It was one man’s word against another’s.

What if McLellan was the mole, as Smitty claimed?

Ignoring the bolt of regret that shot through her, Chris slipped back into the engine room. This place she knew. There was a certainty to it, not like people. A machine either worked or didn’t in predictable ways.

She could do her part and make sure the device she’d discovered—a device that put suspicion on both men—actually was a transponder. Kneeling next to the tool chest, she made two quick slashes with a craft knife through the block of white sealant securing the box to the floor. Her fingernails just fit inside the slash. She pulled up gently. The box rose slightly as the remaining sealant flexed and gave. Perfect. She’d be able to cut the transponder loose later, maybe park it someplace where it’d confuse whoever was following them.

A satisfied smile welled up in her soul. Oh, if it came right down to it, she could cause a helluva lot of confusion—no matter who was lying to her.

Dear Reader,

Yes, I really can change the fuel filter on a 6V53 Detroit diesel engine! When I was advised to “write what you know,” the first thing that came to my mind was to write a story about a woman and her boat. I’m definitely not Chris Hampton—licensed captain, intrepid sailor—though my partner usually asks me to pretend to be “Captain Chris” when a hard-to-reach impeller needs to be pulled off the engine’s backside. That, of course, requires me to lie spread-eagle across the engine with my head stuck down in the hold and a pair of pliers in my hand. Evil man.

Perhaps one day we’ll head out on our beloved thirty-eight-foot motor yacht for our own ocean-going adventure and I’ll write a different kind of book, but in the meantime, I have plenty of other stories to tell.

I hope you enjoy the adventure. Let me know if you do! I love reader feedback. E-mail me at feedback@sandrakmoore.com.

Fair winds,

Sandra K. Moore

Dead Reckoning
Sandra K. Moore

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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SANDRA K. MOORE

moved from Texas to Wyoming to be closer to the mountains. Summer means hiking, and autumn, camping. “During the long cold winters,” she says, “I slide down ski slopes until I have squeezed all the winter out of spring.”

For my wonderful editor, Stacy Boyd,

who believed in this story long after I’d stopped.

And for the crews of Moonstruck,

No Worries, Chances R, Troubadour,

Compromise and Salsero. Fair winds.

Acknowledgments

My sincere gratitude to:

Dave Allen of TNT Yacht Repair, for his matter-of-fact, down-to-earth lessons on boat anatomy (and no, I still haven’t gotten around to cleaning the raw water intake filters);

Lem Powell, retired Galveston police officer and College of the Mainland handgun instructor, for introducing me to the lovely Ruger 9 mm;

and Ann Peake, Sandy Thomas and Dawn Temple, for their unfailing patience and piercing insights, even when reading the same chapter over and over and over….

For further reading on boating adventures and other topics mentioned in this book, a complete bibliography is posted at http://www.sandrakmoore.com/deadreckoning/.

Any factual errors are entirely mine.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 1

“Fifty bucks says I finish first!”

Chris Hampton squinted against her racing sailboat’s bow spray to eye her nearest competitor.

A few yards away and slightly astern, Dave Mitchell’s identical Laser sailboat clipped through the bay waves, gaining. Sitting sideways, he leaned backward to keep the sail upright and full of wind. He grinned over his broad shoulder at her, his brown ponytail flying like a banner. “You don’t stand a chance!”

A gust of wind snatched her laugh. She adjusted the tiller. “Put your money where your mouth is!”

“Make it a hundred and you’re on!”

“Deal!”

Chris loosened the main sheet to put more curve in the sail. Her Laser had the wind behind her and wallowed a little in the light chop of the inlet feeding into Galveston Bay. Another spray of water leaped up onto her back, soaking her black-and-royal-blue wet suit, chilling her. She blew water droplets from her nose and settled down to her sailing. Dave had beaten her twice this season. Let him win this last race of the series and lose a Ben Franklin? No way.

Just a hundred yards to the final buoy and then the sprint for the finish. Dave was the closest sailor, but a few yards behind him lurked the kid called Ferret. Ferret not only had his namesake’s sharp features and close-set eyes, he had a habit of weaseling between boats. The kid was a born tactician and Chris didn’t underestimate him. Behind them, the rest of the racers jockeyed for better wind. At the buoy she’d just cornered, the committee boat, a twenty-five-foot cabin cruiser, signaled the race course’s ending point.

Chris ducked her head to look under the Laser’s boom at the big orange buoy marking the final leg. Fair running, but she’d have her hands full once she rounded the marker. She’d take the wind almost directly on the nose in a close beat to the finish.

She glanced over at Dave. His Laser skimmed easily beside hers and she was beginning to see more of his back than his side as he drew even. Come on, she goaded him. I’m going to bury you right here in this race.

One boat length. That’s all she needed. Heart pounding, she nudged her boat a little further to starboard, closer to Dave. A fresh wind gust cooled the side of her neck. She tightened the main just a touch as the wind strengthened. Her little sailboat leaped ahead as Dave fell back. He was slowing to tack, but she’d chance a spill to gain some distance in the turn.

The buoy sped toward her. As her boat came even with it, she pulled on the tiller and ducked while switching sides of the boat. The sail’s boom swung over her head into position on the port side. She yanked the mainsheet taut as the Laser pivoted, stalled and lifted its starboard side—where Chris now perched—out of the water. Chris leaned backward, fighting not to fall forward as the boat tipped her into a standing position.

“Come on, baby!” she coaxed.

The light sailboat hovered on edge, perfectly balanced. Chris braced her feet on the gunwale and leaned farther back. The boat couldn’t take another inch. For a split second, Chris felt the boat tip past the sweet spot.

The wind eased. The Laser paused, then dropped back onto her bottom. Chris scrambled to adjust her weight. The sail snapped twice, then caught the breeze. The Laser shot away from the buoy.

“Woohoo!” she heard Ferret yell. “Bitchin’ corner!”

Chris grinned, adrenaline surging. The fastest turn she’d ever tried. And the luckiest. She glanced back. Dave’s hull rocked bottom-up. He was out of their little match race. Easy hundred bucks for her. Ferret’s Laser shot past Dave’s bobbing head and executed a picture-perfect tack.

Now it was just her against Ferret for the finish. She tightened the main, trying to get a little more speed out of the Laser. The boat had her shoulder in, really cranking, nipping through the little wave tops. The finish mark was only a couple hundred yards away.

The high whine of a small powerboat’s outboard engine, like a giant mosquito, cut through the rushing wind. Chris glanced around but saw nothing. It wasn’t the committee boat, which had a gutsier inboard. Just somebody out on the inlet for a joy ride. The next moment, Ferret shouted something incomprehensible. She’d gotten too far ahead to hear him. She licked the salt from her lips and glanced again. Nothing but the committee boat, horn blowing. She ducked to look under the sail and froze.

A power runabout, maybe twice her boat’s length and much, much heavier, sped toward her. A hundred yards away but closing fast on an intercept course.

Her heart lurched. If she dropped the sail, she’d stop but couldn’t maneuver. The runabout, a flash of red-and-white fiberglass against blue sky and water, bore down, engine screaming. The driver frantically waved his arms, yelling. Chris caught the word “steering,” but nothing else.

“Kill the motor!” Ferret shouted. “Hit the kill switch!”

Chris had to change direction. A tack wouldn’t do it. It’d have to be a dangerous jibe, letting the wind completely control the boom’s movement and position. She turned the Laser away from the wind. The little boat pivoted its nose toward the runabout, then back toward Ferret.

“Come on!” she shouted at the wind. A gust caught the mainsail. Chris ducked. The boom snapped from port to starboard with killing speed. The Laser lurched, then heeled over. Pointed back toward the other racers, it slowly started moving.

