The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

by Karen Leabo

  The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  2013 Loveswept eBook Edition

  Copyright © 1998 by Karen Leabo.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States of America by Loveswept, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  LOVESWEPT is a registered trademark and the LOVESWEPT colophon is a trademark of Random House LLC.

  eBook ISBN 978-0-345-54490-2

  Originally published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, in 1998.

  www.readloveswept.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Editor’s Corner

  ONE

  Clint Nichols sliced noiselessly through dark, murky water on a black night. The only way an uninvited guest could get into Houston’s ultraexclusive Seville Yacht Club was through the water. Wearing a wet suit, his face blackened with greasepaint, he knew he was almost invisible. Still, he swam mostly underwater, surfacing as infrequently as possible.

  Almost there, he thought, his lungs burning. His training at Quantico hadn’t prepared him for anything like this. But he was in good shape—better than most of his younger colleagues. He worked like a demon to stay that way, especially since he’d hit forty.

  The young Turks might think of him as a dinosaur, but he’d bet not one of them could make it through the grueling physical demands of this task. Too bad the only way he’d ever be able to brag about it was from a jail cell. The Bureau didn’t exactly condone kidnapping and hijacking.

  Clint carefully counted the boat slips. Most of them were occupied by empty sailboats and cabin cruisers. The wealthy owners paid tens of thousands for the crafts themselves, and thousands more to berth them at the prestigious Seville dock, then actually took them out only once or twice a year.

  The whole thing was a pretentious waste of money in Clint’s book. Then again, he’d never made enough money to think about owning anything fancier than his sixteen-foot catamaran, berthed in his garage. How could he understand what motivated rich men, men like Jimmy Gabriole?

  At least Gabriole occasionally used his boat. He often arrived without his entourage, believing he was inviolable at the high-security yacht club. This particular weekend he’d brought his sister, Marissa, with him, providing Clint with the perfect opportunity. An eye for an eye.

  A little sister for an ex-wife.

  Jimmy had raised Marissa from the time she was ten and Jimmy was twenty, when their parents had been killed in a car bombing. Rumor had it that he valued her far more than any of his several wives over the years.

  Slip 64. And there was Fortune’s Smile, Gabriole’s forty-two-foot cabin cruiser, not an ostentatious vessel by any means. Clint supposed that Gabriole didn’t want to draw unwanted attention from the IRS. His official income was enough to allow him to live comfortably, but he wasn’t a millionaire. Not unless you counted all the cash that came in under the table.

  Fortune’s Smile. Gabriole didn’t know how ironic the name of his boat was. Fortune was about to frown on the Mafioso. Big time. He’d find out what it felt like to have someone he loved disappear into thin air.

  Clint found a vantage point behind a slime-covered pier and watched. The water was still a bit chilly on this late April night, and a soft rain was starting to fall, but Clint felt no discomfort. He was on a mission, and he had plenty of time. He wouldn’t move until the optimum moment.

  Clint had agonized for days about what to do. Rachelle, his sweet, wild little Rachelle, had been missing for almost a week, last seen at the Foxhunt, where she worked as a dancer. Police questioning had extracted no useful information. Clint’s boss, Neil McCormick, had warned him to let it go. Rachelle was a minor player, and pursuing her fate might jeopardize an eight-month organized-crime investigation. Let the police handle it, he’d been told.

  But Clint couldn’t sit on his hands, not when it came to Rachelle. She’d briefly been his wife, and though their marriage had ended a long time ago, they still shared a bond. He looked out for her, bailed her out of scrapes now and then. And she provided him with useful bits of information. Her entire involvement with Gabriole and the Foxhunt had been Clint’s idea. She’d risked her life for him. He could not abandon her now.

  Clint pumped his legs beneath the water, trying to keep his circulation going. He didn’t know when, or if, Marissa Gabriole would be left alone on the boat. But he would wait. He was good at waiting.

