Murder on the Oyster Reef

There were no competing buoys in her secret spot because the salinity gradient snuck up northward without many noticing. She knew that because she mapped it out with an aftermarket salinity meter earlier in the week. Her handdrawn map differed from the one the state released, because theirs was an infrared estimate and only went surface-deep. Crabs didn't live on the surface, and they liked saltier water. She set her trotline in this sweet leeward spot she knew she'd be able to safely run later and waited.

...

"Fuck," said Bazoo, that one word packed with meaning.

Few hours later, the waves hadn't changed direction. Worse yet, Bazoo realized they were now definitely stranded for another six hours as the water level was still falling, low tide hadn't hit yet. At least they didn't step on a mine, so they had that going for them.

Luckily, no one had spotted their boats and bothered to come investigate, but it was just a matter of time. Longer they spent doing nothing about it, greater the risk of blowing this whole operation, as ill-planned as it was. They still couldn't call for help and have others find out just how badly they screwed up so early. They had to sweep this fuckup under the rug first. Daytime was short these days and they chanced coming out of the woodwork to see exactly where things stood.

By now Luka felt better but the sight of what they saw made him sick again. Their stolen boat was now practically on dry land. There was no way they could push off now, or get rid of the damned patrol boat, but Bazoo insisted they at least cover up what they could. As they were about to toss the body overboard into the silt, they saw a boat approaching.

"Think we got ourselves a ride out," murmured Bazoo.

...

Cheryl was on her way to run the trotline and get her first crabs out when she saw two beached boats on the proving grounds island, so she headed that way to see if anyone needed help. Even with a detour, she'd have enough time to lay another string before her legal time limit expired. She didn't see any distress signals, but something was way off about the scene. Two guys were milling around on the shoal and one of the boats should've known better.

Closer she got to the boats, she realized she couldn't do much to help but pick those fools up. Her old workboat drew only a freakish 18 inches so she managed to get within a boatlength of theirs before backing off astern. The two guys started wading toward her. She eyeballed the currents behind her and idled in reverse just enough to ensure she wouldn't get beached and the guys could come climb aboard.

"Get your fucking hands up," the grim looking guy screamed at her. It scared Cheryl. She was paying more attention to the danger behind her, and having a gun pointed at her was the last thing on Earth she would've expected to happen. "What the fuck...." she started saying and raised them.

"How do we get in?" the other guy screamed at her. He looked pale and pathetic, as if he'd had enough seawater for a lifetime. With her hands off the helm, the boat was drifting out of position and he was looking for some kind of a magic ladder. "Do you have any fucking dramamine," he yelled at her rhetorically.

"Just grab the rails and pull yourself up," Cheryl told him. She motioned toward the port side with her head, because all the cleats where still there. Her blood ran cold at seeing the gun but the feeling was starting to get replaced by seething rage. As that whiny guy on edge of his strength started climbing aboard, she looked at the beached boat off to the side and noticed it belonged to NRP. It was plain as day, yet she only now fully noticed it. And then she noticed that it had a body in it.

First thing the chunky guy did once he was pulled up aboard was walk up to the helm and yank out her corded VHF radio microphone out of the socket. He threw it out into the shallow water and told her to back them out of here. So that's how it was going to be, she thought grimly.

...

Back at home Marlie took a bath, feeling confused. Horny confused, and then that horny converted to emotionally confused. Then back to horny again. But one thing was becoming clearer, which is that life just wasn't that straight-forward.

Fucking Cheryl, she thought harshly, she was supposed to throw a fit. All her mental preparation for a confrontation was wasted. Marlie couldn't get the thigh bite out of her head no matter how hard she tried, it kept going back to her. Of course, the hickey down there helped remind her. And that fucked up threat of tying her up, why did that make her feel so hot?

Her naughty hand went from soothing her bitemark right onto her pussy lips. She couldn't stop thinking about wanting to bite Cheryl's thigh back and finding out what rest of her tasted like, aside from the lips and neck that she got to experience.

And now that she had Cheryl's shirt, she absolutely had to bring it back to her. Like soon. Cheryl probably needed that shirt pretty bad, Marlie thought, yeah, and kept playing with herself.

...

"Bazoo, ask her if she has any dramamine," Luka insisted after she kept ignoring him.

Being abducted at gunpoint was one thing, but this whiny guy being loose with his hands was infuriatingly creepy so she didn't offer him help of any kind. It was the second time he asked in as many hours, and second time the other guy told him to shut the fuck up by name.

Cheryl did the math and the equation didn't look so good now. Dead-body, names, faces, question mark, her.

The two idiots told Cheryl to bring them to some random coordinates she didn't recognize by number, but what she did recognize was that it was atop an oyster reef once they got closer. One of the last few primeval oyster reefs remaining in the Chesapeake Bay, going back thousands of years. Submerged, but it was there. She knew that place by heart because it was a favorite fishing spot for many, on clear days anyway. And the state wanted to dredge half of it, kill off the last surviving oyster colony in the bay, for like no reason any biologist could think of.

