Natalie untied the bag’s string top. The bag’s contents clicked, like a child’s stash of pebbles or a serial killer’s collection of human teeth. Then she upended the bag and the mahogany table was suddenly strewn with dozens of gorgeous, glittering, cut diamonds.
“I had to send them to you,” Natalie explained matter-of-factly, as if it were a given. “Jerome was looking for them. He would have found them if I’d kept them.” She closed her eyes and smiled, almost beatific-looking in her contentment. “The irony of you hitting him with them was splendid. Such poetry.” She opened her eyes and her gorgeous eyes and brows looked more to Chris like those of a predator than the sweet girl she remembered—or thought she remembered. “Go to your cabin, Chris. We’re taking the yacht to Jamaica.”
“Where’s the DEA agent?” Chris asked.
“We’ve taken care of him.”
The bodyguard unfolded his massive arms. Chris lifted her chin. Natalie wouldn’t kill her or allow her to be killed, she knew that. Chris angled her back to the salon wall.
“Lock her in one of the cabins,” Natalie ordered Gabriel. “We’ll go to Jamaica ourselves. She’ll come around.”
“If you do that, Connor will come after me,” Chris said.
“That hunk you were with?” Natalie shrugged. “You’ll find someone else. I mean, look at you. A little makeup and the guys will be falling over themselves. Don’t worry about your hunk. We’ll take care of him, too.”
No, Chris thought. She wouldn’t allow Natalie to do this, to hijack her vessel, kidnap her, kill the man she wanted. If she went along with this…dream…Natalie would never let her leave. She looked at the sister she no longer knew—perhaps never had. Beautiful Natalie. Chris turned slightly, found the light switch Smitty had taped down.
In her mind’s eye, Chris saw electricity racing from the switch along the wiring to the lazarette, saw the gas fumes hanging like a cloud in the small storage space, saw the bright blue arc of the bad relay.
The bodyguard moved deliberately toward her. Behind him, the new curtains moved slightly in the island’s breeze. There was the gleaming mahogany trim, so painstakingly stripped and varnished and remounted. The galley whose coordinating colors she’d chosen herself. Below, her cabin, throw pillows and her mother’s quilt laid over the bed exactly as she liked, the first real place she’d ever had of her own, inviolate, untouched by her grandfather’s iron will.
And here the map truly ended. All known paths, all known routes, every plan she’d ever had disappeared from the endless blue and undocumented waters. Ther be Dragynes here. Because sometimes facing a dragyne meant giving up everything you wanted, everything you feared, to do the one right thing you had to do.
“I’m sorry, Natalie,” Chris whispered, tears rolling down her face, blurring the vision of the huge man reaching for her. “I’m so sorry.”
She flicked the switch.
She heard first her name, Christina, then familiar arms picked her up. He smelled right, too, Connor, and then sunshine fell on her face. She heard a woman crying, then men shouting, their shoes scraping. She lay still for a long time, listening.
“Get him out of here,” she heard Connor growl, then more footsteps on the wooden dock.
The arms lifted her again, carried her a little farther away. The right side of her face hurt, but something cold was being pressed to it. Moving wasn’t an option. The woman was still weeping—Natalie?—but the weeping was going away, as if the woman was being taken off somewhere.
Chris forced her eyes open. Connor’s body blocked the sun, shaded her. His hand held a compress against her cheek. She tentatively touched the back of his hand.
Connor’s head turned. “Hello, love.”
“I’m okay,” Chris said, not moving. If she moved, she’d throw up. She wouldn’t do that, not on Connor’s nice shoes.
“What happened to me? Was it the explosion?”
He shook his head. “That ape hit you. When the explosion happened, he took off, but we caught him.”
“How long’s it been?” she asked.
“Since the explosion? Just a few minutes. You haven’t been out long.”
“Where’s Natalie?”
“With Russ and Jacquie.”
Chris swallowed, then steadied her voice. “You have to arrest her. She was working with Smitty. The whole thing was her idea. Get Jerome in trouble, get him arrested or killed so she could…” She tried to say more, but her throat closed.
“Hold still, love.”
She closed her eyes, felt him move slightly and then speak. Russ’s voice in counterpoint. Footsteps heading off. Chris lay quietly, for how long she didn’t know. She heard the Coast Guard cutter’s engines fire, heard the water churn as it pulled from the pier and headed out of the lagoon. Still Connor waited, occasionally wetting the cloth he held.
“You’re going to have a helluva black eye,” he murmured once.
“In the grand scheme of things, that’s not bad.”
She opened her eyes. All she wanted was an icy bottle of Coke and to lie on her quilt in the air-conditioning that always blew on her.
Her quilt. She struggled to sit up, pushing away Connor’s hands. “Stop,” she told him. “Let me see my boat.”
