Dead Reckoning

by Moore, Sandra K.

  The relay board stared back at her. Each wire, covered with its insulated black coating, mocked her: Guess what I do!

  Sort of like this whole damned trip, she thought. Lots of confusing inputs and no obvious answers.

  She shifted back on her haunches to ease the pain shooting through her knees from kneeling on the lazarette’s wooden flooring. She knew only that whatever was going on with this mission looked less like a legitimate DEA operation and more like a clandestine one. But if it was secret, would the agency dare take on a civilian? Wouldn’t that mean a security risk, no matter who the civilian was?

  She tapped her screwdriver against her chin. First things first.

  McLellan had saved her life in the engine room and seemed hell-bent on protecting her when he wasn’t pissing her off with his attitude, holding her prisoner on her own boat or trying to charm her out of her pants.

  Chris trailed her finger down one of the wires. No, McLellan wasn’t involved. And she wasn’t thinking that way just because she was a little sore from the rousing bout against the hotel room wall last night. It just didn’t seem right for him. Didn’t make sense. He was too much the man in charge. He’d have too much on the line if he were heading up some kind of special operation against Scintella and still playing the bad guy. Wouldn’t something like that look suspicious after a while?

  But that left only genial, charming, good ole boy Smitty, who was out on the dock sawing marine plywood into replacement wall panels for the lower passageway.

  “How’s it look?” Smitty called from overhead as if her thoughts had summoned him.

  She glanced up to see him leaning over the open hatch. “Come see for yourself.”

  Smitty lowered himself into the lazarette beside her, bringing his musky working man scent with him. “Shit,” he muttered after a minute’s study of the relay board. “You didn’t wire this up, did you?”

  “You think I’d do work like this?”

  He shook his head. “It’d take a full day just to figure this mess out, much less fix it.”

  “Looks like spaghetti right now.”

  “Yeah,” he replied, “but by the time we’re through, it’ll look like a four-course meal.”

  Like the four-course meal they weren’t going to eat tonight because McLellan wasn’t on the yacht.

  “I traced that bad salon switch to this relay board,” Chris said.

  “The one for the recessed lighting?”

  “Yeah. Why don’t you go flip it on and let’s see what happens.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Smitty winked, then hoisted himself out of the lazarette. He took one step and disappeared from view. “Hey, girlie-girl,” he said to Jacquie.

  Could it be Smitty?

  And the better question: Why?

  While Chris waited, she eyed the heavy mechanical spares she’d bought and stored in the lazarette: the extra prop shaft it looked as if Hortense didn’t need, bronze strainers for the fuel filters and the AC water pumps, bronze through-hull fittings, generator parts, a rebuilt AC compressor, the two massive house batteries she needed to wire in parallel as soon as she had time. The sheer bulk of all that familiar metal, safely lashed down in its proper place, comforted her.

  In a moment she heard Smitty call, “Ready?”

  “Do it!” she shouted back.

  Fizz, pop. A blue arc sprang from the board. Chris recoiled and yelled, “Kill it!”

  The arc winked out. Smitty’s feet pounded the deck. “You okay?” He bent over the hatch again, Jacquie peering over his shoulder.

  Chris blew out a breath. “Just scared me. It’s a bad switch.” She shrugged and gave him a rueful smile. “About the only replacement part I don’t have.”

  “Murphy’s Law.”

  “Murphy and I need to have a little chat,” she grumbled.

  “I can run into town and get one.”

  “To tell you the truth, I’d rather wait and rewire the whole damned thing up right,” she said, wiping her sweaty hands on a cloth she tugged from her back pocket. “We can use the lamps instead. Better tape down that switch in the salon, though.”

  “Sounds like a plan. You care which flavor of tape I use?”

  “Do we have anything that even vaguely matches the decor?” she asked, knowing they didn’t.

  “Not even, darlin’.”

  “What the hell. Use whatever you want.”

  “You gonna need me anymore after that? I got some panels yet to cut.”

  “Nah, go ahead.” Chris wiped her forehead on her shirt sleeve again. No, she was better off with Smitty handling dangerous tools well away from her. Every time he hit a switch, she got zapped.

