Emerald Fire

by Monica McCabe

  The skier’s windshield shattered, and a scream ricocheted over the sound of the Fire’s roaring engines. Finn watched with satisfaction as a pirate fell overboard, his comrades not even slowing down.

  Chloe fired again, and when the sound of a sputtering motor reached them, he could’ve whooped in joy. He pumped more lead into the dying speedboat, hastening its demise and causing the cigarette to take evasive action, effectively slowing them down.

  They’d bought a precious few seconds of time. Finn took in their location and noted the narrow inlet waters were beginning to widen. They were approaching the bay.

  “To the bridge!” he yelled at Chloe.

  They both raced back inside and up to the helm. Jonathan had killed the floodlights now that they’d reached the bay, and darkness greeted them out the windshield, broken only by the occasional buoy light. Jonathan immediately veered right, taking the Fire into open water. He jammed the throttle to maximum thrust, and the yacht lifted under the power, quickly pushing to its top speed of thirty-eight knots and cutting through the swell.

  The Emerald Fire flew across the water. Yet even at this speed, they weren’t going to make the city harbor before the cigarette boat overtook them.

  “We need another diversion.” Finn leaned over the instrument panel and stared through the windshield. The lights of Boca Chica glowed on the horizon, but right now they were in wide-open waters.

  “We can use a light marker.” Chloe joined him at the panel. “Aim straight at it and veer off at the last second. Maybe our friends will hit it.”

  Finn weighed the option. At one hundred twenty feet in length, the Fire was big enough that the fifty-foot craft behind them wouldn’t see the light. It might work. Besides, they didn’t have much else.

  “Can you do it?” he asked Jonathan.

  “Just hang on,” he replied.

  “Prop open the doorway,” Finn said to Chloe. “We’re going to tag team this.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Keep her aimed straight at the buoy marker,” Finn tossed to Jonathan. “Clip her if you have too, but don’t turn until the last second.”

  “You got it, mate.”

  And you,” he said to Chloe, “yell when we’re close. I’ll do my best to keep them so busy they won’t see it coming.” Jonathan looked like he was enjoying the chase a little too much. Life or death hung on the line here, and the jewelry storeowner had turned adrenaline junkie. Finn hoped he kept it up long enough to get them out of here. Alive.

  He opened the cabin door and immediately heard the roar of the cigarette’s engine as it closed the distance between them.

  “Get more bullets,” he yelled at Chloe. He raced to the stern, then hefted the AR15 and fired until the magazine emptied. Shouts and curses carried across the water along with return fire. Finn ducked below the rail to reload.

  “We’re closing in,” Chloe shouted.

  He shot several more rounds over the aft rail.

  “Now!” she shouted.

  The yacht slowed just a hair. Finn jumped up, braced his legs apart, and shot a wide spray of lead. When the Emerald Fire wrenched hard starboard, he threw himself to the deck.

  A metallic clang burst across the water as the cigarette boat scraped its fiberglass hull against the anchored channel marker. The pirates veered left, their speed shooting them off in the opposite direction of the Fire.

  “Did it work?” Chloe joined him at the aft rail.

  “For now,” Finn replied. “Not for good.”

  Boca Chica harbor was unique with a graceful curve of land that lay protected by a barrier island. A wide and deep channel flowed at one end, stretching from an industrial wharf to city piers full of leisure craft and fishing boats. The far end was much shallower, and the risk of running aground high. Maneuverability would be limited.

  The pirates had already turned back toward them.

  “Your uncle has a plan?”

  “Yeah.” She gave a little half laugh. “He said keep the bastards off his tail. He’ll get rid of them in the harbor.”

  Bloody hell. Rambo was at the wheel. Could be good, could be bad. Either way, they’d find out pretty quick.

  Finn grabbed a flare gun and steadied his aim, then fired. A brilliant red and orange missile shot toward the cigarette. The craft easily steered away, and the flare fell harmlessly in the water.

  Chloe duplicated the process with her flare gun as Finn reloaded his. Together they kept their pursuers busy dodging flaming missiles until they’d passed the wharf and had aimed straight to the city pier.

