"Want me to plot us?"
"If you want, or I'll do it before I sack out. Come on up and chat with me. Listening to her made me realize how lucky I am."
"Because you got a handsome guy who can cook, instead of a jailbird?"
"That, too, but mostly because of her childhood. She had it really rough."
"You didn't have it so easy yourself, Connie. You made your own luck by working your way out of all that."
"It's nice to think that," she said, a somber look on her face. "I didn't have a wonderful all-American childhood, but it was nothing like hers."
"She playing for sympathy, or what?"
"I don't think it's that. I think she's just plain lonely."
"Lonely? She's got a full-time guy, such as he is. Why's she lonely?"
"I have a feeling he's not much use when it comes to being supportive. I don't think the girl's ever had a friend in her life. She ran away from home at 13."
"That's pretty young. But you were what, 15 or 16 when you did that?"
"Yes, but that was different."
"How?"
"Well, a couple of years is pretty important at that age, for one thing. Besides, it was my choice."
"Not much of a choice."
"I could have lived with my aunt and uncle after my parents were killed. They were fine people. No better off than my parents, but welcoming, and they at least supported my decision to go it alone."
"Why didn't you want to live with them?"
"It would have been more of the same. Plus, they had three little children to feed and clothe. But mostly, I wanted to stay put somewhere instead of following the crops and living in labor camps. That was all I had known, but I saw how the other kids in school lived. Not everybody was rootless. I wanted to be on my own and go to the same school for more than a few weeks. Coffee's done; I heard it. Take the helm and I'll go fix your thermos."
Connie went below and powered up the GPS. While it found a satellite fix, she shut off the stove and filled Paul's thermos, setting it on the bridge deck where he could reach it. She marked their current position on the chart and made a note in the logbook; she was pleased with their progress.
"We averaged about eight knots for the last four hours," she said, as she climbed the ladder and sat down next to Paul, who was sipping his first cup of coffee. "Can I fix you anything to eat before I crash?"
"No, thanks, I'm fine. But I appreciate the offer."
"I could cook some eggs; it wouldn't have to be a peanut butter sandwich."
Paul smiled. "You know I just like to tease you about that, don't you?"
Connie grinned. "Sure." She knew it wouldn't be any fun for him if she didn't act annoyed by his teasing, but she was in the mood for serious conversation. "Listening to Gina made me realize how far I've come. Except for luck, I could have ended up like her, or worse."
"I doubt it. What did she tell you, anyway?"
"Well, you heard her mention that she and Dalton both grew up in Mingo County, West Virginia, right?"
"Yes. That's the heart of Appalachia. That much I know. It's a tough part of the country. I had an Army buddy who was from near there. 'Bloody Mingo,' he called it. When he was growing up in the '70s, a lot of men still carried pistols on their hips, like the Old West. Settled their differences in shootouts, too."
"She didn't tell me that. Her folks had a shack, up in a 'holler,' she called it. I guess that's a narrow, low spot in the mountains, like a dead-end valley or something. They didn't have any neighbors close by, and nobody she knew had electricity or even indoor plumbing."
"Yeah, sounds right. It's definitely a poverty-stricken area."
"Her father was a drunk and her mother was a speed freak."
"Must have been a great match. What did they do for a living?"
"Her father had been a coal miner, but he got hurt and couldn't work. After a few months at home, he stayed too drunk to even try. Guess her mother did whatever she had to do to get drugs — lots of men coming and going, what have you."
"So were they on welfare of some sort?"
"Yes. She rattled off a regular alphabet soup of 'programs.' And they took in foster children, because they'd get an allowance for each one. That was their main source of income, from what Gina said."
"Did they have any kids of their own?"
"Gina. She was an only child, except for the foster kids, who came and went."
"That does sound pretty rough."
"It got worse. Her father raped her regularly, and her mother sold her to some of the men who came around, or traded her for dope."
"All of that happened before she ran away at 13?" Paul asked, shaking his head.
