Dead Reckoning

by Moore, Sandra K.

  When Gus had told her his old partner had become a P.I. based in Galveston, she’d hoped to get some information about Jerome Scintella before she headed out after Natalie. Did he, for example, have a history of violence? Have an arrest record? Own a gun?

  “Extremely dangerous drug smuggler” pretty much had all of that covered.

  Suddenly she wasn’t just talking to a P.I. about snatching her sister. The minute Gus and Antonio Garza heard Jerome’s name, they’d been on the phone to old contacts at the DEA. Hence Special Agent Smith, who reminded her of the boy who used to live next door.

  “It’s clear we can’t take him in Rome.” Smith rose, tall and lean, to pace to the window. He braced his arm in the window casing as he said, almost to himself, “With Scintella so jumpy, moving around every night, it’ll be next to impossible to get a fix on him.”

  “That’s why I’m proposing my ‘suicide’ mission,” Chris retorted. “Natalie’s too hemmed in by her bodyguard to ditch him, so I couldn’t go to Rome myself and have any chance of getting her.”

  “And you think taking your motor yacht to this private island improves your odds?” Smith asked the window. “It’ll be covered up with armed guards.”

  “It’s a very long shot. And dangerous.” The private investigator’s deep brown eyes were soft with concern, as though he was practiced at cautioning others. Given that Garza specialized in finding missing children, Chris suspected he might be.

  “I knew it was going to be difficult before you told me about Jerome,” she said. “But I can’t just let this chance go by without acting on it.” Smith’s longish blond hair raked his collar as he turned to look at her. She continued, “Natalie phoned again this morning and said she’d sweet-talked Jerome into telling her the island’s name. She’s not sure if Isladonata is in U.S. waters. I checked the charts but didn’t find it. Maybe Isladonata is a nickname. I’ll ask around the transient cruising people in my marina and on the newsgroups to see if they know anything.”

  “So she’s able to get some information from him.” Smith’s words sounded almost like an accusation.

  “Every question she asks is a risk,” Chris retorted. “Jerome gets more suspicious of everyone around him every day. I don’t like asking her to stretch that envelope.”

  Smith sighed and returned to the table. His white shirt, tucked carelessly into snug jeans, both set off his tan and made him look more like a horse trainer than a DEA agent. “I hope I don’t sound like I’m asking you to do that,” he said as he dropped back into his chair. “It’s good she’s able to find out a few things for us. It’ll help us find Scintella.”

  And get her out, Chris thought.

  “But,” his tenor deepened slightly, “there’s no guarantee she’ll take the chance of leaving even if you show up with your boat. No telling what orders the bodyguard will have been given by Scintella.”

  Chris’s stomach clenched with fear. Would Jerome order Natalie’s bodyguard to kill her if she strayed? God, why would he not? He seemed to see Natalie as a possession, not a wife.

  “How were you planning on finding Isladonata?” Smith asked.

  “All I need is a fifty-square-mile window. In theory, I could track other boats or choppers from the mainland and project which island they land at, then dead reckon my way in.” Though her chances of actually succeeding, she knew from having been in the Gulf of Mexico, were incredibly slim. Too much water, too many islands, too little time.

  “Navigation by the seat of the pants is risky,” Gus said.

  Smith nodded. “It’d be better if your sister could get us the exact location.”

  Chris studied her hands, resting so still and lost on the wood tabletop’s vast, empty expanse. “I’m sure it would. But I don’t like asking her to take that chance.”

  “Understood,” Smith replied softly.

  She looked up to find him staring at her. He was handsome in a vague way, as though the artist painting him had left him unfinished. It showed in the way his hair roughly brushed his neck, in the slight unevenness of his lips. His eyes, she realized absently, were the color of her own.

  “And your yacht can make that trip?” he asked.

  “Obsession’s not a true blue-water boat, so she can’t take on an ocean,” Chris admitted. “But she’ll handle the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean just fine. An old ship’s log I found aboard said she made two trips down and back in the seventies.”

