Dead Reckoning

“Are you sure it was Falks?” Antonio Garza asked. He leaned from his chair to scribble on his ever-present yellow legal pad.

Chris wrapped her fingers more tightly around her coffee cup and drew her legs onto the sofa. “I’m positive. No doubt.”

“I’m sorry, Chris,” Smitty said for the fourth time since he’d arrived.

Garza sighed. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine. Had I picked up my messages in time—”

“There’s plenty of blame to go around,” Chris remarked. “Galveston didn’t send a patrol car, you didn’t pick up your messages, Smitty isn’t clairvoyant, and I should have gotten a motel room once I got the impression Falks was stalking me. That’s not the point.” She set her cup on the table, finally able to trust her hands not to shake. “The point is I don’t know what Falks is doing.”

“I’ve got a call in to McLellan,” Garza told Smitty’s back. “He’s running Falks’s name to see if it comes up connected to Scintella.”

“You think Falks is stalking me because of Natalie?”

“The timing’s right,” Smitty said without turning.

“But he tried to run me down before I even found out what was going on with her,” Chris pointed out.

Garza’s head shake looked tired, resigned. “It’s still possible. Scare tactic. Scintella knows Natalie would call you for help if she needed it. Maybe he was trying to make sure you wouldn’t pick up the phone.”

“Yeah, but Falks missed that chance. Why is he stalking me on the ferry and then breaking into my boat? Why didn’t he just finish the job when he had the chance?”

Smitty’s shoulders stiffened. They sloped down from his linebacker neck, Chris noticed, as if worn down by a yoke of suffering. “Change of plans. Scintella found out Natalie called you. That’s why Falks called your cell. To let you know he knows.”

“Shit.” Chris scrubbed her hands over her face. “Then she’s in even more danger.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Smitty said to the window. “From your description, Falks was searching for something. You must have something he wants.”

Chris gave a short laugh in spite of herself. “You’ve seen this boat and what I drive. I don’t have anything of value.”

“Has Natalie sent you anything?” Smitty asked. “A box, a letter?”

“Nothing lately.” Nothing that had arrived yet, anyway. She straightened. “I’m supposed to get a package of clothes from her in a few days.”

“Clothes?”

Chris shrugged. “She likes giving me designer clothes.”

Smitty grunted. “Expensive hobby.”

“She can afford it.” Chris irritably swept her feet from the sofa to the floor and grabbed her coffee cup. Damn shakes were back. And she had work to do. But she still had questions. “So do you think Jerome’s ticked off about an Italian dress?”

“Maybe she’s sending you something valuable—like a document. Something incriminating.” Garza glanced at Smitty. “You know the way Scintella works. Could he have left a paper trail and his wife got hold of something?”

“Maybe,” Smitty conceded. “He’s not the brightest bulb in the candelabra.”

“Natalie could have dug something up to use against him,” Chris mused. “She’s scared, but she understands power.” She had, after all, wrapped their grandfather around her little finger.

Garza grunted. “Scintella’s not the kind of man you want to manipulate.”

Chris tried to tamp down the fresh fear rising through her stomach. “What if Falks wasn’t sent by Scintella? What if he’s just a random stalker?”

“He’s Scintella’s man.” Smitty crossed his lean, muscled arms. “I’ll be here 24/7.”

“But what does that mean for my sister?” Fear pierced her chest, making it hard to breathe. “If Jerome knows…”

Garza’s scar throbbed red above his ear. “Anything could happen, Ms. Hampton.” His gaze, when it met hers, lay heavy with the weight of his experience. He finds missing people, she remembered. How many had he found dead? How many mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters had he been forced to face?

Natalie could die, his gaze said. But it said more than that. Natalie could already be dead.

“I have to call her. She gave me a special number where I could reach her.”

Chris grabbed her cell from the table but before she could hit the speed dial, Garza said, “What reason are you going to give her for calling?”

Chris paused. He had a point. Why would she call in the middle of the night? Just to chat? Because she couldn’t sleep? The penalty for making Jerome even more suspicious was too high to pay just to assuage her anxiety.

“I’ll wait,” Chris said through her frustration. “Until morning.”

“Don’t mention the package,” Garza ordered. “If she’s managed to ship something on the sly, let’s not tip off Scintella.”

“This is going to turn into a waiting game, isn’t it?” Chris asked. “Waiting to call Natalie, waiting for the package, waiting to get under way.”

Garza’s half smile was sympathetic. “I’m sorry. It doesn’t get easier. But you have plenty to do in the meantime.”

“McLellan will arrive on Monday morning,” Smitty added.

“Can he help us work?” Chris asked, dragging her attention back to the task in front of her. First things first.

Smitty abruptly grinned his charming, lopsided grin. “You’ll see for yourself.”

“I hope so. We’ve got to launch in thirteen days,” she said, feeling her nerves prick the skin, itching to get things done, and done fast. “Time’s wasting.”

