“Investigation? If we have to wait for an investigation, we’ll miss our window—”
“That’s what I’m saying,” McLellan said sharply. “They’ll take care of it. Shit.”
After a moment, she ventured, “Did you find the killer?”
He shook his head. “No evidence of forced entry. No broken windows.” His set jaw told her everything she needed to know.
He thought she’d done it. He thought her capable of killing. Stabbed by that distrust, Chris resisted the urge to squirm or look away or even shift her weight. She held his gaze and thought about breathing, how each breath she took was another leading her on through this moment, where she still lived and Natalie was still relatively safe.
When he spoke again, his voice rasped, rough and angry, from his throat. “Why did you come back here?”
She willed her own voice to be strong. “When you were on the phone in the restaurant tonight, Falks approached me. He said Natalie had stolen thirty million dollars from Jerome and sent it to me. If I didn’t produce it by noon, he’d kill me and burn my boat to the waterline.”
His shocked stare raised her hopes high enough that his next words shattered them into shards of anger. “So you killed him instead of giving him the money?”
Son of a bitch! “No, I didn’t!” Her fingernails bit into her palms, she clenched her fists so hard. “I came here to look for it even though it was useless. Natalie didn’t steal Jerome’s money. She didn’t send me anything except that compass Falks is wearing on his face.” Chris gestured toward Hortense as she said, “I was in the goddamned engine room trying to figure out what the hell a transponder was doing installed behind the tool chest while someone brained him. I heard footsteps up there and thought—”
“Wait a minute.” McLellan raised a hand. “What are you talking about?”
She’d let that information slip. Now she couldn’t go back. “Somebody installed a transponder. It’s been broadcasting Obsession’s location for who knows how long.”
She watched the wheels start turning in his head, the anguished look return to his angry eyes.
“I found it that night of the trip.” There was no need to explain exactly which night. “I checked it this afternoon—yesterday. If Falks was tracking the signal, he had plenty of time to get to the marina and follow us to the restaurant.” Chris made an effort to relax her hands, get herself under control. “He just had to wait for you to leave me alone.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, Christina?”
Startled by his soft tone, she met his gaze. In it, she found that hauntedness again, the fear he’d been too late. Or betrayed. “He said he’d kill Natalie if I did.”
His short nod was his only answer. He unlocked the door and opened it. Upstairs, Chris could hear a woman’s voice—perhaps Jacquie’s—and more male voices. Out the porthole, she saw only the reflected light of nighttime New Orleans, not the flashing red and blue of cops or red and white of an ambulance. Russ’s friends were apparently taking care of things, just as McLellan had said they would.
Only now McLellan didn’t say anything as he quietly closed the door behind him and shot the bolt home.
“I brought you breakfast.” Jacquie set a tray piled with still-steaming eggs on the little desk near the bed. Chris’s stomach growled at the thick scent of fresh bacon cooked just as she liked it, but she didn’t move from her chair.
Jacquie handed her a mug of fresh coffee. Chris peered into the cup. “Did he spit in it while he poured?”
Jacquie didn’t even crack a smile. She settled on the foot of Chris’s bed and crossed her long, shapely legs. Her white shorts shone starkly against her dark skin. Before she raised her own mug to take a sip, she said, “You’ve got the wrong idea.”
“Do I?” Chris retorted. “McLellan thinks I killed Eugene Falks so I’m under house arrest. I think I’ve got exactly the right idea.”
The blue gradient scarf Jacquie wore around her stylish bun touched her right shoulder when she cocked her head slightly. “We’ve got everything under control. Falks’s body’s been moved.”
“I heard the steam cleaner going. Did the blood come out of the carpet?”
Jackie ignored her sarcasm. “We didn’t find any evidence as to who actually killed him, but we’re still looking.”
“So you’re keeping me locked up on my own boat because…” Chris paused to let Jacquie finish the sentence.
“Lots of reasons.”
“Which you’re not going to tell me.”
“Chris.” Jacquie leaned forward, her long fingers wrapped around her mug, her expression earnest. “It’s not because we don’t trust you.”
“Right.”
“I know you’re probably used to doing things your own way, but let us handle this. It was different before Falks. Easier.”
“I guess a corpse in my salon would liven things up a bit.”
Jacquie frowned. “This attitude isn’t helping.”
Chris set her mug on the floor and leaned forward to put her elbows on her knees. “Then put yourself in my place and tell me what my attitude should be. A man who tries to run me down on the water and then attacks me on my own boat—in my home—shows up last night after our little dessert party. Thirty million dollars is planted somewhere on my vessel, he says, and if I don’t find it and give it to him, he’ll kill my sister.” Chris sat straight, squared her shoulders. “So I come back here and while I’m investigating a transponder that was planted in my engine room without my knowledge, that same man gets himself murdered in my salon, practically over my head. You’re all acting like I’m the problem, goddammit, and I’m tired of it.”
Chris flung out of her chair and paced to the door, too angry to sit still. “I didn’t ask for any of this to go down. Do me a favor. Give me one good reason why I should trust you or Russ or Smitty or McLellan after this.” Her chin lifted. “Just one.”
