“Nope.” He closed his mouth tightly to make sure he wasn’t drooling.
She fluffed the wet strands of hair that hung down past her shoulders. “What marina are we headed for?”
“Mission Bay,” he answered. It was his favorite, one of the older municipal docks, filled with as many battered fishing boats as shiny new yachts. “We can catch a cab and head to the Coast Guard station. Then you can go home. Unless you live down in Ensenada?” Oops, he hadn’t thought of that. He resisted the urge to smack himself in the forehead.
“No. My apartment, such as it is, is in Ocean Beach. I was camping in Mexico for the summer, doing my dolphin research.”
“Alone?”
“Just me and Brad.” She winced, her face going pale. “Jesus, Brad.” She paused, looked like she was gulping back tears at the mention of her partner, but she got it together before he could say anything. “You think the Coast Guard is best? Not the police? Or Homeland Security?”
“Coast Guard is probably your best bet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they shuffle us around some.” Us? Where had that come from? Aw, hell, he was going to stick with her through the reporting process, wasn’t he? He called himself a few obscene names in his head.
“It’s going to be messy, isn’t it?” She looked resigned rather than daunted. Good.
“Probably,” he agreed. A body might have been found by now, but unless Brad Whatsisname had kept ID inside his wetsuit, they wouldn’t be able to identify it, and things moved especially slowly in Mexico. On the other hand, if she didn’t call in the incident as soon as reasonably possible, the U.S. authorities would assume she was hiding something, might even suspect her of complicity in her friend’s death.
“And I’ll have to call his parents. That’ll be fun. They already hate my guts.”
Okay, her more-than-friend, he corrected himself. Which is why he absolutely was not going to leap across the three feet between them and kiss her senseless.
She stood there for a while, staring out at the water. Jake could understand that. When he was stressed out, there was nothing like the ocean to calm the nerves, and he figured she probably needed that right now.
“Can I ask you a favor?”
“Hmmm?” He’d been concentrating so hard on not staring at her that he’d almost missed her whispered words.
“I know this is weird, and awkward, maybe even a little pathetic, but…”
He looked up at her face, saw the crease between her eyebrows, and watched her tongue dart out and moisten her cracked lower lip. It was all he could do not to offer to take over the job. She stared pointedly at his left elbow, ignoring his eyes. “Go on.”
“Would it be too much to ask…oh hell. I could really, really use a hug right about now.”
“Of course.” He turned the captain’s chair on its pedestal so his knees were to the side and opened his arms. “That doesn’t sound weird or pathetic at all. Come here.”
Tall as she was, he didn’t think she was used to sitting on a man’s lap. She approached him awkwardly, lowering herself in a tentative manner, as if she were afraid something would break—or perhaps it wasn’t hesitation, it may have just been pain from her scrapes and bruises. Moving just as cautiously, he enfolded her in his arms, pressing her cheek to his shoulder, and pulled her more firmly against him. Taking her weight was no problem, and apparently she figured that out. After holding her breath for a few heartbeats, she gradually relaxed in his embrace, finally allowing herself to grip the shoulder of his T-shirt with one hand, while the other arm clamped around his waist.
He breathed in the scent of his soap and shampoo mixed with her underlying feminine fragrance, and bit his lip hard in an effort to control his body’s reaction. When he felt the trickle of tears dampening the front of his shirt, he forgot all about wanting her, though. He stroked one hand through her long, damp hair, wishing he knew what to say to give her comfort. In nearly eight decades of walking among humans, he’d lost many friends and it always hurt. But he didn’t think he’d ever let any of them get as close to him as Heidi and her partner had obviously been to each other.
She sat there on his lap, weeping silently, for maybe ten or fifteen minutes. Jake simply continued to hold her close, rubbing her hair and back, feeling more helpless than he could remember. When she finished, they sat there for a few minutes longer. Finally Heidi wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand and turned her face up to Jake’s.
“Thank you,” she said around a sniffle. Her voice was raw and husky from crying, but sexy as hell.
