JIM RECOGNIZED the nondescript olive-green police surveillance van on the far side of the parking lot, and he pulled up to it, his tires sending a spray of little pebbles into the air as he stopped.
Leaping from his car, he hammered on the back door of the van until it opened.
The interior was dimly lit and crowded. Two other detectives sat with Phil Salazar in the glow from the high-tech equipment. The tape deck was whirring, and the receive signal lights were lit. Emily wasn’t there, and Jim felt a stab of panic.
“Where is she?” he demanded harshly. “Delmore’s boat isn’t at its mooring, and it’s not at the dock, and I know you’d never let her sail with that son of a bitch so where is she—Oh, God.”
The look on Salazar’s face said everything Jim didn’t want to hear.
“Jim, you have got to stay calm,” Felipe said. “Going ballistic on me will not help this situation.”
Jim took a deep breath. “Situation,” he repeated. “So. We have a situation, do we?” He could feel his blood pounding angrily through his veins. So help him God, if anything happened to Emily…
“She was going to plant the homing device and get off the ship,” Felipe said. “But then…Marino came on board.”
Vincent Marino. The organized-crime boss who was nicknamed the Shark, due to his lack of mercy. Oh, God, no.
“From the conversations that we’ve overheard, Marino and Delmore are not on friendly terms,” Felipe said. His jaw tightened. “It’s my guess that Marino means to abscond with Delmore’s arriving shipment of drugs. And it would not surprise me if Marino also intends to use the opportunity to remove Delmore from the crack market—permanently.”
Jim felt dizzy. Jesus, this was worse than he’d imagined. “Get me a helicopter,” he ordered huskily. “I’ve gotta get her out of there.”
But Salazar was shaking his head. “Think, Diego,” he said emphatically. “If you go after the Home Free in a police helicopter, what do you think is going to happen? You’re gonna get her killed, man, and yourself, too.”
Jim took a deep breath. Phil was right. He was right. Going after Emily, guns blazing, wasn’t the solution. He had to slow down for a minute. He had to think.
“Where are we going?” Emily’s voice said clearly via the surveillance microphone she was wearing. “Where are you taking us?”
She sounded so cool, so in control, but Jim knew better. He knew she was scared to death. God, he was scared to death for her. His throat tightened.
“We’re gonna have a little party with a few of your fiancé’s buddies,” Marino answered. “I hate to break it to you, but you may not want to marry your little Alex after you meet these guys.”
Emily didn’t answer. Jim closed his eyes, wishing the microphone she was wearing could receive, as well as send. He wanted to talk to her, to tell her to play along with Marino, to tell her not to antagonize him.
Listening in like this was torture. If he’d ever experienced payback for what he’d done to Bob, this had to be it. God, if something happened to Emily, if Marino killed her…He loved her with his life, and without her his life would be over. Just like Bob’s.
Except not more than a few hours ago, Jim had been willing to spend the rest of his life without Emily—a life that would have been cold and lonely and bleak as hell. He had been willing to do voluntarily what Marino could do permanently with a single bullet. He’d assumed that life without Emily was what he deserved.
“Oh, and if you’re thinking about jumping overboard,” Marino said, his voice getting louder as he leaned closer to Emily, “it’s nearly two miles to shore. And I hear there’re sharks in these waters.”
“Apparently there are sharks out of the water, too,” Emily said quietly. Jim held his breath. Was Marino going to get angry? But he only laughed, and Jim exhaled noisily.
“Ever hear of survival of the fittest, sweetheart?” Marino said. “I’d much rather be a shark than a blowfish like little Alex. You, you’re more like a flounder—soft and delicious, and totally defenseless. One bite and you’re history, you read me?”
“Yes,” Emily said softly.
Jim read him, too, loud and clear. He swallowed, listening intently to the silence. Then Emily spoke again, almost inaudibly, and one of the detectives leapt forward to turn up the volume on the receiver.
