The Big Finish Read Online Free PDF

goings. Take the boat.”
    “What’re you saying? This is a trick? The government playing games?”
    “I don’t know what it is.”
    “I’ll tell you what it is. Flynn’s in trouble. Serious trouble. Something he can’t handle.”
    Sugar patted him on the back and got to his feet.
    “ Tranquilo . We’ll find him, bring him home. It’s going to be fine.”
    Thorn held up the postcard. The Neuse River. He’d never heard of it. But it was pretty, with a gentle flow, clear, sparkling water. Looked like a perfect spot for a family reunion.

THREE
    THE LAST ROAD TRIP THORN had taken was decades earlier, a drive from Key Largo to Baltimore with his adoptive parents, Kate and Dr. Bill Truman. They’d driven straight through to drop Thorn off for his freshman year at Dr. Bill’s alma mater, Johns Hopkins. Thorn had lasted exactly two months in college, flunking all his courses, bored by the aimless debates over current events, and tormented by the drab autumn weather which felt bitterly cold to Thorn, but which Baltimore locals described as the mildest fall on record. He dropped out and was back home in Key Largo by Thanksgiving and was never drawn north of Palm Beach after that. Until now.
    In an old gym bag he packed underwear, long-sleeved shirts and jeans, along with his only sweater, a heavy black crewneck that years ago some girlfriend had presented him for his midsummer birthday. A gift so weirdly inappropriate it seemed to signal both the great divide between them and the end of their affair. The sweater smelled as musty as a rat’s burrow, but Thorn stuffed it into the bag anyway, along with the few toiletries he used.
    There was no one to notify of his departure, no one to ask to keep an eye on his old Cracker house. His ancient thirty-two-foot Chris Craft would have to fend for itself. If someone wanted to steal it, all they had to do was untie the lines and find a way to crank that balky eight cylinder.
    He left the front door unlocked so thieves wouldn’t need to break a window to steal his loot. Happy hunting. If they gathered every valuable Thorn owned and pawned them all, they’d be lucky to clear enough for a fish sandwich at Craig’s Diner.
    On the boat ride down to Islamorada the ocean was glassy and pulsed with pale blue wintery light. Earlier in the week a mass of Canadian air had swept in, and now as he headed out to deeper water the sharp sulfurous tang of the exposed flats gave way to the bracing arctic air that had flooded into the Keys, bringing the cypress and fir scent of old-growth forests and the undertone of melting glaciers, that blue ice that seemed to be releasing into the atmosphere precious molecules of oxygen so ancient they’d never been sullied by the lungs of humans.
    He docked, found an empty barstool, ordered a bottle of Red Stripe. After he’d had a taste, a young man next to him tapped on his shoulder and asked if he could take Thorn’s photograph. He was wearing a bright pink flowered shirt the same throbbing tone as his sunburn.
    “Why would you do that?”
    “For a project,” he said. “College art class.”
    Thorn asked him what kind of project.
    “A collection of Keys characters. And you, damn, you’re perfect. You got that local color Jimmy Buffett thing going on. The sandy hair, the jaw, that weathered skin. Like some crusty Old Man and the Sea desperado hanging out in Margaritaville. My professor will love it.”
    “You don’t have people like me where you’re from?”
    “You kidding? In South Bend?”
    Thorn declined as politely as he could manage. Waited a decent interval, then got up, moved to a table alongside the dock. The thought of being in someone’s local-color slide show made him feel even older and sadder.
    When Sugarman finally arrived he had Tina Gathercole in tow. Sugar had been dating Tina for the last few weeks, though Thorn couldn’t see the attraction. Tina was wired and fidgety and a breathless talker. She was barely five feet tall,