A flash of red. The driver’s voice, high-pitched, shouted. She glanced over. The runabout had been headed toward her forward position. Now it veered toward her again. Its bow grew quickly as it bore down on her. The driver’s thin face stretched wide in a grimace of fear. Her fingers fumbled for her life jacket’s straps. She yanked the vest off. A sickening gust of gasoline-scented air rushed over her. Her gut clenched. He was going to hit her. She didn’t stand a chance.

She dove.

Cool water shocked her skin, tore her breath away. She stroked hard for the bottom. Water filled her ears, blunted her hearing, but overhead, fiberglass thudded and cracked on fiberglass. Instinctively, she ducked. The runabout’s sharp-bladed propeller churned and roared over the little sailboat, chewing it up.

She turned and opened her eyes to stinging salt and murky, silty water. Torn pieces of her Laser drifted down. The sail eased and billowed like a giant jellyfish, tugged toward the bottom by the wrenched mast. The runabout’s roar faded, lowered an octave, then quit. Her life jacket floated idly on the surface, its stuffing protruding from the blade-sliced neoprene.

Chris stroked upward. Surfacing, she sucked in air and shook the water from her stinging eyes. Her body trembled, hungry for air and warmth.

“Chris!” someone shouted. “Chris!”

She raised her arm, kept it up like a beacon. “I’m okay!”

The committee boat moved cautiously toward her. Its pilot killed his engine as he drew near and pivoted the boat. When the swim ladder came into view, she side-stroked over and climbed onto the platform.

“Not hurt?” Gus Perkins asked, giving her a hand into the open cockpit. He held her shoulders for a moment in his gnarled hands as his gaze swept her head to toe.

“Nah. Scared. But that’s it.” She shrugged him off, then shoved aside a boat hook and a stack of flags so she could collapse on the vinyl bench and concentrate on breathing. Her eyes watered when she sniffed and salt water shot up her nose. She cleared her throat. “Where’d that guy come from?”

Gus’s weather-beaten face screwed itself into even more wrinkles as he hoisted the blue-and-white checked Abandon Race flag. “Hell if I know. Guys like him shouldn’t have a boat. Didn’t know how to kill the engine. Dangerous bastard.”

Chris tried to comb her fingers through her tangled hair. “I agree completely. Let’s go have a chat with him.”

“Wait just a minute. Let’s make sure you’re all right.”

“I am.”

“Well, you might think so, but you nearly got killed, so let’s just take a minute here.” Gus disappeared into the cruiser’s tiny cabin and came back with a massive towel. “Dry off some. Take it easy.”

Chris took the towel. “I’m really—”

“Let’s make sure you’re all right.” He grabbed his navy Houston Astros cap off his head, ran his hand over his bald head and replaced the cap. “Let’s wait for the police.”

The cruiser bobbed soothingly. The runabout, now dead in the water, its bow gouged and scraped, drifted aimlessly. Its driver clutched his face with his hands. The Lasers, race abandoned, rushed back to the clubhouse like a flock of scared seabirds. Dave and Ferret were tacking their way over to the cruiser.

Chris scrubbed her face with the surprisingly soft towel. Gus was right. Relax. She breathed deep, the towel covering her face. Her heart, she realized now, still raced. Her arms and legs still tingled. Adrenaline. Reaction. Reflex. The sailboat would be settling into the inlet’s mud bottom, shattered.

As she would be, had she not jumped.

Her chest abruptly warmed. Not now, she told herself. No crying. It was all over and she was safe. What would be the point in crying? It was bad enough her hands were shaking. Why did she suddenly feel so weak? She took another deep breath from the towel.

Only then did she recognize the scent. Peaches. Like the sachets her mother had used. Her parents’ house had smelled like peaches until Chris had turned eleven, when she and her sister had gone to live with Granddad.

Chris dragged the towel from her face and mopped the back of her neck. No wonder she felt weak. She didn’t need another reminder of that loss. She’d had a reminder every day growing up, every day she’d gone downstairs to have breakfast with Granddad and Natalie—his beloved “real” granddaughter—and confronted his resentment. His message was clear: You’re not flesh and blood. You’re not welcome here.

At least Natalie had always treated Chris like a real sister. Chris was ten when Natalie surprised their parents by being carried to term. Natalie, though impressionable, had never picked up their grandfather’s disdain for Chris.

Chris tossed the towel on the seat. Screw self-pity, she thought. Her adoptive parents’ love, when they were alive, had more than made up for the old man’s attitude when they were gone. And she’d become stronger, more focused, from constantly battling to live the life she wanted. Her life with her grandfather was just the luck of the draw. She wiped a rivulet of salt water from her temple. Chris believed in making her own luck. Like she had ten minutes ago.

“Galveston’s here,” Gus said from his captain’s chair.

Chris watched the green-and-white Galveston Bay police boat glide up to the dead runabout. One cop eased the boat near the red-striped runabout and the other rigged lines to lash the two boats together.

The driver looked up then. Even at fifty yards’ distance, she saw how thin he was. How shaken up. His white face a mask frozen with that same grimace of fear. Dread oozed through her stomach and lifted bile into her throat.

“You still want to go over and give that guy a piece of your mind?” Gus asked.

The thought of listening to the man’s stammering apology sent a shiver down her spine. What good would it do to hear him say he was sorry? It wouldn’t erase what had happened. Chris shook her head. “I just want to go home.”

She couldn’t, though. She had to give her statement to the police first, then watch a salvage crew pluck her destroyed boat from the inlet’s waters while she stood hugging herself against a delayed onset of the shakes. The runabout driver, the police told her, would be severely fined for operator neglect. Because neither competency tests nor licenses were required for powerboat use, as Chris well knew, the driver would be free to take his runabout onto the bay again whenever he wanted, after he took the U.S. Coast Guard’s Power Squadron course. Like defensive driving, but with a better chance of actually teaching the violator something he didn’t know.

After finishing up with the authorities, she walked outside the racing club, where Dave sat on the porch step, waiting for his ride home. “Stick a fork in me,” she told him.

He stood as she joined him. “Think he’ll pay for the Laser?”

She shrugged. “If he doesn’t, his insurance better. I’m putting the cash directly into Obsession.” Chris jerked open her ancient Chevy pickup’s driver side door. “That dead sailboat will pay for a lot of yacht repairs.” She scooted onto the still-warm vinyl bench seat and shoved her gear bag onto the middle floorboard, away from the rusty patch under the accelerator where she could see the asphalt.

“Helluva way for the last race to end,” Dave commented as he slid in.

Chris turned the key with hands that still shook a little. She concentrated on how the big 454 rumbled, smooth as butter, and felt some of the residual fear drain away. She smiled at Dave. “I guess I don’t get my hundred bucks.”

He winked. “You might get a break on your tub’s yard bill.”

“I’ll take what I can get,” Chris said, thinking about the decrepit motor yacht she now lived aboard—the only material possession her wealthy grandfather had left her at his death nine months before. The big girl sat on boatyard jack stands for her very first maintenance while in Chris’s custody. Living aboard while the yacht was propped up on dry land wasn’t a particularly pleasant experience. The yacht’s AC system was water-cooled and with no water under the hull, no air-conditioning. Besides, the yacht’s soothing rock on the sometimes restive tidal bay was better than any lullaby.

“How far’d you get today while I was in town?” Chris asked as she pulled into traffic.

“Her bottom’s painted. Topside polish tomorrow, hull polish on Friday.”

“She needs a hull painting, not a polish.”

“Ain’t that the truth. But she’s pretty sharp for a hunk o’ junk.”

“She’d clean up a lot nicer if I had some real money for repairs.”

“You could say that about every gorgeous lady.”

