The executioners [antikvár]

CHAPTER ONE Sam Bowden lay on his back under a high Saturday sun, eyes closed, right hand clasping the fading chill of half a can of beer. He was aware of the nearness of Carol. Digestion of the picnic lunch was proceeding comfortably. Jamie and Bucky were thrashing around in the brush on the small hill behind the little beach, and Sam knew that it would soon be time for eleven-year-old Jamie to send six-year-old Bucky down to them to ask if it wasn't time to go back into the water. Other years Nancy would have been racing and whooping with the younger kids. But this year Nancy was fourteen, and this year she had brought a guest along—a fifteen-year-old boy named Pike Foster. Nancy and Pike lay baking in the sun on the foredeck of the Sweet Sioux III, with a portable radio turned to the odd offerings of a progressive disk jockey. The Sweet Sioux was moored a hundred feet down the curve of beach, her bow ten feet off the sand, and the music was barely audible. Sam Bowden lay with the sun coming red through his eyelids and tried, almost with desperation, to tell himself that all was right with his particular world. Everything was fine. This was the first expedition of the year to the island. The Bowdens would make three