“My kids,” he’d said, black eyes shining with a ferocious, mind-consuming love. “Alicia and Reya, those are the girls, aren’t they sweet? Troy, the little one, he’s my little boy. Go on, kids, wave to the nice man!” He waits a beat, turns to Shane and says, “Cute, huh?”

Shane had, of course, agreed.

At the seawall Rick Lang produces a small remote control and sets about lowering the sleek red boat into the water. The notion of fishing as a pleasant activity aside, Shane knows very little about boats. This thing, long and narrow and pointy, looks built for speed and nothing else.

“My special baby, a Y2K Superboat,” Lang explains as the winches unwind. “Pure racing machine, custom-built in New York. Turbocharged, seven hundred horse motor with a Bravo One stern drive. Three stage hull. You want to know how fast it goes? Hundred miles an hour, man. Get you to Bimini in twenty minutes.”

“Very impressive.”

Lang’s finger comes off the remote and the winch stops, causing the big boat to shudder in its cradle. “You messin’ with me, man?” he says, his eyes hardening.

Shane, not sure how to react to the sudden change in mood, asks, “Why would I mess with you?”

Ricky Lang snorts, his neck swelling. “The way you said ‘very impressive.’ Like you don’t believe me. Some crazy Indian bragging on his stupid boat, is that what you think? Huh?”

“No, no,” says Shane, trying to assure him. “I mean it. I love the boat. Very impressive.”

“So you know about go-fast boats?”

“Not a thing, no. Comes to boats, I’m dumb as a rock.”

Lang stares at him, then thumbs the remote, resumes lowering the boat.

“This an A-class racer,” he explains, sounding like a man grievously wounded by insult, struggling to be amenable. “Water gets a little rough, it goes faster. Get it balanced right, there’s only about two square feet of hull in the water at any one time. Air under the hull lifting like wings on a plane. Boat rides on the prop, man. It flies, okay?”

“Sounds dangerous.”

Lang chuckles, a sound that, with his pumped-up build and the Glock in his possession, is anything but reassuring. “Oh man, this boat’ll kill you, you don’t look out.”

Lang leaps spryly into the cockpit, holds a hand out to help him aboard.

Shane hesitates. “We’re going to get the captives?”

“Captives?” Lang says, sounding puzzled.

“Kelly Garner. Seth Manning.”

“Not captives, man. Guests.”

“Guests, yes. But they’re okay? They’re alive?”

Ricky Lang grins, showing his square white teeth. “They be better when you come to the rescue, man.”

Biscayne Bay is the color of a mint-green milk shake, little foamy whitecaps marching along in ragged formation, propelled by a hot, southerly breeze. Off in the distance, a land mass connected by a long sliver of causeway. Must be Key Biscayne, Shane concludes. Beyond that, South Beach is a smudge on the horizon. In the heat of the afternoon, with sunlight exploding from every whitecap, it could be a pastel mirage, hastily sketched. Closer to hand are a number of smaller islands, some natural, others created by developers, as well as navigational aids that appear to be extruded upward from the shallow sea bottom.

As the throbbing beast of a boat glides through the intricate channels, heading out into the bay, Ricky Lang smiles and points out the sights, chatting amiably as he drives the big racing machine one-handed. Shane can’t make out a word, and forms the impression that Lang knows this full well. As if he’s performing a pantomime show, impersonating a friendly host. And yet the way he’s ever so casually leaning on his seat, oriented toward his “guest,” would make it difficult if not impossible for Shane to grapple successfully for the gun.

The posture is hardly an accident. Ricky Lang may or may not be delusional, but he’s what the FBI assault teams would call “situationally aware.” Armed, dangerous and playing a part. Or maybe lost in his role, hard to say.

At the end of the channel Lang slots the shifting lever to neutral, lowers the throbbing engine to idle, and raises his voice to make himself heard.

“So you up for a ride, man?”

“Where we going?” Shane wants to know.

“Check out my little guesthouse, what you think? You want to be a hero or what?”

Shane considers the man, the handsome eagle-beak of a nose, the keenly intelligent eyes. How does it reconcile with the Moe Howard hairstyle, the swaggering, almost theatrical way he presents himself? What’s the message here? Is he daring the world not to take him seriously? Does he revel in his clownish behavior, using it as a disguise? Or are these all symptoms of a deteriorating mental condition?

Randall Shane, never a profiler and always distrustful of snap psychological assessments, decides he has no clue as to what motivates Ricky Lang. “I just want to find the girl,” he says truthfully. “And the boy, too, if he’s still alive.”

Ricky laughs. “What are you so worried about?”

“Boats make me nervous.”

“Yeah? You don’t look nervous, man. You look more like you’re planning to jump me, hijack my ride.”

Shane manages to look astonished. “Why would I do that? I want to find the girl.”

“Yeah, but when I take you there, then you’ll jump me, right? Shoot me, arrest me, whatever.”

Shane shakes his head. “Not me. I’m no longer a law enforcement officer.”

“Somebody else then. Snipers. A SWAT team. Shoot me in the back, like at Wounded Knee.”

“Doesn’t have to be that way, Mr. Lang. Take me to the girl, you’re free to go. No one will press charges. It was a simple misunderstanding.”

“You serious? No charges?”

“I swear.”

“Like it never happened?”

“Absolutely.”

Lang chuckles, shakes his head. “Man, you’re a good liar, you know that?”

“Seriously, if the girl is unharmed we can work something out.”

Lang grins, seriously amused. “She’s okay, man. Hang on, I’ll show you.”

He jams the throttle down, pinning Shane to his seat.

For the next two minutes all he can do is hang on for dear life because the boat, as Lang promised, is pretty much airborne. Scudding over the swells, barely making contact with the water as it accelerates. The pitch of the huge screaming engine is a mere decibel below total disintegration. To Shane the sensation is akin to falling down an elevator shaft, except death by elevator would be over by now and at ninety miles an hour across open water, two minutes is a very long chunk of eternity.

With the boat careening around like an Exocet missile, visibility is pretty much nil. Plumes of white spray explode over the bow, only to be crushed back into the sea by the headlong velocity of the boat.

At the last possible minute Shane sees a structure looming. Scabby concrete pilings holding up what looks like a giant shoe box. They’re going to hit it head-on, at nearly a hundred miles an hour, with a thousand pounds of supercharged engine, and who knows how much fuel right under his seat.

No time. That’s the profound thought he has at the very moment of his death.

No time.

Then Ricky Lang yanks the throttles back, killing the motor if not all of the momentum. Shane is thrown forward, whacking his head on the padded dashboard, which starts his nose bleeding in a fresh spurt, and he ends up flat on his back in the bottom of the cockpit confused and dazed.

After a moment, the shoe box resolves into a boarded-up wreck of a house on stilts, way out in the bay. Nothing but blue sky and sunshine and a row of insolent-looking seagulls perched on a railing, staring down at the intruders.

Ricky Lang then looms over him, offering a hand.

“We’re here, man. Stiltsville, or what’s left of it.”

Not a bad spot, Shane is thinking, to stash a captive or two.