“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.
Dead Reckoning Page 2