He'd chosen to play a game of Wait and See, and intended to stick it out. Whatever the hell that meant for him.

Dex had planned to wait until Ricci's exhaust stopped bubbling at the surface before turning the skiff hard about--no more bubbles equaling no more breathing and a dead man underwater. But it had got to where the tenseness in him was making his stomach hurt as if he'd swallowed a handful of thumbtacks, and he just couldn't stand there watching anymore.

Besides, what did it matter? he thought. He'd fixed the needle of Ricci's air gauge to read like his tank was filled higher than it really was--higher by more'n a thousand psi, a quarter of its total hold--then figured the outside time Ricci could stay at the bottom an' make it back up alive, bein' generous about the amount of air he'd have used by now under the best dive conditions, which was anythin' but what the water was offerin' today, given them funnels an' crosscurrents Dex had been seein' from the get-go. Takin' things combined, Ricci didn't stand a chance. Was pitiful thinkin' how he was gonna check out, his insides goin' all to jelly. Goddamn pitiful. But there was nothin' to do about it, an' Dex guessed that by havin' kept from gettin' the shakes, he could count himself as holdin' together okay. Better than okay, under the circumstances. That standin' an' watchin', though. The waitin' for no more bubbles on the top ... Jesus, that was too much.

His hand clenched tightly around the stick, his long hair whipping back from under his knit cap, Dex kept on at full throttle, as if by doing so he could leave his guilt behind him, washed away in the white wake of foam trailing the skiff as it planed upwind toward his meeting point with Cobbs.

His binoculars raised to his eyes, Cobbs squatted in the weeds and bushes behind the strand and watched the skiff approach from his right, northward, Dex driving the little boat so hard that it almost seemed it would take off into the air like a rocket.