Adventure of Dallas Fontaine 2

Fog swallows the channel whole. Dallas Fontaine rides a dead-silent skiff with Murderbone at the bow, while a patrol launch hangs in the gray like a shark fin. The launch cuts its engine and drifts, blocking the open water beyond.

Murderbone growls low, staring past the searchlight glare. Dallas spots a darker shape off the starboard side, a maintenance buoy and service marker half-hidden in the fog, close enough to reach.

A voice crackles from somewhere ahead, thin and distorted over the fog. The patrol launch begins to turn, its beam sweeping wider, hunting for movement.

Dallas eases the skiff toward the dark marker and catches a glimpse of a narrow cut in the waterline beyond it, a service channel or drainage mouth, barely visible under the chop. It is a new way out, or a worse trap.

Murderbone plants himself, tense as wire, while the skiff drifts toward the hidden opening and the searchlight keeps sliding closer.

As the skiff drifts closer, the fog thins just enough to reveal the iron grate of the drainage mouth is partially rusted away, leaving a gap wide enough for the boat to pass through into the dark tunnel beyond.

Dallas kills the skiff’s running light with a hard twist, and the channel drops into a black hush. The patrol searchlight sweeps past the opening and loses them. He angles the tiller, and the boat slides into the grate gap with inches to spare.

Iron scrapes along painted wood. Murderbone stays low at the bow, braced against the jolt, while the skiff noses into the drainage mouth and takes the tunnel’s cold breath.

Behind them, the searchlight flares against empty fog and then slips away. Ahead, the tunnel swallows the boat whole, its brick throat wet and gleaming.

Dallas steadies the revolver, keeps the evidence tucked close, and lets the skiff coast deeper into the drainage run. The city is still out there, but the net has missed.

Dallas keeps the radio close to his mouth, voice low as the skiff glides deeper into the drain. The tunnel walls swallow the last of the harbor light.

Murderbone shifts at the bow, ears forward, then settles again as the water begins to carry a sour, oily smell from farther in.

The skiff slips past a bend where the tunnel narrows, and the black water starts reflecting only the weak shine off Dallas’s coat and the metal in his hand.

Dallas lowers the radio and lets it hang at his chest. The tunnel closes around the skiff, stone wet on both sides, the water under him black as ink.

Murderbone plants himself at the bow and stares into the dark, steady as a guard dog on a bad street. The skiff rides a slow current, not quite free, not quite trapped.

Ahead, the tunnel bends tighter, and the water begins to whisper against the hull, carrying them deeper into the harbor’s blind throat.

Dallas eases the skiff forward, keeping the bow aligned with the tunnel’s center seam. The black water carries them under a low arch of dripping stone.

Murderbone shifts his paws and noses the air, then settles again when the current holds true. The boat answers Dallas’s hand with a soft scrape of hull against wake.

Ahead, the tunnel opens into a narrower run, its walls slick with old runoff and streaked with rust where water has chewed the concrete bare.

Dallas keeps the revolver low and the evidence dry under his coat, guiding the skiff through the constriction without losing speed.

The current steadies. The skiff slips through the throat of the bend and clears it cleanly, carrying Dallas and Murderbone deeper into the drainage line.

Far ahead, a faint seam of daylight or dock-light flickers at the tunnel’s next turn, too distant to trust, but close enough to aim for.

Dallas keeps the throttle steady, and the skiff holds the center of the tunnel. The little glimmer ahead sharpens into a fixed opening, pale and distant.

Murderbone plants himself at the bow, nose high, reading the air while the water hisses under the hull. The tunnel walls squeeze in close, wet with rust streaks and old runoff.

Dallas nudges the skiff through the straighter run, careful and exact, and the boat answers cleanly. The evidence stays tucked under his coat, dry and close.

The passage opens a little more, just enough to show darker water beyond the tunnel mouth. The city’s hunt drops away behind them, swallowed by the bend.

Murderbone glances back once, then faces forward again as the skiff slips on. Ahead, the pale opening waits, silent and navigable.

Dallas eases the throttle down until the skiff barely kisses the water. The engine note thins to a hush, and the bow slides straight at the pale mouth ahead.

Murderbone lowers his head and stiffens, keeping his weight forward without a sound. The tunnel walls tighten around them, wet rust streaks flashing past in the dim.

Dallas guides the boat low and centered, letting the current carry more than the motor. The evidence stays pinned under his coat, untouched by spray.

The tunnel mouth widens into open black water, and the pale glimmer resolves into freedom beyond the drain. The city’s noise is gone now, replaced by the slap of water against concrete.

Murderbone looks out first, then back at Dallas, calm but ready. Ahead, the skiff clears the last shadow of the mouth and slips toward the dark channel beyond the city.

The skiff clears the drain and drops into open channel water, low and steady, its wake barely breaking the black surface.

Behind them, the tunnel mouth shrinks to a hard stain in the dark. Ahead, fog hangs over the water like dirty smoke, but the boat keeps its line.

Dallas keeps the evidence tucked under his coat as the skiff glides out clean. The current takes the stern and the whole boat answers without a wobble.

Murderbone rises at the bow, then settles, satisfied the chase is no longer on their tail. A wet harbor token flashes once near Dallas’s pocket as the boat rocks.

Dallas spots it, a dim running light on the channel edge, the first sign of Jackson’s pickup point waiting in the fog. The escape route is real, and it is theirs.

Dallas feathers the throttle and keeps the skiff on the far side of the channel, where the fog is thickest and the water runs quiet. The running light ahead holds steady, a small promise in the gray.

He trims the boat into the dark seam of water Jackson marked, letting the patrol launch stay blind behind the fog. The evidence stays dry under his coat.

The skiff answers cleanly, sliding past the worst of the current. The channel opens just enough to give Dallas a straight run at the pickup point.

Dallas brings the bow up on the light, and the far side is his. Jackson’s pickup point sits ahead in the fog, waiting to take them out of the channel.

Dallas keeps left and the skiff answers, slicing into Jackson’s light. The pickup beacon swells out of the fog, steady and close.

Murderbone shifts at the bow, eyes locked on the glow as the boat rides straight and true through the black water.

The skiff glides into the pocket of light beside Jackson’s boat. The channel wall and the patrol’s blind side drop away behind them.

Dallas eases the throttle down, and the evidence stays tucked under his coat, dry and close.

Jackson reaches in from the pickup and grabs the line, his face hard in the glare, already motioning them in. The fog closes around the boats as the transfer begins.