Chris cranked down the pickup’s window. Gorgeous might one day in the far, far future describe Obsession, but it certainly didn’t describe Chris, a scruffy dishwater blonde with too boyish a figure and a brain made for breaking down and rebuilding engines. Natalie was a different story, the spitting image of their long-dead grandmother—wide almond-shaped eyes, an exotic and sumptuous beauty and a flirtatious way with men and money.

When Chris had pulled into the boatyard parking lot and stopped the pickup, Dave grasped her hand. “Are you gonna be okay tonight?” he asked.

She let her fingers lie in his for a moment—he was a good friend and always there to help—before she pulled free. “Yeah. It scared me, but I’m okay.” When his brows registered doubt, she smiled. “Really. Stop worrying.”

“Call me if you need me. I mean it. Any time.”

“I will.” She kicked open the Chevy’s rusty door, then scowled as teenaged boys—two Hispanic, one white—sprinted across the yard in front of her. They ducked under a sailboat’s hull and disappeared. “What are those hooligans doing now?” she muttered. “Don’t you have a policy against letting kids run around a working boatyard?”

“They’re harmless.” Dave cranked his door open. “They haven’t stolen anything.”

“Yet.” Chris grabbed her gear bag from the floorboard. “When do you think Obsession will splash?”

“Saturday at the soonest.”

“Good. I’m ready to have her back in the water where she belongs.”

He swung out of the truck. “You got any charters lined up yet?”

“I’ve got to get her dressed up a little before I can start the day cruises, probably another month,” she called over the cab. “It’ll be next year before she’s ready for the pricey weekenders and vacation cruises.”

“Sounds like a lot of cash.”

“I’ll get there eventually.”

“You could take out a loan to get her in shape right away,” he said as he rounded the Chevy’s blunt nose to stand next to her.

“Using what as collateral? I don’t own anything. Besides, I don’t like being in debt.” Sure, she’d saved a lot of money living at her grandfather’s, which she’d done mostly to please Natalie, but she’d used much of those savings to overhaul the engines and get Obsession truly seaworthy. She was living off the rest until she was ready to launch her charter business.

Dave nodded, then squinted at the sky glowing yellow, tingeing into orange. “Will you be okay living aboard in the yard another few days?”

“Yeah. I’ve got box fans.”

“If you get hot,” and he winked, “you know where I live.”

She smiled as she shrugged her bag onto her shoulder. Dave waved and strode off to the shabby apartments adjacent to the marina. A moment later, only seagull cries and the occasional metallic clang of a loose sailboat halyard slapping its mast pierced the air. Early evening, the sun was just thinking about dropping behind the western shed housing the covered boat slips. Seagulls arced overhead, headed home.

Chris walked past the line of small boats propped on jack stands in dry dock. At the yard’s end, Obsession loomed over them. The yacht’s deep-V hull gave her a beefy, broad-shouldered attitude. In the water, she was a large boat. Out of it, she was a behemoth.

Dave had been right. The fresh coat of black bottom paint made her look good, at least from the bottom down, kind of like a nice pair of heels on a bag lady. But it was a start. Beneath the bent railings and chalky fiberglass, the cracked windows and dubious plumbing, a grande dame waited to emerge. Chris ran her hand along the yacht’s side as she walked toward the tall ladder that led up to the aft deck.

Home.

Chris knew in her bones the old man had intended the yacht to be an insult but he didn’t know Chris. And he certainly hadn’t known she’d love the boat at first sight. The yacht was fundamentally sound—solid hull, reliable engines, no severe water damage—despite being neglected for the better part of two decades. For Chris, abandoning her offshore rig mechanical engineering job to get her captain’s license had merely traded one hands-on skill for another.

The old man had hoped to leave her a money pit but she’d turn his insult into a gift if it killed her.

After living aboard since her grandfather passed away, she could tell which bilge pump was running by sound, when the water tanks needed freshening by smell, and when the engine oil needed changing by feel. She’d crawled all over the yacht—into every bilge area, into every nasty, stinking little hole—to see for herself what needed to be done. Now if only she had a lot more cash, she’d be able to do almost all of the restoration work herself.

Just over seventy feet from bowsprit to swim platform, Obsession had been built along the lines of the old classic motor yachts. From the bow, the pilothouse, which contained the lower helm station, swept back to the main living area. The living area had a facing dinette and galley, and behind them a salon—a living room, as Chris explained to landlubber friends—that stretched the width of the boat’s interior. Further aft, the salon’s rear sliding door opened onto a spacious covered deck. Atop the pilothouse and salon was the bridge deck, where Chris planned to steer at the upper helm during nice weather. Down in Galveston, that was ten months out of the year. Most of the sleeping quarters were below, deep in the hull: two large cabins and two crew cabins.

She swung up the ladder to the aft deck and dropped her bag on the teak table she’d recently coaxed from weathered and stained back into golden glory. Her first varnish attempt, and it looked pretty darn good. Now if only the rest of her “little projects” would go as well.

Her heirloom quilt drooped across a pair of deck chairs in the shade, drying after a careful hand wash early that morning. She tested the material between her thumb and forefinger. Yes, nearly dry, the fabric just as fine and solid as the day she and her mother had pulled it from the quilting frame after months of hand stitching. Chris traced the intricate mariner’s compass that emblazoned the exact center like a bull’s-eye. Funny how all things come together, she thought. Never in a million years would she have imagined at the age of eight that she’d live on a boat or drape the mariner’s compass across her stateroom bed or have earned her captain’s license.

Snagging a bottled water from the minifridge, she settled into a third deck chair and tried not to see visions of her destroyed life jacket, its yellow-white stuffing sticking out like a half-popped kernel of corn. At least her hands had stopped shaking.

Her cell trilled and she fished it out of her bag with a sigh. The screen flashed UNKNOWN. Probably Natalie, calling from overseas on the never-ending, globe-hopping honeymoon.

Natalie, perfect granddaughter that she was, had followed their grandfather’s wishes and married a rich businessman. It was like Natalie to do it a mere two months after meeting the guy at the old man’s funeral. There’d been plenty of business acquaintances, but Natalie had latched onto the blond bodybuilder type’s arm and held on with a bulldog persistence that somehow managed to be both feminine and suitably mournful. Predictably, she had failed to introduce him to her sister.

It was like Natalie to get everything she wanted at the drop of a hat, Chris thought. And she had impeccable timing, too, always knowing when Chris would be home and available to talk.

“Chris?” echoed hollowly over the connection when she picked up.

“Hey, Natalie. Where are you this time?”

Natalie gave a slightly breathless laugh. “Rome! I never thought I’d be here. It’s gorgeous. You’d love it!”

“Last week France, this week Italy,” Chris said, feeling the accident’s presence fade from the edges of her mind at Natalie’s energetic voice. “Where to next?”

“Who knows? Jerome always surprises me. Greece, I’m hoping. They’ve got some great bazaars there.”

“Shoes and designer dresses, right? Scarves and figurines and upholstery fabric? Not that you need to upholster anything,” Chris teased. “You don’t stay in one place long enough. At least you’re out of the Far East.”

“Hey, we’ll make it back to the States. Eventually. But wait till you see the clothes I’m shipping to you. Don’t you dare wear them to work on that awful boat.”

Chris grimaced. “Frilly girlie-girl wear.”

“A more feminine style, yeah.” Natalie laughed again. “Something that shows off your legs, proves you have a waist, attracts men. You know.”

Chris let her groan signal the end of that bit of conversation. “Tell me about Rome.”

“You’d love it. Crammed full of smelly little cars and everyone driving too fast. Jerome says he’s never seen chaos on the road like this.”

“Sounds like Houston,” Chris remarked dryly. “Except the cars are SUVs here. How is Jerome? Still treating you like a queen?”

“You know how it goes.” Natalie’s voice dropped. “Sometimes the honeymoon’s over even when it’s not.”

