Out of Nowhere

by Rebecca York

  Settling into a comfortable rocking chair, he set his meal on the side table, then opened the bag and began to eat. Not too fast—he wanted to savor the taste of the greasy food and the shake. The folks here didn’t know how good they had it. But he did, and he was hoping his luck was going to hold.

  BACK IN HIS ROOM, Max was careful not to slam the door. After closing it carefully, he sat down at the desk and booted up his computer.

  First he did a web search for the symbol on the piece of paper. He’d been correct. It was the insignia from a biker gang—the Hell Raisers—centered in upper New York State. So why would they send someone down to Hermosa Harbor?

  He didn’t know the answer. He also didn’t know why Annie wrapped the damn symbol in a plastic bag and sealed it up. Was she planning to get on another boat with it and wanted to make sure it didn’t get wet? Was she planning to leave it for someone? Maybe it didn’t have anything to do with the biker gang. Maybe it was some kind of code she was using to tell her friends she’d made contact with Max Dakota.

  But for what reason? Were they planning to hijack The Wrong Stuff? Kidnap him?

  He bit back a curse. There was no way of figuring it out. Not without applying some pressure on her.

  Maybe he’d better do what he’d suggested to her—get some sleep. He wasn’t exactly thinking straight right now, and he had the feeling he was going to need his wits about him when he saw her in the morning.

  He thought about getting undressed again. Instead, he decided to keep his clothing on, just in case.

  Next he picked up the piece of paper and slipped it back into the plastic bag. He was about to put it into his desk drawer when he changed his mind. It could be important, and in that case he’d better put it somewhere secure.

  He slid aside the picture on the bulkhead behind his bunk and unlocked the small safe hidden behind it. After slipping the paper inside, he lay down. But he couldn’t stop thinking about the woman. He’d been so focused on the incident with Trainer and the symbol on the piece of paper that he’d forgotten about what had happened earlier. She’d been dreaming, talking in her sleep. And then afterward, when her guard was down, she’d told him some interesting stuff.

  She’d spoken of a sister, Suli, which was an odd name. She’d spoken of a brute named Angelo. It sounded as if he’d physically abused her.

  He had no way of knowing if that was true. Either she’d been revealing facts from her life, or she was living in some sort of fantasy world.

  He closed his eyes, willing his mind to sleep.

  He woke up when it was still dark. In the light from the companionway, he saw that Annie was leaning over his desk, rifling through one of the drawers.

  But he’d left her handcuffed to her bunk. He blinked. Was he dreaming?

  “What the hell?” he said.

  At the sound of his voice, she whirled, and he saw that she was holding the Glock—leveled at his chest.

  Chapter Eight

  This was no dream. Max was wide awake and staring down the barrel of his own gun.

  Trying to ignore the inconvenient fact that the woman across the room could blow him away with a twitch of her trigger finger, he said, “I thought I cuffed you to the bunk. How did you get loose?”

  “I opened the lock.”

  “How?”

  She shrugged. “I just did it.”

  “Okay.” He wet his dry lips, then asked the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. “And now are you planning to kill me?”

  At least the question seemed to cause her some mental anguish, judging from the expression that flickered over her face. “I don’t want to. You…saved my life.”

  “Yeah. A point in my favor,” he said, keeping his voice even. He’d always thought of himself as a good poker player. Now he was playing the game of his life.

  He sat up in bed and put his feet on the floor. He and Annie stared at each other across several yards of charged space. Too bad she held the boss hand.

  “I’d suggest you put down the gun before we have an accident here.”

  “I’m familiar with the operation of this weapon,” she said, sounding as if she was repeating a lesson she’d recently learned. But then, a lot of what she said sounded that way.

  Somehow he wasn’t reassured.

  “I can’t put down the gun,” she added. “I can’t trust you. Not after you chained me to the bed like…like a dime girl.”

  “A what?”

  She blinked as though she’d just realized what she’d said. “A dime girl. You don’t know what that is?”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “Dime girls don’t have anywhere else to go, so they, you know, service men. But sometimes they want to leave, so…” She shrugged.

  Max knew a lot of slang expressions, but he’d never heard of a dime girl. He’d have to ask her about it, when he wasn’t in danger of having her drill a hole in his chest.

  “Put the gun down,” he said again.

  She shook her head. “I have to get out of here.”

  “And do what?”

  “I looked through the desk. The piece of paper you took from me is not there.”

  “Too obvious,” he agreed, glad he’d taken the precaution of using the safe. Maybe the paper could be a bargaining chip for his life.

  “Where is it?”

  He shrugged. “What if I flushed it down the toilet?”

  “I can make another one.”

  “Then why are you looking through my desk?”

  “There may be other things here.”

  “Like what?”

  “That is none of your business.”

  “Sure. You’re none of my business.” Despite the gun, he glared at her. “Get off the boat. I’ll even give you some money if you haven’t already stolen some from me. Go on. Be my guest. Give it your best shot. You said you had something important to do, but I wouldn’t lay odds that you’ll be able to do it.”