  “You’re sure you don’t want to come?” Jimmy asked his sister for the third time as he fastened a slim gold watch around his wrist. “I was supposed to show you a good time this weekend, and we haven’t even left the dock.”

  “It’s okay, Jimmy, really,” Marissa Gabriole said, hoping she didn’t look as green as she felt. She was actually relieved the lousy weather had prevented them from venturing out on Trinity Bay with Fortune’s Smile. She loved her brother, and she’d been promising for a long time that she would spend a weekend on his sailboat with him and his wife, Sophia. Now that tax season was over, she’d run out of excuses, so this was the weekend. But sailing had never appealed to her. In fact, she’d discovered, much to her dismay, that she was prone to seasickness.

  Since the weather had made sailing impossible this evening, Jimmy wanted to go out on the town.

  “But it’s lobster, Marissa,” Sophia said. “How can you turn down a lobster dinner?” She pronounced the shellfish as “lobsta.” Sophia was young and cute and unsophisticated, Jimmy’s third wife. Still, Marissa couldn’t help liking her. She was as ingenuous as a puppy.

  “I just want to curl up in my bunk with a book,” Marissa said. And some antacid. She’d downed a gallon of the pink stuff since her arrival at the Seville Yacht Club that afternoon. “Y’all go out and have fun. Don’t worry about me, I’m fine.”

  “Okay, sissy,” Jimmy said with a shrug. He’d never claimed to understand his sister’s low-key ways. “We’ll be back around midnight, maybe a little later.”

  Marissa breathed a sigh of relief as the hatch closed behind Jimmy and Sophia. She grabbed the edge of the fold-down galley table as the boat listed to one side, then the other, announcing the couple’s disembarkment. Closing her eyes, she waited for the rocking to stop before she tried to walk.

  What she really needed was some down time. This spring had been the busiest tax season ever for her growing accounting business. For weeks she’d been working twelve-hour days, seven days a week. Then, when the end had been in sight, Jimmy had shown up at her doorstep with a chicken-scrawled ledger book and a box of receipts, begging her to do a Schedule C for his restaurant, the Foxhunt. His regular bookkeeper had quit in a huff.

  She’d done it because she had a hard time saying no to her older brother, who’d always done so much for her. But she’d barely finished the paperwork in time for Jimmy to make the April fifteenth tax deadline.

  Thank God that insanity was over. Now all she wanted was to kick back, relax, be bored.

  Marissa wiggled out of her sticky clothes. The sailboat didn’t afford much privacy, so it was
a relief to have the place to herself for a few hours. In deference to the muggy night, she wandered around in a beige silk camisole and paisley boxer shorts.

  Some graham crackers and a glass of milk served as her dinner. After tidying up the tiny galley, then washing her face and brushing her teeth in a bathroom too small to turn around in, Marissa headed for her cozy—some might say cramped—quarters in the V-berth. She stretched out on clammy sheets and cracked open a mystery she’d been dying to read.

  With a sigh, she decided that this wasn’t paradise, but it wasn’t half bad, either. No phone, no computer, no aggravations. Just the gentle sound of waves lapping against the hull, the murmur of a gentle rain, the occasional sleepy call of a water bird, and—

  What was that noise? The boat abruptly leaned to one side, the way it did when someone boarded. Did Jimmy and Sophia forget something? It wasn’t even ten o’clock. Maybe the weather had dissuaded them. It was supposed to be stormy later on.

  She didn’t hear any familiar voices. Tense with fear, Marissa put the book aside and felt around at the side of the mattress for her gun. Ever since she’d passed her test to carry a concealed weapon, she never went anywhere without her old Colt revolver.

  It’s a lady’s gun, she remembered her father saying when he’d presented the weapon to her mother. Marissa had been seven or eight at the time. Small, fits easily in the purse, but accurate. Not like some of them peashooters your bridge club friends carry.

  Her mother, who had never favored impractical furs or jewelry, had been pleased with the gift.