"So she said. From when she was seven or eight. I can't believe the authorities would put foster children into a situation like that, let alone leave her there."
"Oh, I can," Paul said. "That system's always been a mess. There're never enough foster homes, and placement's subject to all kinds of schemes. We had cases in Miami where the social workers were taking kickbacks to place kids in certain homes. Usually, there were a few people involved who really cared, and somebody would blow the whistle, but a lot of kids still got hurt."
"She thought it was just the way things were; she didn't even know any better, Paul. It made me want to cry, listening to her."
"What made her leave, then, if she didn't know better?"
"Somebody killed her father, and her mother just disappeared. She took what she could carry in a backpack and beat it before the county came along and put her in foster care. As she said, she 'knowed all 'bout that and didn't want none, thankee very much.' It's sounded so awful, Paul."
"Do you believe her? She could be exaggerating, you know."
"Sure, but I don't think so. If you could have seen the look on her face when she was telling me all that, you'd believe her, too."
"I don't disbelieve her. I've seen kids come out of situations like that. They looked like walking death. I've seen corpses with more animation. If she went through that, I'm truly sorry for her."
"I guess it's no wonder she took up with Dalton, after that. He probably seems like a regular fellow to her," Connie said.
"There's one thing about this that bothers me, Connie."
"What's that?"
"Understand that I made a living working around people like this; they're a bigger percentage of the population than you would think, especially the population that gets involved with the police."
"Okay, but ... " She shook her head. "You said something bothered you. What is it?"
"They don't usually talk about it, particularly with strangers, people who haven't shared that kind of experience. And when they do, it's usually because they want something."
"That's pretty cynical."
"I know. I developed my cynical attitude after a lot of bad experiences."
"So what could she want from me? Sympathy?"
"We aren't talking about somebody who just had a little rough spell in an otherwise normal life. If what she's told you is true, the kind of emotions that most of us have are outside her experience. People like that think sympathy's for suckers."
"But why would somebody make up stuff like that? What could she want beyond sympathy that would cause her to bare her soul?"
"She'd recognize a sympathetic reaction, and work to evoke one. I'm not saying she's doing that, but I've run across some pretty smooth con artists that play on sympathy."
Connie considered that for a moment; she was no stranger to con games, having run a few herself over the years.
"Okay. I still think she's genuine, but I see what you mean. My question is, if she's trying to con me, what does she hope to gain? I mean, we're already feeding them and taking care of them."
"That's a puzzle, isn't it?"
"What do you think I should do? Give her the cold shoulder?"
"No. Just do what we've been doing. Treat them like we're taking them at face value. They're shipwrecked; they lost everything
they had."
"Then what's your point?"
"My point is that we should keep our guard up. We've got a meth-head ex-con who's hallucinating and a woman who, best case, is an enabler for him."
"Best case? And what's the worst case?"
"Worst case, she's his accomplice."
Connie was silent for a moment, thinking. "You're one of the least cynical people I know, Paul. Now you've got me worried. His accomplice in what?"
He shrugged. "Let's hope we don't find out. I've left that life behind me; I'm a chef on a charter yacht with the world's most beautiful skipper. Now, give me a kiss and go get some rest."
Gina was stretched out in her bunk, wide awake. She was musing about how comfortable she felt with Connie, thinking about how easy it was to talk to her. Dalton would be furious if he knew how much she had told the woman. Connie was such a good listener, though, and so kind. Gina had known little kindness in her 20 years. Certainly, it had been in short supply in Mingo County, and no one she had met since leaving there had expressed any interest in her, beyond using her for their own ends.
Was this what having a friend was like? This feeling of being accepted, of being at ease with another person? She didn't know, but Connie made her feel like she could tell her almost anything. Connie had grunted or nodded occasionally, but she had said little. She had given the impression of wanting nothing from Gina, but had seemed to enjoy her company.