Jacquie met her gaze for what must have been a full thirty seconds before saying, “We’re trying to do what’s best.”
“Then you’re not trying hard enough.”
“It’s for your protection.”
Stunned, Chris stared. “My protection.”
“Yes. Yours.” Jacquie stood, as calm and cool as if they were discussing her tennis club’s new chef. “When word gets back to Scintella that Falks is dead, which it will, he’ll likely send someone out for you.”
“I didn’t kill Falks!”
“You don’t understand. It doesn’t matter whether you did or not.”
Suddenly Chris saw the hard-boiled agent in Jacquie’s demeanor, the steel, the years, the strain all written in the fine lines around her eyes and tense corners of her mouth. A woman who’d seen more of life and death than she wanted, but was still around to talk about it.
And then came the realization, crashing down like a tidal wave, that Chris was in so far over her head she might never see the surface again. What had she been thinking when she agreed to this crazy trip? Snatching her sister from a paranoid husband had been dangerous enough, but once she found out he was a hardened drug smuggler wanted by the DEA, wouldn’t it have made sense to back out and let the DEA handle everything?
Except they needed you.
Hell, she could have handed over her boat to McLellan and Smitty, let them sort everything out.
But the truth—and here Chris had to admit it—was that she’d never trusted them to get Natalie out alive, never trusted them to put Scintella second on their priority list. Never trusted them with her yacht, the only place in her life that had felt like home to her since her mother died.
And she certainly didn’t trust them now. Not after the transponder. And the half-truths. And the things McLellan wasn’t saying.
And the fact she suspected either McLellan or Smitty had killed Falks, perhaps to keep the cadaver from implicating him.
Breathe.
First things first.
She needed facts. Not “facts” from these agent
s who didn’t want to tell her anything, but from an outside source. Someone she could trust to know what the hell he was doing and tell her the truth straight up.
Then she could make a plan. Then she could decide what to do.
“I need to make a phone call,” Chris said.
“I see,” Jacquie replied, though her expression suggested she didn’t. Or didn’t like what she saw. It was hard to tell, in the way it was always hard to tell with stylish, elegant people who could choose whether or not to give a clue what they were thinking.
“Now,” Chris clarified.
Jacquie sighed. “You can make it from the upper passageway, can’t you? The reception will be good enough there?”
It’d damn well better be, Chris thought, as she followed Jacquie out of her cell.
Because she wanted Gus Perkins, the one man she trusted, to hear every word she said.
“I have to leave,” McLellan said after lunch later that day.
Chris tried to gauge the others’ reactions where they sat around the dinette, boxing her in. McLellan stood at the table’s head, arms crossed, unshaven and angry, a thunder-cloud in black, threatening them all with torrents and lightning and fury.
“What’s going on?” Russ asked.
“Garza’s on my case and I need to settle some things with him.”
McLellan didn’t look at her, but Chris knew where he laid the blame. Apparently Gus Perkins had heard her perfectly and, as she’d known he would, had raised a ruckus with his old HPD partner, Antonio Garza. Too bad McLellan didn’t like being pushed into this particular corner, but he’d pushed her first.
And if he was actually the mole the DEA was looking for, maybe she’d just improved the odds of getting Natalie back in one piece.
“You have to go back to Galveston?” Smitty asked.
“Garza’s threatened to go over my head and blow us out of the water. I need to be there to calm him down. I’ll be back by the time Obsession leaves the dock tomorrow.” McLellan unfolded his arms, and his shirt drew tight across his chest. “Jacquie, I want you with Ms. Hampton every minute. She’s not to leave the yacht and should stay out of sight.”
Chris couldn’t let that order pass. “That’ll make it difficult to finish the work that needs doing.”
His remote gray eyes flickered briefly with annoyance. “Then track down the engine exhaust leak. Smitty can handle everything up top. Russ, what’s the word from your buddies?”
Russ scrubbed a hand over his crew cut. “Falks is hanging out in the morgue for the time being. No prints off the compass, no fibers, nothing that points to the perp.”
“Must have been a strong man to cave his face in,” Jacquie remarked.
“Nope,” Russ replied. “With an object that heavy, you can only rule out little old ladies and kids under twelve. The first hit knocked him out. The rest were just for fun.”
“Or rage,” Smitty muttered.
Chris felt the weight of their collective expectations fall on her shoulders. How close had she come to admitting to McLellan the kind of anger that could pound a man’s face to pulp? She tensed her spine against a shudder. She could never kill a man. Not like that. Not when she could have simply pulled the Ruger’s trigger.
In self-defense, for Natalie, she could use a gun. But not for anything or anyone else. Certainly not for money, no matter how much.
“My plane leaves in a couple of hours. You know what you need to do.” McLellan glanced around at his team. “I’ll keep in touch. Obsession needs to be in Key West by Wednesday at the latest. Smitty, keep us on schedule.”
“Right.”
As the agents shoved out of the dinette, Chris fisted her hand and wished she could slug Smitty. It was stupid to feel possessive about her yacht under the circumstances—she already had enough to worry about—but Obsession never strayed far from her mind. And Smitty, despite his Coast Guard experience, was enough of a boat cowboy to botch a delicate, cosmetic job. In all her sailing years, she’d only met two men who had the same eye for detail that she had. Smitty wasn’t one of them.
