Lee leaped onto the man’s back, clinging to him, but he shook her off and she fell to the ground. He stood there unmoving, staring at her, then the gun dropped from his hand and he crumpled to the ground as if all the air had gone out of him. The beam from his flashlight fell on the wooden handle of the steak knife protruding from his chest.

As Gamay helped Lee to her feet, Lee gazed at her deadly handiwork.

“I’ve never done anything like that,” she said. “Never.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Gamay said. “Who is he?”

“I don’t know. He came up while I was getting my kayak and struck me with his gun. He said he’d been watching me, and that others were coming in a boat to take me away.”

Gamay suddenly put her hand on Lee’s arm.

“Listen,” she said.

Excited voices talking in Chinese could be heard coming along the path. The others had arrived.

Lee’s kayak was righted and dragged to the water. She produced a spare plastic-and-aluminum paddle for Gamay to use. They both shoved their kayaks off the beach and paddled madly. They were about a hundred feet from the mangroves when flashlight beams probed the water around them.

The shafts of light reflected off the shiny fiberglass hulls. Gamay told Lee to hug the shore, where they’d make a more difficult target. She tensed, expecting gunfire, but the lights blinked out.

“They are going back to their boat,” Lee said. “They will come around the other end of the island and intercept us.”

“How long before they get there?” Gamay asked, without breaking the rhythm of her strokes.

“Five, ten minutes, maybe. What should we do?”

“Paddle as if our lives depended on it . . . because they do.”

They put their backs into each stroke and made it out of the cove, but the sound of a boat engine soon shattered the quiet of the night. A spotlight moved slowly back and forth across the water. There was no place along the shore where they could put in and hide. Thick, gnarly roots extended out from mangroves, forming a formidable barrier.

A silhouette loomed ahead. They were coming up on the grounded cabin cruiser. Gamay paddled toward the old boat with Lee right behind. They climbed aboard the derelict, pulling their kayaks up behind them, and lay facedown on the rotting deck.

Through cracks in the hull, they saw the spotlight go past the cruiser. For a second, Gamay entertained a flash of optimism, but that faded as the search boat changed direction, circled the wreck, and came closer. The spotlight filtered through the cracks and fell on their faces.