Her thoughts went back to the body that she saw far too late to do anything about. She tried to put it out of her mind, but couldn't stop thinking about it as it prophesized her own future. It was plain as day as to what'd happened, and their demeanor was so nonchalant to a point of being scary. What was so important to kill over it so casually?

"No, get it closer, like this," Bazoo shoved his portable GPS into her face as if that extra decimal point helped her keep station somehow. And for what? Absurdity of the task snapped her back to reality. Whatever they were after would take a floating derrick and a trained retrieval crew. Cheryl barked at him, "you know we're in twenty mile per hour winds, right? And it's about to pick up?"

When no recognition crossed his face, she tried to help him, "If you told me what you're looking for, maybe I could find it for you better."

Bazoo thought it over. Luka looked ashen, still pleading for his dramamine. That still didn't stop him from leering at Cheryl's body.

"Alright, keep your fucking panties on," she screamed at him.

Threat of becoming a second dead-body didn't stop her from being her feisty self. If anything, it steeled her resolve. Fewer choices you have, more certain you get about them, she remembered her pop-pop telling her once. She only now appreciated what those words meant. Despite her movements being scrutinized through a gun barrel, she dove for a first aid kit out of a locker.

She thought it over for a second, but the dead body she saw earlier made the choice for her. There'd be no turning back from here. She unlatched the one waterproof ammo box she kept supplies in, and tossed an unremarkable bulk pill bottle at the pale shitbird. He almost fumbled catching it.

"If it hasn't been working on you so far, you're gonna need a megadose," she told him, "pop a dozen pills fast, better if you do two dozen at once. Three if you want relief right away." Luka looked puzzled, but he did it unquestioningly. She sounded like she knew what she was talking about. Cheryl watched him pop a horsepill after horsepill, look of relief on his face growing.

She demanded, "Now, what the fuck are you looking for because my crabs are gonna run out of bait and start eating each other in about an hour?"

Bazoo and Luka exchanged looks, and in that moment they didn't even pretend that her fate wasn't sealed. They wore these nasty smirks and the approaching sunset worried Cheryl, it meant some very concrete things had to happen soon.

She could navigate in pitch black just fine, but, even she couldn't see submerged logs floating down from Pennsylvania after heavy rains. Hitting one was survivable, but she'd mess up her outdrive. There was a reason why crabbing wasn't done at night.

"Friend of ours had something... sink here," Luka explained.

Bazoo continued, "This GPS unit has a mark where it was last seen."

"It was being dragged behind a big boat," Luka said, "box size of a car's trunk, wrapped in a cargo net."

Cheryl took the unit and pretended to look at it, hitting a few buttons to zoom and pan, but she was merely thinking furiously considering her situation.

So far, her situation was basically unchanged. She was still very much in trouble. These two morons had no idea what they were doing here. Whatever was being illicitly towed got snagged on the reef and broke off, that much was plain to anyone. But they were looking in the wrong place, she thought. Whatever it was, it was probably washed out all the way down to the Atlantic Ocean by now. They should've been looking for it south of here.

As inexperienced with water as they were, the amount of effort and resolve they've demonstrated so far was serious, which meant there was no way they would just leave and not come back. Effort they needed to retrieve their lost package was well beyond their ability, which meant that they'd have to come back later with retrieval gear. Which meant that they wouldn't leave her standing after what she'd seen and heard.

She proposed a plan to them. A believable plan to retrieve their "something." And somewhere between her voice sounding eastern-shore sweet and their level of desperation, it almost sounded like a real plan.

...

Marlie just couldn't fucking drop it right now. She wrote Cheryl a text message novel, and then deleted it before sending. It was only earlier in the day she'd seen her, but she was desperate to hear back from her. She compromised, or tried to. So that she wouldn't come off as pathetic, she wrote she'd be in the neighborhood later and offered to buy dinner. She hit send and hoped.

Marlie was so fucking confused. Being confused was more fun than she'd ever imagined. And she worried if she was being a tad more generally impulsive than she should be.

...

"Fuck, I don't feel so good," Luka whined out of breath for the tenth time over the hours. He was touching his stomach as if in pain.

Bazoo yelled at him, intent on his own chore, "Shut the fuck up and watch the depth meter." He was sure there was something fucking wrong with Luka over the past hour, he was dumber than usual and fading fast. At least he stopped groping the girl, that sick fuck.

Cheryl explained her fishfinder to them earlier, and assured them they could spot and raise their "something" very easily if they just worked together. She'd faked through parts they didn't understand and assured them that they'd definitely located their missing object, which was a huge load of horse shit. The readings were delayed and only approximated shapes underneath them. The machine wasn't built for finding sunken treasure.

Somewhere between being completely out of their depth and being desperate, they believed her more easily than she'd imagined they would. Bazoo became noticably relaxed. Luka, despite his discomfort, started leering at Cheryl again, knowing something she didn't.