Chris frowned. The strained note in Natalie’s lowered voice was always the first clue that something huge was going on. Had it truly been nothing, she would have laughed it off. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s okay, really.” A pause, then she said brightly, “Rome is so gorgeous. I’d love for you to see it.”

Chris hesitated a beat. Natalie typically spoke her mind, no dancing around the subject. Did her avoidance of the question mean she couldn’t talk about it? Was she afraid of something?

An old protective instinct flared in Chris. “Tell me more.”

“It’s a place you’d have to see for yourself. In person.”

Meaning Natalie wanted her to come to Rome?

The silence was filled only by a rush, like holding a seashell to the ear. Natalie finally said, “This connection is crap. Let me call you another time.”

The phone died. What the hell? Chris stared at the flashing numbers onscreen for a moment. The connection had been fine, so why had Natalie hung up on her? She put the phone down. With no caller ID, with no number to call, Chris couldn’t call her back.

Her cell trilled again and Chris snatched it up. “Natalie?”

“Yeah, it’s me. I had to switch phones, get outside.” Behind her voice, faint road noise: a car engine growling up a hill, tires hissing on wet pavement.

“What’s going on?”

“I guess I didn’t really know Jerome when I married him,” Natalie confessed, her voice now at normal volume. “You hear about men changing after they get married, and he’s one of them.”

“Changing how?” Chris rose from her deck chair, too keyed up to sit.

“He used to be proud of other men looking at me and making comments, but now…” Natalie sniffed. “At first it was just little things. We’d be at a friend’s party and he’d smart off to another man when the guy said something about how I looked. Just a compliment, nothing out of line. I told Jerome he was being silly. I married him because I wanted to be with him. Period. That would usually settle him down, but then after a while it didn’t.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this when it was happening?” Chris asked, trying not to sound accusing.

“Because it’s a drag. I know you, Chris. You’d just worry about me and it wasn’t that bad.”

“And now?”

“It’s worse,” Natalie admitted, her voice quavering a little. “He got into a fight last month, nearly got arrested for punching out the party host. He’d been drinking, which never helps. Now we don’t go to any parties at all. A bunch of his friends who were traveling with us left last week and went off on their own trip.”

“Is he treating you badly?” Chris paced to the railing, stared unseeing over the boatyard.

“He won’t let me go anywhere without either him or one of his bodyguards. I have to take a bodyguard with me when I go shopping and the whole time the guy’s watching to make sure no one even looks at me the wrong way. I can’t even go pee without asking his permission.” Natalie sniffed again. “I used to think having a bodyguard would be fun. You know, a status thing. But it’s more like being in prison.”

Chris scrubbed her face with her hand. Yes, Natalie would think having a bodyguard would be “a status thing.” She’d directly inherited their grandfather’s penchant for power, except now she was seeing firsthand what that kind of power, misused, could do.

“Have you talked to him about it?” Chris asked. “Told him you don’t like having a guard?”

“He won’t listen. I can’t get through to him.”

Just like their grandfather. “What are your plans?” Chris asked.

“We’re spending another three weeks or so in Europe, then flying to some private island one of his business associates owns.”

“Private island? Where?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere south of Florida. I don’t really care about it. Just a bunch of guys drinking and fishing.”

“Visit me instead, then. It feels like forever since I’ve seen you. Let Jerome go to his buddy’s private island and you come here.”

“I can’t. I mean, I want to, but Jerome…he has plans and we have to keep to his schedule. He’s doing a lot of business and I need to be with him. You know.”

No, I don’t, Chris thought, annoyed with this man she’d only ever seen at a distance. Why did they have to get married in London? Without family present? Why would he care if Natalie saw her sister? “Can’t he give you a couple of days to see me? It’s not much time. And it’s not like it’s a horde of people. Just me.”

“You don’t know Jerome very well.” Then the connection echo was so bad Chris heard her say, “Neither did I” twice.

Chris suppressed a sharp retort. Yes, Natalie had acted, as usual, on impulse. Last year, it was the Jaguar. The year before that, the high-priced condo. In both cases, Chris had managed to get Natalie out of the deal during the three-day grace period. But buyer’s remorse wasn’t so easy to remedy when you suddenly realized you were married to the wrong man. And bitching Natalie out about it now wouldn’t help.

“Listen,” she said instead, “why don’t you and Jerome stop here before going to the island?”

“That’s not a good idea.” The strained note was back.

“Why not?” When Natalie didn’t answer, Chris’s stomach felt heavy. “Why not?” she asked again.

“I told him I wanted to see you and he…didn’t like it.”

Chris took a deep breath. “What do you mean?”

Silence.

“Talk to me, Natalie.”

After a moment, she said, “He…really…didn’t like it. Look, it’s nothing.”

“Nat,” and Chris’s breath curled with dread as she forced herself to say the words, “is he hitting you?”

“I—I should get off the phone.”

Fighting down the rage threatening to boil up in her chest, Chris made an effort to speak calmly. “Listen to me. Are you listening?”

“Y-yes.”

“Is he hitting you?”

Natalie’s indrawn breath shuddered over the line. “Just that once.”

“Goddammit!”

“It was just one time, Chris,” she cried, her voice high, rattled. “He didn’t mean it. And it’s not like he broke anything—”

“There’s no excuse. None.” Chris gripped the mahogany railing so tightly her finger bones ached. “Do you want to come home?”

“He’d never—”

“I don’t care about him. I’m asking about you. Do you want to come home?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Natalie said in a low voice, tears clogging her voice. “He won’t let me. I tried once. That’s when he got so angry and he…” She hiccupped a sob. “He’s jealous of everybody. Even you. He knows how close we are.”

“Oh, God, Nat.”

“I have to get off the phone before he comes outside. We have to move again.”

“Move again? What do you mean?”

Natalie’s breath hitched as she inhaled. “He won’t stay in one place for more than one night. I never know until he comes home and then we pack up and go. Or sometimes he just calls and I have to go meet him.”

“What the hell does he think’s going to happen?”

“I don’t know. But I hate this! I hate living out of a suitcase.” A loud sniff sounded. “Look, it’s been long enough for me to have a cigarette. I have to go back inside.”

“Answer my question, Natalie. Do you want to come home?”

“You don’t understand. Jerome will never let me leave.”

No, Chris thought. There was always a plan. There was always a way of getting out of places you didn’t want to be. It just sometimes took brainpower and usually needed guts.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Chris’s voice was calm as she said, “Fuck Jerome. I’ll come get you.”

Chapter 2

“What you’re proposing, Ms. Hampton, is suicide.”

Chris lifted her chin, annoyed by Antonio Garza’s pronouncement. As a private investigator, he was there to inform, not to advise. “What I’m proposing is saving my sister from an abusive husband.”

She surveyed Garza’s small conference room where she sat with her friend, Gus Perkins, Antonio Garza and an innocuous-looking man who’d been introduced to her as Special Agent Smith of the DEA. “The fact her husband is an extremely dangerous drug smuggler is news, but it doesn’t mean I’m giving up.”

She clasped her hands together on the conference table’s edge and willed them to stop trembling. The shoulder squeeze Gus gave her felt affectionate, supportive. As well it should, all the years she’d taken sailing lessons from him after he retired from the Houston Police Department. She trusted him, at first with her safety on the water—he had never let her down—and now with this.

When Gus had told her his old partner had become a P.I. based in Galveston, she’d hoped to get some information about Jerome Scintella before she headed out after Natalie. Did he, for example, have a history of violence? Have an arrest record? Own a gun?

“Extremely dangerous drug smuggler” pretty much had all of that covered.

Suddenly she wasn’t just talking to a P.I. about snatching her sister. The minute Gus and Antonio Garza heard Jerome’s name, they’d been on the phone to old contacts at the DEA. Hence Special Agent Smith, who reminded her of the boy who used to live next door.