Sharing the beauty of the open sea at night with someone who didn't make any demands was a calming experience in itself. Connie's warm companionship had put Gina at ease in a way she'd never known. She chewed her lip, thinking of all the things she'd told Connie that she'd never shared with anyone else, not even with Dalton. "Especially not with him," she told herself. "He'd freak out if'n he knowed half that shit." Knowing she'd told Connie anything personal would have put him over the edge.
He didn't even think the woman was human. "Fuckin' spic bitch," he kept calling her. Dalton didn't mix with people who weren't white. Gina knew the notion of who was white varied; she'd learned that the hard way, working the streets. But Dalton's view was narrower than most, formed by his hard childhood in Mingo County and reinforced by his gang affiliation in prison.
To him, white went way deeper than skin color. White meant attitude, religion, politics, and heritage. Language was part of it, too. The whole mix was seasoned with a generous dose of hatred for anyone who was different. Dalton couldn't say what made somebody white any more that she could, "But I fuckin' well know white when I see it," he'd told her more than once, talking about somebody who didn't meet his standards.
She shuddered to think how close she'd come to telling Connie about Dalton. God knows she'd wanted to; that was a lot to carry around inside. She'd felt her burdens lift at some of the simple stuff she'd shared; she knew it would have made her feel a lot better if she'd told Connie about him. But her survival instinct had kicked in. She knew how he would react if he discovered she'd told Connie about him, about them, let alone about the stuff they'd done.
He would have killed her, and it wouldn't have been quick, either. She'd seen how he dealt with people he thought had betrayed him. She swallowed hard at the recollection of the first time she watched him kill. He might decide to kill her anyway, she knew. There was always that risk, but there was also the security that he represented. It was a tradeoff. She wouldn't risk giving up his protection just to unburden herself. It wasn't worth it. No way.
Dalton was awake and disoriented; his own scream still echoed in his head. He lay still, listening, looking around through slitted eyes. The light was dim; he couldn't see anything. It took him a minute to puzzle out where he was. The sound of the sea rushing by outside the hull registered with him after several seconds. He was on a boat, a sailboat, from the sounds. He'd been on one before, with Gina and those two old people, the ones that kept pissing him off. Had they heard him scream?
"Gina?" he asked, his voice soft.
"Yeah, babe. You awake?"
"Did I scream?"
"Just now?"
"Yeah. It woke me up."
"No, sugar. I didn't hear nothin'."
"Shit. Reckon I dreamed it."
"You okay?"
"Hurtin' purty bad. We got anything? Anything at all?"
"No, babe."
"You sure? Cough syrup? Liquor? Uppers, downers, fuckin' any kind of stuff to get me through this?"
"Nothin'," she said.
"Where the fuck's them old people? Old people gotta have medicine of some kind."
"Harry and Marilyn?" she asked.
"I reckon that's their names."
"You don't remember?"
"Why the fuck do I gotta remember their names?"
"Not their names, Dalton. You don't remember what happened to them?"
"Uh-uh. What?"
"They're dead."
"Dead? Bullshit. Then who's sailin' this goddamn boat, huh?"
"Their boat done sank and we got in the life raft. That's when your shit got washed away."
"Sank? But this ain't no damn life raft."
"No. Another boat picked us up, remember? Paul and Connie? Come on, baby, focus."
"Spic bitch," he sputtered. "And he's a fuckin' cop. The law done already caught up with me."
"They're running this here boat for rich people to rent. He ain't a cop no more; he's the cook."
"Bullshit. He's a fuckin' cop, all right. I remember the way he looked at my tats. I remember. Goin' to the Virgin Islands, right?"
"Yeah. You're doin' good."
"We can't go there. That's part of the U.S. They'll lock my ass back up. Let's steal this damn boat; dump the two of 'em. Then we can go where the hell we want."
"That's the plan, babe. But it ain't quite time, yet."
"How come?"
"We done tried sailin' that boat, Blue Wing, 'member? After you ... um ... after Harry and Marilyn died."
"We got in a storm, didn't we?"
"Yeah. It's comin' back to you quicker, now."
"The fuck you mean?"
"Last time you went under it took a lot longer for you to get a grip when you woke up."