She assigned Luka at the helm so she could keep an eye on him, and put Bazoo on the port side to slowly feed a spare trotline anchor while she handled starboard, doing the same thing. She'd told them that doing a zigzag pattern over the reef and slowly feeding the two anchors was guaranteed to snag their missing object right by that cargo net and bring it up to the surface. She lied about doing it before many times. It was getting dark and the whitecaps were steady now. There wasn't much time left.

Cheryl started quietly forming a large slipknot on the deck, waiting for the right moment. She read the waves since she was a kid and this one she was certain about, sent by a passing tugboat a mile away and awhile ago. Those things displaced a surprising amount of water, as slow as they went. She yelled at Luka, prepared for her move. She paid out a long distance and then let go of the starboard side anchor. It sank fast.

"Alright, turn all the way to your right fast," she screamed at him, "go go go."

He did, like an idiot. The moment after he started turning toward starboard, a three foot wave creamed them followed by another. Cheryl was ready for it but the two guys lost their footing. Luka freaked out and ducked protectively, hiding under the antique windshield. In the confusion, she activated the stern controls and gunned the engines, wildly turning the spinner knob and generally compounding the chaos. While those two idiots were fighting to stay upright, she took her slack loop and threw it over the fat guy as if he were a dock piling, and started pulling hard.

"You fucking bitch," the man roared and punched her in the eye. Cheryl took the hit with a scream that curdled Luka's stomach, but held onto the line. She braced herself against Bazoo with her feet and kept pulling, cinching her rope tight. Like a fucking six foot tall chicken neck, she thought.

The man dropped his side of the line to focus on her full-time and kept punching her, landing a solid stomach blow that laid her out on the deck gasping for breath, then switched to kicking Cheryl when she fell down. Or trying to, because at that moment, the portside anchor he let go made contact with a reef and brought the entire vessel to a lurching stop. It bought Cheryl a few seconds of respite while he steadied himself on his feet. The boat broke free and kept going. She ran out of moves, she thought. This was it.

But mere seconds later, Bazoo became an anchor. With nothing to hold onto and no cleats for her line to catch on, he got pulled four feet across to the other side of the boat, knocking it out of gear with his body. He barely made a scream before disappearing under the surface.

Cheryl caught her breath, nursing her ribcage. She'd never broken anything before in her life, but she immediately felt she had a cracked rib or two. It hurt to breathe.

She and Luka stared at each other for a time. They were both sitting on the deck now facing each other. He was near the bow, clutching his stomach on the upper right side, trying to shelter from the spray. He was sweating profusely. Cheryl leaned over and checked that the remote shifter was in neutral. The wind had picked up and the boat was uncontrolled in the waves, anchored tight.

"You're dead," she told him quietly.

Luka didn't understand. He didn't have what it took to answer her, he felt so confused, befuddled. She was just sitting there watching him. There was no fight left in him, he felt so weak. "Get me help," he whispered staring at unforgiving eyes. His organs were on the virge of shutting down, starting with the liver. He was in incredible pain and couldn't focus to reason out why he felt so bad. Brain had been fuzzy for awhile now. Had he been a touch more skeptical, he would've noticed the tiny labels on the generic-brand extra strength pain pills she tossed him hours ago. They just sat apart until darkness fell over the skies.

...

"What the fuck happened to your eye??" Marlie screamed after picking her up from the marina late that night. She'd gotten a puzzled text message asking for a favor and her immediate happy context was entirely inverted by now.

Cheryl was spent, "Long story. Can you drive me to the city or not?"

Marlie could, and did. They went to a dive bar next to the closed tattoo place she worked at, and she watched Cheryl order and take three shots of tequila in a row. "What happened to you?" she kept asking but got no answer other than Cheryl switching to beer. Cheryl's friendly arm around her shoulders were enough of an answer so that was that. She smelled like sweat, like honest work. Cheryl didn't want to talk so they just hung out and drank and listened to music, and that was fine.

An hour later, Marlie's uncle asked skeptically, "Is that all you want?"

He rarely worked now except for doing challenging pieces. Fact that his niece asked him for a favor this evening was the only reason he bothered coming out. He was annoyed; two of them were a little drunk but Marlie could've handled this, he was sure of it. This weird friend of hers with the bruised eye... was weird. He came out all this way and all she wanted was two parallel lines on her shoulder, like tally marks. But not centered. She asked for enough reserved space to complete a five.

"So are you going to tell me what happened or not?" Marlie demanded back at the bar, when it was all done and her uncle went home.

Cheryl smiled, her lower teeth slightly bloodied from a seeping cut that wouldn't stop. Sight of it terrified Marlie, but somehow it also looked freakishly hot because Cheryl was a bad-ass.

Cheryl thought about saying something but then trailed off. It didn't matter. None of it mattered the same way anymore. They drank and enjoyed the music and the late night climate. She smiled, "you know what, that old coot never had to repel boarders," she grumbled under her breath.