  Jonathan wasn’t reducing speed despite the clearly lighted No Wake sign. They hurled past an anchored sailboat, causing its mast to weave drunkenly in the surging waters behind them. They weren’t slowing so much as a knot, and Finn began to worry Jonathan’s plan involved driving this whale of a boat straight on shore.

  The pirates blasted off a heavy round of ammo. The harbor patrol had to hear the noise, but Finn doubted that mattered. They were bankrolled by the local gang. No help coming there. Finn shot back with the AR.

  Jonathan zigzagged through the water, creating a disruptive wake for their pursuers. It gave Finn an idea.

  “Shoot flares on their starboard side!” he yelled to Chloe. “Push them over till they come alongside us.”

  Chloe nodded and grabbed more flares. Finn made loose with the AR again, firing over the rail. When she was ready, he ripped across the deck to the bridge and yelled out his Hail Mary plan to Jonathan, then hightailed it back.

  “Keep firing!” She did, and another flare arched toward the boat. Just as Finn hoped, they veered left, trying to come alongside the bigger yacht.

  Finn risked his neck to lean out port side, gauging the distance of the city dock. It wasn’t far. He fired his rifle over the side, and the pirates returned fire, right at the moment Jonathan backed off the engines. The yacht slowed, and the pirates did, too, but Finn was banking on surprise and confusion.

  When the Fire slowed to less than four or five knots and inched toward the dock, the pirates let out a whoop of victory and kept pace. They eased back to the yacht’s stern, preparing to board her from the rear ladders.

  “Fire the flare straight up!” he yelled at Chloe.

  She did, and a brilliant orange streak lit up the harbor.

  It was the signal Jonathan waited for, and he threw full power into the engines, cranking the wheel hard over in an evasive maneuver that blasted a surge of seawater behind them. The turbulence in the Fire’s wake shoved the lighter craft against the end of the pier with enough force to rip through wood planks and send several moored boats into a demolition derby.

  The move was pure revenge wrapped in genius. Plus a strong dose of good luck because the Fire’s draft was huge, and there was no telling how deep the waters were at the pier. Too bad the trick didn’t extinguish the cigarette. It's engines sputtered and the long boat struggled to come about, but it kept moving and followed them back toward the industrial wharf.

  But Jonathan wasn’t done. Their pace was slow and intentional as they weaved in and around several vessels anchored for the night. The pirates were furious, buzzing up close enough for a warning shot, then falling back, determined to board and take back their prize.

  Jonathan used that against them and slowed to a near stop alongside a midsize tanker ship. The pirates were circling, shouting threats and laughing. On their second time around, Jonathan waited until they’d started the gauntlet between the Fire and the tanker and, with precise timing, fired the starboard thrusters.

  Under normal circumstances, they were used to gently assist the yacht in smaller spaces. But Jonathan threw full power into the thrust, and the sideways maneuver trapped the cigarette between the two larger vessels.

  The pirate’s boat crumpled in the squeeze against the tanker’s unforgiving steel hull. The sound of crunching fiberglass and screeching metal filled the air, along
with shouts of alarm from the tanker's crew and furious screams of pirates as they abandoned ship.

  Lights were pouring on all over the wharf. Which would be a good thing if the city wasn’t well entrenched with piracy. They wouldn’t stand a chance against a pissed-off local police force whose friends and family they’d just dumped into the harbor. Before Finn could get across the deck to yell at Jonathan to get moving, the yacht’s engines wound up, and they began to clear away from the spreading debris. Seconds later, the port thrusters fired and the lumbering yacht turned, beginning to pick up speed.

  Finn ran to the bridge. “Kill the running lights and pedal to the metal, Jonathan!”

  The speed part was well under way, and Jonathan began throwing switches on the console. The yacht went dark.

  Chapter 9

  Chloe stood alone at the helm and stared out into the darkness through the forward windows. She’d put on the captain’s hat while Finn and her uncle did a sweep of the boat. There was no celebration, no toasting of their success, just a somber run through the night as they put distance between them and danger.