With a sigh, he gave up and helped her sit, braced her against his chest. From where they were, she could see all of Obsession’s starboard side.
Her bow tipped high in the air, levered there by the water flowing unimpeded into her exploded stern. The ragged remnant of an attempt to keep her afloat—yellow float gear strapped to her hull—made ghostly shapes beneath the clear blue water. Her decks lay nearly underwater. The bit of aft deck that wasn’t already submerged had been blackened by fire and smoke. When the breeze picked up, the eye-stinging smell of burnt fiberglass carried to Chris.
Connor wrapped his arms around her. “We tried.” He pointed to the rigid inflatable and the sailing tender lying on their keels on the dock. “Your office equipment is in that big box there.”
“What about my quilt?” Chris asked numbly.
“The lower passageway went under almost immediately.”
She nodded. So Claire and Hortense had drowned first. Her mother’s quilt lost. Everything she’d worked for, gone.
She watched Obsession’s beautifully polished coach house ease deeper. The yacht’s windows gleamed as brightly beneath the crystal clear water as above it. Another few minutes, her bow tipped level—the water inside had evened out—and she sank, leaving only bubbles and the flybridge helm for Chris to see.
Six months later
Chris sat on the Galveston Marina’s only bench, watching the seagulls lift from the breakwater and arc easily toward home, wings barely moving. She wrapped her jacket around her chest against the cool winter breeze. The boats in this marina were mainly sail, and their halyards clinked companionably against their masts. It was a comforting sound, she thought. Like children’s chatter. When halyards clinked, all was right with the world.
“You beat me here,” Connor said as he dropped onto the bench beside her and leaned in for a quick kiss. “Have you been waiting long?”
She shook her head. “Just wondering why you wanted to meet here after work.”
He draped his arm across the bench behind her. “Makes a nice change from just going straight home, doesn’t it?”
She thought about their tiny apartment, not much bigger than Obsession’s salon, galley, and dinette put together. Neither had had the heart to really work at furnishing it, making it a home. It was merely a space in which they lived. Even making love there felt temporary, as if they were on vacation and biding their time, enjoying each other but waiting for a better place. Not to mention it sported a view of the refineries steadily pluming white smoke into the clear Texas sky. Here, a tern cried and streaked past with a wriggling fish in its beak while a pristine cloud loomed in the distance.
“Very nice change,” she admitted and leaned into him. “How was work?”
<
br /> “Emilio’s making some progress.”
“In his English or otherwise?”
“He’s not wearing gang colors yet.”
Chris tipped her head back to look at him. The tension that she’d learned to read around his eyes was gone, leaving only the character lines she thought were so sexy. “You’re doing a good job.”
“It’s up to him, like it always is.” He caressed her shoulder.
They still didn’t talk about Natalie. She did that once a week in Houston, when she told a different facet of her story of betrayal and fear and guilt. It’d been a long time since she’d woken herself or Connor with her nightmares. In a few weeks, the counselor had said today, the story might change to one of acceptance and letting go.
And who knew? When Natalie was eligible for parole in a few years, she might have become someone different. Someone who didn’t refuse visits from the sister who’d turned her in, betrayed her.
“It’s a nice evening,” Chris said now.
“Do you want to have more evenings like this one?”
“You mean come here every day?”
He smiled and nodded. “Something like that.”
She thought about her long work days at the office, analyzing plans and calculating precisions, the chopper rides out to the rigs where old enemies took one look at her and chose not to argue. Coming out here for a few minutes’ rest felt like just something else to do. She wanted to put Nothing at the top of her to-do list for a few more months.
“Not after a hard day at work,” she admitted.
“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about you quitting.”
She turned and stared at him. “I thought we’re saving the last of your house money for emergencies. We can’t afford for me not to work.”
“We could if we lived aboard again. Cheaper living on a boat.”
Chris’s chest tightened. How great, how comforting, it would be. On the water again. She shook her head. “We can’t afford to buy a boat.”
He leaned close, kissed her ear before he whispered, “True. But I had something else in mind.”
“Like what?”
“A fixer-upper.” He lifted his head and pointed toward the breakwater where a yellow Sea Tow center cockpit tow boat was angling a much larger vessel down the channel. “You know, one that’s just floating and we’ll have to do all the work ourselves.”
“That’s a full-time job,” Chris protested, one eye on the tow boat.
“And why you should resign your job. It’s going to take a lot of work to bring her back. Like that one.” He pointed at the towed vessel as she rounded the breakwater and eased down the channel past the dock where they sat.
She was an elegant little motor yacht, forty-five feet, classic aft cabin design. Old, Chris judged, Obsession’s age, still a fiberglass hull. Streaked and dirty, rusty. No doubt water-damaged.
Beneath the grime, Chris knew she was gorgeous.