  As he spoke, he watched her face, seeing the uncertainty, knowing that on some level he was getting through to her, so he kept pushing—hard. “Somebody trained you for a secret mission. But you can’t remember what it is. What do you think you’re going to do—wander around town until something looks familiar?”

  She had broken down before, after the nightmare. Now he knew she was holding herself together with spit and baling wire.

  “I know you’re trying to act tough,” he continued. “Hell, you are tough. You’ve handled yourself well in situations that would reduce most women—and most men—to a quivering mass of jelly. But you’ve handled it.”

  “No,” she said, her voice hardly a whisper. “I’m making a total mess of everything. Last night…last night I knew that man, Sheriff Trainer, wanted to hurt me. You stopped him.”

  She looked so utterly lost, so utterly bewildered. Like a small child who’d found out her parents had been killed in a car accident.

  He fought to shake that image out of his head as he came off the bed. “Put down the gun.”

  She set it carefully on the desk.

  He wasn’t sure what he had meant to do, but he found himself gathering her to him, wanting to give her comfort, even after she’d given him a good scare. He felt the desperation in her as he combed his fingers through her hair, stroked her shoulder.

  “It will be all right,” he soothed, marveling at his own unstable emotions. She might have been holding a gun on him less than a minute ago, but now he was thinking about tipping her face up to his and kissing her. Yet he didn’t. Some part of him knew that it was important to demonstrate that he could hold her and not have it turn sexual. He understood that was vital now, even if he wasn’t absolutely sure why.

  “I’m supposed to be competent,” she whispered. “I’m supposed to be able to handle myself.”

  He made a strangled sound, because he’d once encountered another woman who’d said the same thing. “That attitude is what got my wife killed.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. Your parents. Then
your wife, too. What happened?”

  He sighed. “About all I can tell you is that we were on a covert operation. Stephanie made a grandstand play, and it came out badly.”

  She gave a tight nod.

  “I was with the government. And I can’t talk about my past because of the nature of the work.” He paused, knowing he’d come to a decision. In an even voice, he went on, “I shouldn’t talk about what I’m doing now. But I will, because maybe it will help you understand where I’m coming from. I’m not just down here in Hermosa Harbor relaxing in the sun like the locals are supposed to think. I work for a private investigative agency now. I was sent down here to look into the death of a young man. Apparently he was mixed up in a drug-smuggling operation. When he got out of line or asked too many questions, they left him facedown in the swamp.”

  He watched her take it in. “So you can see why I have to be cautious. I’m betting Sheriff Trainer is in on it. Also that woman who called me on the phone—Nicki Armstrong. And Hap Henderson is part of it, too. They tend to eliminate people who get in their way.”

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “I’m hoping that if I’m absolutely straight with you, you’ll be straight with me.”

  He didn’t push for an instant answer, but he was praying they had turned some kind of corner. “Let’s go to the galley. You can think about it over some vanilla ice cream with butterscotch syrup.”

  “Over what?”

  “You’ve never heard of butterscotch syrup over vanilla ice cream?”

  “I have heard of ice cream.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s right up there with the American flag and motherhood.”

  The joking comment only made her look grave. “The American flag has a field of blue with stars in the upper left-hand corner. The rest is red and white stripes.”

  “You sound like you memorized that in a classroom.”

  “Maybe I did,” she said in a small voice.

  “Well, let’s take vanilla ice cream and butterscotch into the realm of real experience.”

  THE CLUB WAS CLOSED for the night when Nicki Armstrong’s phone rang.

  She’d already gotten a report from Trainer. Was it him again? She snatched up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Are you waiting for a crate of Vidalia onions?” a voice asked.

  It wasn’t Trainer on the other end of the line. It was someone she didn’t know. But she recognized the onion reference. It was a code she’d been told to expect.

  “We have onion soup on the menu next week,” she said.

  “Then you’ll want to take delivery tomorrow night.”

  “Wait—”

  Before she could finish her sentence, the man on the other end of the line cut the connection.

  She waited for her heart to stop pounding. Until a few weeks ago, she’d had a nice little operation going in Hermosa Harbor. Until Max Dakota had started poking around. He’d tried to make it look as if he was simply having a good time down here. But she’d bet it was just a cover. She might not have any proof yet, but she felt it in her gut. And now she would have liked to postpone the latest drug delivery. Unfortunately, the timetable wasn’t hers.

  Picking up the phone again, she dialed Hap.

  “Anything new?” she asked.

  “They’re still holed up in the boat. I can see them in the galley. I think they’re making ice-cream sundaes.”

  She snorted. “How quaint. Let me know if they go out again.”

  “You know I will.”

  She kept the phone in her hand, thinking that Max Dakota was a loose cannon she couldn’t afford. She needed to know whose side he was on. To that end, she called one of the men in town who helped her out on occasion and gave him explicit instructions.

  ANNIE WATCHED Max scoop two mounds of white stuff into bowls. The ice cream. She had heard of it but never tasted any. After spooning sticky golden goo on top, he carried the bowls to the table, putting one in front of his place and one in front of hers. He stuck his spoon in the messy-looking stuff and carried it to his mouth.