  Gus snorted. “The seventies? A little time has passed, hasn’t it?”

  “I tore down and rebuilt both engines myself,” Chris replied. “She’ll make it. It’s the cosmetic work I’m worried about.”

  Smith leaned his brown forearms on the table. “What do you mean?”

  “If these Isladonata guys are high-dollar bad guys, they’ll have high-dollar hobbies. When I inherited Obsession nine months ago, she needed a lot of work. I’ve got her mechanical systems in order, but it’s the spit-and-polish that’ll convince them she’s legit and get me onto the island.”

  “What were you planning on doing once you were there?” Garza asked.

  “I’m going to have to look like a private captain on my way to drop off or pick up someone important.”

  Gus grunted. “If Scintella’s going to be on the island in three weeks, that’s not much time.”

  “Two weeks to dress up the yacht, one week to get down there,” she confirmed.

  Garza scribbled some notes. “Is that enough time?”

  “Not really,” Chris admitted, thinking about chalky fiberglass and cracked windows. “And I need a lot more money than I have to make it happen.”

  “How much?” Smith pulled his hands from his jeans pockets and crossed his arms.

  “This is where my plan needs some work.” She ballparked the repair price tag. Gus whistled softly. Once Garza’s brows dropped back from the ceiling, she said, “Look, a brand-new yacht of her build quality would cost upwards of five million. Obsession’s old and needs a serious facelift, but she’s fundamentally sound. I’ve worked on the basic systems myself and sunk most of my savings into her. All I need now is the window dressing.”

  “That’s a helluva dressing,” Smith muttered.

  “She’s a helluva window,” Chris retorted. “I’m not talking about installing Waterford chandeliers. Just reasonably good quality furnishings and carpet to make her look like she’s been pampered. The external work includes a full-on paint job, replacing windows and railings, that kind of thing. I could do it all myself if I had the time.”

  She glanced out the window. Her rusted Chevy pickup, the truck she’d bought as a hobby project but that was now all she had for transportation, stared back at her blankly. “And the cash,” she added, thinking about how soon her remaining savings would run dry even paying only her living expenses.

  “You have your captain’s license. Can’t you just rent a vessel?” Garza asked.

  She shook her head. “Large vessels carry their own captains and crew. Even with a license, I’m an unknown, an insurance risk. Nobody’s going to let me hire a yacht that size even for twice the going rate without taking their crew. And maybe I’m assuming here, but I bet if I show up in anything shorter than seventy feet, I won’t get within a mile of the island.”

  Smith settled back into his chair and studied her for a long moment. “Let’s say money’s no object,” he said finally. “What would your schedule look like?”

  Money no object? Fighting down the hope swelling in her throat, Chris forced herself to concentrate on facts, not pipe dreams. “Two weeks in the boatyard for as much as we can get done here in Galveston, then a shakedown cruise to New Orleans to make sure everything’s working. If there’s any cosmetic work left, we may be able to get it done in New Orleans if they’re not still covered up with hurricane repairs. Then I’ll head south for Isladonata.”

  “We could take a page from your book and bluff our way onto the island,” Smith mused. “Maybe say we’re coming to drop off a p
layer.”

  Garza nodded. “One of the Delacruz family. Enrique Delacruz.”

  “They wouldn’t see us coming.”

  Gus’s chin jutted like a battering ram. “A private island’s going to be heavily guarded. They’ll be running radar and spot a fleet of choppers and cutters coming from two hundred miles out. Scintella will be gone before you get there.”

  “It doesn’t have to be a major operation,” Smith replied.

  “You’re not going to sneak up on him.” Gus shoved his creaking chair back and stood to glare down at Smith. “Not on an island.”

  Smith raised his face to meet Gus head-on. “We can set it up. With the right hardware, the right men, we can take this guy.”

  “And his army?” Gus asked. “Sounds like you’ll be taking in your own army to handle it.”

  “Scintella won’t be the only target on that island,” Garza pointed out.