“He’s gone,” she breathed. “Felipe, I’m not sure what to do. The homing device is still in my purse. I never had a chance to plant it anywhere. It’s turned on, though, and you should be receiving its signal.” She took a long, shaky breath.
“I’m not sure if I should try to jump overboard, or if I should just wait and see what’s going to happen,” she continued. “They have Alex down below. I think Marino’s men beat him up.” She was quiet for a moment. “I honestly can’t imagine that Marino’s going let me stay alive after everything I’ve seen and heard here.”
Another pause. “Felipe, I need you to tell Jim that I love him. And make sure he doesn’t come out here and get himself killed because of me. This was my mistake—Please, I don’t want him to die because I made a bad decision.”
“Hold on, Em,” Jim whispered, even though Emily couldn’t possibly hear him. “Don’t give up. I’m on my way.” He turned to Felipe. “We need a boat. Something big enough to hide all this stuff down below,” he said, gesturing at the equipment that was receiving the signals from both Emily’s surveillance microphone and the homing device.
“We’re working on that,” Felipe told him.
Jim’s eyes flashed, and his voice rose dangerously. “What, am I hearing you tell me that Lieutenant Bell set this thing up and she didn’t make damn sure you had a boat?”
“I’m sorry, man. There was a snafu and—”
“Get this equipment ready to travel and meet me down at the dock,” Jim snapped, pushing his way out of the van.
Felipe jumped to work. The other two detectives exchanged a long look, glad as hell that they weren’t wearing Lieutenant Bell’s shoes.
IT TOOK EMILY several moments to understand what the commotion was about. She sidled closer to the navigator’s station, trying to eavesdrop.
Marino was arguing with one of his crew about some problem they were having with the ship’s radio.
The vessel they were to rendezvous with had contacted them via radio. But they were having some difficulty communicating. They were picking up strange interference.
It was the transmission from the homing device that was in her purse, Emily realized with a wave of fear. The scratchy interference faded in and out with the same pulsating beat as the homing device’s signal.
How soon would it be before Vincent Marino figured that out? How soon until he searched the ship and found the homing device in her handbag?
The handbag, Emily realized with dread, that she had unwittingly left over on the other side of the deck, next to the lounge chairs…
“Turn that damn thing off,” she heard Marino say. “It’s annoying the hell out of me.”
The static was shut off, and Marino came out on deck, followed by one of his bodyguards.
“Could be the result of another radio signal,” Emily heard the bodyguard say.
Marino stopped and turned toward the man, his foot mere inches from her handbag. Emily felt the palms of her hands start to sweat.
“Bring Delmore up here,” Marino commanded. “We’ll find out soon enough if he’s got another radio on board.”
He stepped back, and his foot bumped the handbag.
Emily could feel her heart pounding.
He looked down and noticed it.
Kick it to the side, she silently implored him. Don’t pick it up….
He bent over and picked it up.
“Whoa, this weighs a ton. What do you have in here?” he said to Emily. “Your bowling ball?”
Her throat was so dry, she couldn’t speak. She shook her head no. Please, God, don’t let him look inside….
“Your nose is getting sunbu
rned,” he said. It was obvious from his mocking tone that he was toying with her. He was trying to make her squirm, and getting pleasure from it. “You might want to put some sunblock on.”
Emily couldn’t answer. She couldn’t move.
“You got some sunblock in here?” he asked, opening her bag. “Jeez, you got everything else, don’t you?”
This was it. It was all over. He was going to find the homing device, and he was going to kill her.
“Yep, here it is, right on top,” Marino said, pulling out a bottle of number fifteen sunblock and waving it at her. He put it back inside, closed the zipper and tossed the bag to her.
Instinctively Emily reached for it, to catch it. But she didn’t want to catch it. She didn’t want it on this ship. So, when the canvas fabric hit her fingers, she fumbled.
The handbag—and the homing device—went over the side of the Home Free, and into the dark blue Gulf waters.
“Damn,” Marino said with disgust. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you to catch?”
Emily stared down into the water. Her handbag had already disappeared from view.
Vincent Marino would never find the homing device now.
Of course, it was also true that without that homing device, Jim and Felipe would probably never find her.
“COME ON, COME ON,” Jim said, taking an armload of equipment from Felipe and hurrying his partner and the other two detectives onto a sleek white powerboat.
He opened the throttle and headed away from the dock at a speed that made the other boat owners shake their fists.
“Where did you get this thing?” Felipe shouted over the roar of the powerful engine.
Jim slipped his sunglasses over his eyes as he rounded the buoy that marked the exit from the harbor. “I hot-wired it,” he shouted back matter-of-factly.
“You stole it?”
“Borrowed,” Jim replied. “For official police business.”
“Whatever you call it, what you did is illegal. I oughta arrest you, man,” Felipe said.
“Why don’t you go below instead,” Jim shouted, “and make sure Winstead and Harper are setting that equipment up right?”
As Felipe started down, Winstead stuck his head up through the companionway. “We have a potential problem,” he announced. “The signal from the homing device just went dead.”
Jim’s knuckles whitened as he gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Phil, take over for me,” he said, pulling the throttle back. The boat still skimmed across the water, but no longer at a breakneck speed. The noise of the engine dropped considerably.
“Are you going to call for a helicopter?” Felipe asked as the two men switched places.
Jim nodded tersely. “I want one warmed up and ready to go at a moment’s notice.”
“When you radio in,” Felipe said, squinting out across the glare on the water, “ask if the hospital called with any word about Jewel.”
Jim had damn near forgotten about Jewel. He nodded again, touching Felipe briefly on the shoulder, then turned to go below.
Winstead and Harper both had headphones on and were listening intently to the conversation coming in from Emily’s radio microphone.
Winstead glanced up at Jim, handing him a third pair of headphones. “They’ve made physical contact with the second ship,” he told him. “Vincent Marino is on a first-name basis with these guys. It appears that he’s intending to take his men and Delmore’s drug money and depart on this other ship.”
“What about Delmore and Emily?” Jim asked, slipping on the headphones.
“Oh, my God! Alex!” he heard Emily say. In a lower voice, surely for their benefit, she added, “He’s been beaten up. His face is a mess, and I think his arm’s been broken. He can’t even stand up.”
“See what you get for screwing with me?” Marino’s voice said. “See what you get?”
“I’m sorry,” Delmore sobbed. “I’m sorry. Please…please, I’ll cut you in from now on, I promise.”
“Too late,” Marino declared. “You had your chance to do business with me. Now I’m doing business with you, and it’s in my best interest to cut you out of the picture entirely. You get my drift here?”
“Oh, God,” Emily breathed, and Delmore began to cry in earnest. “They’re rigging some kind of bomb to the yacht’s engine.”
Jim pushed the headphones off one ear, reached for the radio and keyed the mike that connected him directly to St. Simone’s police headquarters. Briefly he explained about the bomb, and how they’d lost the signal from the homing device. “I need a chopper,” he said, “up and over these waters, helping us find the Home Free.”
“We’ve got a chopper standing by,” the dispatcher replied over the squawky radio speaker.
Jim passed the microphone to Harper. “Give them the last known reading and heading of the vessel, so at least they’ll know where to start looking.”
Over the headphones, he could hear Marino say, “Take care of the shortwave radio. We don’t want them sending out any SOSs.”
“You’re just going to leave us here to die?” Emily asked.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“ACTUALLY, NO,” Vincent Marino said. “I’m going to leave you and your fiancé already dead.”
His words came as an icy shock, even though Emily had been waiting for them ever since Marino had come aboard the yacht. She hadn’t been thinking about whether he was going to kill them, she’d been thinking in terms of when.
Now all of the crew were on the other boat, an enormous speedboat, with the exception of Marino and one other man. And Alex and Emily.