  Now the gun belonged to Marissa. It was considered old-fashioned today, but she didn’t care. She knew how to use it, and it would do the job if she ever had to pull the trigger, which she fervently hoped would never happen. She quickly loaded all six chambers from the box of ammunition in her overnight case.

  The hatch at the opposite end of the boat rattled. Had Jimmy locked it behind him? Probably. Jimmy took matters of security very seriously.

  A loud creaking noise shattered the quiet. Oh, Lord, someone was breaking in! Marissa rolled onto her stomach, closed the privacy curtain that separated the V-berth from the rest of the boat, then trained her eye and the muzzle of her gun through a crack. If she could keep her presence a secret, she would. Maybe her uninvited guest would quickly canvass the main living area of the boat for valuables, then leave.

  She could hope, anyway.

  The hatch slowly lifted. Marissa held her breath as a silhouette descended the five steps that led into the living area of the boat. The man—and clearly, it was a man—wore a shiny black wet suit that outlined every sinew of his body. He looked hard and muscular, at least six feet tall. When his face came into view, Marissa saw that it was painted black, and she stifled a gasp. He looked like the bad guy from a James Bond flick.

  Not your garden-variety boat breaker, then. Marissa became more frightened.

  All right, where was she? Clint wondered as he descended the steps, grateful that someone had left a light on. He hoped Marissa was asleep. If she’d slept through his break-in, he stood a much better chance of avoiding injury to either of them while he subdued her. For intimidation purposes he had only a knife, so the element of surprise was essential.

  Clint surveyed the boat’s interior, taking a moment to appreciate the tidy, space-efficient living area. Some designer had done a number on the place. The pale pastels, warm wood tones, and gauzy upholstery made the minimal space seem larger than it was. Ultramodern appliances in doll proportions defined the galley. He supposed there was some appeal to yachting. He could stand this for a few days.

  Marissa was not in plain sight, nor in the tiny bathroom, which left the two sleeping cabins. He’d studied the plans for this model of boat, and he guessed that Gabriole and his wife would take the larger rear cabin, leaving Marissa the smaller V-berth, wedged into the prow.

  That’s where he headed, as quietly as possible.

  A movement caught the corner of his eye. He jerked his head around, scanning the area, but didn’t see anything. He was way too jumpy.

  He continued toward the V-berth. He slid the curtains open.

  He saw it, but he didn’t believe it. Marissa Gabriole, her huge brown eyes filled with fear, lay on the bunk, pointing a gun at him.

  “Freeze,” she said calmly, deliberately. “Take one step closer and I’ll pull the trigger.”

  He would have laughed if he hadn’t been so scared. Who did she think she was with that ancient Colt pointed at his heart? Still, because the gun was old and the woman scared out of her wits didn’t mean he couldn’t be just as dead if she shot him.

  “I’m not here to hurt you,” he said softly, imagining what a vision he must have presented her with his black-painted face.

  “I don’t care what your intentions are,” she said. “Just leave the way you came.”

  He didn’t have to think about what he did next. Years of training shaped his actions. With one lightning-quick motion he rotated his body, giving her the smallest possible target, and reached for the gun, deflecting the barrel away from him as he wrenched it out of her hand.

  Marissa was propped on her elbows, so there was no way for her to react with any speed. The gun went from her grip to his in the blink of an eye, and she was left staring at Clint, first in disbelief, then with fear.

  “You ought not to carry a gun unless you know how to use it,” he said with a lazy drawl while he emptied the chambers, dropping the bullets to the floor. “For this very reason. Ten seconds ago I wasn’t armed. Now I am.”

  “Spare me the lectures!” she said hotly. “I’ve had training. I have a license to carry a concealed weapon.”

  “Not trained well enough, obviously,” he said, searching for a place to dispose of the gun. He thought briefly about keeping it for his own purposes, then rejected the idea. When he planned this operation, he’d promised himself he would do it without a gun. He didn’t trust himself not to shoot Gabriole.

  He opened a porthole and started to toss the revolver overboard.

  “No!” Marissa objected.