“It’s clear we can’t take him in Rome.” Smith rose, tall and lean, to pace to the window. He braced his arm in the window casing as he said, almost to himself, “With Scintella so jumpy, moving around every night, it’ll be next to impossible to get a fix on him.”

“That’s why I’m proposing my ‘suicide’ mission,” Chris retorted. “Natalie’s too hemmed in by her bodyguard to ditch him, so I couldn’t go to Rome myself and have any chance of getting her.”

“And you think taking your motor yacht to this private island improves your odds?” Smith asked the window. “It’ll be covered up with armed guards.”

“It’s a very long shot. And dangerous.” The private investigator’s deep brown eyes were soft with concern, as though he was practiced at cautioning others. Given that Garza specialized in finding missing children, Chris suspected he might be.

“I knew it was going to be difficult before you told me about Jerome,” she said. “But I can’t just let this chance go by without acting on it.” Smith’s longish blond hair raked his collar as he turned to look at her. She continued, “Natalie phoned again this morning and said she’d sweet-talked Jerome into telling her the island’s name. She’s not sure if Isladonata is in U.S. waters. I checked the charts but didn’t find it. Maybe Isladonata is a nickname. I’ll ask around the transient cruising people in my marina and on the newsgroups to see if they know anything.”

“So she’s able to get some information from him.” Smith’s words sounded almost like an accusation.

“Every question she asks is a risk,” Chris retorted. “Jerome gets more suspicious of everyone around him every day. I don’t like asking her to stretch that envelope.”

Smith sighed and returned to the table. His white shirt, tucked carelessly into snug jeans, both set off his tan and made him look more like a horse trainer than a DEA agent. “I hope I don’t sound like I’m asking you to do that,” he said as he dropped back into his chair. “It’s good she’s able to find out a few things for us. It’ll help us find Scintella.”

And get her out, Chris thought.

“But,” his tenor deepened slightly, “there’s no guarantee she’ll take the chance of leaving even if you show up with your boat. No telling what orders the bodyguard will have been given by Scintella.”

Chris’s stomach clenched with fear. Would Jerome order Natalie’s bodyguard to kill her if she strayed? God, why would he not? He seemed to see Natalie as a possession, not a wife.

“How were you planning on finding Isladonata?” Smith asked.

“All I need is a fifty-square-mile window. In theory, I could track other boats or choppers from the mainland and project which island they land at, then dead reckon my way in.” Though her chances of actually succeeding, she knew from having been in the Gulf of Mexico, were incredibly slim. Too much water, too many islands, too little time.

“Navigation by the seat of the pants is risky,” Gus said.

Smith nodded. “It’d be better if your sister could get us the exact location.”

Chris studied her hands, resting so still and lost on the wood tabletop’s vast, empty expanse. “I’m sure it would. But I don’t like asking her to take that chance.”

“Understood,” Smith replied softly.

She looked up to find him staring at her. He was handsome in a vague way, as though the artist painting him had left him unfinished. It showed in the way his hair roughly brushed his neck, in the slight unevenness of his lips. His eyes, she realized absently, were the color of her own.

“And your yacht can make that trip?” he asked.

“Obsession’s not a true blue-water boat, so she can’t take on an ocean,” Chris admitted. “But she’ll handle the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean just fine. An old ship’s log I found aboard said she made two trips down and back in the seventies.”

Gus snorted. “The seventies? A little time has passed, hasn’t it?”

“I tore down and rebuilt both engines myself,” Chris replied. “She’ll make it. It’s the cosmetic work I’m worried about.”

Smith leaned his brown forearms on the table. “What do you mean?”

“If these Isladonata guys are high-dollar bad guys, they’ll have high-dollar hobbies. When I inherited Obsession nine months ago, she needed a lot of work. I’ve got her mechanical systems in order, but it’s the spit-and-polish that’ll convince them she’s legit and get me onto the island.”

“What were you planning on doing once you were there?” Garza asked.

“I’m going to have to look like a private captain on my way to drop off or pick up someone important.”

Gus grunted. “If Scintella’s going to be on the island in three weeks, that’s not much time.”

“Two weeks to dress up the yacht, one week to get down there,” she confirmed.

Garza scribbled some notes. “Is that enough time?”

“Not really,” Chris admitted, thinking about chalky fiberglass and cracked windows. “And I need a lot more money than I have to make it happen.”

“How much?” Smith pulled his hands from his jeans pockets and crossed his arms.

“This is where my plan needs some work.” She ballparked the repair price tag. Gus whistled softly. Once Garza’s brows dropped back from the ceiling, she said, “Look, a brand-new yacht of her build quality would cost upwards of five million. Obsession’s old and needs a serious facelift, but she’s fundamentally sound. I’ve worked on the basic systems myself and sunk most of my savings into her. All I need now is the window dressing.”

“That’s a helluva dressing,” Smith muttered.

“She’s a helluva window,” Chris retorted. “I’m not talking about installing Waterford chandeliers. Just reasonably good quality furnishings and carpet to make her look like she’s been pampered. The external work includes a full-on paint job, replacing windows and railings, that kind of thing. I could do it all myself if I had the time.”

She glanced out the window. Her rusted Chevy pickup, the truck she’d bought as a hobby project but that was now all she had for transportation, stared back at her blankly. “And the cash,” she added, thinking about how soon her remaining savings would run dry even paying only her living expenses.

“You have your captain’s license. Can’t you just rent a vessel?” Garza asked.

She shook her head. “Large vessels carry their own captains and crew. Even with a license, I’m an unknown, an insurance risk. Nobody’s going to let me hire a yacht that size even for twice the going rate without taking their crew. And maybe I’m assuming here, but I bet if I show up in anything shorter than seventy feet, I won’t get within a mile of the island.”

Smith settled back into his chair and studied her for a long moment. “Let’s say money’s no object,” he said finally. “What would your schedule look like?”

Money no object? Fighting down the hope swelling in her throat, Chris forced herself to concentrate on facts, not pipe dreams. “Two weeks in the boatyard for as much as we can get done here in Galveston, then a shakedown cruise to New Orleans to make sure everything’s working. If there’s any cosmetic work left, we may be able to get it done in New Orleans if they’re not still covered up with hurricane repairs. Then I’ll head south for Isladonata.”

“We could take a page from your book and bluff our way onto the island,” Smith mused. “Maybe say we’re coming to drop off a player.”

Garza nodded. “One of the Delacruz family. Enrique Delacruz.”

“They wouldn’t see us coming.”

Gus’s chin jutted like a battering ram. “A private island’s going to be heavily guarded. They’ll be running radar and spot a fleet of choppers and cutters coming from two hundred miles out. Scintella will be gone before you get there.”

“It doesn’t have to be a major operation,” Smith replied.

“You’re not going to sneak up on him.” Gus shoved his creaking chair back and stood to glare down at Smith. “Not on an island.”

Smith raised his face to meet Gus head-on. “We can set it up. With the right hardware, the right men, we can take this guy.”

“And his army?” Gus asked. “Sounds like you’ll be taking in your own army to handle it.”

“Scintella won’t be the only target on that island,” Garza pointed out.

Finally. Let’s talk about Natalie. Chris crossed her arms and willed herself to relax.

Then Garza said, “If he’s doing business you’ll have the Mendoza family on your hands, too. That’s a lot of firepower in one place.”

“If you can even get there.” Gus thrust his hands in his pockets and started filtering change through his fingers. “I’m tellin’ you, he’ll catch you on radar. By the time you get there, the only people left on that island will be the cook and the gardener.”

