She’d truly expected to find Josh’s boat and had half expected to find something on the boat that would explain the insurance scam. Well, maybe not half expected, but she’d certainly convinced herself it was a realistic possibility.
A wind gust blew down the back of her neck, and once again she shivered. Halloween was more than a month away, but the deserted grounds were starting to give her the willies. She reached the last of the boats, a craft half again as long as Josh’s, and came to a stop.
There were possibilities at this point: Had Marcie already sold Josh’s boat, or was it being stored inside one of the warehouses? Okay, there was a third possibility, that Marcie was storing the boat somewhere else, but Katie didn’t see that as likely.
She eyed the warehouses with their multiple sets of doors, both large and small. Well, it didn’t hurt to try, she supposed. Starting at the building closest to her, she tried the doorknob of the human-sized door. Locked. Which was what she’d assumed, but you never knew.
The wind picked up, and she zipped her jacket all the way to the top. Five more buildings to check, five more doors to test, and then she was out of there. It was all kind of silly, anyway. The Sheriff’s Office hadn’t arrested Don, after all. And even if she found the boat, what had made her think she’d find anything that would help her learn how the scam had operated?
The second, third, fourth, and fifth buildings were also locked, and Katie headed to the sixth and final building, as due diligence, really, already thinking about the hot chocolate she’d make when she got home and wondering if she’d stay awake or fall asleep if she started watching Casablanca. She put her hand on the sixth doorknob, tried the door, and it opened.
She gave a start and was so surprised that she almost shut it again.
Light poured through the small gap, which seemed strange. She hadn’t seen a soul or a single vehicle since she’d arrived. She had begun to assume that someone had left the lights on and the door unlocked by mistake, when she heard a radio broadcasting a football game.
Hmm.
She poked her head inside but saw only boats, boats, and more boats. Inching inside, she debated calling out, and almost did. Something kept her quiet, though, and she moved silently among the mothballed boats, both looking for Josh’s Carver and trying to see who might be in the building.
The warehouse seemed even bigger on the inside than it did on the outside, and the voice of what she assumed was a local high school football radio announcer bounced around, echoing off all the hard surfaces.
She crept closer, keeping to the back wall, in the shadows and out of sight. There was a good chance it was just an employee working on winterizing a boat. If so, she’d sneak back out, no harm, no foul. But the whole thing seemed odd. Why would a single employee winterize boats so late at night? And why wasn’t a car parked outside?
For the first time, Katie was glad for the black clothing she’d chosen. Unless someone looked directly at her and saw her pale skin, she should be essentially invisible.
She edged deeper into the building. All kinds of boats lined the outside walls, and there was an open aisle in the center for hauling the craft in and out. The floor was concrete, and she carefully kept her shoes from making any sound as she moved.
A metal clang startled her. At the same time a man cursed, and she realized he must have dropped a tool.
So, a guy working on a boat.
Still, she wanted to get a closer look. She made her way carefully forward, step by cautious step, half of her trying to think of what she’d say to this guy if he happened to look up and see her, the other half sure that she was close to finding out why Josh had been murdered.
Peering around the end of a bright red vessel, she caught a glimpse of a blue-jeaned pant leg. She poked her head around a little further and saw that he was facing the stern end of a big, beautiful boat, using some sort of small power tool on the top of the hull.
Katie watched, trying to figure out what was going on. This was no part of winterizing; even she knew that. Winterizing was almost entirely about taking care of the motor. The only thing anyone would do to a hull was wax it, and that was clearly not what was happening.
Curious, she slid forward to get a better look, trying to remember everything Seth had ever told her about boats. Everything she’d ever learned about everything, really, because judging from the furtive way the man kept looking around, he was obviously doing something he shouldn’t.
What could he be up to? What was on a hull? What was . . . And then Katie suddenly knew what the man was doing. She remembered sitting on the back of Seth’s boat, putting her hands on the edge—the gunwale—to steady herself, and feeling something under her fingertips. She leaned over and had seen a serial number.
“Done,” the man said and stepped back. He turned, and Katie pulled in a quick breath.
It was Warren Noth.
She slid backward, back into the depths of the shadows. This was enough for Detective Hamilton. It had to be. All she had to do now was get back to her car, leave quickly, and call 911. She could report what was going on here, and they’d arrest Noth, and—
There was a noise behind her, which made no sense because she knew Noth was still in front of her. But there was no time to wonder, no time to think, because she heard a fast whir of air, felt a monstrous bang! on the back of her head, and then crumbled to the ground.
Eighteen
Pain. Pounding pain. That was the first thing that registered in Katie’s foggy brain. A pounding headache beyond belief. With her eyes still closed, Katie tried to move—only her wrists were attached to each other. Then she realized her ankles were in the same situation.
She tried to sit up and immediately banged her head on something immovable. “Ow!” Her cry of pain sounded weakly pathetic even to her own ears.
Flopping back down, she waited for the sharp throbbing in her head to subside. It took about a year and a day, but the pain eventually subsided to a level that didn’t make her want to whimper like a whiny child.