"We ain't in no storm, now. Let's take this damn boat away from these assholes. Maybe they got some medicine of some kind, make me feel better."
"We need to let 'em get us closer to the islands, Dalton. We done already talked through this. Once we can see land, then we can take down the sails and drive the boat to where we want. We couldn't figger out how to sail Blue Wing — "
"Yeah, I remember. And this here boat's way the hell bigger, ain't it?"
"That's right."
"You was gonna ask the bitch how long we was gonna be before we get to the islands, right?"
"Yeah. Welcome back, baby. I missed you."
"How long?"
"She said 'bout four days."
"Four days? From when?"
"Hour ago, maybe."
"How long was I out?"
"Three hours, give or take."
"What were you doin' then? Do I 'member you sayin' you was gonna go talk to her?"
"Yeah. You're doin' real good. That's 'xactly right. I shot the shit with her for a while after you drifted off."
"Learn anything else from her?"
"Not too much. She talked 'bout growin' up in the farm labor camps out to California. Reckon she ain't had no easy life, either."
"I knowed it all along. Fuckin' wet-back-Mexican-bean-pickin' bitch. Who you reckon she screwed to get this here boat?"
"She's nice, Dalton."
"Nice my ass. Nice don't make the kinda money to buy no boat like this 'n. Ain't no damn cop can come up with enough bread for somethin' like this, neither. Not unless the fucker's bent. Maybe they're runnin' dope."
"Get a grip, Dalton. They ain't runnin' dope."
"How the hell do you know that?"
"I just know. I talked to her for several hours. If 'n they was a-runnin' dope, I'd a-done picked up on it."
/>
"The fuck did you talk about for several hours?"
"Girl stuff."
"Don't smart off with me, Gina. I ain't in the mood to put up with no shit."
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean nothin'. We just shot the shit. She told me 'bout workin' her way through school in a beauty shop after her parents was killed. Like that."
"I'll let it go this time. I'm too damn fucked up to whip your ass right now, but you watch it, you hear?"
"I will, babe. You know that."
"We got to figger out how we gonna do this when the time comes."
"You mean ... "
"You know what I mean. We'll need somethin' I can use besides my bare hands. That fuckin' cop's too big. You find out if they got a gun on this boat, you hear?"
"Okay, Dalton. You gonna be all right for a while?"
"I reckon. Why? You goin' somewhere?"
"Feelin' kinda sleepy. She'll be goin' off watch soon. I'm tryin' to get on her same schedule, so I can spend some more time gettin' her comfortable with me, okay?"
"Yeah."
"You gonna go back to sleep?" she asked, yawning.
"Yeah, prob'ly after while. Gonna see if I hear him get up, first. Need to go talk to him, get him used to me bein' around. You think it's almost his turn to steer?"
"Yeah, I think so. Don't get in no argument with him, please."
"No. I ain't gonna. I'm gonna kiss his ass like a good ex-con, talk about how I'm tryin' to get my life back on track, shit like that."
"Dalton?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm glad you're out. You never shoulda been sent away."
"It's okay, babe. I ain't goin' back. Don't you worry none. Sleep good."
12
Dalton waited until he heard Paul take over from Connie. Gina was asleep in the berth above him; he could tell by her even breathing. After he heard the door to the aft cabin close, he waited another five minutes, hoping that would be long enough for Connie to get to sleep.
He slipped out of the cabin, taking care to make no noise. Once in the main saloon, he sat down on the starboard settee to get his bearings. He hadn't spent any time below deck except in the cabin where they'd put him and Gina.
Any doubt he had about the wealth of his hosts faded as he took in the luxurious appointments of the main cabin. He considered rifling the lockers to find a weapon of some sort, but decided it was too risky. He got to his feet and shuffled to the companionway, pausing at the foot of the ladder. He mounted the first step and saw Paul watching him.
Storm Sail_A Connie Barrera Thriller_The 4th Novel in the Caribbean Mystery and Adventure Series Page 8