Dead in the Water

by Janice Kay Johnson - His Best Friend's Baby

  It wouldn’t, but she’d find that out soon enough.

  “I wouldn’t mind doing the same,” he admitted. After the past few days, and especially today, he wasn’t likely to smell very good.

  Once the first water had warmed, Claire produced a skimpy towel, a washcloth and soap, collected a clean set of clothes and disappeared behind a sizable tree trunk. He sat down with his back to her, but he heard her garments dropping, squeaks a couple of times, branches swaying. When she gave a happy hum, he gritted his teeth and looked ruefully down at the bulge that made the pants even tighter.

  Damn, he wanted to see her naked. Touch her, kiss her, hear another hum like that when he made love—no, damn it—pleasured her.

  Love had nothing to do with it.

  The rustle of fabrics told him she was getting dressed again. Adam made himself think about their grisly tasks of this morning, and the perilous days ahead.

  His body grudgingly accepted his changed mood, but at least he was able to stand up when she returned, to take the saucepan from her and fill it with water on the stove.

  * * *

  EVEN AS SHE pretended to read, all Claire could think about was the dead man when they had pushed him underwater and lowered rocks on top of him. Adam had gently closed Kyle’s eyes before they picked him up, but she kept imagining him staring up through the water at her.

  It didn’t help that the next thing she’d done was inspect Adam’s wounds before covering them again and pulling the vet wrap around his chest again. She thought they were healing; neither hole had turned flaming red or seeped pus, but they were still gruesome. Between the gunshot wound and the cold water, he’d come so close to dying. She kept sneaking peeks at him, picturing him laid out on the beach, marble pale as she’d first seen his face, utterly still, beyond reach.

  Adam appeared to be reading, close to finishing The Mote in God’s Eye. She made a point of turning a page regularly, hoping he hadn’t noticed her occasional shudder. If he was really concentrating on the story, he must have better vision than she did. The light was really lousy. It almost felt as if they were in a cave, surrounded on every side by vegetation. What sunlight did reach them had been filtered through the overreaching spruce and firs that turned it green. If only her electronic reader hadn’t reached the end of its charge...

  “You’ve got to think about something else,” Adam said gruffly, breaking the lengthy silence. “We made the best decision we could.”

  She bobbed her head. “I know.” And she did, but—“I’ve never seen anyone dead before.”

  His surprise was obvious. “Really? Not a grandparent, or—”

  “Mike.” Wow, the memory of her last glimpse of him made her teeth want to clank together. “I guess I saw him dead.”

  “He had to have still been aware enough to release himself from the spray skirt and grab things from that deck pocket after he rolled.”

  She lifted one shoulder. “Okay, almost dead.” Wasn’t this a macabre topic. Of course, it had been that kind of day. “Does it...get any easier?”

  New tension on his face had her shaking her head. “Forget I asked. You can’t possibly want to talk about this.”

  In the ensuing silence, she didn’t look at him.

  But then he said haltingly, “I...usually don’t.”

  “I suppose you don’t have to with other agents.” She hesitated, focusing on a delicate spiderweb strung between two fern fronds. “Assuming you really are a DEA agent. Don’t worry—even if you’re not, I’ll do whatever I can to get us to safety. Then you can just...disappear.”

  “Claire.” He spoke softly, only a little gravel remaining in his voice.

  She had to meet his eyes.

  “I really am with the DEA. The sooner we can connect with Canadian law enforcement, the better.”

  That had to be honesty in his eyes. If it wasn’t...well, she’d feel really dumb, wouldn’t she? But right now, she only nodded.

  “As for the dead...” He ran his fingers through his hair. “You’re right. We don’t talk about it. Mostly, the bodies I’ve come across were scumbags in real life. Traffickers or muscle sent to intimidate.” His shoulders moved. “Users who died from an overdose. Once—” He shook himself. “You don’t need to hear about that.”

  “If you want to talk about it...”