“No problem,” he replied. “Honestly, you’re holding up better than most people would. It’s okay to need a shoulder to cry on.” He told himself he had to turn away, had to stop staring into those watery blue eyes before he did something stupid.
“Well, thanks anyway.” She leaned up a few inches and feathered a kiss on his cheekbone.
Jake knew it was an idiotic move, but his body went on autopilot. He turned his face and pressed a small kiss on her full lips. Her breath hitched, and he thought maybe his stopped entirely. Time hung suspended for a moment before she brought her hand up into his hair and began to return his kiss.
Cautiously he stroked his tongue along her lips, testing her response. When she opened her mouth, he dove inside, heedless of the things he should be thinking about. She tasted sweet, from the tea he’d given her. Her own tongue slid silkily along his, tasting and exploring. Jake cupped the back of her head with one hand while the other slid upward from her waist to cup the side of one round breast.
“Whoa!” Heidi broke off the kiss and pulled back abruptly. “Jesus, what the hell just happened here?”
“I’m sorry, Heidi,” Jake began. “I didn’t mean—”
“No, I know that.” She scrambled off his lap, moved back out onto the deck, toward the hatch down to the cabin. “I think I should be the one apologizing but…oh hell, I have no idea.” She opened the hatch and started down the stairs.
“There’s coffee in the galley, if you want some,” he called.
“Thanks.” She didn’t even turn, just called the word over her shoulder as she fled.
* * * * *
“You awake?”
Heidi’s words and the hand on his shoulder jolted Jake out of a semi-doze. He spun the captain’s chair quickly, almost knocking the coffee cup from Heidi’s hand. He caught it, offered her an apologetic grin. A glance at the clock on the control panel told him she’d been below for maybe twenty minutes.
“I saw your empty cup in the galley, thought you could use a refill.” She held two cups, he noticed—his oversized mug advertising a San Francisco coffee house and the black sea turtle one from Honolulu he’d put her tea in earlier. She had the open pack of sandwich cookies he’d left on the counter tucked under her arm. She’d also put the T-shirt back on over her swimsuit, thank goodness.
“Thanks.” He nodded toward the mate’s chair beside him. She sat, but he noticed she took great care not to touch him at all as she moved past. Oh, goody, she was feeling awkward too. He took a cookie, gestured for her to do the same. She did, nibbling it gently, making him jealous of the damn thing. So he turned away.
“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” She gestured at the sunrise, under which the San Diego skyline was starting to take shape.
He shrugged. “I guess. You should have seen it before the high-rises went up. It was even prettier then.”
She smiled. “Since some of those high-rises are more than twenty years old, I guess that means you grew up here.”
Shit. Stuck his foot in it that time. He brazened out the lie. “Mostly.”
“I’m from Minnesota,” she replied with a wry grin. “And even though I spent summers on the Lake Superior shoreline, I still can’t get over the sheer vastness of the ocean.”
“Minnesota?” He didn’t know why that amused him. She’d look cute in a furry parka that covered everything but her nose. “So what brought you out here?”
“Dol
phins,” she replied. “I got my bachelor’s degree in zoology at Northwestern. That’s where I met Brad. I was a scholarship student from the Great White North, and he was a trust-fund baby from Glenview, Illinois.” She must have seen the query in his eyes. “Chicago’s version of La Jolla,” she explained. “Lots of old, old money.”
“Anyway, we both came out here for grad school, hot to be the next Jacques Cousteau. Of course, once we got out here, we discovered that roughly half the students at the university were Midwestern kids with the same idea. There was no way we could have all studied marine mammals. I studied lizard behavior for my dissertation. Brad did his on bird migrations.”
“Why not? It’s a big ocean.”
She smiled wryly. “Because in order to do graduate work on something, you have to have a professor willing to sponsor you, and funding to do the research. Both of those are severely limiting factors.”
Jake hadn’t thought of it that way, but it made sense. “So then what?”