  She imitated what he’d done, knowing he was watching her.

  The first sensation she had was cold, like the iced tea but colder. Then what took her by storm was the burst of flavor in her mouth.

  “Oh!”

  She stared down at the bowl in wonder. He had taken blobs of cold white stuff and poured on something that looked like grease and produced a combination that filled her mouth with pleasure.

  She spooned up another bite of the magic food he had called a butterscotch sundae, sure that she had never tasted anything like it in her life.

  “This is—” she stopped, fumbled for the right word “—bully.”

  “Bully?”

  “Good. Very good.”

  She saw him lean back in his chair, his expression thoughtful. “Bully,” he said slowly. “I read a biography of Theodore Roosevelt once. That was a word he used.”

  “I don’t know why I used that adjective. It just popped into my head.”

  “Yeah. Well, it hasn’t been in style for the past eighty years or so.”

  They were both silent for several moments. She lifted the spoon again and savored the sweet, smooth taste. She couldn’t stop herself from running her tongue over her lips to catch every delicious bit.

  Looking up, she found Max watching her and she flushed. “I guess I’m being impolite.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t do if you were having tea with the queen of England. But it’s okay on The Wrong Stuff.”

  The queen of England. Was she likely to meet that lady in a small town in Florida? The question made her brain feel muzzy, the way it often had since Max had pulled her out of the water. She would try to figure something out, and she’d feel as if fog was choking off her thought processes.

  Max was speaking again, and she struggled to focus on his words. “So now that I’ve impressed you in the food department again, maybe you’ll tell me what you drew on that piece of paper. Maybe you’ll even let me help you.”

  She had been bitterly afraid to trust this man. But something had changed after she’d held the gun on him.

  When she had put down the weapon, he might have killed her, or at the very least punished her. Instead, incredibly, he had hugged her, then brought her up to the galley for the most amazing thing she had ever tasted. And in those simple acts of kindness, he had shattered her defenses. She wanted to answer him honestly now.

  “I don’t know what I drew.”

  “Then how did you draw it?” he asked immediately.

  “I just…picked up a pencil and drew.”

  “Oh, yeah?” He sounded frustrated.

  “I’m not lying to you,” she said. Well, not exactly. The mark was branded into her brain and tattooed on her body.

  Her words came faster as she continued, “I know it’s important. I know I’m supposed to leave it at a building downtown. I can picture the spot. But I don’t know why I’m supposed to do it.”

  “Okay.”

  “You still think I’m…not coming clean,” she said, trying to fight the defeated feeling that threatened to swamp her.

  “You have to admit that explanation is a little harder to swallow than ice cream with butterscotch sauce. What building?”

  So much in her mind was misty. But the building and the mark were very clear. “It’s big and white. A very solid structure. Massive. But it’s not tall.” She paused for a moment, then added, “And you cross a big plaza to get to the front entrance. There’s a gate. And flags out front.”

  He thought for a minute, apparently taking an inventory of the large structures in town. “Fort De Leon? The old Spanish fort downtown?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why there?”

  “Because it has been standing a long time. Because it won’t get wiped out in the flood,” she told him, wondering how she knew that part.

  “Yeah, it was built on high ground—or high by Florida standards. And it’s got
walls three feet thick. I guess it would withstand high water, if this place were going to flood. What else do you know about that?”

  She blinked. “I don’t know specifically. But anyone who has studied the weather changes over the past few years knows that a lot of coastal communities are going to be underwater. Especially on a peninsula that sticks out into the ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.”

  “Have you studied weather changes?”

  She shrugged, then took another swallow of the sundae, more like a gulp.

  “I can see this discussion is making you uncomfortable.” Max’s tone was sympathetic.

  She nodded. “I want to answer your questions, but I can’t. I feel like my chest is so tight that I can hardly breathe. I have to take that paper down there and leave it in a specific spot. After I do that, I think I’ll feel better.”

  “You’re making it sound as if you’ve been given a posthypnotic suggestion.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked carefully, afraid she might already know the answer.

  “It’s possible to put a person in a hypnotic trance and make suggestions about what she’s supposed to do. Then she does it.”

  “Like what?”

  He shrugged. “They use it in nightclub acts sometimes. You get a person up on the stage, hypnotize him, then tell him that when the band starts playing a certain song, he’ll get up and start prancing like a chicken or something just as weird. Everybody in the room is waiting for it to happen, so they laugh when he does it just as he was told.”

  She sat there, clutching the cold bowl, trying to picture the scene he was describing. He’d said too many things that didn’t quite make sense to her. But if she started asking for clarification, they would be sitting at the table for hours.

  “Would you take me to the Fort De Leon?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you!”

  “But maybe we could try something else first.”

  “What?”

  “I have some specialized training. Would you let me hypnotize you and see if we can get your memory back?”

  She raised her eyes to his face, studying his features. Allowing him do that would be taking a terrible risk. She would be opening herself up to letting him control her. At least that was what it sounded like from what he’d said about the nightclub act.