Even as she whispered, “Please, please, please,” Claire fumbled in her day hatch for the SPOT satellite tracker with the panic button that would bring help.
But not soon enough, not for Mike.
No, he’d only dropped his paddle and was snatching at something as he rolled. He’d freed himself from the cockpit and was swimming underwater, trying to reach the sanctuary of one of the islets. She’d hear a splash any minute.
Her hands felt clumsy. She couldn’t look away from his overturned kayak.
Suddenly, she was juggling with the small electronic device. It slipped from her hand, bounced once off the glossy surface of the deck of her kayak and fell into the water. She grabbed for it, almost unbalancing the kayak, and missed. “Please” was supplanted by “Dear, God. Oh, Lord. Oh, no.”
Claire lifted a terrified gaze to see that the crane had swung back into place on the freighter and the yacht was in motion. It turned in a tight circle to pass between two small islands and flee south. She couldn’t make out the black letters on the bow. What was wrong with her vision?
Claire swiped angrily at her eyes, and realized she was crying.
Rick Beckman spun toward the shooter. “Why in
the hell did you do that?”
Dwayne Peterson—although probably none of them used a real name—turned a scathing look on Rick. Dwayne cradled the Remington in his meaty arms. “We can’t have a witness.”
“A lone kayaker? Really? If we’d exchanged waves and a few friendly words with him, he’d have gone on his way without giving us a second thought. But what if some other boaters are in earshot? What happens when this guy is found?”
Dwayne’s eyes narrowed. “Kayak’s upside-down. He’s dead. Probably fell out.”
Rick didn’t point out that, if the victim had released himself from the cockpit, his body was almost certainly now drifting on the surface, thanks to the flotation device kayakers all seemed to wear.
The Seattle Flirt, a pricey midsize yacht, was heading out of this cluster of islands to open water, putting distance between the two boats as fast as the pilot could manage without hitting a rock and grinding a hole in his hull. He was smarter than Dwayne, clearly.
Well aware of the five other men watching the confrontation—no help there—Rick kept his mouth shut, but he did shake his head.
“What?” Dwayne snarled.
Rick shrugged and raised his voice enough to be heard by everyone. “If any of us get arrested now, we’ll go down for murder.”
“I don’t like your attitude.”
Rick didn’t take his eyes off his nominal boss, who was bristling as he always did at any hint at criticism. Still, Rick remained aware of the bright red hull of the long kayak floating aimlessly with the current. That poor bastard. Having a good time exploring this spectacular landscape, gets shot by a trigger-happy drug trafficker.
It had happened so fast, there hadn’t been a damn thing Rick could do to prevent it.
“Nothin’ to say?”
Shouldn’t have opened his mouth. He balanced on the balls of his feet, staying deceptively relaxed, ready to move fast. But, damn, he wished he wore a Kevlar vest beneath his T-shirt and heavy sweater.
What was done was done. “Nope.”
Dwayne started to walk away. He was halfway across the broad, flat deck when he turned back. “Well, I do. I’ve had it with you.” He lifted the rifle and fired in one practiced movement.
The violent punch flung Rick backward. He crashed against the thigh-high metal curb. Flipped over it. Agony spread across his chest until he hit the icy water, when his entire body screamed in protest. Somehow, God knew how, he resisted the instinct to struggle in the water. He had to stay lax when he surfaced.
Had to play dead.
Odds were, hypothermia would ensure he was dead, but he couldn’t let himself believe it.
Claire still hung beneath the shelter of the cedar branch, whimpering, when she heard the next gunshot and saw a man topple backward off the freighter.
Terror and a stinging dose of common sense kept her frozen in place. If she was spotted, the next bullet would be the one that killed her. But, oh God, what if Mike was alive? Waiting for her to rescue him?
She knew better, she did. He’d been wearing his PFD. It wouldn’t allow him to sink below the surface. If he’d managed to release himself from his kayak and was alive, she’d have seen him surface. Given the shock of the bitterly cold water, he wouldn’t have been able to hold his breath long.
Her only salvation was that this storm-twisted tree had reached low enough to hide her and that her kayak was blue instead of a neon color like Mike’s.
Tearing her eyes from the hull of Mike’s kayak, she sought the other guy. The one who just went overboard. Him, she could see, floating on his back, unmoving. If he’d moved since he hit the water, she’d missed it.
A change in the sound of the freighter’s engine jerked her gaze up. A moment later, men moved purposefully on deck, somebody securing the crane, others going into the squat building that filled the stern and was topped with a tiny wheelhouse and radar. She did her best to memorize what she saw. The hull of the ship was black with a faded red stripe and significant rust, the pilot house a scarred, stained white. She couldn’t imagine the freighter still plied the Pacific Coast with any legitimate trade.
But it was moving, so slowly she first thought she was imagining it, but then it began a wide swing across the inlet to go the way of the yacht. Claire had no idea how much time had passed, but knew that with the tide falling the freighter had to reach deeper waters or risk being trapped or grounded.
She didn’t move, didn’t dare, even when it passed out of sight behind the islet that was her refuge. She waited, waited, until the sound of the engine receded and something like peace returned to the passage.
Then, she let go of her branch, dug deep with her paddle, and shot forward toward Mike’s kayak.
The struggle to flip it was brief. It would have been harder if he’d still been in the cockpit, but he wasn’t. She swiveled frantically in place. He had to have lived long enough to release himself from the spray skirt that kept water out of the cockpit. A spot of yellow caught her eye. His PFD—
It floated alone. He had somehow shed that, too. A dying man thinking he was freeing himself from restraint?