“Well, shortly after we both got our degrees, Brad’s grandfather died and Brad came into a chunk of the family money. He swung a deal with the university for us to do our post-doctoral research at the Weston Institute, with him funding the project. So for the last year we’ve been camping up and down the Pacific coastline, documenting the movements and behaviors of the white-sided dolphins.”
“Sounds like interesting work.”
“It is. They’re such incredible animals, smart and social, and funny.” She practically glowed with enthusiasm, her grief momentarily forgotten as she talked about her work. “I’ve always believed that they understand much, much more than people give them credit for.”
She was right about that, he mused. White-sided dolphins were the species linked with his people and he’d spent lots of time swimming with them when he was younger.
They stared at the shoreline for several minutes in awkward silence, sipping coffee and eating the cookies until they’d finished the pack. “So,” she finally said, her voice a little hesitant. “Now you know my entire life history. Okay if I ask you a little bit about yours?”
“Go ahead.” His cover story would withstand any questions she threw at him, and he supposed she was within her rights to ask about the man she’d just kissed.
“What is it you do for a living, Jake Delos?”
“Ever heard of Travis McGee?”
She shook her head, her silky hair tumbling around her shoulders and making him want to bury his face in it again. “No. Is he your boss?”
Jake laughed. Goddess, she was so damn young. “He’s a fictional character, written by an author named John MacDonald from the sixties through the eighties. McGee is an interesting guy, sort of a detective, but mostly he’s retired. He believes in taking his retirement in chunks, whenever he can afford it. Whenever he has enough money, he retires until he runs out, then he just takes a job ‘til he can afford to retire again.”
“And what does this fictional character have to do with the real-life Jake?”
“Well, he’s pretty much my role model. I made a healthy bit before the tech stocks crashed, so I can afford to be a beach bum.”
“Okay, I think I get it.”
“I have enough to stay retired, but once in a while I do odd jobs, like finding things, mostly to break up the boredom.”
“Finding things? Like what?”
“Missing ex-spouses. Stolen cars. Whatever people want found.”
“So you’re a detective.”
“Not exactly. In most places that requires a license, and I’ve never stayed in one place long enough to acquire one of those. I just find things.” And do the occasional odd job for a handful of government agencies, he thought. But he didn’t tell her that.
“Got it.” She laughed, raised her coffee cup. “Here’s to avoiding license fees.”
He clinked cups with her, then drank a bit of the dark, strong coffee.
* * * * *
Heidi sat in the overly air-conditioned Coast Guard station on what had to be the world’s most uncomfortable molded plastic chair and resisted the urge to bang her head on the table. She’d been over her story a thousand times, her head hurt, she was freezing, and she still hadn’t had anything to eat since the cookies on the boat. She supposed she could have legally gotten up and left, but she didn’t have enough emotional or physical energy left for that fight.
Jake insisted on going with her to the Coast Guard. She tried to tell him she could handle it on her own, but she didn’t try too hard. This was going to be scary enough. It was nice to know that Jake had her back. He hadn’t seen everything, but he’d witnessed the chase, the shooting, and seen the cigarette boat. That should lend some credence to her story. And more than anything else, just knowing he was standing behind her helped her feel a little less alone.
Of course they were separated the minute they’d made their initial report. Heidi should have seen that coming, but then, having never been interrogated before, she supposed she could forgive herself for not knowing what to expect.
It wasn’t fun, and it didn’t resemble CSI or Law and Order. Not one stinking bit. For one thing, the drab little room was nowhere near as comfortable or clean as the ones shown on TV. For another thing, the criminals on the shows never had to beg just to be allowed to go to the bathroom. Over the next four hours, Heidi was grilled by everyone from an impossibly young Coast Guard lieutenant to a tired-looking woman detective from the SDPD to a heavyset man from the freaking FBI. She wouldn’t have been surprised if the parade had included the mayor of San Diego, the Chargers’ defensive line, or the building janitor. She told them all the same thing. They’d seen the plane drop crates, saw the cigarette boat pick them up, then they’d been shot at and chased. She described the wreck ‘til she couldn’t talk over the tears. No, she hadn’t gotten a clear view of any of the shooters; she’d put her head down as soon as they’d started firing. No, there had been no name or numbers that she’d seen on the cigarette boat, which was white, she thought, though it could have been cream or even pale blue. It had been dark.
