Standing still as a heron, dressed entirely in black, Danny
listened to the water lapping against mangrove roots and the soft whisper of
Australian pines swaying in the gentle breeze. The murmur of serenading
crickets highlighted the silence and the occasional splash told Danny that the
mullets were running. Heavy with moisture, the warm night air filled Danny’s
lungs with the primeval smell of oozing mud and salt marsh. The moonless night
swarmed with twinkling stars, a vast luminous carpet stretching away, suspended
in a velvety sky.
Danny quietly paced a hundred yards up the trail, alert for
others. Satisfied, he returned to his vehicle, checked his watch, then perched on an overturned 55-gallon drum. It was still
too early. Melting into the dark landscape Danny listened to the stealthy
scuffling of blue land crabs scuttling in and out of muddy burrows, their claws
clicking softly like castanets. Silhouetted against the white sand a fat
raccoon suddenly waddled by, then disappeared into a
sea grape thicket. Stretching his legs, Danny settled back, reflecting on the
work ahead. Directly across the dark water from him, glowing in the distance, stretched the long, narrow island of Palm Beach, an exceptionally wealthy enclave.
Separated from West Palm Beach, its poorer mainland cousin, by the
Intracoastal Waterway, there existed only a handful of bridges
connecting the two. Palm Beach was an old-money town of gated
communities and guarded palatial compounds, with access tightly controlled.
Strange cars were viewed suspiciously, strangers even more so. Following major
crimes the police were known to raise the drawbridges to isolate the island,
then conduct car-to-car searches. Yet Danny, who’d inherited the extreme gene,
entertained no fear. As a youth, in some odd cosmic shift in consciousness,
Danny had suddenly recognized death as a foregone conclusion...not in the
abstract but as an unconditional fact, something that, somewhere in the
gradient of time, had already occurred and already resided somewhere within him...and
thereby gained his sure sense of invulnerability, his fearless certitude that
in those heightened moments when he imposed his will, he could not be
threatened by the possibility of death or harm. It was a matter of
relinquishing fear and doubt, a matter of superseding death. Fear was the
enemy. This perception gave Danny complete confidence in the power of his sheer
force of will and bestowed upon him an exhilarating sense of freedom...an
absolute freedom from fear. So far it had proven true. Now, convinced he had
fate in his hip pocket, Danny stared intently at the incandescent island,
seeing beyond the superficial...the verdant landscaping, luxurious cars, posh
shops and opulent estates; what he saw, with a singular clarity, was a sweeping
panorama of vast and tangled possibilities, as dangerous as a combat zone, as
promising as Ali Baba’s cave. He was alive to its dangers large and small, but
more alive to its opportunities.