  They had rounded the Dominican Republic at full speed and now skirted the northeastern side of the island, a ghostly outline of mountains and rugged beaches to their left, while to their right, unrelenting open water. A thickening layer of heavy clouds blocked the silvery moonlight and helped conceal their location from pursuit.

  They’d just passed the lights of Punta Cana, a remote but luxurious tourist resort. Several times she’d considered spending a week in one of their all-inclusive resorts, sipping fruity drinks and swinging in a hammock beneath a palm tree. Never did she think she’d be sneaking past in the dark of night, fleeing bullets and angry pirates.

  A soft shudder crossed her skin, her muscles still twitching with leftover adrenaline. She was both exhausted and wired at the same time, a strange strung-out sensation that had her doubting her sanity. This was, by far, the dumbest stunt she’d ever pulled in her quest for proof of her ancestry.

  From the day she decided to specialize in Prussian history and find their lost cultural treasures, she’d begun intense training. Artifact recovery at Elliston Curator Foundation sometimes required risk. She’d mastered defensive tactics and street survival techniques, weapons training, and surveillance. Her unique skills had helped her outsmart border patrol in the Czech Republic. They had come in handy when she’d fled the Soviet Union one step ahead of a vicious art collector with an insatiable thirst for Napoleonic era treasure. She’d even battled smugglers for possession of a painting directly linked to Charlottenburg Palace during the reign of Prussian King Frederick William III and his wife, Queen Louise.

  But tonight she’d faced a different sort of adversary. Unstable countries or angry collectors didn’t match the level of fear inspired by pirates and a constant rain of bullets.

  “Don’t worry,” Finn said quietly as he stepped up behind her, “the adrenaline will subside shortly.”

  She rubbed her arms and continued to stare out the windshield, uncertain whether the ripple of awareness came from him or the aftereffect of a death-defying escapade. “How do you do this for a living?” she asked. “I’d be a twisted mess of nerves.”

  His soft laugh blended with the hum of the engines, and in the dim glow of the instrument panel’s LED lights, she swore he looked vital, intense, thriving on the thrill of pitting strength and intellect against the enemy. She understood that, but he’d taken it to a whole new level of crazy.

  “You get used to the challenge,” Finn said, “but my cases are rarely this dramatic.”

  “That’s too bad,” Jonathan said as he entered the bridge. “Because if this is what your job is like, I need to switch careers. That was a crazy rush!”

  Her uncle took the helm from Chloe and double-checked the gauges, making a few adjustments. He kept the engines running full, though not the breakneck speed they had at the start. He didn’t look fazed by their pirate encounter either. He was actually smiling.

  Chloe took a deep breath and tried to equalize. Hard to do when Finnegan Kane stood so close.

  “Rush or not, we got away too easy,” Finn said with a scowl. “They let us escape.”

  Her jaw dropped at that statement. She couldn’t have heard him right. “What part of gunfire, ruined docks, and mangled boats is easy?”

  “I don’t know, but something doesn’t feel right.”

  He had good instincts. And if she believed that, then a Finn on edge meant they weren’t out of the woods yet. “They could still be out there, following us,” she said with an uneasy glance out the windshield. “Is that it?”

  “It’s probably just nerves,” her uncle said. “We’ll settle down soon. What we need is a celebration drink.”

  Chloe seized on the idea. “How about I go fetch us something from the galley?” With the crisis now past, she’d been itching to get alone long enough to check on the journal. Her uncle just handed her the perfect excuse.

  “Bring the scotch,” Jonathan suggested.

  Without another word, she hurried away from the bridge and made her way below decks. The galley could wait. Instead, she aimed for the interior staterooms, straight to the one she always used when onboard the Fire.

  She opened the door and flipped the light, peering cautiously inside before entering the empty room. She shook her head and chided herself over the paranoia. Did she expect a pirate to jump out of the room and attack? They were alone on the ship. She needed to get a grip and shake off Finn’s dire prediction.

