Dead Reckoning

by Moore, Sandra K.

Her head hit the hull. Pain scorched her skull. She felt the tug. The props would eat her alive. She struck out with her arms, trying to keep her legs tucked in. Her head ached. She concentrated on the props’ roar. Try again. Swim around it, put it behind you, then go up.

  Suddenly the tugging stopped. She put one hand on the hull. Obsession still vibrated strongly. The engines ran but the boat didn’t move. The lifeline had fouled the props. The boat wouldn’t chop her to bits.

  It’d hold her under until she drowned.

  She started to see red. The lifeline.

  She grabbed the line and pulled herself toward the now-still props, relieving the tension, hoping the line wouldn’t suddenly break and drag her face-first into suddenly freed and spinning blades. The snap shackle on her harness caught on the harness ring. She tried not to panic. Sort it out. Her fingers studied the harness fitting, the shackle. Twisted.

  She yanked the shackle around and unhooked it. Free.

  One hand on the hull, she swam out from beneath the yacht and surfaced, coughing. Obsession, turned slightly by the wave action, presented her backside, giving Chris the full benefit of her exhaust.

  “Chris!” Russ’s voice echoed weirdly from the yacht’s stern and heaving water. “Chris!”

  Still heaving for breath, she floated, vaguely aware of Russ scrambling down the ladder to the swim platform. She heard his voice—he kept talking—but wanted only the cool night wind blowing the fumes away from her face, to feel the last of the salt water trickling from her sinuses down her throat, to lie here with the air scraping in and out of her burning lungs.

  She wanted Connor.

  “Chris!” Russ shouted again, sounding desperate.

  Chris roused herself, treaded water. “I’m not coming close until Smitty kills the engines!” she shouted, trying to pitch her voice over the noisy exhaust. “You shut down those goddamned engines and bring Smitty’s ass back with you!”

  If Russ hesitated, Chris didn’t see it. She’d tread water all night if she had to, but she wasn’t going near the swim platform as long as Hortense and Claire were capable of spinning propellers. As long as Smitty was out of sight. She sniffed hard, ignoring the salt burn in her nostrils. If she could just breathe. Her lungs felt so tight.

  The exhaust pipes’ deep spluttering died, leaving only the flat clap of wave on fiberglass. Dark movement on the aft deck, then the deck lights popped on, revealing the two men standing together until Russ dropped onto the swim platform again. Chris dipped her head back to let the water sweep her hair from her face. She watched the men for a long moment, made sure Smitty wasn’t going to move from the deck rail, then breaststroked to the teak platform. Russ grasped her arm and hauled her from the water as if she weighed nothing. Her breath hitched a little, but she got control.

  “How’s Jacquie?” She started stripping the rescue harness off, angry that her voice sounded so raspy, so weak.

  “Hurt pretty bad, but alive.”

  Chris swung up the steps to face Smitty, who squared off against her in a defensive posture. Fighting to have her voice here, on the deck, she tightened her abs for support as she said, “Did you hail the Coast Guard?”

  “I haven’t had time—”

  “Bullshit!” Chris clenched her hands into fists and willed herself not to strike him. “Do you even know how to use the VHF radio? How about a freakin’ phone?”

  “Wait a minute—”

  “Jacquie’s barely alive and you don’t have time to hail the Coast Guard? What the hell were you doing that you didn’t have time to call for help?”

  She brushed past him and strode down the side deck to the pilothouse, aware that both men were following. Jacquie lay on her back on the pilothouse’s bench near the helm console, the ugly cut behind her ear bleeding through the T-shirt bandage someone had made. “Hang on,” Chris told her. “I’m gonna get help.”

  Glancing at the GPS for their current position, she grabbed the satellite phone from its holder. “This is motor vessel Obsession with a Coast Guard emergency. Requesting Coast Guard assistance, over.”

  “This is Captain Anderson of the U.S. Coast Guard,” blared the phone’s speakers. “What’s the nature of your emergency? Over.”

  “We’ve recovered a man overboard who requires medical assistance.” Chris gave as much of Jacquie’s information as Russ knew, then relayed Obsession’s position.