Outside, faint peach light colored the sky, and the resident green monk parrots, so social, so busy, had already begun to chatter up the dawn.

Late Monday afternoon, Chris lay on a catwalk stretched inches over oily bilge water, a rough-drawn map of Obsession’s hull in one hand and a flashlight in the other. She didn’t much care for poking around in the bilge, but necessity was a mother and there was no getting around it. Every through-hull—every hole in the boat that fed water into or out of the boat, through the hull—needed to be watertight. The last thing she needed was a hose to give way at sea.

She’d already suffered one setback. Bright and early this morning, Dave had had to confess the air compressor on his spray-painting equipment had failed. No hull painting, he’d said, until the new compressor came in on Thursday morning. And the other boatyards were booked up because it was prime boating season. It was one of the ironies of pleasure boating: no one wanted to fix up their boats until it was weather-fit to use them, which meant they lost half the season to repairs.

But not repairs like the kind she was going to have to do now.

At least Natalie had called yesterday. Three minutes away from the bodyguard she called Igor was all Natalie could grab. While in a public pay toilet, no less. The disposable cell phones she’d bought were extremely handy. Chris just prayed she didn’t get caught with one.

First things first.

The bilge’s overhead lamps cast dim vee’s along the catwalk. Glad I’m not claustrophobic, she thought as she shimmied on her stomach a little farther forward toward the hardest-to-reach through-hull fitting. Damp mustiness filled her nostrils, made her skin clammy despite the growing morning heat. Around her, color-coded wiring and grimy hoses snaked along the hull. A few feet of belly-crawling brought her even with the fitting she was looking for.

The through-hull, placed several feet away on the starboard side, looked pretty rough from the catwalk. The flashlight picked out minute cracks in the hose that fed seawater into the engines’ cooling systems. The clamps securing the hose in place showed specks of rust, too. Chris wiggled off the catwalk and balanced herself over the bilge to get close to the fitting. One good yank and the clamp snapped. Another yank and the hose popped off the through-hull barb. She looked at the crumbling heavy-duty rubber. Were all the hoses this bad?

“Captain Chris?”

A man’s deep voice drifted through Obsession’s dimly lit bowels.

Her stomach clenched until she realized Eugene Falks wouldn’t be casually calling her name. No, this had to be a workman or something. She’d seen the revolver Smitty wore in his shoulder holster this morning and the way his gaze constantly flicked from door to window while he tore out the salon carpet. Nobody was going to get past Smitty upstairs while she lay prone down here.

She leaned against the hull wall to lever herself back onto the catwalk. Nearly there, her hand slipped from the hull and plunged into the bilge. The flashlight clattered, then splashed next to her and went out.

“Dammit.” She fished the dead flashlight out of the filthy bilge water, trying not to use her imagination when her fingers touched solid, shifting objects near the bottom. God only knew what was down there.

“Chris?”

The man was close by, inside the engine room, and still calling her name. She crawled backward to the open crawl space door. Going ass-first into the engine room wouldn’t be much of a greeting for the workman, but what the hey. He could learn to call before showing up.

She wriggled her butt through the hatch, got to her knees, straightened and said sharply, “What is it?”

The first thing she saw was an astonishing pair of gray eyes, very pale irises rimmed with a much darker slate. The man squatted about a foot from the hatch. They were nearly nose to nose, and his gaze pumped every ounce of blood in her body straight to her core.

She registered all of this at once: he hadn’t asked permission to board her yacht, he was in his late thirties, he wore expensive Italian leather shoes, she was smeared with grease and oil, he had thick black hair, her right hand was now bleeding, he smelled wonderful.

Not your average Galveston boat monkey schlepping down to a job.

“Special Agent McLellan?” she asked.

“Connor.” His remarkable eyes gleamed at her, kicking her pulse into high gear.

“Smitty said you’d show up today.”

“He told me you’d had some excitement.” His voice resounded through the engine room. “He also showed me around a little upstairs.”

Chris got to her feet, then closed the bilge hatch. “Obsession’s not much to look at right now,” she said as she looked around for a shop rag to wipe off with, “but she’s built like a tank.”

“I noticed.”

She glanced up to find him staring at Hortense. “You won’t have to worry about the engines. Detroits were made for tough lives. Some built back in the fifties and sixties are still powering shrimpers and tow boats. Hell,” she said, running the dirty cloth over her arm, “these old ladies will outlive me.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“Come on upstairs. I’m ready to look at some daylight.”

He followed her out of the port engine room into the lower deck passageway. “Will all this need to be fixed, too?” He waved a hand at the crumbling wall panels.

“Eventually. Hold your ears.” She shoved the engine room door closed and winced at the metal-on-metal shriek. “Sorry about that. Out of WD-40. The two aft staterooms here were actually in decent shape when I got her, very livable. Mine’s on your right. The one on the left needs a little work.”