  “I don’t,” he said shortly. “Mostly, in my job you do get inured to it. I’ve shot and killed four men. Our goal is to arrest them, but things happen.”

  Like it did on the deck of that freighter, she realized. Undercover, Adam must walk on an edge, knowing his cover could be blown at any minute. Claire couldn’t imagine the stress.

  “It’s not the kind of thing you forget,” he continued.

  She might be imagining that he was thinking the same she was. That neither of them would forget her friend’s death, or Kyle Sheppard’s.

  When she nodded and stayed silent, he finally went back to his book. Claire went back to pretending.

  It wasn’t quite dusk when she raised her head. “Listen.”

  “What?” Adam started to rise to his feet, then stopped. “What the hell?”

  “Do you recognize the sound?” She was smiling for the first time since this ordeal had started.

  He’d turned toward the beach they could barely see through the heavy screen of vegetation. “Whales?”

  “Yep. Probably orcas. Let’s see if they pass in front of us.”

  She pushed through the branches with him right behind her. From this beach, they had a broader view of the inlet than they’d had at their former campsite. Tinted purple, the sky had deepened the color of the water, too. Looking east, they couldn’t see the setting sun.

  But she heard again the noisy exhalation made by a whale surfacing for breath, followed by another, and another. As many times as she’d seen orcas, she always got excited. They were magnificent, with their patterns of white against black, the sharp jut of fins and the grace of their massive bodies arching above the water.

  Seeing the first one appear, she whispered, “Oh!”

  Keeping his voice low, too, as if the creatures would pay the least notice to the humans standing on land, Adam said, “We saw some in the distance on my earlier trip on the freighter. Otherwise, I’ve never seen an orca.”

  Soon half a dozen of the pod were visible; others were presumably submerged. They were moving fast, led by the largest, probably a male. By the time she saw the last arching back, the sky had noticeably darkened. A few more exhalations drifted to them, and finally quiet returned with the advent of night.

  “They’re magnificent,” Adam murmured.

  She wrinkled her nose. “It’s a little unnerving when one surfaces near your kayak.”

  “A little?”

  Still smiling, she said, “Ready for dinner?”

  * * *

  THE BIG MINUS, as far as Adam was concerned, was that last night, Claire had laid out her own sleeping bag and pad a foot from his at bedtime, and without saying a word to him. His sleeping bag felt cold and unwelcoming with just him in it. The tree root stretched alongside the edge of his pad kept him from spreading out. He had a feeling she hadn’t fallen asleep any faster than he had.

  Both of them were quieter than usual over their morning oatmeal and coffee. She made a couple of brief suggestions as they packed up.

  On the positive side, Adam didn’t have to get wet when he and Claire removed the rocks weighing down the body and hauled Kyle Sheppard from his temporary watery grave. Adam tried not to think about the fact that he was wearing the wet suit he’d appropriated. He’d never robbed the dead before.

  And, damn it, he didn’t know why he was giving sentiment any room in his head. It wasn’t like him. Practicality was a big component in surviving the dangers of working undercover.

  Claire won the argument about who’d c
limb the cedar tree they chose. It made sense, given that she was less likely to have a limb break under her, and his injury left him debilitated. She went ahead, working her way up as high as she could by stepping from one branch to another and stabilizing herself with a hand on the trunk. Then she tossed an end of a towline they’d tied to a fist-sized rock up and over her chosen limb of the cedar. “Is that high enough?” she called down.

  He evaluated the branch. It wasn’t twenty feet off the ground, but he didn’t see how they could do better. “Yeah. Can you reach the rock?”

  “Sure.”

  She lowered herself carefully, Adam hovering below prepared to catch her, although he hoped she didn’t notice. The feathery branches of the cedar shook until she had her feet solidly on the ground.

  Adam tied one end of the towline to the dead man’s ankles, and then both of them hauled on the other end until the body wedged to a stop. They weren’t going to be able to maneuver it over the branch the way Adam had hoped. Making do, he tied the line as securely as possible to a sturdy limb close to the ground. When he stepped back, the body didn’t plummet back down.

