Dead Reckoning

by Moore, Sandra K.

  Of course, if she could see the buoys, someone on the island could see her.

  Obsession might have been spotted by security, but no one was saying. Chris flipped from VHF channel 16 to channel 13, just in case the island used a different frequency, but both were silent except for the occasional crackle of static. She backed off, kept the yacht in position a mile away from the red and green channel markers. The swells here were long and broad; Obsession serenely rode the waves.

  Jacquie joined her on the flybridge. Her arm sling was wrapped with a decorative black, white and red scarf that appeared to be part of her sundress. The dress, deep-necked, fitted snugly around her trim waist and flared at the hip, looking sexy and simple enough to have cost a small fortune.

  “Ralph Lauren?” Chris guessed.

  “Donna Karan. Wait till you see the hat.” Jacquie gave her the once-over. “You look pretty sharp yourself.”

  “Monkey suit,” Chris remarked, resisting the urge to straighten her lightweight royal blue blazer over her crisply pressed white slacks. “Are you going to this party as a model?”

  “Maybe a prostitute. We’ll see how it goes. I’m versatile.”

  Chris gave the dress a critical eye. “You don’t look like a high-dollar whore.”

  “I hope not. But you look like a captain who knows what she’s doing.”

  “Wait till you see the hat,” Chris replied. “They’ll have binoculars on us,” she reminded her. “Here goes nothing.”

  Chris levered the throttles forward. Hortense and Claire rumbled reassuringly and in moments Obsession’s bow sliced the pristine water, nose pointed directly between the distant buoys. Chris smoothed her ponytail, then flipped the captain’s cap onto her head.

  Jacquie turned her back to the bow, then pulled her Glock from her sling. Keeping the firearm low behind the helm console, Jacquie pivoted to face front and laid it in one of the cubbyholes, out of sight but close at hand.

  “This is nuts, you know,” Jacquie remarked conversationally.

  “You were the one preaching Girl Power when we talked about it,” Chris said, wishing her nerves weren’t jumping under every patch of skin.

  “Yes, well, at the time I expected a little Boy Power right behind us. Too bad my boss didn’t agree with me.” Jacquie smiled and lifted her face toward the sea, pushing out her gifted chest in a nice show for any vigilant island security forces. “I’m going to end up fired if not worse when we get back.”

  “Your boss’ll be pissed?”

  “Thoroughly. One rogue agent is enough. An injured rogue agent getting herself killed in action because she disobeyed a direct order to stay put will get his ass in hot water.” She sighed. “With any luck, we’ll find Natalie and get out before anyone notices she’s gone. Or that we’re gone.”

  “My luck hasn’t been that good on this trip.” Chris slipped on her sunglasses as the growing light sparkled hard on the water. “Let’s work off your luck for a change.”

  Jacquie tapped her forearm cast.

  “That was meant for me, remember.”

  “Meaning my luck’s just as bad.”

  “How are you doing on pain?”

  Jacquie shrugged her good right shoulder, winced. “Still flying on the last pill, thanks.”

  Obsession swayed slightly as she passed over the waves sliding across her path. About half a mile out now, Chris judged. She checked her speed and backed off to a stately ten knots. No need to look like they were in a hurry.

  “Anything yet?” Chris asked.

  Jacquie took a long look through the binoculars. “There’s a lagoon beyond the breakwater. I’m seeing some big boats moored in there.”

  “Any sailboats?”

  “Two really tall masts.”

  “Deepwater lagoon, maybe,” Chris said. “In general, the taller the mast, the deeper the keel.”

  “Good Lord.” Jacquie panned the binoculars. “You weren’t kidding about it being a resort. It’s built up a series of terraces—”

  Chris jumped when the VHF blared with a man’s booming voice. “Approaching vessel, please identify yourself.” She turned down the volume.

  “Show time,” Chris muttered. She put Hortense and Claire in Neutral, then picked up the VHF mic. “Motor vessel Obsession requesting permission to approach and dock.”

  Silence for several long minutes. “Obsession, there must be a mistake. We don’t have you down for an arrival today.”