Then, when she thought she could think about something else other than her head, she slowly opened her eyes and saw . . . nothing.
Well, not exactly nothing, she amended silently. There was a small amount of light, but only enough to let her make out the outlines of large shapes. She was lying on a narrow bed that had a ceiling two feet above her. To her left she could make out cabinets and a table with banquet seating.
She studied the arrangement, her fuzzy brain trying to make sense of it all. Though the place looked vaguely familiar, she felt no sense of ever having been there in her life. Yet . . . where was she, exactly?
That’s when she noticed she was moving. Up and down with a little side to side thrown in for good measure. Suddenly, she clued in to the noise that had been rumbling in the background all along.
“Oh no,” she whispered.
Because she was on a boat.
Tied up.
And no one knew where she was.
How could she have been so stupid? She started cursing herself but stopped almost as soon as she started. Berating herself was going to have to come later, after she figured a way out of this mess. Right now she had better things to do.
She looked over to what she now recognized as the boat’s galley. If it was a functioning kitchen, surely there’d be a knife she could use to cut her bonds. Feeling around with her fingers, she deduced they’d wrapped duct tape around her wrists and ankles as a restraint. For a moment she was grateful they hadn’t slapped her mouth shut, then she felt stupid for a second time. Why should they bother? There wasn’t a soul around to hear any cries for help.
That fact might give her an edge. They would expect her to start screaming the second she regained consciousness; if she stayed silent and stealthlike, maybe, just maybe, she could use that to her advantage. How, exactly, she didn’t know, but there had
to be a way.
After trying unsuccessfully to unstick the tape from her ankles—her fingers were also half covered with tape, and she couldn’t grip for beans—she wriggled to the edge of the bunk, lowered her feet to the floor, and listened. No voices, no footsteps, no thumping of any kind, just the boat’s motor humming along as it carried her farther and farther away from safety.
Panic stirred somewhere in her middle and started to flow outward.
Take a deep breath, she told herself and pulled in a couple. She had to stay calm if she was going to survive. And at this point, survival was the only thing that mattered. Everything else could wait. Had to wait, really, and since the second—and the only other—thing on her mental task list was to slap Warren Noth and whoever else was working with him in jail, she had to get control of her emotions.
First, she had to get her hands and feet free. Then she needed to figure out a plan for getting to shore. Then she could work on the jailing issue. Whoever it was would eventually pay for what they’d done to Josh and were doing to her.
But, as she stood and hopped her way across the floor toward the galley, she couldn’t help wondering: Who was the “they” in question? Warren Noth, yes, but there was at least one other person involved, the one who had clonked her on the head. So, two, at least. And maybe more, for all she knew.
The footsteps, the ones she’d heard behind her for the fraction of a second before she’d been whacked on the head, had sounded heavy and male, but she wouldn’t want to assume that. Women could be plenty mean and murderous; she knew that for a fact.
She hopped forward, trying to make no noise as she did so. The whisper of her soft-soled shoes against the carpet was slight, but it seemed as loud as cymbal crashes to her. Though there was no possible way her movements could be heard up above, over the sound of the grumbling engine, she was still wary, stopping between every hop and cocking her head, listening.
Forty-million hops later, she stood in front of the galley sink. Awkwardly, she pulled open the first drawer she could grab.
Empty.
“Dammit,” she whispered and tried the next drawer.
That one was empty, too, as were the cabinets above and the cabinets below. Not a single utensil, not a single pot or pan. Not even a Tupperware lid.
Her nascent plans to cut herself free and then use the knife to threaten whoever it was driving the boat instantly vaporized. No wonder they’d felt free to leave her down there; they’d emptied the boat of anything useful.
“Jerks,” Katie muttered. But they were murderous jerks, and she couldn’t let herself forget that.
Because now what was she going to do?
Turning in a slow circle by virtue of a series of coordinated hops, she surveyed the contents of her prison by the dim light that filtered down through the skylights from what she assumed was the cockpit.
Seth’s boat, the one with which she was most familiar, was a sailboat, but except for the width—sailboats were skinnier—the two interiors had a lot in common. Low ceiling, narrow walkway, wraparound seats for a banquet table that could be lowered to become another berth, compact galley, built-in couch/berth. Up toward the boat’s forward end, Katie could see hints of a master cabin and a tiny bathroom.
All probably as empty as the kitchen had been. Still, she had to try.
She gave the kitchen one last going-over, just to be sure, and for a second time, found absolutely nothing, not even a take-out packet of pepper.
Getting down on her hands and knees, she checked the cabinets under the seats and found nothing except a book of matches and a small packet of tissues, which she shoved in her pocket. How they could possibly be useful as part of an escape plan, she didn’t know, but she wasn’t about to reject anything.
She started to stand but came to the sudden and very abrupt realization that getting up from a hands-and-knees position when your wrists and ankles were tied together was a lot harder to do than it sounded.
