. As soon as the speedboat was out of sight, he gunned the engine, full power. The banca began to move forward. Rasul, back at the tiller, couldn’t see the feeding fish from where he sat. But he let JoJo guide him in, steering by the small motions that JoJo flicked with a hand held behind his back as he stood at the prow. Right. Right again. Easy left. Steady. Easy right. Slow. Stop.

Rasul turned off the engine, and the boat glided to a halt. Up front, JoJo was staring down at the water. Rasul expected him to snap into action—grab a net, something—but for a few seconds JoJo remained fixed on the water.

“Jo?” said Rasul.

JoJo didn’t answer. He crouched on one knee and got low to the water. Still staring.

Then he abruptly recoiled, straightening at the waist.

He turned back to Rasul. His face showed shock. Fear.

“What is it?” Rasul said.

“Turn around. Now.”

“What?” Rasul began to rise out of his seat, to get a look at what had startled his brother.

JoJo’s head blew apart.

In the same instant, time began to parcel itself out in excruciating segments.

There was the part where JoJo’s face ruptured in ghastly slow motion.

There was the part where Rasul heard a wet spattering on the deck and felt a stinging mist on his face and arms, and heard a thunderclap from above, and thought, Rain?

There was the part where JoJo’s body began to topple forward and Rasul looked into the top of JoJo’s head and saw just a bloody husk, and then the part where Rasul heard himself keening a mournful “Jo!”

And then Rasul realized that the mist was blood and tissue, and the stinging was pieces of bone, pelting him, and the thunderclap was not thunder but a gunshot from somewhere up at the top of the cliff.

JoJo’s lifeless body thumped down hard into the banca, sending a shudder along the deck.

Now time began to move in a hurry, and Rasul moved with it. He pushed the throttle all the way forward, and leaned into the tiller to turn the banca. The bow came around; the island swung out of sight behind his back. The banca picked up speed, headed back the way they had come.

Rasul twisted the throttle hard, trying to squeeze every bit of power out of the engine, and for several seconds the banca plowed straight westward, banging into the waves. Rasul fought against panic. Dark blood was spilling from JoJo’s head, pooling on the deck, and Rasul flashed on that last moment of his brother’s existence, the startled and stricken expression on JoJo’s face the instant before he died.

What did he see? Rasul thought. He glanced back over one shoulder, but there was only the wake that the banca made, and the fish still thrashing at the surface.

Rasul looked forward again, westward to where the archipelago lay. Home.

A heartbeat later, Rasul found himself sprawled inside the boat, facedown, as if he had been flung to the deck. He was aware of having been struck from behind, a hard and heavy blow at his back. He dimly heard another thunderclap from the island.

He had been shot.

The banca was still churning forward. Rasul knew that without a hand on the tiller it would soon begin turning in circles. He tried to get up, get back to his seat, but he