Drowning Tides

by Karen Harper

  He could tell they were already descending, though Jace was keeping the plane level and the nose slightly up. He went back out into the cabin. He blinked back tears when Claire smiled at him and Lexi yawned with her head trustingly on her mother’s shoulder.

  “Now listen to me, everyone,” he announced in as steady and stern a voice as he could muster. “We are having a problem with the engine.”

  Bronco said, “I don’t even hear it no more.”

  Nick ignored that. “We are going to make a water landing. We have rafts, and Jace is going to declare an emergency with Miami air traffic control. They will track us and help us, at least when daylight comes.”

  Nita gave a little scream and started crying. Bronco put his arm around her, then said, “I’ll help, Nick. Just show me what to do.” Heck looked like he was going to throw up. And Claire? What a woman. She twisted her neck to look up at him and nodded, though he knew it pained her every time she moved. Why was he thinking of such trivia now when they all might die? But if this wasn’t chance, and Ames was somehow behind it, he had to live, not only to save Lexi and Claire, but to finally stop that damn bastard.

  Claire was saying, “Lexi, get your coat back on, then your life vest. Mommy will help you. We are going to take a boat ride for a while, and everything will be all right.”

  The three men scrambled to get the two uninflated life rafts and drag them near the door. Nick started repeating what Jace yelled out from the cockpit, so he sounded like an echo, “We are all going out the front door into the rafts once they are inflated right next to the plane in the water. The sea is not too rough tonight. I will open the door when Jace gives the okay. If that door jams, Bronco will open the back baggage door. Some water will get in, even though Jace will put the plane down carefully. Do not be afraid if water comes into the plane.”

  “But won’t it sink?” Nita asked. She looked on the edge of hysteria. “I can feel we’re going down.”

  Jace went silent, so Nick was on his own now. “Didn’t you all see those pictures of that plane with lots more people than us that landed on the Hudson River in New York?” Nick said, pulling that one out of his hat. “We’re going to be all right and we’re going to lock our rafts together and just float until someone comes to help us.”

  He went back to the cockpit door. “Jace, can I do something?”

  “Get back in your seat and strap in. Everyone’s head down on their knees and braced with their hands. When I say so, we go!”

  * * *

  Claire was terrified, but she didn’t let on. For Lexi’s sake. To help Nick. So that Nita would stop crying. This could not be happening. Not with all they’d been through and their well-laid plans. Ames had to be behind this.

  Nick was in a seat behind them, calmly promising Lexi he’d take her on horse rides. An eternity seemed to tick by.

  “I see the water!” Jace shouted from the cockpit. “Brace! Brace!”

  Claire braced with one hand and put the other on Lexi’s head. The plane seemed to do a big belly flop, rise again, go down. They could hear and feel the smack of water. They coasted, rocked. Jace had them skidding across the waves.

  When they came to a rocking stop, Jace shouted “Go! Door, rafts, go!”

  Claire unbuckled Lexi, and Nick appeared from behind to pick her up. Despite orders of no baggage, Claire slung her purse over her arm. Her meds...she’d need her meds. Bronco and Heck handled the front side door as Jace stumbled out of the cockpit, trying to keep his balance. They were starting to list. Jace popped the door open before anyone else could get to it. Cold air smacked them. Water sloshed in but only ankle deep.

  Nita screamed. The rafts went out, one, the next, one held by a cord to Heck’s wrist, one to Bronco’s. They hissed as Jace inflated them. Jace shouted, “Nick, get into this raft, and I’ll pass Lexi and Claire down. You three get ready for the second one!”

  “No, I’m not letting go of Mommy!”

  Jace pulled her away from Claire and, on his belly in the door of the plane, getting sopping wet, handed the screaming child to Nick who had dropped into one raft. Jace pulled Claire to the door of the plane. The wind seemed strong, and the plane tilted even more. Salt spray spewed in her face. With his arm tight around her, he said in her ear, “Sorry this went bad. Whatever happens, I still love my girls.”

  Salt water stung her eyes, or tears, as he handed her down to Nick as if she was another child. She huddled in the bottom of the raft, wrapped around Lexi who clung so hard she hurt her neck.

  Nick held to the wing of the plane until the others dropped into the second raft. The plane was listing toward them now. Would it suck them all under? Claire wished he’d let go of the plane, get them away from the huge, sinking mass, but they had to wait for Jace. Jace, who she knew she loved too, always would.

  “Shove off, Nick!” Jace shouted as he helped Heck and Bronco into the other raft last. “Get away now! I’ll walk the wing to get in. Go!”

  Nick shoved them away with his hands, then one foot. No paddle but Nick paddled with his arm over the side of the raft, under the wing.

  Jace, holding some sort of emergency pack, started walking the wing. The plane lurched and he skidded off into the waves, but surfaced, spitting water. Claire could tell Nick didn’t know what to do: get them away or go back for Jace.

  “I’ll help you paddle!” she screamed. Keeping Lexi between her ankles, she leaned over the bubble of the raft’s edge and dipped her hand in the water, again, again. Nick did too until he could haul the sopping, heavy man over the side into the raft. The box of whatever he had was tied to his wrist, so they pulled that over too.

  Spitting water, Jace said, “Yell at them to get away. It’s going down. This five-million-dollar FBI plane is going down.”

  Nick and Claire paddled, then Jace too. Heck and Bronco moved their raft clear of the plane. They were nearly thirty feet away when the plane tilted again, gave a huge almost human gasp and went under into the darkness.

  It was so silent then, but for the wind and water. Bronco and Heck paddled their raft close and they tied them together. Nita had stopped crying. Claire, leaning against Nick, held the trembling Lexi. At least they were all alive, Claire thought. And, though it took all this, they were together. She prayed the Coast Guard or someone would find them as soon as daylight came. It was so very dark, as dark as one of her narcoleptic nightmares, a black night of the soul.

  “Jace,” she said, desperate to keep spirits up, “where are we? Could we just drift into the Florida coast?”

  “We’re closer to Cuba, and with this wind direction...”

  “Oh.” She held Lexi closer. Nick tightened his arm around her.

  Jace said, “I’m sorry, Claire. Everyone. I checked things out, so someone tampered with the plane after that, unless it was screwed up even earlier.”

  “In the end, you saved us,” she told him. Clinging to Lexi, she settled closer to keep Nick warm, since he’d taken off his dry jacket to put over Jace’s shaking shoulders. She raised her voice so everyone could hear, however much it hurt her throat.

  “Since we’re all together,” she promised, “we are absolutely going to be all right!”

  * * * * *

  If you liked DROWNING TIDES, make sure you

  read the first book in the SOUTH SHORES series, CHASING SHADOWS!

  And don’t miss the next book, FALLING DARKNESS, coming soon from MIRA Books!

  Keep reading for a sneak peek...

  Author’s Note

  So ends book two of the SOUTH SHORES series, but the story of Claire, