Tracy wouldn’t be intimidated. If the man wanted her to hook up with Trevor, he’d play along. If he really cared what Trevor wanted. “I don’t understand,” she baited him. “Why would such a high-ranking FBI official as yourself care what some low-life criminal wants? What does he have over you? Information?” She watched Jonas as the vein above his eye began to twitch.
She took that as affirmation that she was on the right track. “And so what if Trevor has dirt on you? Kill him.”
“I tried that!” Jonas snapped back. “I shot him twice, right outside this cave. You saw his body floating in the water. And if I’d have left him there another couple of minutes, he’d be dead.”
“So why didn’t you leave him?”
The twitching trickled down from his eyelid to his mouth. Tracie watched as the FBI official fought between telling her and remaining silent. She prodded him with words. “If you wanted Trevor dead, why didn’t you leave him? You had what you wanted.”
“No, I didn’t,” Jonas cracked. “Trevor’s father has too much on me—information that would put me away forever. If I let his son die, he’d expose me.”
“So kill Tom Price, too. Kill them both.”
“It’s not that simple. I don’t know where—” Jonas stopped mid-sentence, scowled and straightened. “Your choice is simple—Trevor or death.” As he laid out her options, Jonas waggled the key at her once again.
Tracie wasn’t satisfied. She wanted justice. If this man was going to kill her, she at least hoped to get him to spill enough of his secrets to put him away for life. She ignored his question. “How is it possible that you work for the FBI when you supposedly died on the Requiem twenty years ago? The FBI doesn’t hire dead men. How did you outsmart the Navy and the FBI?”
As she watched, a light came on behind Jonas’ eyes. Sinister pride glinted there, the kind of pride that couldn’t resist a chance to boast. Tracie watched as Jonas made the decision to tell her everything. His chest puffed up slightly, and he tapped the key against his chin. He smiled to himself as he began his story.
“My name really is Jonas Goodman. I began working for the FBI twenty-six years ago. I started out like a lot of guys, naive, eager to please, ready to catch the bad guys and see good triumph over evil.” He made a face. “That is, until I got smart. Figured out it doesn’t work that way. I watched too many good men die poor and lonely trying to work for a thankless cause, and I decided that wouldn’t be me.
“About that time, I was assigned to the coldest, loneliest spot on the Canadian border to investigate a customs issue involving some diamonds. Now, as I’m sure you’re well aware, the border between Canada and the U.S. is friendly, but only if the personal effects a person carries are also the friendly sort. The government doesn’t look too kindly on large amounts of diamonds sneaking through undeclared.
“I thought it was a chump assignment, and I won’t pretend I wasn’t offended to get it. But when I saw what these guys had, churning out diamonds by the bucketload, when I realized what kind of profit margins they could be capable of, I saw my ticket out of poor and lonely. I made a deal with the guys, bought them out, so to speak, in exchange for covering up what they’d done and covering our tracks for what we’d go on to do.” Jonas chuckled to himself and continued.
“Of course, you can see the trouble. I bought them some time, but then what? How to shuttle that many diamonds across the border? Sure, Customs doesn’t always check your bags, but they’d only have to crack open one suitcase and our gig would be up. And we couldn’t just move our operation south—the raw materials we needed were abundant in Canada. Everything else was in place. We just needed a way to breach the border.”
He smiled to himself as he paced before her, so caught up in his self-glorifying tale he didn’t even appear to suspect that he might be digging his own grave. His gravelly voice rumbled on. “About this time, I read about these shark class subs and realized they were just the ticket. Just what I needed. I took an extended leave of absence from the FBI and joined the Navy as Jonas Vaughn. Got myself assigned to this sub. Talked to the boys assigned with me. Tom and Mark, they were smart fellows, my right-hand men. Jeff Kuhlman, he never did take very well to the idea, needed too much encouragement, tended to get nervous about some of the things we’d done. And I can only put up with nervous folks for just so long.