  “Bring your vessel east on heading one two five. Our chopper should meet you in twenty minutes.”

  “No can do. We’re dead in the water with lifeline fouling both props. It’ll take twenty minutes just to cut it all out.”

  “Roger that. Make that ETA thirty minutes.”

  “Thirty minutes,” Chris repeated.

  She slotted the phone handset back into place, then glared at Smitty. “Now would have been the time to start the engines.”

  “Hey, I didn’t know—”

  “You don’t know a helluva lot for someone who was Coast Guard.” Chris automatically checked her watch to note the time, then pivoted to face Smitty. “Does ‘kill the engines’ mean anything to you, Coastie?”

  “Come on, Chris—”

  “This is the second time you’ve nearly killed me because you couldn’t follow a simple order. Give me one good reason why I should keep your ass aboard instead of tossing it straight into the fucking gulf.”

  “Look, Chris, I know you’re upset,” Smitty said, his hands raised as if to fend her off.

  “I’m not upset, you moron, I’m furious.” She jabbed a finger at his chest but stayed out of his reach. “Confined to quarters until we reach land. Then you’re off my vessel.”

  “No way.” Smitty shook his head. He glanced at Russ, looking for support. “I’m going to do my job.”

  “And what’s your job, buddy?” Russ asked softly from where he sat at Jacquie’s side.

  “What do you mean?” Smitty asked, eyes wide.

  “You lied,” Russ said. “You told her you served. I know from your records you couldn’t even finish training.”

  Relief swept through Chris’s body in a great rush. Russ understood. He knew. Or at least he was beginning to see.

  “Why’d you do that?” Russ continued, his gray-green gaze spearing Smitty. “What did you hope to gain by lying?”

  “Look,” Smitty said with a feeble shrug, “Connor wouldn’t have taken me if he’d thought I couldn’t handle crewing. I did fine with that at Cape May—it was just the rescue operations….” His hands clenched and unclenched several times. “You just don’t know what it’s like to go out there and throw yourself into all that water and—”

  “She did.” Russ nodded at Chris.

  “That’s not the problem,” Chris said, starting to shiver in the pilot house air-conditioning. “The problem is you’ve told me a helluva lot that’s not true.”

  “Like what?” Smitty challenged, his expression very much like that of a disgruntled teenager testing parental boundaries.

  “You told me McLellan’s brother shot himself.”

  Russ pulled his Glock from its holster, held it steady. “You were on that sting, just like us. You know what happened to Sean.”

  “Yeah, exactly what he deserved. You play with guys like that, you take your chances. Just because it was pretty boy’s brother, everybody’s a bleedin’ heart.”

  Chris froze. “Falks called McLellan ‘pretty boy’ the other night.”

  “Aw, shit.” Smitty’s disgust showed in his snarl. “You’re kiddin’ me, Nancy Drew.”

  “Where’s the best place to put this asshole?” Russ asked without taking his eyes off Smitty.

  “Bunk cabin upstairs,” she said quietly, her throat aching. “There’s not a hatch big enough to climb out.”

  “This is crazy! Damn, Russ—”

  “Let’s go.” Russ motioned Smitty to precede him out of the pilothouse.

  “Wait a minute,” Chris said on a hunch. “We need to make sure it’s clean.”

&
nbsp; On the way down to the bunk cabin, Chris ducked into the office to grab the yacht’s key ring. Inside the small room, she quickly upended the cushions, dug around in the little hanging locker. Then her hands brushed something hard near the clothes rod.

  “Gotcha!” she said in triumph.

  “What is it?” Russ called from outside.

  She peeled away the tape that held the weapon to the locker’s ceiling. “Ditty revolver.” It tucked neatly into her waistband. Super lightweight.

  “Hey!” Smitty protested. “You think that’s mine? That isn’t mine!”

  Chris finished her search and emerged, gave Smitty plenty of room to pass, stayed out of his reach. Russ shoved Smitty, hard, into the cabin.

  “You come outta here, I shoot you on sight. Got that?”

  “When do I get my piss breaks?” Smitty asked.

  Chris ignored his sarcastic tone. “You don’t. Piss out the window.”