  Jacquie put both hands on her hips. Chris held the mic open while Jacquie screeched, “What does he mean we’re not on the schedule? Maurice told me specifically today and if he…”

  “Isladonata,” Chris said over Jacquie’s continuing outburst, “would you mind rechecking your paperwork? Over.”

  “Obsession, we’ve checked.”

  “I’ll wait, if you’ll just check it again,” Chris said, putting a pleading note in her voice as Jacquie kicked her tirade into high gear. Chris let her finger hang on the mic for a couple of seconds before she released it, giving the security office plenty of time to share her pain.

  “Who’s Maurice?” Chris asked with her best ventriloquist lips.

  “A boy I dated in high school!” Jacquie said, waving her good arm, outraged, in the air.

  “I’m sorry, Obsession,” the male voice said, and seemed to mean it, “but I don’t have you on the list.”

  Jacquie grabbed the VHF from Chris’s hand. “Jacqueline Cummins!” she shrieked into the mic. “Maurice said he’d put my name on the list for Jerome Scintella’s party. Cummins! Go check your records again, moron.”

  Chris tried not to roll her eyes. Jacquie’s choice of pseudonym wasn’t just funny from a porn point of view; Cummins was also the brand name of a popular diesel engine.

  “Ma’am, we don’t have your vessel’s name.”

  Chris grabbed the mic from Jacquie’s hand and suffered a mock slap for her trouble before Jacquie stamped toward the flybridge’s aft section.

  “You see what I’m working with here,” Chris said to her sympathetic listener. “Do you have the girls’ names on your list?”

  “Uh, no.” The voice sounded doubtful.

  “I guess they’ve all arrived already.”

  “Uh, no, they haven’t. They’re not due until the big party tomorrow.”

  “Okay, so Miss Cummins’s agent told her to come early. It’s a simple mixup and you’d be doing me a huge favor if you just let me drop Miss Cummins off now.”

  “Ma’am, if you’re not on the schedule, there’s nothing I can do.”

  “I don’t think you understand. Mr. Scintella specifically requested Miss Cummins’s…ah…services. Letting us through may be a breach of protocol but I don’t imagine Mr. Scintella would be glad to hear you’ve turned her away.” She paused. “It’s up to you.”

  “Obsession, please stand by.”

  Chris remained at attention while Jacquie started on another one-sided screaming match. If lungs and foul language were the keys to getting your way, Chris reflected, the door was opening even as Jacquie spoke. Jacquie charged the helm and grabbed the throttles, throwing Obsession’s nose to port.

  “Don’t make them think twice about letting you in,” Chris said as she wrestled Jacquie’s hand off the controls. She gave Jacquie a shove onto the bench seat near the helm and pointed at her sternly. Jacquie crossed her legs and turned away, for all the world like a spoiled brat. She reminded Chris, surprisingly, of Natalie in a postadolescent huff.

  Chris straightened Obsession back out to face the breakwater’s opening squarely. It’d been nearly five minutes. They waited another five before the VHF cracked and spat.

  “Obsession, you may approach and dock at the pier, slip four on the starboard side. Welcome to Isladonata, Captain.”

  Chris didn’t bother to suppress a grin. The security officer would know her relief intimately. “Slip four on the pier,” she repeated. “Thank you, sir. Obsession out.”

  Jacquie stood and came to lea
n on the helm console. “So we’re in.” Her lovely dark skin had a grayish cast and a light sweat sheen.

  “Do you need to lie down for a while?” Chris asked.

  “I’m all right. I should be able to keep them busy while you look for your sister. If I can get them to tell me where Scintella’s rooms are, I’ll meet you there.” Jacquie’s smile looked wan. “I promise to stay conscious and able to get back to the yacht.”

  “Good, because I’m not leaving without you. Now sit down.”

  Chris scanned the island’s layout. The sheer cliffs and coastal forests gave way to a natural break, where a lagoon stretched, cool and blue, into the island’s interior to wash up at pristine white sands. On the starboard side of the break, a security building had been set into the rock. As Obsession motored past the buoys, Chris raised a hand. A man behind the window waved back.

  Inside, sleek luxury motor yachts, much larger than Obsession, lay at their moorings. The pier, Chris noted wryly, was for the small fry. A pair of dockhands emerged from a boathouse, coming to catch the yacht.