“But the rest of us, we had a good run. I went back to being Jonas Goodman, went back to the FBI, took up right where I’d left off defending our nation from criminal activity, and always on the lookout for suspicious gems. As soon as some gemologist got too smart for his own good, tried to blow our cover, I had him blown first. It was a clean and tight operation. For over twenty years we kept it that way, and our blue diamonds have made us wealthy.”
Jonas Goodman paused and looked back and forth between Heath and Tracie. “But some people don’t kill too easy. They ask too many questions about things that aren’t their business. And I tell you, kids, when I have to leave my office and come down here to clean things up myself, it makes me irritable. And when I get irritable, people don’t die clean and easy. They die slow and ugly.” He seemed to tire of his story then.
“So choose already! Are you going to go to Trevor, or am I going to have to kill you?”
“If you kill me, won’t Trevor give away all your secrets?” Tracie asked. “He’s been captured—won’t he want to bargain for his freedom?”
For a second, Jonas looked like a trapped animal, but then pride filled his features again and his voice dropped to an even more threatening tone. “Fine. I’ll make your choice easier for you. You can go to Trevor, or you can watch me kill Heath. I’ll let you think about your decision a while.”
He snapped off the light and slammed the door as he left, leaving them in utter darkness, which Tracie figured was just one small piece of his plan to leave them hopeless and helpless, just as she felt certain he wouldn’t have risked telling them his tale unless he was absolutely certain they’d soon be dead.
Tracie felt her heart plunge to her knees. She might have been willing to die rather than become part of Trevor’s criminal activities, but she couldn’t imagine watching Jonas kill Heath. She’d crack. She couldn’t see any way around it. They were both doomed.
“Tracie,” Heath’s whisper broke the silence. “Can you get your shoes off?”
His question seemed odd, but she answered, “I think so.” A moment’s foot-shuffling later, she announced. “Yes. They’re off.”
“Okay,” Heath grunted. “I’ve shifted my body as close to you as I can. Reach out with your leg. I have Trevor’s keys in my left pants pocket.”
The darkness was complete, without the slightest hint of light. Tracie inched one foot toward Heath until she could feel the tips of his shoes with her toes. She strained the tight hold of her wrists against the pipes as she slid her foot up his leg until she found the opening to his pocket. It took several more minutes of shuffling, failed attempts before she caught the ring of keys with her toes and pulled them out.
Panting, she announced, “I’ve got them.”
“Can you find the one you used earlier?”
“I’ll try.” Tracie recognized what Heath was getting at. He must have put Trevor’s keys in his pocket before they’d left the speedboat. And since Jonas and his men had been playing friendly as they’d welcomed them aboard, they’d never patted them down, and the keys had gone unnoticed.
Which left them with a slim chance that the key she’d used to open her handcuffs at Trevor’s would work on the cuffs Jonas had used on them—assuming Trevor and Jonas had used the same brand of cuffs, and assuming that brand was one that made all its cuffs with interchangeable locks. Though many of the major brands of handcuffs used interchangeable keys, some cuffs were made with unique keys, and if Trevor or Jonas had used that kind, there would be no way the key would open their cuffs—if they could even wrangle the key into the lock before Jonas or his men returned for them.
&
nbsp; “I think I’ve got it,” she announced, the slender key sliding between her first two toes as she flexed her foot against the cramp that had formed in her instep in protest of the unfamiliar activity.
“Can you hand it up to me?”
“I’ll try.” Grabbing hold with both hands to the bar she was cuffed to, Tracie pulled up her legs up like a monkey’s while still clutching tight to the keys with her toes. She slid her feet along the pipe toward him, holding on to the heavy key ring with all the strength her foot could muster. As the cramp in her instep began to cry out, she felt her toes brush against metal.
And she dropped the keys.
They hit the floor with a loud clang, and Tracie froze, bracing herself as she waited for Jonas or one of his men to pounce.
“Here,” Heath whispered. “I’m sliding them toward you on the floor. Try again—you were almost there.”