“She’s not Obsession,” Connor began but Chris interrupted.
“She’s ours?”
“If you want her.”
Chris stood, shaded her eyes with her hand to take in the boat’s lines. How pretty her bow was, how gracefully the deck line swept back to the stern. Sweet thing.
It took Chris a moment to realize she was smiling. Then she turned to Connor. “Where did you find her?”
He shrugged, glanced away like someone who didn’t want to tell. “Somebody owed me.”
“Ah, jeez, this is a seized yacht, isn’t it?”
“The government thought it was okay for you to sink yours in service of justice, so I thought they could at least do you the favor of replacing her.”
Which was a fine gesture because they both knew U.S. law demanded that boats seized, damaged or destroyed during the execution of a drug-related operation were forfeit. Chris had filed the necessary paperwork for recompense because she, as Obsession’s owner, had been only peripherally involved. But given her relationship with Natalie, she doubted she’d ever see any of the tens of thousands of dollars she and Connor had put into the yacht.
But if she did, here was a brand-new project. Hell, even if she didn’t, here was a brand-new project.
She waved to Gus, who was standing on the yacht’s flybridge making hand motions to Chris about the motor yacht. Yes, she agreed, the yacht was a junker, but a junker with a lot of class underneath.
Connor led her down the pier to the slip where the Sea Tow captain, using his own boat, started to pivot the yacht into the slip. Gus climbed down to the deck to throw bow lines to Chris and Connor where they waited to tie her off.
“Engines?” Chris asked.
“Not Detroits,” Connor warned, “but I got a good deal on some rebuilt six-vee-seventy-ones. You probably need to check them out before I write the check.”
“It’ll cost a fortune to haul the existing engines and bed new ones,” Chris protested.
“Taken care of,” Connor said. “Your buddy Dave is going to let us use the boatyard and his equipment for nothing. We’ll just have to work at night and on Sundays when his guys aren’t there.”
They caught the lines Gus tossed, then cleated off the vessel. Chris caught the distinctive whiff of old boat, a combination of mustiness and damp wood and cracked hoses. She ran her hands over the yacht’s railing, the first spark of real excitement flaring in her chest. Yes, she thought. We can do this.
“She’s a mess,” Gus said, removing his baseball cap to scratch his bald head, “but I guess you’ve seen worse. Should clean up pretty, though.” He jumped from the deck to the pier and nodded approvingly. “Smooth as silk cutting the water. Wave chop on the way here didn’t seem to bother her much, either.”
“Thanks for helping bring her down,” Connor said, shaking hands with the old man.
“My pleasure, son.” He hauled Chris into a bear hug, patted her hair. “Helluva present and what my girl deserves after all she’s been through. Y’all be good.” Then he climbed nimbly into the Sea Tow boat for his ride home.
Connor stepped aboard their new boat and turned to Chris. “She’ll be a lot of work, but I thought we could work on her together. Make her ours.”
Ours.
Their home. Their choices, their colors and textures. Their work and priorities. Doing it for no other reason than because they wanted it, without deadlines and fear and hidden agendas.
“Starting from scratch,” she said, almost in wonder.
“From the water up,” he affirmed.
She took the hand he offered and stepped aboard. He opened the sliding salon door. The musty smell was strong, but the boat would air out in a few days.
“I don’t mind camping out on the floor if you want to move in right away,” Connor said. “We can start with all the main systems. Hell, we could tear out any of these non-load-bearing walls and reconfigure the entire interior if you want. Redesign her the way that makes sense for us. And our charter business.”
“Would you still work at the center?”
He nodded. “Good for my soul. Just like this work would be good for yours.”
Chris looked around at the battered wall panels. The electrical control panel would be a mess, she knew. A serious rewiring job. All the plumbing would have to be rerun, the framework examined for rot, the cracked windows repaired or replaced. The carpet was a mildewed disaster; the sofa and chair were fashion horrors from the Sixties. Water and holding tanks would have to be replaced. If any of the piloting instruments worked, it’d be a minor miracle.
Not Obsession, but then, Chris thought, maybe she’d moved past that, moved on to some new part of her life where she didn’t have to worry and plan and make sure everything was just so. Her maps were gone, her compasses gone, and she had only her own experience and skills and the landmarks she knew to be true to guide her. Like the solid, trustworthy man who stood in front of her, waiting to see what she was going to say.
She studied him, standing next to her in the spacious and
decrepit salon. Yes, she thought, tears creeping into her eyes, he did know her. Smitty had known what she wasn’t, but Connor knew what she was.
“Let’s do it,” she said.
“I’m glad you like her,” he said, pulling her into his arms. “Welcome home.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-5775-1
DEAD RECKONING
Copyright © 2006 by Sandra K. Moore
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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Dead Reckoning Page 25