Ironically, McLellan was.
“I need to talk to you,” she said quietly as she slid out of the bench where McLellan stood.
“In your cabin.”
He followed her downstairs. This time, he shut the door gently, didn’t lock it. She turned, dreading the cold, accusing glare she knew she would face but steeling herself for it. But instead she found uncertainty, with something behind it that looked like yearning. Suddenly, here was the man who’d sailed with her, who’d held a seagull’s delicate body in his bare hand. Here was the man who’d confessed his powerlessness over his brother’s fate and rage at the monsters who’d killed him.
She took a steadying breath. “What do you think will happen to Natalie now that Falks is dead?”
“It’s hard to say. Scintella’s not going to chance killing Natalie until he gets his money back. Even to a guy like him, thirty mil isn’t chump change. I think she’s still safe.”
Chris scrubbed her face with her hand. “But he might send someone else for his money. Someone we wouldn’t recognize.”
“Perhaps.”
“Falks said Natalie was working with someone to steal the money from a courier. Does that sound possible? To do, I mean, if she were the kind of woman who’d steal from her husband.”
“Anything’s possible.” At her frown, he added, “Look, I’ll keep you safe. That’s my first priority.”
“If that were true,” she said slowly, “I could never have left the hotel without you.”
His jaw clenched hard, made a harsher line by the stubble on his cheeks. She wondered suddenly if this was what had happened to his brother, here one minute and gone the next because McLellan had lied to himself about his priorities. If that story was even true. The air-conditioning kicked on, spraying cool air around them.
“How long are you going to keep me a prisoner?”
“You’re not a prisoner. But we’ll keep you under wraps for as long as it takes.”
“To do what?”
“Catch Jerome Scintella.” His voice ground like whiskey over rocks. “You won’t be safe until we have him in custody.”
“What about my sister?”
“Natalie’s a priority, too.”
“One of these priorities has to come first.”
“We can work together to get Natalie back.”
“But that’s not why you’re here.” Chris raised her chin, looked him in the eye. “You’re working an old dream and to hell with anything and anyone else.”
“You don’t believe that. Not after what happened…after last night.”
She shoved her hands in her jeans pockets. “We fucked once, okay?” She glanced away, at the bed where her quilt lay crumpled in a heap. “Don’t pretend it meant more than it did.”
Stark pain registered in the lines around his eyes. “That answered a few questions.”
She was silent for a moment, then asked, “Why did you show up here last night?”
“I went to your room but you weren’t there. So I called Smitty.”
Why did you come to my room? she wanted to ask, but didn’t. To seduce her? She suppressed the dark excitement that thought aroused. It was likely that what he’d just told her was merely a convenient tale to explain his presence aboard, when in fact he’d come to retrieve the thirty million dollars—wherever the hell it was—for himself. And found Falks. And killed him.
She shivered.
“Why do you ask?” he added.
“You were at the hotel and Smitty was gone. I thought I was alone here. At least until I thought I heard Smitty come back.” He was silent for so long, she said, “You’re going to miss your plane.”
“Christina.” McLellan’s whole body seemed to radiate desire, a wish, a futile hope. “I need you to trust me. To be totally honest with me.”
“The way you’ve been with me?” Her chin rose as she fought back sudden tears. “The way yo
u told me from the beginning you’re fighting a mole in your agency? That you normally take three or four times as many agents into a bust as you are now?” Her tired smile felt watery. “What part—of anything you’ve said to me—am I supposed to believe?”
He turned and left her cabin without a glance, without arguing with her or telling her she was wrong or asking her to reconsider. But that was for the best. She couldn’t tell anymore what was truth and what was lie in his words.
All she knew was that with him gone, with Falks out of the picture, she could concentrate on what was next to be done on the yacht, her plan firmly restored, if perhaps modified. If she knew Gus, he’d bullied Antonio Garza into investigating McLellan; Garza would keep McLellan in Galveston until Gus was satisfied they’d caught the mole.
Then the plan would go back to normal. Chris would pilot Obsession to Isladonata, and the straight-up DEA agents aboard would capture Scintella, call in the Coast Guard, and Natalie would be saved. Everything would be okay.
It had to be.
Chapter 12
Chris knelt in the lazarette, the wide, deep storage locker beneath the aft deck’s floor. She shoved aside the heavy-duty plastic five-gallon gas container that held the fuel for the inflatable’s outboard and studied the wiring board bolted to the lazarette’s wall. Much of the salon’s lighting and electrical system ran back here, where a series of relay switches that governed who knew what—they weren’t labeled or color-coded—did their work of turning on and shutting down electrical current to various unknown parts of the boat.
Even her long nap and impulsive crying jag after McLellan left hadn’t prepared her to tackle this one. She wiped her sweaty face on her sleeve and tried not to think about how hot it was in this little crawl space. Or that Jacquie sat in a deck chair overhead, a little Beretta tucked in her shorts pocket.
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