“He probably sent the photos to a contact on land long ago, who will have forwarded them. They developed a sophisticated system so that the source and origin cannot be located, but I didn’t understand it. Everyone has their job.”
Great!I was hurt, so I kept quiet. Dad would faint if he saw me in those photos.
Nathan watched me. “It’s already happened. I can’t change it, so we’ll wait and see… Maybe your father will surprise us and react after all.”
“Your brother would have let Sparta drown,” I said heatedly even if it had nothing to do with it.
“I know.” Nathan said nothing more.
“Nobody deserves that. What if it wasn’t Sparta?”
Nathan glanced at the sleeping people, put his index finger to his lips, and shook his head. Then he mouthed tonelessly “Not here—not now,” at least that’s how I interpreted it.
I nodded.
His face darkened when he spoke again. “Isaac must never find you, Will. His hatred is much deeper than I realized.”
I leaned forward a little, which immediately rocked the boat. “You were afraid he would come on board. You changed course. I don’t understand. You said he would join you at the end of the three weeks anyway.”
“That was the official plan, yes, but I had my own from the start—just as Isaac apparently had his own. I always planned to release you here in the bayous, somewhere near the villages, ofcourse, without him ever seeing you. But only me and the twins knew this plan.”
“Ilias and Pan?”
“Rayk and Kjertan, yes. They never liked Isaac and the feeling is mutual. He thinks they’re simple-minded. Not men you can hatch clever plans with. They think he’s a smug bastard.”
“You trust Ilias? Rayk?”
Nathan nodded toward the narrow boat in which Pan was lounging. “Yes. But I kept a few details from both of them.”
I peered into his serious face, his gray eyes silvery in the morning light. “You think you’re infallible on your own, don’t you?”
He looked back, concerned. “If I were infallible, Isaac wouldn’t have discovered the coordinates. I keep wondering who it could have been if not Stan.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I don’t even know if the person who threw you into the ocean was the same one who revealed the coordinates. Basically, anyone could have gone onto the bridge while I was diving for you in the water. So, anyone who knows anything about transponders. It doesn’t have to have been Stan.”
I looked at him. “Did it have to be on the bridge? What about your cell phone? When you were in the water, anyone could have used it, right?”
“It has a code. Nobody knows it.”
“Maybe someone brought a second cell phone on board.”
“It can’t be ruled out, although I’m fairly certain no one would have dared. Anyway, it could have been anyone.”
“The question is why did someone do it?”
“Because the plan was in danger. They wanted Isaac to come and finish the plan with all his might, no matter what it meant for you.” Again, he looked at the boats and put a finger to his lips.
I wondered which of the men he trusted. Pan certainly and Troy too. Sparta was a questionable candidate, but what about Icarus? He might have been the only one who could have made the ointment disappear without anyone noticing. Obviously, anyone could have thrown it overboard unnoticed. No magic tricks needed for that.
I would talk to him alone about it later. Right now, I needed to sort out something else. “Do you know what Isaac wants to do to me?” I absolutely had to know because, in my opinion, he wanted me dead and he had wanted it from the beginning.
Nathan glanced at his hands and then back at me. “I knew that he would have no qualms about hurting you if your father didn’t meet our demands. That’s why I changed the agreed-upon course. But of course, there is…” He suddenly fell silent.
“What?”
“Quiet…the others are awake!” He rose elegantly and jumped from the tree stump onto the motorboat with a giant leap. That was the end of the conversation because Icarus bolted upright with a startled cry, waking Troy, who was muttering something to himself. Nathan, meanwhile, balanced skillfully, his arms outstretched horizontally.
I looked at him disapprovingly and he gave me a rueful smile before avoiding my gaze. He didn’t want to speak about it.
Okay, apparently there was something more concrete. It wasn’t merely about Coldville and the Hampton Oil Company. It had to be something serious, the real reason why Isaac hated me with all his heart.