Diligently, Tracie retrieved the keys and attempted the difficult maneuver a second time. This time, she felt his fingertips brush her toes as he took the keys from her with one hand. She dropped her feet to the floor and listened while Heath used the keys held in one hand to free his other wrist. A clicking sound told her when Heath’s hand popped free.
“Praise God!” he declared, and a moment later she heard a second click. Instantly his warm hands found her in the cold darkness, feeling their way up her arms to the handcuffs that held her. Two clicks later, she sagged against Heath, taking just a moment to let the blood return to her arms. Then she found his ear in the darkness and whispered quietly, “Now what?”
Heath’s lips grazed her earlobes and he held her tight against him as he spoke. “It won’t be long before Jonas comes back. I say we wait and pounce. He’s expecting us to be cuffed to the pipes. If we can catch him off guard—”
“But Jonas and his men are armed, and they also outnumber us,” she said. What she really meant to say was that she didn’t want to do any of it, but then she realized she had no choice. She shook her head. “The only way for this cup to pass is by our drinking it,” she murmured.
“That sounds like something from the Bible,” Heath murmured back.
“It is.”
“Then that’s what we’re going to do,” he announced decidedly. “I’m going to see if I can’t brace myself close to the ceiling. Then I can drop on them when they walk in.”
Tracie let out an exhausted sigh. “You can’t be serious. Heath, you don’t know how long it’s going to be before Jonas and his men return. You could be holding on for hours.” She shuddered at the thought, especially given his injuries. “Can’t we just hide in the bunks and pull the curtains shut?”
“But won’t that be the first place they look?”
“Sure, but we’ll see them coming. That gives us an advantage.”
“A small one,” Heath conceded. “Okay, but I’ll take the top bunk, you take the bottom one. Hopefully they’ll check the middle one first. And let’s just pray they don’t come in shooting.”
The bunks were stacked three high—Tracie figured a crew of four wouldn’t need four bunks in the tightly-packed sub, since they’d rotate shifts for sleeping along with everything else. As she slid onto the soft blanket she whispered to Heath, “Let’s pray we don’t fall asleep, either. I’m so exhausted; it’s going to be difficult to keep my eyes open. But if they walk in on us while we’re asleep we’ll lose everything we’ve gained.”
“I’ll keep you awake,” he offered. “We need to discuss our strategy. I’m going to strike first. You wait for my signal.”
For several minutes, the two kept themselves awake by discussing what they’d do if Jonas came alone or with his men, how they’d disarm them, and under what circumstances they’d shoot. They both agreed not to kill the men unless they had no choice, preferring to see them face justice in court. Most importantly, they considered what to do once their captors were subdued—assuming they would be able to subdue them.
On a hunch, Heath rummaged in the darkness through the six-inch-deep drawers underneath the bunks. He gave a delighted cry when he discovered not only a flashlight, but extra handcuffs as well.
“Wonderful, now get back in your bunk and hide,” Tracie hissed at him, though she felt encouraged by his find. God was providing for them.
Just as her exhaustion was beginning to overtake the adrenaline rush she’d felt since being captured, Tracie heard the taunting sound of Jonas Goodman’s laughter echoing from the other side of the door. She braced herself and prayed.
As they’d planned, Heath waited for first Jonas and then the man behind him to step into the room. Jonas flicked on the light as he came in, which would have temporarily blinded them were it not for the filtering effect of the curtains that all but covered their bunks.
Tracie squinted at the light but heard a solid thump before the second man slumped to the floor. Jonas gave a cry, but it was cut short by a cracking sound Tracie hoped was Heath’s shoe making contact with the killer’s head. She didn’t wait to find out, but swiftly swept her legs out, knocking the startled Jonas off his feet.
Tracie watched from a gap in the curtain of her bunk as Heath leapt down on top of Jonas, punched twice and then whispered to her, “They’re both out. Cuffs?”
Springing from the bunk, Tracie worked quickly to cuff the men, and then searched their pockets thoroughly to be sure they didn’t leave any keys on them. Then she and Heath said a quick prayer of thanks before proceeding down the passage toward the control room.
