"Papa Jacques, get your ass out of there!" exploded Hoagie. He grabbed the man's arm and yanked him bodily from the plane.

The little man drew himself up and glared at him, fingering his necklace. "Mon ami, take care!"

Hoagie grinned tightly. "Go stick pins in my doll, you little bastard. It's this lady's plane for the morning, and I'm not hauling you for free."

The man's eyes flashed. "But you mus'. You mus' fly me to Whiskey Cay, c'est très important. I have a patient there."

"You always have a patient," Hoagie said with a snort. "A dying grandmother? A father with four kids?"

"A little girl. She has la fièvre. A baka has enter her heart."

"Which baka?" Hoagie grinned.

"The barracuda god. I mus' drive him away."

"Where were you when I was married?" murmured Hoagie. He opened a luggage compartment behind the cabin and hefted in Ellen's suitcase. "Sorry, Papa Jacques. There's a real doctor on Whiskey Cay, now isn't there?"

"What does he know of the baka?" His eyes went blank. "And he has gone to Crooked Island."

Hoagie shot him a strange glance. "How do you know that?"

"I see him." Papa Jacques shrugged. "Your doctor is there at la clinique, sticking worthless pins into living dolls."

Hoagie stepped under the wing to help Ellen into the right front seat, next to his own. "The strange thing is," he murmured, "he's probably right. I flew him there last week."

He reached up and fastened her seat belt. His touch was warm and gentle. She felt herself blushing.

"Hoagie, can he do the little girl any good?"

"I don't think so."

"But does she?"

"That's for certain."

"Then, Hoagie, let him come."

"Your son doesn't like him."

"Just the same..."

He looked up into her face and smiled. "He's conned you, you know? But it's your airplane, Mrs. Brody. As you say."

They rattled into the sky between an Eastern jet and a Drug Enforcement Agency search plane and skimmed the turquoise waters of New Providence, heading east.

She looked down on a sea the color of polished jade, so different from Amity Sound. Beyond the last cays, she knew, lay the Atlantic, full of evil and despair.

Thank God she was here.

***

The great white cruised at a hundred feet, making a good eight knots. When he had left Amity, he had moved in purposeless circles, foraging far to sea, and though he had always tended southward, his route had lacked direction.

Ranging eastward, he touched the waters of the Gulf Stream. Then he turned south again, breasting the current. Though the surface above was turbulent with the mixing of warm and cold water, his dark green world below was calm and cold. This far from shore, the nearest land was under him, peaks of the Northwest Atlantic Ridge.