  Good enough.

  Claire stared up for a long minute. He saw her throat move, and wondered if she was praying.

  They’d already loaded their kayaks and were ready to shove off. Claire hesitated.

  “Do you think there’s any chance they’ve given up?”

  They hadn’t heard the outboard motor yesterday or so far this morning—but yesterday they didn’t hear the gunshots, either.

  “I want to think so.”

  She gave a small nod, hearing his doubt, gave her kayak a gentle push and then stepped into the cockpit.

  Adam did the same, not looking forward to the day. Claire had insisted on trying something she hoped would help with his shoulder pain, though; using a good-sized book, the BC atlas, and a cutting board, she’d created a stiff cocoon around his shoulder that would accomplish something of the same effect as a plaster cast. Limiting his movement, mostly, forcing him to use his full body to paddle rather than his shoulders. He’d also taken Tylenol, but refused the heavy-duty painkillers in case he needed a clear head.

  A moment later, they glided out into a morning he suspected was unusually still. With no breeze, the low-lying fog hadn’t broken up into shreds. Claire had a compass mounted to her kayak deck. Without that, Adam couldn’t even guess how she’d have navigated. They headed north, their goal a campsite on Spider Island, the largest island in the group.

  Even he knew that was a joke. A half-hour outing for a serious kayaker. Another day, he’d asked Claire how far she typically planned to go in a day. Roughly twenty miles, she’d admitted, but she could—and had—exceeded that. The plan for today was two miles, tops. Okay, maybe a little farther than that, given their winding route.

  In fact, at the moment, they completed a half circle between smaller islands and the rocky islets that reared from the fog and disappeared as suddenly.

  “Stay close,” she said one time.

  He had no intention of letting her out of his sight. How would he ever find her again? He heard the lap of water against the hull of his kayak, an occasional cry or caw that must be some bird or other overhead. Once a dark head came out of the water so close to him, he could have touched it. An inquisitive face with dark eyes and long whiskers studied him.

  A sea otter.

  Claire momentarily vanished into the mist, her blue kayak far less visible than his red one. He could see how she’d been able to hide the day her friend was shot. Her neoprene suit was gray and blue, her skullcap navy blue. With her blond hair tucked out of sight, only her yellow flotation vest stood out, and it had either faded or was dirty enough to subdue the bright color.

  Adam clung to that thought. She might be able to slip away unseen if he was spotted.

  He dug in his paddle to shoot forward and retain his visual on her.

  The silence was almost eerie, making him feel as if he wore earmuffs. He started to itch between his shoulder blades, familiar prickles climbing his spine. No reason, he told himself; the fog cloaked them, and they couldn’t be tracked by sound. Yet he hated not being able to see more than ten feet in any direction, and kept wondering how much the fog would muffle the noise of a boat motor.

  He also began wondering whether the two men he’d seen hunting him—Lee Boyden and Curt Gibbons—were returning to the freighter at night, or making camp somewhere nearby. What if they weren’t alone? Another man or two could be taking out the skiff.

  How was Dwayne justifying this all-out manhunt to his crew? Adam doubted many, if any of the crew, knew what was at stake.

  Adam considered himself damn lucky that the meet had been set up amidst the cluster of islands. The intricate passages were what made this escape possible.

  He realized suddenly that Claire must have put on the brakes, because his kayak had glided up beside hers.

  “How are you?” she asked.

  He had to take a moment to think about it. The pain hadn’t immediately hampered him the way it had yesterday.

  “Better. Stronger,” he decided. He grinned at her. “I think your jury-rigged shoulder harness works.”

  She laughed. “That’s because I’m so smart.”

  “Has to be,” he agreed not quite solemnly.

  “I think the fog is starting to lift,” she said.

  He turned his head. “How can you tell?”

  She pointed with her paddle. “See? It’s thinner off that way.”