  She opened the closet and bent down to one knee, sliding a couple shoeboxes over to reveal her hiding spot. The small access door to the bathroom shower water pipes opened easily, and when she spied the sealed container inside, she nearly wept with relief. She reached in and grabbed the package, the solid heavy weight telling her what she wanted to know. She sat back on the carpeted floor and unwrapped a two-hundred-year-old journal belonging to William Desmond and her detailed notebook of deciphered clues and possibilities.

  She hugged the books to her chest and released a pent-up breath. Lisa Banks almost had won this round. Ironically, Chloe suspected the woman knew about the emeralds. Nothing outright, just the calculating look in her eye or a casual comment that had double meaning. Uncle Jon knew, but the existence of the royal jewels was their sworn secret, and he’d never break her trust that way.

  Owen also knew. He didn’t believe, but that never stopped him from interfering. Owen had visited her at Uncle Jon’s in the days before college, the days before Lisa. But Chloe had seen him leaving there recently. He had given a lame excuse of looking for her. Combine that with her suspicion that Lisa was seeing someone on the side, and the idea of Owen and Lisa working together became all too real. Or worse, what if they were in a relationship? Chloe shuddered at the thought. Those two deserved each other. But it was what the knowledge would do to her uncle when he found out that bothered her the most.

  The floorboard outside her door creaked, and she snapped to attention. It was a familiar sound, but out of place if she were truly alone.

  “Uncle Jon?” she called out. Her breath hitched as she waited, but nothing came from the darkness beyond the partially open door. The hair on the back of her neck tingled, and Finn’s words came back to haunt her. It was too easy. They let us go.

  She gave herself a mental shake and quickly wrapped up the journals. She stashed them back in place, grabbed her flashlight, and peered into an empty hall. With one last look behind her, she headed for the galley.

  * * * *

  Finn couldn’t believe they’d done it. Sure, he had anticipated success, or he wouldn’t have taken the chance, but one bounty hunter and two civilians going up against a dozen or more pirates should’ve been suicide. Luck played a heavy hand tonight, and though the worst of it had passed, he still had an itch, a lingering suspicion that it wasn’t over.

  He joined Chloe’s uncle at the navigation console, taking
in an instrument panel that made his heart sing. “You’re a hell of a pilot, Jonathan,” Finn said as he checked out fuel and water tank gauges. Fuel was low, but it wasn’t a concern yet. “Those were some amazing maneuvers you pulled.”

  “I learned a few things back in the day,” Jonathan replied. “But I’ve never put the Fire through anything like that before. She handled the stress like a champion.”

  “She deserves a medal after that run.” Finn would give a week’s pay to activate the ship’s dream displays. Sonar, weather radar, chart plotting, and autopilot, the yacht had it all.

  “And a rest,” Jonathan replied. “God knows, I’d love to anchor down and sleep a solid eight myself, but we should run all night.”

  Finn couldn’t agree more. He pushed the backlight on his watch. One-fifteen a.m., and they had a long way to go before he’d feel completely safe again. “I can take first shift at the helm.”

  Jonathan scrubbed a hand over his face. “I need sleep, but I’m too keyed up.”

  “It’s nerves and will fade,” Finn said with a frown. “What gets me is how we actually pulled that off. I don’t trust that it’s over.”

  Lights on the navigation console blinked, and Jonathan checked the readings. “We’re making good time. The Turks and Caicos should be off our port side by noon tomorrow. We’ll need fuel by then. We’re burning it fast at this pace.”

  “We can get supplies, too.” Plus he needed to make a phone call to Sam Brady.

  “No police, though,” Jonathan declared. “Don’t think we can trust them yet. Too close to the damage we’ve already caused.”

  That statement brought to light something that had bothered Finn from the start of this escapade. They’d have to bring the authorities in eventually, but where? Jonathan was right about one thing—there wasn’t enough distance between them and the pirate lair. Turning the Fire over to authorities here risked his bounty money. No. They had the yacht, and Finn planned on keeping it that way.