And—dear God—he always kept a small day bag tucked in one of the mesh gear pockets on his deck where it would be accessible. The bag was missing, along with Mike himself.
His body.
She heard a splash, then another one. The man who’d been shot and fallen overboard was trying to swim, mostly with one arm. He was alive.
It might have been smart to hesitate, but she didn’t. She snatched the PFD out of the water and laid it across her front deck, hanging it over the compass right in front of her, and then started paddling her kayak toward the only man she could save.
His already futile effort to swim had slowed to almost nothingness by the time she reached him. Somehow, he lifted his head and saw her. She had the impression of a bone-white face and seal-dark hair. Hypothermia would kill him in no time.
Bracing to hold her kayak a safe distance from him, she tossed the vest toward him. “Can you put this on?”
He grabbed it with one hand, but nothing else happened.
Rescuing him would be the most dangerous thing she’d ever done. A drowning man’s instinct would be to lunge toward her kayak. He could sink her. Flip her.
He lifted a glassy-eyed look at her, and tried to dog-paddle toward her.
“Listen to me. Can you follow instructions? Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes.” His voice wasn’t strong, but it sounded certain enough to make her think he was still aware.
“I’ll back up to you. Climb up if you can and pull yourself to lie flat on my boat. Grab a hold of
my cockpit. If you dump us over, neither of us will survive. Do you understand?”
She thought he nodded. This was worth a try. If he couldn’t make it, she could go back for Mike’s kayak, try to pour the water out, somehow help this guy get in...but he was fading fast. She thought he’d be past rescuing if this failed.
She used her paddle deftly, rotating the kayak in the water, backing up until his hand grasped the rear grab loop. Then she did her best to stay steady in the water as he somehow found the strength to heave himself upward and grip with one hand the rigging that crisscrossed the deck. The kayak rolled to the right; she dug in her paddle to brace it. Left, ditto. Then she heard a groan and dared to turn her head.
Somehow, he’d made it and lay sprawled the length of her stern, sinking it deeper than she’d like. The fingers of his one usable hand dug into the cockpit coaming behind her. Claire had practiced rescues like this a few times, but this man was bigger, heavier than anyone she’d tried it with.
The PFD... She looked around. Bumping against her hull. She grabbed it, knowing he might need it—if he survived the next hour or two.
The speed and liveliness Claire relied on from her kayak had turned into reluctance. It barely moved until she dug in to paddle as if she was crossing an open strait midstorm with whitecaps topping rolling waves, a powerful wind at her head.
She’d been thinking only one step at a time, but hadn’t moved twenty feet before her mind cleared enough for her to realize she had no idea where she was going. Was there anything closer than last night’s campsite? Besides, it didn’t seem smart to go the same way the freighter had.
She and Mike had intended to reach Spider Island for the night, but they had notes about a couple of picnic stops where they could beach a kayak that were a lot closer. A chart formed in her mind, although with her current stress and desperation it wasn’t easy to see the one-dimensional features in the cluster of rocky islands and unnamed islets in front of her.
I should take Mike’s kayak with us, she thought with sudden clarity. Try to dump enough water out of it to allow her to tow it.
Her mind was working sluggishly now. Wait. She could call for help on the VHF radio, and rescue would come to them.
“No,” a voice mumbled behind her. “They...could be monitoring for calls for help.”
They? Fresh horror was answer enough. Them.
And...today, Mike had carried the VHF radio.
Thanks to her panic and clumsiness, the SPOT was gone...and seemingly the VHF, too.
Wait. He often stuck the radio in the pocket of his flotation vest. She paused with the paddle resting across the cockpit and reached forward to the PFD. One look told her the breast pocket was empty. She tried to remember seeing him shove the radio inside and snap the buckle closed this morning. Had he not bothered securing the pocket? Or somehow grabbed for both it and the day bag that held his SPOT?
With no answers, her mind clicked to the next problem as if she were watching a slide show. She’d have no dry clothes for her passenger without what Mike carried. Hers wouldn’t do a large man any good. She had to reclaim Mike’s kayak.
She explained what she was doing to the man behind her, hoping even inane chatter would prevent him from sinking into unconsciousness. He grunted a couple of times.
She wouldn’t have had any choice but to abandon the plan if Mike’s Tsunami had been carried very far away. Thank heavens the tide hadn’t yet turned. Maneuvering her own already sluggish kayak the fifty or so yards to Mike’s, she took out her towline and clipped it to the carrying toggle at the bow of his orange-and-red boat, fussed about where to attach the other end and finally chose rigging right in front of her.
With a struggle, she managed to roll it enough to dump out most of the water, but quickly found that towing another kayak, along with the deadweight behind her, shifted her normal sprightly skim over the surface of the water to a painful slog. If the waves had been any higher, they’d have been washing over the deck of her kayak, and over the wounded man clinging to life.
She focused grimly. If she were in the habit of giving up, she wouldn’t have chosen a sport where the suffering often outweighed the triumphs.
She passed a rocky island on her starboard. But when she neared the slightly larger one ahead and to her port side, she spotted a hint of an opening. Really a crack in the steep rock. If there was nothing resembling a beach within it... Claire didn’t let herself finish the thought. She’d go on, that’s what she’d do. Her muscles burned.
“You still with me?” she called over her shoulder.
The fact that her passenger made a noise was a positive. If he was unconscious by the time they got out of the water...
Stop. One step at a time.
Copyright © 2021 by Janice Kay Johnson
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ISBN-13: 9780369709172
Missing at Christmas
Copyright © 2021 by Kia Dennis
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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Missing at Christmas Page 19