  Chris started to stick her screwdriver in her back pocket and froze.

  No, that didn’t make sense, either. Why would Smitty try to kill her?

  Suddenly she couldn’t breathe. She tossed the screwdriver out of the hatch above her head, then grabbed the hatch’s sides and hustled out. The breeze struck her full force, a wind smelling of rain again and the darkening sky to the northwest showing the dissipated thunderheads had regrouped. Jacquie looked up from the book she appeared to be reading, then glanced toward the pier. On the dock, Smitty, now shirtless, hand sawed through a long panel of marine ply, his muscles sliding easily beneath his golden skin.

  Surely not. Smitty had struck her as a genuine guy from the beginning. He had an ease about him that suggested he wasn’t nervous or hiding anything. Living in close quarters with his partner for three weeks had given him ample opportunity to say or do something to incriminate himself, but McLellan apparently hadn’t picked up on anything.

  No, it had to be someone else, maybe someone outside the four agents she knew. She was just exhausted, and nursing low-level terror was making her jumpy.

  “I’m going below,” Chris said to Jacquie. “I’ve got some work in the engine room.”

  “All right.”

  Chris slipped down to the lower passageway, absently noting the skeleton of the mahogany framework as she passed. As was becoming her habit, she propped the engine room door open with the crate of oil before she got to work. She had only one thing to do: track down the damned exhaust leak that had nearly killed her.

  Obsession wasn’t going anywhere until it was patched. Chris had fought pinhole leaks before. Rust was just a fact of life on a boat, and she’d come to have a healthy respect for the way salt and water and metal combined into either a battery or a mass of corrosion.

  Chris stood back and evaluated the exhaust system as a whole, an engineering strategy that had driven the roughnecks crazy—just get on with it, sweetcheeks!—but had saved her a helluva lot of time and effort in the long run. In this case, it was simple: the exhaust blown from the engine ran through a wide metal pipe until the raw-water cooling system hooked in; then the steam exhaust mixed with the water, cooled down, passed into a standard marine water hose and exited the stern. The leak, Chris knew, must be upstream of the raw-water system, when the exhaust was still primarily smoke.

  She first checked the bolts holding the metal exhaust pipe fitting to the manifold itself. No sign of the bolts having loosened, no crumbling mess of a melted gasket. The bolts were evenly rusted, too, suggesting they hadn’t seen a wrench in some time. On to the exhaust pipe.

  From the exhaust manifold to the raw-water system, the metal exhaust pipe was jacketed with several pieces of heavy-duty temperature-resistant material. The pipe could reach extreme temperatures and give you a third-degree burn in about two seconds flat if you brushed against it while Hortense was running. Chris would have to untie the tightly wired jacket holders—the ones that reminded her of office envelopes with their red strings—and check every inch of Hortense’s considerably long pipe.

  She decided to tackle the easiest-to-reach jacket first. It covered the two feet of pipe bolted directly to the manifold, with only a slender gap of about a quarter inch between it and the next jacket covering the ninety-degree bend where the pipe curved to run be
hind the engine. Chris had nearly unwound the first metal tie from its securing button when she saw the problem.

  A perfectly round hole in the gap between the two jackets.

  Chris stopped wrestling with the metal tie and pulled the jackets’ edges back with her fingertips. Yes, it was a hole, not a shadow. Its edges were clean, not rusted at all, and as round as if it’d been drilled there. In fact, it looked exactly like a hole created by a five-sixteenths drill bit.

  A pinhole leak she’d expected, someplace where the metal had been weak or had succumbed to fatigue in the harsh marine environment.

  But not this. Not sabotage.

  Can’t you make this just a little worse? she prayed angrily. Isn’t there a hurricane out there you can throw at me? Or maybe you could sink my yacht, just for grins.

  She walked to the tool chest and opened the lid. The tools all sat strapped down against the yacht’s movement. The drill lay mute and harmless in its bed. She lifted out a tray of wrenches to reveal the plastic case of drill bits. Hands shaking, she opened the set.

  All bits present and accounted for.