She explained that she’d been knocked out, hadn’t seen what happened to Brad. She even showed them the bruise on her temple to prove it, which earned her a rough examination from a Coast Guard medic and, thankfully, a couple of ibuprofen. Heidi also told her questioners about being rescued by Jake, and that he said he’d searched for Brad for a long time. She cried a lot, and by midafternoon her head was pounding so hard it felt like the building was falling in on her. They’d given her endless cups of coffee and bottles of water, but no food. The Oreos had been hours ago, and her stomach was cramping with hunger. Finally there was a knock on the door of the interrogation room.
“About done, Detective?” Her current interrogator was from the SDPD, Heidi thought. She’d long ago quit trying too hard to keep them straight. The current cop was forty-something, female, and determined to get Heidi to confess to something.
Bleary-eyed, she looked up at the door. Jake stood there, arms crossed and a foul look on his face. Next to him was the fresh-faced Coast Guard officer whom they’d spoken to first and a handsome, blond, thirty-something man in a charcoal gray suit. Heidi didn’t think she’d seen him before, though she couldn’t be entirely sure.
“There are still details I’d like to go over one more time,” the detective replied, clearly pissed at the interruption.
“I don’t think so, Detective,” the new guy replied with an easy—and wicked-looking—grin. His bright-green eyes narrowed as he stared her down. Heidi wouldn’t want to tangle with this guy. “Jurisdictional issues have been settled. This one’s mine.”
The detective raised one neatly arched eyebrow and shot him a dirty look. “Says who?” she sneered.
The other man waved a sheaf of paper. “Federal judge. Bye-bye now, Lydia.”
“We’ll see.” She stacked up her folders, turned off her recorder and added it to the pile. “Ms. Eriksen, I’m sure we’ll be meeting again. Meanwhil
e, please don’t attempt to leave town or anything else so foolish.” Then she stalked out, her silent flunky beside her and her sensible heels clattering on the linoleum.
“Doctor Eriksen,” Jake interjected in a low growl. Heidi just shook her head. Frankly she didn’t care if they called her Lassie, as long as they let her stretch her aching legs and found her some food.
“Thanks.” Heidi drained the last water bottle, thumped it back on the table. “I don’t suppose any of you have an aspirin handy, do you?” The ibuprofen had been about six hours earlier and had worn off a while ago. Her stomach growled loudly. “Or a sandwich.”
The guy in the suit turned toward the Coast Guard lieutenant. “You haven’t fed her?”
The younger man shrugged. “I tried, but the FBI and SDPD guys wouldn’t let me.”
Jake scowled even more as he stepped over and took Heidi’s arm to help her to her feet. She staggered a little as the blood flooded south, but he caught her, wouldn’t let her stumble in the few seconds it took her to regroup. “I’m taking her home now.” He glared at the suit. “You can talk to her tomorrow.”
The blond man eyed her dispassionately, then gave a single, crisp nod. “Fine. Your boat, nine a.m. sharp.”
“She’s not available until two o’clock.”
The other man smiled. “Noon, and I’ll bring the doughnuts.”
“Deal.”
Heidi didn’t argue with Jake’s speaking for her, not if it was getting her out of here. Doughnuts sounded good too. She signed a bunch of forms, listened to a handful of variations on the don’t-leave-town theme, then found herself on the front steps, still holding onto Jake’s arm.
“Jesus,” he muttered, lifting her chin as if to examine her face. “And they call dolphins animals.” He hugged her to his side with one arm, hailed a passing cab with the other. “What’s your address?”
She told him. She was just too wiped to argue about it. She didn’t argue when he paid for lunch at a Mexican drive-through, or the cab fare either. After all, her wallet was in a tent in Ensenada.
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