  Finally. Let’s talk about Natalie. Chris crossed her arms and willed herself to relax.

  Then Garza said, “If he’s doing business you’ll have the Mendoza family on your hands, too. That’s a lot of firepower in one place.”

  “If you can even get there.” Gus thrust his hands in his pockets and started filtering change through his fingers. “I’m tellin’ you, he’ll catch you on radar. By the time you get there, the only people left on that island will be the cook and the gardener.”

  But not my sister. Chris tried to still her nerves but the jingling coins might as well have been dancing in her dental fillings. If the DEA spooked Jerome with their he-man tactics, Chris thought as the men continued to argue, Natalie would be swept away, as though she’d never existed. She listened to their voices, heated now, Special Agent Smith standing to square off against Gus. Guns, choppers, ammo. Always Scintella. Always his arrest. Never a word about what really mattered.

  “All I want is my sister,” Chris said loudly into a break in the argument. “I can get onto that island myself, one way or another, before you bring in the cavalry. Give me that chance to get Natalie out, and you can do whatever the hell you want after we’re gone.”

  “That’s a good way to get yourself killed,” Garza remarked.

  “If I do nothing, Natalie gets killed. None of you sound very interested in her except as a source of information.”

  For a long moment, no one spoke. Gus’s face screwed into his characteristic scowl. Antonio Garza stared at his shoes beneath the table.

  “I’m not leaving my sister at Jerome Scintella’s mercy,” she said quietly. “I’ll take Obsession to Isladonata if I have to do it on my own.”

  Long seconds passed while she held Smith’s gaze. She wasn’t bluffing and she knew that showed in her face—she was scared, but she wouldn’t back down. She didn’t trust this agent to look after Natalie once he and his team had Scintella in view. Sure, they might be honorable men. But her experience had taught her to be wary. The nice mutt sitting placidly with you on the front porch one minute could become a mindless part of a howling, uncontrollable pack when the quarry was sighted.

  She was the only one in the room putting Natalie first.

  Smith must have read her correctly because he said to Garza, “I need to make a phone call. Can we talk outside?”

  Garza sighed and faced her, his dark eyes soft with what looked like fatherly concern. “Do you mind waiting?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Garza grasped the cane that leaned against the table and levered himself from his chair like a much older man. After he’d limped from the room behind Smith, Chris asked, “Was he injured in the line of duty?”

  “Domestic violence case. Guy beatin’ up his wife, the neighbor calls, we go over there. We’ve got the guy cuffed and headed out the door when the wife goes ape-shit with a handgun ’cause she wants to ‘save her man.’”

  Chris heard again Natalie’s voice: He didn’t mean it. It’s not like he broke anything.

  “God,” she murmured.

  Gus shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m no shrink. I just know it happens sometimes. They usually don’t come out firing, though. Tony got a bad break.”

  She was silent for a moment before she asked, “What do you think they’re talking about?”

  His heavy sigh could have been anything: fatigue, resignation, exasperation. “I don’t know,” he said finally, kicking his chair back onto two legs. “I got an idea but I never cared much for guessin’.”

  He had a point. Guessing invited a lot of wondering, and that would turn into worrying. She had enough of that on her plate already.

  While Gus jangled quarters and dimes, Chris tried to concentrate on not wondering if Jerome was hurting Natalie. Live today, right now, she reminded herself. Maybe it was time to go back to meditating. That practice had helped when she was having a tough time with the rig roughnecks. Funny how the simplest things got so easily swamped by worry and fear. You get busy, then you forget how to stay centered, sane.

  “What I don’t understand,” Gus said abruptly, “is why these boys sound like they need your boat. The DEA could use any old tub they’ve seized recently.”

  “I thought smugglers used Cigarette boats and fishing trawlers,” she said, thinking back over cruising posts and magazine articles she’d read.

  “Then why don’t they take a damn go-fast boat then?”

  “You know I won’t let them go without me,” she warned.