But not my sister. Chris tried to still her nerves but the jingling coins might as well have been dancing in her dental fillings. If the DEA spooked Jerome with their he-man tactics, Chris thought as the men continued to argue, Natalie would be swept away, as though she’d never existed. She listened to their voices, heated now, Special Agent Smith standing to square off against Gus. Guns, choppers, ammo. Always Scintella. Always his arrest. Never a word about what really mattered.

“All I want is my sister,” Chris said loudly into a break in the argument. “I can get onto that island myself, one way or another, before you bring in the cavalry. Give me that chance to get Natalie out, and you can do whatever the hell you want after we’re gone.”

“That’s a good way to get yourself killed,” Garza remarked.

“If I do nothing, Natalie gets killed. None of you sound very interested in her except as a source of information.”

For a long moment, no one spoke. Gus’s face screwed into his characteristic scowl. Antonio Garza stared at his shoes beneath the table.

“I’m not leaving my sister at Jerome Scintella’s mercy,” she said quietly. “I’ll take Obsession to Isladonata if I have to do it on my own.”

Long seconds passed while she held Smith’s gaze. She wasn’t bluffing and she knew that showed in her face—she was scared, but she wouldn’t back down. She didn’t trust this agent to look after Natalie once he and his team had Scintella in view. Sure, they might be honorable men. But her experience had taught her to be wary. The nice mutt sitting placidly with you on the front porch one minute could become a mindless part of a howling, uncontrollable pack when the quarry was sighted.

She was the only one in the room putting Natalie first.

Smith must have read her correctly because he said to Garza, “I need to make a phone call. Can we talk outside?”

Garza sighed and faced her, his dark eyes soft with what looked like fatherly concern. “Do you mind waiting?”

“Go ahead.”

Garza grasped the cane that leaned against the table and levered himself from his chair like a much older man. After he’d limped from the room behind Smith, Chris asked, “Was he injured in the line of duty?”

“Domestic violence case. Guy beatin’ up his wife, the neighbor calls, we go over there. We’ve got the guy cuffed and headed out the door when the wife goes ape-shit with a handgun ’cause she wants to ‘save her man.’”

Chris heard again Natalie’s voice: He didn’t mean it. It’s not like he broke anything.

“God,” she murmured.

Gus shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m no shrink. I just know it happens sometimes. They usually don’t come out firing, though. Tony got a bad break.”

She was silent for a moment before she asked, “What do you think they’re talking about?”

His heavy sigh could have been anything: fatigue, resignation, exasperation. “I don’t know,” he said finally, kicking his chair back onto two legs. “I got an idea but I never cared much for guessin’.”

He had a point. Guessing invited a lot of wondering, and that would turn into worrying. She had enough of that on her plate already.

While Gus jangled quarters and dimes, Chris tried to concentrate on not wondering if Jerome was hurting Natalie. Live today, right now, she reminded herself. Maybe it was time to go back to meditating. That practice had helped when she was having a tough time with the rig roughnecks. Funny how the simplest things got so easily swamped by worry and fear. You get busy, then you forget how to stay centered, sane.

“What I don’t understand,” Gus said abruptly, “is why these boys sound like they need your boat. The DEA could use any old tub they’ve seized recently.”

“I thought smugglers used Cigarette boats and fishing trawlers,” she said, thinking back over cruising posts and magazine articles she’d read.

“Then why don’t they take a damn go-fast boat then?”

“You know I won’t let them go without me,” she warned.

Before Gus could work up a head of steam, the office door opened. Chris watched Smith and Garza file back in and settle across from her again. Gus tipped his chair onto all four legs, clearly ready to do battle.

“Ms. Hampton,” Smith said, “you’ve given us the best chance in years to put our hands on Scintella. It’s a major break for us.”

“I’m sure of that,” she said flatly. “What about my sister?”

“We want to see her home with you safe and sound.”

That she wasn’t sure of. Smith didn’t seem to notice.

“We’ll put a team together and go to Isladonata, intercept Scintella and bring your sister back.”

“On what boat?”

“I phoned my partner, Special Agent McLellan, while Mr. Garza and I were outside. McLellan wants to pay for the upgrades in exchange for using your yacht.”

“Why can’t you take a seized boat?” Gus demanded.

“Logistical problem,” Smith snapped. “Last year’s hurricane season took out our suitable yachts. Ms. Hampton’s right. We need something that won’t make them suspicious.”

“And you’ll find a captain who can handle a hundred-ton vessel?” She ignored the yank on her gut at the thought of handing the yacht—her home—over to a bunch of weekend sea cowboys she didn’t know.

“It might be tricky,” he admitted.

“How will you find the island?”

“Hook us up with your sister and we’ll take it from there.”

She shook her head. “It’s not going to work that way.”

“Why not?” Smith asked sharply.

“She won’t talk to anyone but me.”

“That’s not wise—”

“Of course it’s wise. She doesn’t know you. She doesn’t know your voice. What if Jerome tricks her into talking to one of his thugs? It’s bad enough that he could tap her phone.” Chris paused, lifted her chin. “But she knows me. She trusts me. If she does happen to come up with fresh information, she’ll call.”

Smith hesitated, clearly tempted. “We can set up a phone relay.”

Chris shook her head. “Not good enough. I’m going with you or there’s no deal.” When she saw that mule look come over Smith’s open face, she added, “This isn’t negotiable.”

“You don’t understand.” Smith leaned forward. “Two operations failed to bring Scintella in. Believe it or not, the long shot you’ve dropped in our laps may be our best opportunity to nail him. He might anticipate his men turning on him, but he might not guess that his wife would.”

“I just want to know Natalie’s going to be safe. If it comes down to a choice between catching Scintella and saving my sister—”

“There aren’t any guarantees where Scintella’s concerned,” Smith said bluntly. “Except that he’s dangerous and he’ll fight being brought in. He’ll do everything he can to stay free.”

And the DEA agents, no matter how well-meaning, would have their sights set first on Scintella, then on Natalie.

I’m the only one who’s going to be looking out for her.

“I’m captaining my vessel on this trip,” Chris told Smith as she stood. Before he could start lobbing objections her way, she said, “When you and your partner come out to the boatyard, I’ll be prepping my yacht.” Then she turned on her heel and walked out.

The small, silver key dangled on a chain held lightly in Special Agent Smith’s fingers. Behind him, late afternoon sunlight swept into Obsession’s salon, haloing him, making his blond hair almost golden, his roughly sculpted features classically Grecian in their shadows and highlights.

“I wouldn’t deposit or spend this all at once,” he said around a smile.

Safety-deposit box key.

Chris scrubbed her hands with a shop rag, feeling suddenly as if plucking that key from his fingers would change everything, that she’d be cast out into the perilous unknown. The end of innocence. The end of everything she knew and the start of a journey she might not complete.

The rising tide of fear was swallowed by the image of Natalie holding out an ice-cream cone to Chris. Chris had been fourteen and Natalie four. “Share!” Natalie had shouted and laughed, tossing her dark, curly hair.

Leave everything she knew behind? Risk her boat and her life to save her sister?

So be it.

She took the key from Smith’s hand and shoved it deep in her shorts pocket. “Thanks.”

“My partner doesn’t like the idea of your captaining us.” Smith stepped farther into the salon, abruptly losing his godlike demeanor as he glanced around, seemingly taking everything in at once.

“You told him I won’t take no for an answer.”

“Yes.” He paused. “For what it’s worth, I’m in your corner on this.”

Surprised, she glanced at him. His face showed nothing but the certainty of a man who knew what he wanted to do. “I appreciate that,” she said. “Where is your partner?”

“Busy. He’ll show on Monday.” He flashed a quick and charming smile. “Call me Smitty.”

She relaxed a little. Funny how nicknames knocked people down to size or elevated them into legend. Thank God his nickname hadn’t been something like Nine-Fingered Sam or Chainsaw Larry. “Smitty” was a guy you could trust. Like “Gus.”