  Smitty dropped onto the bunk, stared at the windowless wall in front of him. As she closed the door, she saw his eyes shift, meet hers, filled with anger. And something more: resentment. Loathing. The same look she’d seen from Natalie on the rare occasions Chris hadn’t given her younger sister what she wanted. But he was much more dangerous than a spoiled child. The door clicked closed.

  She turned the key. The lock shot home and suddenly Chris could breathe again.

  Chapter 14

  “How’s she doing?” Chris asked the nurse as the woman thunked a big plastic Super Big Gulp cup, emblazoned with the Tampa Bay Hospital logo and filled with crushed ice and water, onto the wheeled adjustable tray next to Jacquie’s bed.

  The nurse slapped a blood pressure cuff around Jacquie’s arm. “Let’s just see.” She hit the switch on the measurement machine and watched its lights until it beeped. The Velcro scritched as she removed the cuff. “Good as gold.” The nurse scribbled on a chart.

  Chris sat back in the uncomfortable guest chair at the bed’s foot and eyed the pink-and-purple flowery scrubs the nurse wore. She was half-glad Jacquie wasn’t awake to see them. Not your style at all, Chris thought to Jacquie.

  She studied the bandage on Jacquie’s head, which had turned out not to have as disastrous a wound as had first appeared. By the time Obsession had reached Tampa Bay at dawn, Jacquie’s injuries had already been examined and treated. Jacquie had even managed a wave with her good hand when they came into her room. A broken forearm and wrenched shoulder were the worst of it. Jacquie’s arm would be in a sling for a few weeks, then she’d be in physical therapy after that.

  “If she wants more pain medication when she wakes up, buzz me,” the nurse said.

  “Thanks.”

  Russ caught the door on his way in as the nurse sped away. He closed it quietly. “She doin’ all right?” he asked in a low voice as he walked to the bed.

  “The nurse keeps telling me that. Pain killers are still on offer.”

  “Good.” Russ leaned over Jacquie, studying the bandages and stiff sling. “At least it’s not her shooting arm.”

  “What’d you find?” Chris asked.

  Russ finally looked her way for the first time since entering the room. “Not much. It looked like the sailing tender’s boom might have been rigged up under pressure so if somebody moved it, it’d hit whoever happened to be on the wrong side. But I couldn’t find the trip wire.”

  “It might have snapped off into the water when the boom swung,” Chris suggested.

  His expression hardened as he shoved his fists into his pants pockets. “Swung like a damned catapult. The impact’s what knocked her off the flybridge. If she’d been about your height…” He glanced at Jacquie, still sleeping peacefully. “Probably would have taken her head off.”

  Chris swallowed. “Sounds like Smitty’s work to me.”

  “Well, we can’t say that yet.” Before Chris could protest, he continued, “Local office is sending out internal investigations to take a look around.”

  “What about Smitty?”

  “I gave him to our guys here. It’s out of our hands now.”

  Chris sat forward in her chair and scrubbed her face with her hands. “So they’ll decide whether to keep him in custody based on the circumstantial evidence your investigators might not find? Hell, Russ, the ‘accidents’ are just guessing on my part.”

  Russ shook his head. “You got more on him than you think. We’re checking on a few things. The investigators are gonna wanna talk to you.”

  “When?”

  “In a couple of hours. What’s it been since you slept? Thirty-six hours by now?”

  Chris leaned back in the guest chair and tried to calculate mornings and nights and hours, then realized it didn’t matter. “I can sleep on this lovely sofa bed here if I start losing it.” She nodded at the vinyl-covered sofa, thought about closing her eyes, about drifting off, then caught herself before she did. “How long do you think the investigators will take? Our window’s closing. We’ve got to get to Isladonata in two days, three at the absolute latest. They know this is a priority for us.”

  He pursed his lips as if he was about to give her bad news. “They will now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s…complicated. McLellan can explain it.”

  “No,” Chris said, standing up. She didn’t want to meet this new challenge sitting down, no how, no way. “Smitty apparently told me the truth when he said this mission was under the radar. So I want you to explain it.”