  She plucked the five-sixteenths bit from its holder and examined it. No tell-tale metal shards clinging to the blade, no nicks or scratches. It looked almost brand-new. And she couldn’t remember the last time she’d used this particular bit.

  She took it back to the engine. The bit slid neatly into the hole. She removed it again, went back to the tool chest. Compared to the other bits, it showed more wear, but nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that might suggest it had been used to put the hole in the exhaust pipe.

  What exactly did sabotage mean?

  Heavy footsteps on the stairs. Chris froze for a split second, then quickly snapped the bit back in its holder. She closed the bit set, stowed the wrench tray, closed the tool chest. Another few seconds and she’d shoved the jacket edges back together on Hortense’s exhaust pipe.

  “Whatcha doin’?” Smitty said from the doorway.

  Chris shoved her trembling hands in her shorts’ back pockets and shrugged. “Thinking about going after that manifold leak. We can’t leave New Orleans until that’s taken care of, but I’ll be damned if I want to go poking around a quarter mile of pipe.”

  “Oh.” Smitty’s bare chest glistened with perspiration and his jeans rode low on his hips. He ran his hand through his sweat-darkened hair. Under other circumstances, Chris would have thought he looked incredibly lean and sexy. “Let me grab some breakfast for dinner and I’ll take care of it.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “I can do it. It’s probably a pinhole leak and just needs a welding job.”

  “Naaaah,” Smitty admonished with a casual smile. “That’s nasty work. There’s some trim in the salon that needs a last coat of varnish. You do that and I’ll do this. I’m guessing you’ve had enough engine work to last you a lifetime. You want some eggs?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Right-o, boss.” He winked as he turned to go.

  Ther be Dragynes here.

  Chris stepped into the lower passageway and waited until she heard a frying pan hit the stove, then the coffee grinder growling its way through some beans. Smitty would be busy for a while, reading while he ate. He was a lot like her: he liked his schedule the way it was and no monkeying around with it.

  Satisfied she knew where Smitty would be for twenty minutes or so, Chris collected fresh linens from the closet near Smitty’s room, then walked to McLellan’s cabin door and opened it.

  His lingering cologne, all musk and leather, crashed over her. Damn that man, she thought as the scent insinuated itself in her senses. The same cologne he’d worn that night, that she’d carried on her skin after they’d taken each other. She closed her eyes against her body’s thrumming.

  She silently closed the cabin door behind her. The cabin had hardly seen any renovation—this side of the boat hadn’t leaked much—and they hadn’t had time to repanel and recarpet. The wide bed, roughly made in what Chris imagined was a man’s way, looked abandoned. A towel hung crookedly on the rack visible through the open bathroom door.

  Chris tossed the fresh sheets on the bed and looked around. The dingy curtains needed replacing. The cabinetry had been sanded down and simply needed a few coats of varnish to complete its restoration. She opened the clothes chest’s bottom drawer. It held only a blanket and a stack of neatly folded golf shirts. On impulse, she removed the items, shook them out.

  What are you expecting? she berated herself. A clue? For the missing drill bit to fall out? If he’d sabotaged the engine, he would have destroyed the evidence, tossed the drill bit overboard or out with the trash.

  Nevertheless, she methodically opened every clothes drawer, then looked in the hanging locker, the nightstand, the bathroom cabinets, searching for something—anything—and finding nothing but expensive clothing.

  She gave up and made short work of changing the sheets and towels, then hurriedly left the cabin. Once they were in the gulf again, when she knew Smitty would be on the flybridge for his watch, she’d search his cabin, too. She dumped the used linens on the washing machine in the little launderette, wondering if Jacquie could be prevailed upon to do the washing.

  Inside her own cabin, Chris locked the door behind her. The wall-mounted lamp’s light dispelled the growing gloom of evening, casting the room into the warm hues of red mahogany. The traditional blue comforter and blue-cushioned chair welcomed her.

  This room, she thought as she surveyed it, had been her home for almost a year. There were the leaking portholes she’d reseated and sealed, there was the water-stained cabinetry she’d stripped and varnished. Chris sat on the bed, ran her hand over her quilt’s compass rose pattern.