  He paused and looked at her.

  “It was my mother’s gun,” she said almost sheepishly. “It has sentimental value. Don’t throw it out. Please?”

  Clint didn’t believe her for a second, but he couldn’t seem to make himself ignore her plea. Instead of pitching the gun out, he bent down, scooped up the bullets, and threw them out. He took a couple of steps backward into the galley and shoved the gun into a drawer. His gaze remained trained on Marissa.

  He studied her then, really looked at her, and he had to admit he liked what he saw. Before, he’d seen her only at a distance. Other than coloring, she bore no resemblance to her short, stocky, snub-nosed brother. Marissa Gabriole had the face of a cosmetics model along with the eyes of a frightened fawn—an undeniably appealing combination. Her tousled hair was thick, shoulder length, gently curved under so the ends barely tickled her graceful neck. As for the rest of her …

  “Put some clothes on,” he said crossly, irritated that he was responding to her as a man. He didn’t know much about Marissa other than that she was a Mafia princess, daughter of the late, great Lido Gabriole. But that was enough to disgust him. He shouldn’t be attracted to such a person, no matter what his hormones thought of her.

  At his terse command, Marissa had grabbed an oversize T-shirt from her bag and dragged it over her head. Clint breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could have looked at her barely covered breasts without some noticeable reaction.

  Now it was time to do something about his own attire. The wet suit was extremely uncomfortable. He unzipped it and peeled himself like a banana, conscious that Marissa’s frightened gaze was riveted to him. When he was done, he wore only a pair of very brief swim trunks.

  It hadn’t occurred to him that his skimpy attire would be so awkward. He felt much too vulnerable with so much skin showing. Bare skin could all too easily be raked with fi
ngernails. “Got another T-shirt I can borrow?” he asked as amiably as if they were friends at the beach.

  Marissa visibly swallowed and licked her lips. She shoved her suitcase at him. “I think there’s a blue one in there that might be big enough to fit you,” she said grudgingly. “Otherwise, you can wear one of my brother’s. His bag is in the other cabin.” Her gaze never left him. “You know, he’ll be back anytime. And he’s not someone you want to mess with. He’s got some pretty nasty friends. I’d leave if I were you. Really.”

  “I’m well aware of Jimmy’s collection of friends. And I know he’s dangerous. That’s why I’m here.” Clint sifted through pastel underthings—far more interesting to him than they should have been—before finding the blue T-shirt. He quickly donned the shirt. “I’m not planning to hurt you,” he thought to add. Terrorizing women, even crime-family women, wasn’t his goal. “If you’ll just cooperate, we’ll be done with this thing before morning.”

  “You’re going to kill him,” she said, her voice a monotone. “Oh, God, I knew someday they’d catch up with us.”

  “They?” Perhaps Marissa would prove to be a wealth of information.

  “You,” she clarified, malevolence burning from her eyes. “You’re the one who killed our parents.”

  Marissa thought he was another gangster! All right, so maybe at this moment he wasn’t acting like an FBI agent. But desperate circumstances called for desperate measures. He would do what he had to do to get Rachelle back safely—and if she was already dead, someone would pay.

  Jimmy Gabriole. The man had featured prominently in all of Rachelle’s info drops. He’d issued veiled threats against her. Clint had cautioned her to be careful, that giving herself away could lead to her death. But she’d become more and more reckless with her snooping into Jimmy’s personal affairs.

  Then she’d disappeared. Her apartment door had been bashed in, the furniture tossed about. He’d found no sign of Rachelle after days of searching.

  Clint had a soft spot for Rachelle, never mind that she’d been unfaithful to him during their brief marriage, that she’d wiped out his bank account to buy drugs, that she liked to dance seminaked in front of strange men. There was an innate sweetness about her, a genuine desire to make the world a better place. He’d lost count of the number of excellent tips she’d given him, tips that led to arrests and convictions. None of her lowlife friends ever guessed that she had cooperated with the authorities.