So make sure it doesn’t happen, she told herself. Get off the main river and out of sight for a bit while you figure out what to do.

With that in mind, she went into the wheelhouse and examined the controls after the dive line and magnetometer had been brought aboard and stowed away. The controls seemed fairly intuitive and the time she’d spent watching Mitchell maneuver the boat earlier that morning would likely be helpful, as well. With only a little trouble, she got the engines started and the boat turned around, heading back in the direction from which they’d come.

She encountered only one other vessel while out on the open river, a small fishing boat with an outboard motor. As they passed by on the port side she was filled with a sense of impending doom. They were going to see the bundle and know exactly what was underneath it! Annja was sure of it.

Of course, nothing of the sort happened. The other boat was far too low in the water to allow its passengers to see her deck, never mind figure out what was under the weighted tarp. They passed with a friendly nod and a quick wave, allowing Annja to get back to worrying needlessly.

Twenty minutes farther along, she spotted the mouth of a tributary large enough to handle the boat and turned in that direction. About a dozen yards down its length, the channel curved sharply to one side. Anything around the bend would be out of sight of the main waterway. It was just what she needed.

Once in position, she brought the boat to a stop and shut down the engine. She listened for the sound of another engine nearby, but all that came back to her was the gentle lapping of the water on the hull and the occasional cry of a hunting bird of prey.

She couldn’t bring the boat into dock with two corpses under a tarp on the back deck, she reminded herself. They might not be noticed for a day, maybe two, but the minute they started smelling someone was bound to come aboard and investigate.

She needed somewhere that she could store them until this entire mess was sorted out. She felt terrible about it, but what choice did she have? If she called the police now they’d hold her for questioning, perhaps even decide that she was the prime suspect and lock her up. She’d be condemning Garin to certain death.

As it turned out, the answer was right there behind her.

A pair of doors was set in the center of the aft deck a few feet forward of the stern gunwale. Opening them, Annja discovered the refrigerated fish hold. On a working trawler, the fish would be rinsed with high-powered hoses that would push them over the lip of the hatch into the hold below. The refrigeration unit built into the walls of the hold would then keep the fish fresh until the boat returned to dock and the catch was sorted, boxed and then iced for its journey to the preparation plant.

If she could get the bodies into the fish hold, they’d be out of sight and chilled enough to stop major decomposition for the time being.

The trouble was, she didn’t want to handle them. Not because she was squeamish, she was a far cry from that, but because she didn’t want to leave any trace evidence on them if she could help it. She was already going to have a hard enough time explaining things when she got the chance. She’d be a suspect in their deaths, for sure. Add that to the recent killings she’d been involved in overseas and she knew she’d be answering police questions for weeks, if not months. Giving the police evidence that she’d been in physical contact with the victims was not going to help her case, not at all.

The problem was partially alleviated, she realized, by the fact that she was still in her neoprene wetsuit. With the hood up and her neoprene dive gloves on, the only part of her body that wasn’t completely covered was her face. Even her hair was secured beneath the tight-fitting hood. The fabric of the suit would help repel any blood that got on her, and since she had other clothes to change into, she could always spray herself down with the high-powered hose and then dispose of the suit when she was finished.

Satisfied with her plan, or at least as much of a plan as she had, she got to work rigging the rest of the equipment she needed to pull this off.

She moved one of the booms into position over the doors to the fish hold and then attached a rope pulley to it. She dug around in the storage lockers until she found a medium-size net that would be large enough to hold both Jimmy’s and Bernard’s bodies and laid it out flat beside the hatch.

Then, donning her gloves, she took off the tarps and put them aside. She’d deal with them in a bit. Right now she needed to get the bodies into the net and then maneuver the net over the hatch so she could gently lower the whole contraption to the deck below.

She supposed it might have been easier to just roll them over the edge and into the hold, but she just couldn’t bring herself to do that. Not so much earlier both men were laughing and joking with her and the idea of treating their earthly remains like, well, sacks of meat just wasn’t going to cut it. She’d spend the extra time to lower them into the hold gently, and if someone came along while she was doing it she’d worry about it then.

She shifted the bodies one at a time and put them in the net. She then attached the hooks on the sides of the net to a sling and tied the sling off to the rope she’d threaded through the pulley earlier. She gave all the connections a few tugs, and found that they were secure.

Satisfied, she moved over to the other end of the rope, sat down on the deck with her back to the gunwale and, taking the rope between, began to heave it backward. It went easily at first, for all they were doing was taking up the slack. But after that, when the weight of the two bodies was pulling against her, she was thankful that she had the pulley or it would have been all over before it began.

Annja managed to lift the net a few inches off the ground, then used the tip of her foot to maneuver it out over the open doors to the hold. The moment it was she let the rope slip through her hands and the bodies of the two men disappeared into the hold with nary a sound.

After that all the equipment, including the tarps and the pulley itself, were tossed down beside the bodies. She used the high-pressure hose to spray down the deck, flushing the bloodstains out as best she could and sending the water over the side into the river. She then turned the hose on herself. She changed the setting to low and rinsed every inch of herself. Satisfied that there was no blood on her, she flushed the deck of the boat a final time. She stripped out of her gloves and wetsuit, tossing them into the fish locker with everything else. Last but not least, she closed the hatch and locked it up tight with a padlock she found in the toolbox.

If somebody wanted into the fish locker, they were going to have to work at it.

Having already dug a change of clothing out of her backpack, Annja got dressed. Just being back in her jeans and sweatshirt made her feel better, made her feel more ready to take on the challenge ahead of her.

With the clock ticking down, she didn’t have time to waste. She fired up Kelly May’s engines and maneuvered her back into the main river channel. Once there, Annja opened up the throttle and headed for the marina as fast as she dared.

By the time she drove the boat into the narrow tributary that marked the only entrance to the marina where Mitchell had a slip, she was feeling fairly competent with the controls.

That was a good thing, because there was a lot more activity around the marina than there had been on the way out that morning.

Or you’re just paying more attention to it, she told herself.

Either way, she was thankful that the wheelhouse was enclosed. Several folks recognized the boat and waved as she went past and their inability to see her clearly meant she didn’t have to explain why she was at the controls instead of Jimmy.