  “Damn. I like being invisible.”

  “Well, Spider Island lies off our port side. We’ll hug it until we see the inlet where I know there’s a campsite.”

  Adam would have rather aimed for a stop that wasn’t listed in maritime guidebooks, but what glimpses he caught of any land seemed to be buttressed by those rock walls rearing from the water. There was nowhere they could pull a kayak ashore.

  He cursed his own weakness again.

  On that thought, he realized he felt more resistance against his paddle. The tide was still ebbing, but he had no idea what effect that had in a north-south ocean passage between islands. Adam dug in the paddle with more effort and stayed a few feet off the stern of Claire’s kayak. She was right—the fog was tearing into long shreds. One moment, the world was gray, the next almost too bright, with glimpses of the blue sky and sun.

  They’d been on their way for a couple of hours, at a guess—he’d dropped the wrist watch into the deck hatch to keep it from getting soaked—when he heard a low growling sound.

  Swearing, he shot forward again just as Claire’s head turned, too.

  “That’s close,” she exclaimed.

  “Too damn close. Watch for anyplace we can get out of sight.”

  She looked scared. “The channel is pretty open here. I don’t think we’ll be that lucky.”

  “They may go right by without seeing us.”

  She gave a sturdy nod and kept paddling, Adam matching her speed even though he was starting to feel as if a spike had been driven through his shoulder.

  A shout behind them carried across the water. They’d been seen, and Claire was right—there was no place for them to hide.

  Chapter Ten

  “Go!” Adam called to Claire. “Don’t wait for me!”

  Fog again closed around them, all-encompassing gray. He paddled as fast and hard as he could, and hoped she was doing the same. To his frustration, he could still see her. Why wasn’t she pulling ahead? Hadn’t she taken him seriously?

  When they next emerged from the mist, he cast a look over his shoulder. He couldn’t see the boat, but the volume of the outboard motor grew. What he’d give for a gun. If they were being pursued by the inflatable, he could capsize it with a few well-placed shots.

  His muscles screamed but he didn’t ease up. There had to be somethin
g he could do to delay these bastards enough for her, at least, to slip away.

  Grabbing the flare gun he’d taken from Kyle Sheppard’s kayak would require him to quit paddling, if only momentarily. The pocket of his PFD had seemed handy enough, but he’d been wrong.

  Using the flare gun—that would mean he had to be within two or three hundred feet, and he had to be able to see the boat. He’d get only one shot, too, so it had to be a good one. If he was in range to use it, they’d sure as hell be in range to shoot him, too, with their far deadlier firearms.

  Some distance had opened at last between his kayak and Claire’s. She disappeared in fog while he was still in the open, but she yelled something back at him. He couldn’t make it out.

  He shot into the band of fog and she yelled again. The buzzing from behind grew ever closer, but he heard something else, too. An odd sound. Another boat approaching from the north?

  Then she called out again, and this time he heard her. Orcas.

  That’s what he’d heard: the explosive exhalation of an orca. The same pod they’d seen yesterday evening, now turned around to head south?

  It came again. A gun fired, too. He was low in the water, which made him a less-than-ideal target. God. What happened if bullets passed through the hull of the kayak? Would he sink? Get dumped back in the bitterly cold water, where he’d wait for death from another bullet...or death from hypothermia if they didn’t see him—or felt especially sadistic?

  But he was still moving forward, his level in the water no lower. He rotated his body the way Claire had taught him, going for maximum speed, praying she’d achieved even more.

  A bullet skimmed the water to his left even as he heard the report from the gun. Not easy to be accurate when shooting at a moving target from a small craft on the water, he thought, in that remote part of his mind making calculations.

  And then water and sound exploded into the air not ten feet to his right, just as a massive black-and-white body leaped out of the water. His rhythm broke. Would one of them come up right under him? As close as he and Claire had been on the shore, he hadn’t understood how huge these animals were. Would his kayak pass for a seal or whatever these particular orcas hunted?