  My home.

  She pressed the hidden panel in the wall above the headboard. When it popped open, she could see the plastic strip tucked into the cubby hole. She needed to get it to Gus, preferably without anyone knowing, but hadn’t figured out how to do that yet. A couple of hours of pondering and she’d have it. Time she didn’t have, she thought as the hidden panel clicked shut.

  In the nightstand drawer lay a handheld GPS. She fired it up. Even down in the bowels of the yacht, the little device was able to get a signal from the satellite. For the umpteenth time, she keyed in the lat-longs Natalie had given her. Same place, one of many private islands people had shelled out millions of dollars for. Yes, definitely U.S. waters there. The Coasties could ride in like the cavalry. Chris scanned the device’s settings and waypoints—the little electronic beacons directing the way to the destination—to make sure she remembered exactly how to get there. Then she carefully erased Isladonata’s lat-longs.

  She switched off the GPS and placed it back in the nightstand drawer. Hiding. She was hiding and she knew it. She slid the drawer closed.

  Face the facts.

  Smitty had had plenty of opportunities to install the black box and run the wiring up to her office wall.

  Smitty had started the engines when he knew she’d be in one of the engine rooms, and hadn’t checked first to see where she was.

  Smitty’s broom had lodged against the engine room door.

  Smitty had left her alone on the yacht once they had reached New Orleans, which had sent McLellan ballistic.

  Smitty’s page had pulled McLellan away from her last night and given Falks a chance to corner her.

  Smitty hadn’t been on the yacht last night when he should have been, and showed up just as she found Falks’s corpse.

  Could Smitty have been working with Falks to get the alleged thirty million dollars back—and prevent her from reaching Natalie? And prevent the DEA from getting its hands on Scintella?

  Could he have killed Falks? And if they were working together, why would he have done it? Greed?

  “Damn,” Chris said, her voice loud in the silence.

  Maybe Smitty was the mole and maybe he wasn’t. She didn’t trust Jacquie or Russ to be straight arrows, either, so going to them with
her suspicions was out of the question. No, the way to handle this thing was to go forward as planned, to avoid tipping him off by acting as if everything was normal. But she’d watch Smitty the whole time, not be caught off guard again.

  Chris leaned her head in her hands. Days like this, she just wanted to call it quits. Just give up the chase, give up the work. Go back to Galveston, forget everything, forget the fact her grandfather had given her only this yacht, forget this horrible mess Natalie had gotten herself into. All she wanted was to run her charter business and live a quiet life. Sometimes, like now, it seemed as though the only way Chris could ever do what she wanted was to leave her family behind.

  Family. She hadn’t had family since her mother succumbed to cancer and her father wrapped his car around a telephone pole. The only “family” she had was Natalie, who perhaps would learn from this experience and not leap into a bad relationship again.

  Chris raised her head, clenched her hands into fists. If Natalie hadn’t married Jerome Scintella after such a short engagement, they wouldn’t be in this mess. Natalie might have seen past the dollar signs to the man and realized who he was.

  Jerome Scintella.

  The Ruger gleamed, lamplight caressing its lines like a lover’s hand.

  Chris hoped she’d never meet Scintella face-to-face. She wasn’t sure what would happen if she did.

  As she slid the nightstand drawer closed, she tried not to notice how the Ruger slumbered, so innocent, so peaceful, so beautiful.

  So tempting.

  Chapter 13

  Sunset on the Gulf of Mexico, Chris thought as she stood at the flybridge helm, felt like the last stop before oblivion.

  Ahead, miles of open water stretched all the way to night. A deep mauve and orange sky glowed in the west; low clouds streaked the horizon. A brown pelican arced, then tucked in its shoulder and dove. It bobbed up to sit quietly and held its chin close to its chest for a moment before lifting its beak to swallow. Then it lifted—heavy, improbable flyer—into the air again, as a pelican always had in these waters, and probably always would. The air smelled of nothing but mild salt and wild wind. Obsession’s hull neatly sliced the blue water, her bow wave splashing up, white and foaming, then falling back and disappearing as the yacht swept past.