  Before Gus could work up a head of steam, the office door opened. Chris watched Smith and Garza file back in and settle across from her again. Gus tipped his chair onto all four legs, clearly ready to do battle.

  “Ms. Hampton,” Smith said, “you’ve given us the best chance in years to put our hands on Scintella. It’s a major break for us.”

  “I’m sure of that,” she said flatly. “What about my sister?”

  “We want to see her home with you safe and sound.”

  That she wasn’t sure of. Smith didn’t seem to notice.

  “We’ll put a team together and go to Isladonata, intercept Scintella and bring your sister back.”

  “On what boat?”

  “I phoned my partner, Special Agent McLellan, while Mr. Garza and I were outside. McLellan wants to pay for the upgrades in exchange for using your yacht.”

  “Why can’t you take a seized boat?” Gus demanded.

  “Logistical problem,” Smith snapped. “Last year’s hurricane season took out our suitable yachts. Ms. Hampton’s right. We need something that won’t make them suspicious.”

  “And you’ll find a captain who can handle a hundred-ton vessel?” She ignored the yank on her gut at the thought of handing the yacht—her home—over to a bunch of weekend sea cowboys she didn’t know.

  “It might be tricky,” he admitted.

  “How will you find the island?”

  “Hook us up with your sister and we’ll take it from there.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not going to work that way.”

  “Why not?” Smith asked sharply.

  “She won’t talk to anyone but me.”

  “That’s not wise—”

  “Of course it’s wise. She doesn’t know you. She doesn’t know your voice. What if Jerome tricks her into talking to one of his thugs? It’s bad enough that he could tap her phone.” Chris paused, lifted her chin. “But she knows me. She trusts me. If she does happen to come up with fresh information, she’ll call.”

  Smith hesitated, clearly tempted. “We can set up a phone relay.”

  Chris shook her head. “Not good enough. I’m going with you or there’s no deal.” When she saw that mule look come over Smith’s open face, she added, “This isn’t negotiable.”

  “You don’t understand.” Smith leaned forward. “Two operations failed to bring Scintella in. Believe it or not, the long shot you’ve dropped in our laps may be our best opportunity to nail him. He might anticipate his men turning on him, but he might not guess that his wife would.”

  “I just want
to know Natalie’s going to be safe. If it comes down to a choice between catching Scintella and saving my sister—”

  “There aren’t any guarantees where Scintella’s concerned,” Smith said bluntly. “Except that he’s dangerous and he’ll fight being brought in. He’ll do everything he can to stay free.”

  And the DEA agents, no matter how well-meaning, would have their sights set first on Scintella, then on Natalie.

  I’m the only one who’s going to be looking out for her.

  “I’m captaining my vessel on this trip,” Chris told Smith as she stood. Before he could start lobbing objections her way, she said, “When you and your partner come out to the boatyard, I’ll be prepping my yacht.” Then she turned on her heel and walked out.

  The small, silver key dangled on a chain held lightly in Special Agent Smith’s fingers. Behind him, late afternoon sunlight swept into Obsession’s salon, haloing him, making his blond hair almost golden, his roughly sculpted features classically Grecian in their shadows and highlights.

  “I wouldn’t deposit or spend this all at once,” he said around a smile.

  Safety-deposit box key.

  Chris scrubbed her hands with a shop rag, feeling suddenly as if plucking that key from his fingers would change everything, that she’d be cast out into the perilous unknown. The end of innocence. The end of everything she knew and the start of a journey she might not complete.

  The rising tide of fear was swallowed by the image of Natalie holding out an ice-cream cone to Chris. Chris had been fourteen and Natalie four. “Share!” Natalie had shouted and laughed, tossing her dark, curly hair.

  Leave everything she knew behind? Risk her boat and her life to save her sister?

  So be it.

  She took the key from Smith’s hand and shoved it deep in her shorts pocket. “Thanks.”

  “My partner doesn’t like the idea of your captaining us.” Smith stepped farther into the salon, abruptly losing his godlike demeanor as he glanced around, seemingly taking everything in at once.