Then she asked the sixty-four-dollar question. “How much boating experience do you have?”

“I’ve done a little Coastie work up the eastern seaboard.”

“Coast Guard, huh?” she shot back, surprised. “What’d you do?”

He shrugged, wandering past her to the aft deck’s sliding door. “A little search and rescue, a little cruise ship escort, stuff like that. Nothing too exciting.”

“Not exciting?”

Smitty chuckled. “If I never see another drunken offshore fisherman with a bad bilge pump, it’ll be too soon. Can I have a tour or are you in the middle of something?”

“No, I’ve got time. You’ve seen the aft deck there.”

“Yeah, it’s a great space.” Smitty’s gaze automatically moved from the port cleat to the storage compartment marked LIFE JACKETS to the round life ring and its attached line. His priorities fit hers, she noted with approval.

“She was under a shed and neglected for almost twenty years,” Chris said. “I’m surprised she even floats.”

“Old girl like this? She’ll never sink. That your distribution panel?” he asked, hooking a thumb at the sliding wooden door in the salon wall.

“Yes.”

She slid open the panel’s door to let him study the shore power switches, generator start-and-stop mechanism, the breaker switches for all the boat’s electrics.

“Nice setup. You wire all this up?”

She nodded. “The electrical wiring on the old panel was so frayed I’m surprised she didn’t burn to the waterline when the surveyor switched on the shore power.” She watched him close up the panel as she said, “I still have some wiring to check. There’s a light switch here in the salon that doesn’t work.”

He stood again and his gaze traced the probable route from the distribution panel to the light switch on the other side of the salon. “Take half a day to track down, probably.”

“Low priority,” she replied. “Come on down below. I’ll show you the engine rooms.”

Smitty might turn out okay, she thought as she led the way down the spiral staircase to the lower passageway. He seemed to know his stuff and appeared comfortable with the fact this was her vessel. Even Dave had wanted to jump in and fix things for her rather than wait for her to ask for help. But Smitty just put his idea out there—half a day to fix the light switch wiring—and left the decision up to her.

She opened the starboard engine room door and squinted against the door’s piercing screech. Note to self: Oil the hinges. She flicked on the overhead light and the starboard engine’s massive bulk sprang to life.

“A Detroit!” Smitty said, clearly pleased. “Twelve-vee-ninety-six?”

“Yep. Naturally aspirated, no turbocharging. One thing I wanted to do was paint the engine room floor here before the shakedown cruise so the leaks would show. I overhauled both Hortense and Claire, but—”

“Excuse me?” Smitty asked, turning from his examination of the engine’s coolant, collection tank cap in hand.

“Claire’s the starboard engine. Hortense is the port, just across the hall in her own engine room.”

His grin split his mobile face. “Claire and Hortense. Named after…?”

“Great-aunts on my father’s side.” Chris smiled, faintly remembering lemon squares and tatted doilies and sunshine on a back porch surrounded by maple trees. No faces anymore, but feelings of warmth and contentment. Happiness.

“Nice to meet you, Claire.” Smitty patted the engine’s solid block, then turned back to Chris. “I’ll paint in here for you.”

Chris looked around the engine room’s still stout flooring, at the little worktable sitting below the pegboard she’d organized just last month, at the tool cabinet and hatch leading to the bilge compartment, all smeared with grease and ages-old dirt. “Nasty piece of work.”

“That I am,” he said with a grin, “but I’ll do my best.”

Friday evening, Chris eased her pickup onto the Galveston-Port Bolivar ferry and parked where she was directed by a bored ferryman. After an afternoon spent poking through Old Man Templeton’s salvaged spares, she was ready to get home and snag a late dinner. She’d found several items she could use, including a fuel pump to replace Hortense’s aging one. But she hadn’t found a propeller. The starboard prop was so gouged and chipped that the shaft had started vibrating. A few hours of that and Claire, the starboard engine, would shake to pieces.

Leaving the pickup’s windows rolled down and her wallet and cell phone under the seat, she slammed the door, then headed toward the bow where a small contingent of hardy souls braved the still-warm breeze. In a few minutes the last car came aboard and the ferry cast off.

The ferry’s bow wave arced below her as she leaned over the rail. Texas City refineries plumed white smoke into darkening sky. Laughing gulls shrieked as they careened toward her, then banked and slipped back to the wake to fish for minnows stunned by the ferry’s engines.

She turned to watch the birds. That’s when she saw him, leaning casually against the shoulder of a dark blue Buick, watching her. He wore a white T-shirt, jeans and black biker boots, his clothes a size too big for his rail-thin frame. His thin blond hair lifted in the wind. One hand rested on the Buick’s hood; the other fingered a cigarette. He could have been anyone.

Only she’d seen him before.

She pivoted slightly as though looking back toward Port Bolivar, not moving from the rail. He raised his head and looked at her, squinting against the ferry’s bright house lights. His thin lips stretched over his gaunt face in that same grimace of fear she’d seen as his out-of-control powerboat veered toward her. Except she’d changed her sailboat’s direction, and his powerboat should have kept going the way it was headed.

But it hadn’t. It had changed direction, too.

She looked again. The grimace wasn’t a grimace.

He was smiling.

Eugene Falks, she thought. The name on the police report was Eugene Falks.

“Nice evening,” he called. His voice was thin and razor-sharp, like him.

She said nothing. Her pickup sat directly behind the Buick. She’d walked right past him and not known it was him. He could have touched her. She shuddered.

She folded her arms across her chest, but that made her feel vulnerable—not easily able to move or defend herself—so she relaxed enough to let them drop to her sides again. Better. Deep breaths. Keep him in view but don’t let him rattle you. Settle down and wait.

Consciously, muscle by muscle, she released the tension from her body. The ferry plowed through the darkening water. Over the opposite railing, Chris watched whitecaps kick up. The man tucked one hand in his front pocket and hunched farther against the car, still watching her.

Was he a stalker? Had he picked her out in the grocery store parking lot and decided for whatever twisted reason to target her? Maybe being a natural blonde, dishwater or not, wasn’t such an advantage after all.

As the ferry pulled up to its dock, she faced Falks. He pursed his lips and sniffed, tossed his cigarette onto the ferry’s deck and toed it out with his boot. Then he reached into the front seat and pulled out a cell phone. In a moment, she heard her cell trilling in her truck.

He knows my phone number.

People streamed back to their cars. Chris gripped the railing with one hand as the ferry jolted into place. Falks snapped his phone closed, then yanked his Buick’s door open and folded himself inside.

The good news was, Falks would have to drive off first.

The bad news was, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t follow her.

Don’t walk like a victim. Chris strode toward her pickup, head up. She’d have to walk past his car again, but she’d do that on the passenger side, where he couldn’t reach out the window or door. At least it’d be harder.

She braced herself as she walked around the car’s nose. When she drew even with the Buick’s passenger side headlight, the car’s engine spat and clattered to life. Falks didn’t move, didn’t look at her, didn’t put the Buick in gear. She dug the keys from her jeans pocket. On impulse, she took a couple of steps back from her pickup until she could read the Buick’s license plate. Falks made eye contact in his side mirror.

He didn’t grin this time.

The first cars started bumping up and over the landing ramp. Behind her, an SUV revved its engine. She waited until the Buick eased forward, then quickly opened the pickup’s door and hopped inside. One tap on the accelerator and the Chevy roared, settled into its purring rhythm.

“Go ahead,” she muttered at Falks as she put the pickup in Drive. “Follow me.”

Because her first stop would be the Galveston Police Department.

Chapter 3

Chris woke instantly. Someone was aboard.

She lay perfectly still in her cabin, holding her breath and trying to listen beyond the hum of the corner box fan. The boatyard’s shed lights glowed outside the open portholes.