Alex had crumpled into a pile on the deck. At Marino’s words, he cried even harder.
“Looks like you didn’t really need that sunblock after all, did you?” Marino said to Emily with a laugh, ignoring Alex’s pleas for mercy. He turned to the man standing next to him. “Waste them.”
Emily had never faced death before, but she knew right now she was looking at it dead-on, straight in the eye.
Death wore sunglasses and a conservative dark suit. Death had a long, dangerous-looking gun that he pulled from the holster nestled under his right arm. Death was left-handed, Emily thought inanely.
But he wasn’t death. He was a man. He was human.
The man turned his head slightly and looked from her to Alex, and Emily knew in that flash of a moment that he was squeamish about shooting a woman. As he pointed his gun at Alex, Emily dived for the companionway doors and threw herself down the stairs into the yacht’s cabin. She tripped and hit the wall with her shoulder and chest. The pin that held the microphone and the miniature radio dug painfully through her shirt and into her skin.
She heard the gunshot, felt the recoil, and heard Alex scream in pain. God, they’d shot Alex, and she was next.
“Go after her!” she heard Marino say as she scrambled down the hall and into the room Alex used as an office.
“The clock’s running, Mr. M.,” she heard the other man say. “We have less than ten minutes. She’s not going anywhere. Let’s get out of here.”
Were his words a trick to make her relax, to make her believe he wasn’t coming after her?
Alex kept a gun in his office. Emily knew he kept a gun in here. And, by God, if they were going to kill her, she was going to go down fighting.
Her breath came in sobs as she searched Alex’s desk. The front drawer was locked, and she used a letter opener and a paperweight to pry it open.
And there was Alex’s gun, small but deadly, lying amid the paper clips and pencils.
It felt cold and hard in her hands.
She held it up, supporting her right hand with her left, aiming it at the office door, praying it was loaded.
But then she heard the hum of an engine, and felt the Home Free rock slightly in the other boat’s wake. She peeked out one of the portholes.
They were leaving!
Still holding the gun, she opened the door and slowly went out into the corridor. The yacht was si
lent. But not dead silent. There was a hissing sound, the sound of white noise, or interference. It was coming from the shortwave radio.
The yacht’s radio had been smashed, hit with some kind of heavy object, the microphone pulverized. But it was receiving something. She turned the knob marked Volume, and the hissing got louder. She tried to adjust the tuning, but nothing happened. The hiss didn’t subside, and the needle didn’t move.
JIM’S HANDS WERE SHAKING. He was going on faith here, purely on faith. He’d heard only one gunshot. He’d heard someone try to talk Marino into leaving. But all he’d heard from Emily in the past two grueling minutes was silence.
“Come on, Em,” he muttered. “Tell me what you’re doing. Tell me you’re okay. Tell me you’re not lying somewhere on that boat, wounded….” Or worse.
“The chopper pilot is leaving the airport,” Harper said. “He’ll be over the harbor in about ten minutes.”
“That’s not soon enough,” Jim said.
“He’s fighting winds coming in from the west,” Harper said apologetically. “He’s doing the best he can.”
“Emily, talk to me, damn it!” Jim growled. Adrenaline was surging through him, but there wasn’t one damned thing he could do to help her. She was out there, somewhere, on a boat wired to explode any minute, any time.
“Jim? Felipe? Are you receiving me?”
Emily was alive.
Both Harper and Winstead cheered. Jim closed his eyes briefly. Thank God. Her signal wasn’t the greatest—it was as if she were speaking from a long way away, rather than into a microphone that was located just underneath her chin.
“I fell and landed on the mike,” she said, her voice shaking slightly, “and I don’t even know if it’s still working, but I’m hoping that it is. Marino and his men are gone, Alex was shot in the chest. He’s bleeding all over the place. He’s still alive, but just barely.”
The signal from her mike faded slightly, and Winstead worked furiously to bring it back in.
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