  Russ spread his hands. “Hey, this is not my deal—”

  “But you’re here. You’re in it, just like me. Is it true McLellan set this up outside the DEA because he was afraid of the mole scuttling it?”

  His solemn, square-jawed face confirmed it even though he said nothing.

  “Okay, let me speculate,” she went on. “McLellan’s keeping this mission a secret for the reasons you’re not discussing. Fair enough. So the cash Antonio Garza handed me for the yacht restoration didn’t come from the DEA, but from McLellan himself. And chances are,” she pursued, “the DEA would never allow a civilian like me to get involved. A snitch, sure. Someone on the inside, fine. But all I can give you is regular contact with Natalie—”

  “And sometimes that’s enough. A regular source of good information is an expensive asset on the street,” Russ explained. “Hell, if I were Connor, I’d be willing to pay.”

  “And Falks showing up in the first place was another good clue, huh?” she asked, letting the sarcasm creep into her voice.

  “It meant the connection between you and your sister was good, yeah. Falks would never have bothered you if your sister wasn’t serious about leaving Scintella.”

  Chris fought the tears stinging the backs of her eyes. Which felt worse, believing McLellan had used her to get his hands on the missing thirty million or knowing he’d used her for the information she could give him?

  And when you were weighing that kind of betrayal, what difference did it make whether the betrayer was a good guy or a bad guy?

  “But you’re overlooking one thing,” Russ said. When she didn’t invite him to enlighten her, he added, “Had Connor not taken this on, you’d be dead already.”

  And out of my misery. “Why didn’t he just tell me?” she demanded. “What’s so difficult about being up-front with this kind of information?”

  Russ’s lips thinned and she knew he was through with this conversation. But she knew, too, could see in his eyes, that there was more he was unwilling to tell her. A lot more.

  “Come on back to the marina with me,” he said. “Sleep in your own bed tonight. I’ll stay the night here with Jacquie.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Jacquie murmured.

  Her faint voice might have been a shout given the way Russ’s head snapped around. “Chère,” he said, smiling as he went to her. “You’re back with us again.”

  “I hadn’t gone that far.”

  “Far enough to scare me to death.”

  �
��Your nose is growing, Pinocchio,” she muttered. “You probably had dibs on my Glock.”

  “And your ergonomic desk chair,” he said. “Want some water?”

  “Love some.”

  He adjusted the wheeled tray’s height, then drove it around the bed where she could reach it with her good arm. She picked up the Super Big Gulp and sipped delicately at its fat blue straw. “Very nice,” she said. “Now catch me up on all the news.”

  As Russ described his morning studying the sailing tender and gave his theory on the rigged boom, Jacquie nodded, her dark eyes thoughtful.

  “Yes, there was definitely a twang, like a high-tension wire giving,” she said. “I didn’t see anything. Smitty had already gone below so even the instrument lights were out.” She paused, then her lips drew into a chagrined line. “If I’d had Chris’s eye for the mechanical, I might have recognized what would happen.”

  “That’s why she’s an engineer and you’re not,” Russ said.

  “And we didn’t anticipate Smitty’s attack on Chris,” Jacquie admonished. “Which means you and I aren’t very good at what we do.”

  “He’s a good salesman,” Chris said quietly. “I bought his story about the Coast Guard even though I should have known before we ever reached New Orleans.”

  “Why?” Russ asked.

  “There’s a dead spot on the ICW where GPS occasionally doesn’t work. All the cruisers know about it and we figure it’s the Navy or the Coasties testing GPS-jamming devices. Smitty didn’t know anything about it. I should have realized it then.”

  “You had a lot going on at the time from everything I heard,” Jacquie said. “That was the night of the accident at sea, wasn’t it? When Smith tried to kill you?”

  “Did McLellan tell you that?” Chris asked, startled.

  Russ nodded. “Smith’s good at seizing opportunities. McLellan’s theory is that he spotted a chance to do what Falks hadn’t succeeded in doing while keeping his own position intact. Connor swears there was time for Smitty to have blocked the engine room door.”

  “All speculation, of course,” Jacquie added. “Connor figured Smith might overplay his hand while he was gone and asked us to keep an eye on you. We just didn’t count on Smith to play it the way he did.”