Damn kids. She knew Dave should have run the little heathens out of the boatyard. Probably stealing electronics.

Footsteps above, in the salon. Heavy. Not a kid’s. A man’s.

Her skin tingled with fear. The face of the cadaverous man, pale, thin, eerie in the new moon’s light, floated in her mind’s darkness. Eugene Falks. She’d have to do something, not just lie here waiting for him to find her. Her arms and legs lay like stones. Was it really Falks? How strong was he? Could she fight him? God, she hadn’t hit anyone since seventh grade when awful Jimmy McAllister tried to French-kiss her in study hall.

No way was she going to let some weirdo come onto her boat and steal something or attack her. This was her home. Her home. No freakin’ way.

The molten lead that had filled her veins a moment ago surged into adrenaline. What were her options? Her cell phone was in the galley. Her tools were all put away. There was nothing in the stateroom she could use as a weapon. She hadn’t oiled the engine room doors, so opening either of those to grab a tool would alert the intruder to her presence. Still, he might not expect her to be aboard while the boat was in dry dock. She could take a chance on the noise.

The wrench. She saw it clearly propped up behind the door to her ensuite head. She’d used it yesterday and forgotten to put it up. Fortunately, it was a nice, hefty seven-eighths.

She slid out of bed and pulled on her robe, belting it tightly around her waist. She retrieved the wrench from the head, paused. Silence upstairs. Whoever was up there had stopped moving. She eased open her stateroom door, crept into the hall.

She paused again by the spiral staircase, heart pounding, to listen. A familiar click and shush told her the door to the port side office had opened. She switched hands on the wrench, then flipped it around so the open end—the end that made two prongs—was the business end. Swing or jab, it would work fine.

She crept up the staircase, skipping the step that creaked. The upper passageway loomed, dark and empty. On the port side, the office. On the starboard side, the galley. Aft, the salon, whose sliding glass door opened onto the aft deck. Dim light from that door cast long shadows of sofa and chair onto the floor. Beside her, the office cabin door was ajar. She sidestepped into the galley. The smooth tile cooled her bare feet.

Shoes. She should have put on shoes.

Without taking her eyes from the office door, she reached for the counter beneath the starboard window where her cell phone lay. Her hand found a notebook, a pen, the bowl of fruit. Chris tore her eyes from the office door’s sliver of darkness. The cell wasn’t on the counter.

Yelling wouldn’t do any good. Nobody hung around a boatyard after midnight. She hefted the wrench.

Knife?

She shuddered. No. No knife.

Leave.

Now there was a plan. But if Falks was after her, and if he happened to hear her, she’d never outrun him on foot. Not barefoot through a debris-strewn boatyard. She needed her car, to get to the police substation.

Car keys? She slid down the starboard cabinet to the floor, facing the office and willing herself to be small and unnoticeable while she tried to remember where she’d left them. After a frustrating and fruitless visit to the Galveston cop shop about Eugene Falks (Sorry, ma’am, we can’t post anyone at the yard, but we’ll send a patrol car by once in a while), and an equally frustrating call to Garza (Please leave a message), she’d driven home, climbed up the ladder to the aft deck, come inside, made sure all the doors and windows were locked, then tossed her keys in…

…the office.

Dammit.

She’d have to chance it on foot.

Chris turned the wrench in her grip. Right. Just slip around the L-shaped counter that separated the galley from the salon, walk across fifteen feet of carpet, ease on out the open door to the aft deck, then down the ten-foot ladder to the ground. No problem.

Except she was sitting on the galley floor, butt frozen to the tiles, legs locked in place, eyes riveted to what little she could see of the office’s dark doorway. The only part moving at any speed was her brain, imagining Falks coming through that office door like a storm, his sickly grin plastered on his face.

“Move,” she whispered.

She stood. Her heart banged away at her chest wall, fouled her hearing. Crouching, she slunk through the galley, paused briefly at the salon’s edge to silently suck some air into her lungs. Her trembling hands clenched. The wrench felt like a puny baseball bat. Note to self: Buy a Louisville Slugger.

She straightened and took a step toward the salon door. Dark movement flashed on her right.

She swung, head-high.

A soft thunk—metal on flesh—then a muffled grunt. Chris recoiled, ducked instinctively into the shadowy galley rather than the backlit salon. On the other side of the L-shaped counter, just in front of the office door, the intruder wheezed.

Had she hit him in the throat?

She gripped the wrench tighter. Outside. She needed to get outside. The wheeze moved from the hallway toward the elbow of the counter’s L. He’d be an arm’s length from either the salon or the hallway. She remembered Falks’s long, spindly, angular arms. Come into my parlor.

The wheeze permeated the air like a metronome: Hiiiss, ruuush. Hiiiss, ruuush.

Options. Right. A galley door led forward into the pilothouse. But the door, like so many on the yacht, would creak when opened and Falks would know instantly what she was doing. She’d never have a chance. Nor was she fast enough to reach the office and grab her cell.

She had another option.

She could attack.

Chris breathed silently through her mouth while she laid the wrench on the linoleum next to her right foot. She felt behind her for the cabinet door she wanted, the one with the little plaque on it.

Hiiiss, ruuush.

Falks started moving again, inching along the L toward the little passage between the galley and the salon. A shaft of boatyard light speared the passage.

The plaque’s sharp edge pricked her fingertips. She opened the cabinet door and reached inside.

Hiiiss, ruuush.

Falks’s fingers curled around the cabinet’s sides. Chris’s own trembling fingers found the smooth, cold cylinder she was searching for. Falks eased into the light—an ear, a stretch of pale skin, one wide, pale eye.

“I see you,” he whispered.

Calm wrapped itself around Chris like a cloak, as it always did the moment before an irrevocable action: a softball arcing toward the plate and her waiting bat, the red-circled target coming into focus just before she squeezed the trigger, pen poised above paper as she prepared to sign her resignation. It was the moment anything was possible.

Falks was a man. Only a man.

Chris smiled. “Come and get me.” She drew in a deep breath and held it.

He leaped. She wrenched the cylinder from its holding clips and yanked out the safety pin. By his second step, she gripped the mini fire extinguisher’s handle, and by his third—he fell toward her like an avalanche—she shot a hard stream of chemical agent into his wide and glaring eyes, then skittered away, out of reach.

Falks shrieked, jerked away. “Shit!” he shouted, scrubbing his face, tearing at the smoky dust. “You bitch!” He collapsed back against the counter, reeling. Chris let out her breath, extinguisher raised and ready to strike. He fell backward into the salon. His curses stuck in his throat, then the coughing started as white smoke drifted around his head like a veil.

Chris bolted into the office, snagged her cell. Fire extinguisher in one hand, she punched 911 with the other. Falks’s coughs rasped, fading.

“Come on!” she shouted at the phone. Why weren’t they picking up? She looked at the phone’s LED screen. Because she’d dialed 991.

A thud and the crash of shattering glass, then a scrabbling on the aft deck.

The bastard was getting away.

Chris skirted the dying edge of chemical smoke as she ran from the office into the salon. She stopped short at the aft deck doorway that glittered with broken shards.

Falks’s long, white hand shone like that of a picked-clean corpse before it slipped from the deck railing and disappeared.

Chris studied Smitty’s lean back from her sofa vantage point. He stood in front of the salon door’s remains, hands stuffed in his shorts pockets, his shoulders hunched as if against a cold wind. Or blame.

“I should have been here,” he said to the spray of glass at his feet.

The breeze kicked up by the box fans blowing from the galley ruffled his shirt sleeves. Outside, the predawn darkness carried a hint of dew. The cops had long since taken down their notes, given their assurances they’d find Falks and gone. They’d stayed almost as long as the residual chemical smoke, which had left a film of mica dust over the floor where Falks had jumped Chris.

“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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