She opened her door to flash him a glimpse of her queen-size bed and wall of drawers. The mariner’s compass quilt stretched across the bed’s foot. Two frilly, decorative pillows, a nod less to traditional femininity than to homeyness, lay propped up against the real ones.

He stepped closer, caught the door as she was about to close it. “Very nice,” he said, leaning in.

Chris suddenly realized just how big he was, how his shoulders filled the narrow space they stood in. What was she thinking, showing him her private space? She stepped back to cue McLellan to do the same, then closed the door when he let go. “You and Smitty can fight over the other big cabin.”

She headed for the stairs, tapping doors as she passed them. “Engine rooms, starboard and port. Laundrette. Crew cabin, for the loser.” She turned right up the steps to the upper passageway. When he reached the hall, she pointed to a forward door. “Another crew cabin, smaller than the one below. And behind it, the office.”

She stood at the edge of the salon, looked at the disaster that was once merely a fashion-challenged salon. All of the ratty brown Naugahyde furniture had been shoved onto the aft deck, waiting for a landfill run. The good furniture—the mahogany tables, the brass lamps, a mahogany bench seat with a hand-embroidered cushion—sat on old blankets in the galley. A shirtless Smitty was hoisting a roll of torn and ugly carpet onto his bare shoulder.

“How’s the flooring?” she asked.

Smitty grinned under his rime of dirt. “Solid as a rock. Marine planking. Thirty years old and still has the battleship gray primer.” He headed toward the aft door with his filthy carpet mangle, but paused long enough to say to McLellan, “Change your clothes, boy. You gonna git yo’ ass in gear for a change.”

McLellan raised a brow, unruffled in his crisp white dress shirt and dark slacks. He looked pointedly at the brown carpet strips hanging over Smitty’s bare chest like a furry vest. “Staple some of that to your chest and you’ll stop having woman problems,” he remarked mildly.

“Hey,” Smitty called from the aft deck, “don’t go south with the mouth, pretty boy.”

McLellan just shrugged.

“Have a seat.” Chris waved at the bench seat as she threaded her way through the tables to the galley sink. “I’ll wash up and be right with you.”

“Smitty said there’s a lot of work to be done.” McLellan came to stand by the island counter that separated the galley from the salon. “He told me you were very resourceful.” He paused.

She glanced up at him and found his gaze thoughtful, considering. And admiring as it slid from her chin to her collarbone, then lower. She realized suddenly the thread-bare tank top and satin demi-bra she wore for hot and dirty boat work showed almost as much as they concealed.

Then he murmured, “I see there was much he didn’t say.” He went on, “For one thing, I didn’t expect Obsession to be so…” He trailed off, looking around the profoundly empty salon, as though he expected to find his vocabulary there.

Chris dried off while she waited for him to finish.

He didn’t. Instead he asked, “What does she weigh?”

“About a hundred thousand pounds.”

“Stout lady,” he said, nearly under his breath.

“She was built in the days when fiberglass was new and the boatyards were afraid of underbuilding. Her hull’s about twice as thick as it needs to be.”

“And a classic design.” He nodded to himself, obviously pleased, and turned from the galley to the salon.

His masculine grace as he strode away reminded her of the world her grandfather had lived in with his antiques gallery, his art, his clothes, his money. The world she didn’t belong in and never would.

Smitty might not look like a DEA agent, but neither did McLellan. This one at least had the air of command, but not the militaristic bearing she associated with state troopers. Different breed, she guessed. A rich one, given the way he dressed. She wondered which of them was the boss and decided on McLellan, who apparently didn’t have a nickname. And didn’t need one.

As she joined him in the salon’s center, he turned to her. “This boat’s very beautiful.”

“She will be.”

“Is everything on schedule?” His gaze sharpened as it roamed over the cracked windows, dingy wall panels and bare floor.

“So far. The boatyard can do the big jobs, but not all of it. My timetable says we need to splash next Friday. That means everybody pitches in.” She eyed the impeccable crease in his slacks. “If you’re up to it.”

McLellan shoved his hands into his pockets, relaxed and clearly at home. “I’m up to it. Always glad to learn something new.”

Chris paused, trying to figure out how to say what she needed to say. “Thank you for letting me be a part of this.”

His eyes darkened slightly. “Against my better judgment, but Falks’s attack on you tells me you’re the key to this mission. It’ll be dangerous but we’ll keep you safe.” He looked at Chris for a long, somber moment, as if he could see past her tough facade as easily as he could see past the salon’s water-stained wall panels to the strong framework beneath. Then he said softly, “We’ll bring your sister home.”

Sudden tears threatened but she blinked them back, turned slightly to study the stout and faithful flooring. She’d concentrated for the past five days on the effort, the plan. Keeping the schedule. It was all she’d allow herself to think about. Never beyond that. Never to what if Jerome finds out, or what if he sends more goons to stop them, or what if Jerome skips the island and goes straight to South America?

Or, heaven forbid, what if he’s already killed Natalie?

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