  The satellite phone buzzed. Natalie? Chris grabbed the handset. “Hampton,” she said.

  “I need Adair,” the voice said. “She aboard?”

  Chris handed the handset to Jacquie, then dropped the wheel to pivot Obsession on the engines, turn her toward the assigned slip. Just another day in paradise, she thought as she took in the blue sky and clear water. Then Jacquie said, “Shit! Are you sure?” and paradise faded into a hot and muggy hideout for thugs and murderers.

  “God bless,” Jacquie said. She dropped the handset back in its cradle.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Jacquie’s already paling face had gone almost gray. “We may have got it wrong about Smitty.”

  Chris’s stomach clenched hard. “What do you mean? He tried to kill me!”

  “Yeah, but he didn’t plant the transponder.”

  “They matched the fingerprint?”

  Jacquie nodded. “It’s Connor’s.”

  Chapter 16

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Chris said.

  “It does if he’s covering his bases. He’s a sharp guy. Maybe he anticipated you taking off without him.”

  “You think he’s following our signal here?”

  Jacquie shielded her eyes with her good hand and scanned the resort marching elegantly up the little hillside. “It’s a good guess.”

  “He’s on his own, then. I just want Natalie.”

  “I bet that’s what he’s counting on.”

  As Obsession motored to the pier, Chris glanced over the massive vessels moored in the lagoon, trying to gauge the island’s party mood. Helluva lot of fiberglass. One hundred feet, Italian design. One hundred and ten feet, design unknown though reminiscent of a French yacht she’d seen once. A ninety-footer, an ocean-capable Cape Horn with its distinctive blue hull. And a gargantuan one hundred-fifty foot yacht with three decks, Italian design, flying a Venezuelan flag. Jerome’s South American contact, maybe.

  Armed men stalked the various yachts’ decks. “Expecting trouble,” Chris observed. She scanned the shoreline, noting all cover ended at the wide, bare expanse of beach. “Where’s the safest place to be when the shooting starts?”

  Jacquie smiled. “Idaho. The second best place is here, on the getaway vessel.”

  The two dockhands, wearing walkie-talkies on their belts, hustled out to meet Obsession. Chris maneuvered the yacht into the tight slip and held her in position. One young man made hand motions for Chris to bring the nose further to starboard so his buddy could grab the line she’d laid out. Following the signals, she jockeyed Obsession around in the slip until all four lines were secured.

  The signaling dockhand cupped his hands around his mouth. “Nice landing, Captain!”

  Chris touched her brim. She shut down the engines and took her first good look at Isladonata’s resort.

  The resort’s main building climbed, as Jacquie had said, up several terraces. Each terrace had its own rooms with windows facing the lagoon. Man-made waterfalls cascaded down the stepped landscape at irregular intervals, sending a fine mist into the air. A beautifully carved stone stairway wound up the terraces, past the individual rooms, to a large archway supported by pillars on either side. A short man dressed in a white suit trotted from the archway down the long stairway toward the pier.

  “Welcome to Fantasy Island,” Jacquie said as she followed Chris down to the deck. “Here comes Tattoo now.”

  Chris shot her a nervous glance. “You get your Glock?”

  “Too bulky. I’m armed.”

  Jacquie raised her skirt enough to flash Chris a glimpse of a pearl-handled revolver strapped to her lower thigh before gracefully stepping onto the heavy-duty portable stairs the dockhands had secured in place on the floating pier. One of them took Jacquie’s hand to steady her on the way down; she flirted with the young man, making him blush.

  “My apologies, Miss Cummins,” the white-suited man said when he reached her. He raised her proffered hand to his fleshy lips. “We had no idea Mr. Scintella had made special arrangements for anyone’s arrival. I’m surprised he didn’t mention someone of your extraordinary beauty.”

  Jacquie smiled warmly, preening a little at his attention. “I understand these things can happen.”

  “Captain, you won’t mind…” He gestured to the dockhands who stood poised and ready to board. “Security precaution.”

  “Of course,” Chris replied, and stepped aside to allow the dockhands to board.

  “Shall we?” Tattoo offered his arm to Jacquie.

  “I’ll wait. I may need the captain to fetch something for me.”