“Back so soon?” A swarthy Goliath chuckled at the sound of the door.
Instead of responding, Heath leapt toward the two men who sat obliviously with their backs to them. He’d removed his left shoe and hit them each in turn with the heel to their temples. When they slumped forward, he dragged them from their seats down the passage to the crew’s quarters, where Jonas and the other man were still out cold. They cuffed them, patted down their pockets and locked the door behind them.
“Now,” Heath said, racing back to the control room, “let’s sort out where we are and figure out if we can drive this thing. I want to get back to Bayfield before those guys have time to give us any more trouble.”
Heath looked over the controls with a sinking heart. As he’d feared, the multimillionaire smugglers hadn’t been content to leave the government-issued sub controls alone. They’d had a custom job installed, with more bells and whistles and newer technology than anything he’d ever seen. He had a sudden flashback of the trouble he’d experienced adapting to the unfamiliar control panel on the microwave at his Bayfield apartment. And the submarine controls were a thousand times more complicated.
“Can I help?” Tracie asked, hovering at his elbow.
Desperately, Heath tried to recognize something familiar among the instruments before him. “You can pray.”
Her small hand slid over his fingers. “You pray with me, okay?”
With their foreheads just touching, they thanked God for getting them as far as he had. Heath tried not to let on to Tracie just how desperate their situation was. They were lost in the dark, silent lake, and he had no idea how far they’d gone from the Devil’s Island sea cave, or in what direction, let alone how fast they were going or whether they were even moving at all. The waters that had once claimed her father’s life could very well still claim theirs.
“Amen,” they said together, and Heath prepared to admit to Tracie that he didn’t know what he was doing.
Before he could speak, she leaned toward the large grid-filled screen that dominated the controls, her eyes smiling. “This is so amazing,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” he agreed, unsure what had captured her awe. “What is?”
“Their depth-chart map. It’s so detailed, so complete. They’ve got the whole lake here. And look.” She touched the screen and swept her hands gently up, and watched the picture move up with her movement. When she slid her hand sideways, the picture moved from side to side. She tapped a spot on the screen, and the image z
oomed forward. Her voice carried an air of discovery. “You can zoom in on any part of the map.” She slid the picture sideways and tapped the screen a few times, snapping the focus tighter with every tap of her fingertip. “There’s Devil’s Island.”
“So you know where we are?” Heath asked, hardly daring to hope that Tracie had recognized what he had been unable to see.
“Well, if that’s us,” she said zooming out again and touching the screen below a blinking red dot. Suddenly the screen changed to a picture of a shark class submarine. “And I think it is,” she continued, tapping the screen again and sending them back to a panoramic view, “then we’re right here.”
Heath looked at the fresh picture on the screen in wonder. “And where is here?”
“The bottom of the North Channel, just off Madeline Island. About a mile from Bayfield.”
The news was better than Heath had dared to hope. He had a fighting chance of navigating them into pier. “Any idea how deep we are?”
Tracie clicked through the screens. “I don’t know.” She paused on the depth chart. “It almost seems as though we’re on the surface,” she said, zooming in on their sub, then panning back out as far as the screens would take her.
“Perfect!” Heath wanted to kiss her, but the way she’d been cold to him all evening, he doubted it would endear him to her. Probably the opposite. Instead he crossed the room to where the periscope hung from the ceiling. At least the smugglers hadn’t messed with the manual controls. “I should be able to bring her in from here.”
Just as Heath was about to situate himself at the controls, he heard a distant thunk.
He looked into Tracie’s concerned face. “What do you suppose that was?”
“Our friends must be waking up,” Tracie speculated.
“You stay right here,” Heath insisted. “I’m going to go check on them.”
He hurried down the hall, peeking into the darkened crew’s quarters just long enough to be sure his eyes hadn’t deceived him. Then he ran back to the control room, taking care to lock the door securely behind him.
Troubled Waters Page 17