“Never mind,” she muttered to herself and inched her way to the front of the boat on her knees and elbows, feeling like a large and awkward human caterpillar. She made a slightly hysterical mental note to bring knee pads to her next kidnapping, then firmly battened down the hysteria and concentrated on the task at hand, ignoring the sharp sting of carpet burns.
Reaching the master cabin took longer than she would have liked, but at least she hadn’t been detected.. She wanted to sigh with relief because she now had the ability to close a door between herself and her kidnappers, but she knew she wasn’t safe, and no closer to escape. Speaking of escape . . .
No light filtered farther than the cabin’s door, so she searched the cabinets, shelves, and bunks strictly by feel. Just like the kitchen, they were completely empty. Not even a book of matches this time.
Deep in her stomach she felt the stirrings of despair. She was never going to get out of this. Somewhere out in the middle of Lake Ontario, Warren Noth was going to toss her overboard, and she would drown, just like Josh. She had no idea how far from shore they were, but she’d lived near the big lake most of her life and was more than familiar with what the temperature of the water was likely to be at this time of year and the effects of hypothermia.
She wasn’t cold; in fact, she was sweating from all her caterpillaring efforts, but she shivered.
Bathroom, she told herself. Check out the head. It would be an excellent place to leave a small pair of scissors. A nail file. Anything.
As she shuffled/hopped out of the main cabin, she thought somewhat desperately about detaching a plumbing fixture to use as a cutting instrument. Maybe the faucet was a little loose. Maybe she could get it off and there’d be a sharp edge and she could saw through all those layers of thick tape. Maybe . . .
But there was nothing.
A tiny bit of light helped Katie quickly establish that no fixture was even remotely loose. Not the faucet, not the shower head, and nothing in the under-sink cabinet.
“Dammit,” she said under her breath as she grabbed onto the edge of the cabinet and pulled herself to her feet. She flinched as she saw movement in front of her, then felt stupid as she realized she’d caught sight of her own reflection in the mirror.
The mirror.
Hope surged through her. The mirror! She could break the mirror and use a shard to cut the tape. She’d get out the packet of tissues—so useful!—to protect her hand during the cutting job. This would work, this would really work. She was as good as free, and when she was free, surely she would figure out a way to get back to shore. A boat this size was bound to have a lifeboat.
Excited, she reached out . . . and her hopes died in an instant.
The mirror was made of plastic.
She blew out a disgusted breath. It probably made sense, safety-wise, to have plastic mirror on something like a boat, but it sure would have been nice to catch a break for once.
And now what was she going to do?
Her legs were starting to cramp, so she hopped over to the small commode and sat down, putting her elbows on her knees. The next obvious step was to come up with options. Unfortunately, she couldn’t think of a single one. She’d been so intent on getting her hands and feet free that she hadn’t considered anything else.
“Dammit,” she muttered and sagged a little. Her right elbow slid off her knee and banged against the toilet paper roll.
The toilet paper . . .
She scrabbled at the roll, telling herself not to get too excited, maybe it wasn’t the right kind, maybe it wouldn’t work, maybe she was nuts, maybe . . .
Her taped-together fingers reached around the toilet paper, trying to figure out how it was attached, feeling the holder, thinking hard, begging please don’t let it be plastic, please, please, please . . .
It wasn’t. It was metal.
She smiled into the dark and grasped the metal cylinder with her fingers
. Pushing it to one side, she loosened it from the holder. Letting the toilet paper drop to the floor, she pulled the two halves of the cylinder apart. Inside was a metal spring. She put her index finger on the end and nearly laughed. It was so sharp it almost pierced her skin.
Perfect.
Leaning down, she ran the sharp end of the spring across the tape. It made a skittering noise that was like music to her ears. Pressing down a little harder, she drew the spring across the layers of duct tape over and over and over again.
Every so often, she’d use her fingers to check her progress. When the top layer parted, she almost cheered out loud but instead kept bearing down. Second layer cut through . . . third . . . fourth . . . fifth . . . and then she was free!
Well, her ankles, anyway.
Katie stood and walked—no, strode—out of the bathroom, feeling a huge psychological boost. If she could get her feet free, she could get her hands free, and then she’d be able to get going on the serious business of getting back to shore.
She went into the master cabin and sat on the bunk. With her fingers half taped up, it was going to be harder to use the spring, but she had a lot of motivation, and there was no way she was going to just sit there and give Warren Noth and his buddies an easy time of it.
Turning the spindle around, she tried to aim the sharp end at the tape around her wrists, but the metal made it slick, and it rolled out of her fingers and hit the floor.
Swell, she thought, and slid to the carpet. It took a little searching to find her tool, and when she did, she just stayed on the floor. If the thing had slipped out of her hands once, it might do it again.
She levered the spindle every which way she could think of, aiming it this way and that, getting cramps in her hands and ignoring them, but the noise she’d loved so much just wasn’t possible.
Now what? There had to be a way. She was not going to give up. Just. Was. Not.
She started to stand, thinking that in her earlier exploration of the kitchen maybe she’d missed something. Probably not, most likely not, but maybe, and what else did she have to do?
Dead, Bath, and Beyond Page 24