  “We have servants—”

  “I prefer my own servants.” Jacquie flashed a smile. “I’m sure you understand. May we wait here until your little search is done?”

  Tattoo inclined his head.

  When the two young men climbed up to the deck, Chris saw the firearms strapped behind the radios. She followed them inside the pilothouse, then back into the salon area as they performed a random search of cabinets and hatches. One disappeared downstairs while the other stood in the salon’s center.

  “Expecting trouble?” Chris asked conversationally.

  “Routine,” the fresh-faced young man replied. “You wouldn’t believe the lowlifes who try to sneak into this place.”

  “Did you have to search the big yachts, too?” she asked, as if seventy feet were rubber ducky size.

  He shook his head. “They have gentleman’s agreements. It’s just the drop-ins we search.”

  “Get many of those?”

  “Not usually.”

  They filed outside and disembarked. Chris walked down the stair unassisted and earned only a haughty smile from Tattoo, who still waited with the chattering Jacquie on the dock. Chris fell into step behind them as they turned toward the hotel, glad she wasn’t the center of attention. Jacquie might be cool as a cucumber but Chris had to clench a fist against her trembling. I do much better, she suddenly realized, when someone’s trying to kill me.

  On the long walk up the winding stone stairs, Tattoo inquired politely after Jacquie’s health, how she injured her arm, was she in any pain. Jacquie tucked her good hand into his crooked elbow and beamed at him, the slightest hint of smokiness in her voice. “No pain whatsoever,” she crooned.

  The archway Chris had seen earlier led to a wide, breezy veranda where empty deck chairs faced paradise. Tattoo explained the resort had been designed and built by an architect who was particularly attuned to weather, hence the way the stone walls captured and funneled wind through the rooms. Freshwater springs fed the cisterns.

  “Sweetest water in the world,” he boasted.

  He led them around the foyer’s ménage à trois fountain, then into a luxurious living space decorated with fine, old furniture. While he shuffled papers on a Louis XVI desk for a few minutes, Chris had plenty of time to lean in the doorway, studying the foyer’s layout an
d the two stairways she could see from her vantage point.

  Jerome Scintella would have the best rooms in the place, Chris guessed, probably as high as possible. Which meant Natalie would be the princess in the freakin’ tower.

  “Not many people around,” Chris remarked, and earned Jacquie’s glare. Right. Servants should be seen and not heard.

  Tattoo ignored their exchange to respond politely. “Most of our guests are on diving expeditions today. We offer a full range of activities and entertainment.” He smiled warmly at Jacquie. “And are quite happy to accommodate any entertainment our guests see fit to bring with them.”

  “Mr. Scintella has arrived by now, of course,” Jacquie said. At Tattoo’s nod, she added, “I would like to see him after I’ve been shown my room. Does it face the lagoon?”

  “Yes, ma’am. You’re in the east wing.”

  “And Mr. Scintella?”

  “In the main building, in the uppermost suite.”

  Jacquie glanced in Chris’s direction. “Bring my bag,” she ordered. “I have a gift for Mr. Scintella.”

  Chris touched her cap’s brim and strode out. She made short work of getting to Obsession and retrieving the carry bag she and Jacquie had prepped earlier. Heavy damned thing, but then it would be. They’d wrapped up the brass compass as Jerome’s “gift.” That weight, plus the carry bag’s stout canvas straps, ensured Jerome would go down easily with a well-aimed swing. Chris took the time to go to her cabin, remove the canvas bag from its cubbyhole. It fit neatly in its holster under her arm, hidden by her blazer.

  Was Connor on his way?

  No time, Chris reminded herself as she stepped off Obsession. She didn’t have time to think about how Connor had lied to her again. Put him away, out of her mind. Where he belonged.

  Her sister needed her. That’s all that counted.

  Back up at the foyer, she paused in Tattoo’s office doorway. He and Jacquie were gone, presumably viewing Jacquie’s room. Chris skirted the fountain and headed directly up the first staircase, the one she hoped led all the way to the highest terrace. The spiral stone steps led up to the next level and presented her with two breezeways, one extending far along the front of the resort and the other, much shorter, angling back along the side with slightly less impressive views.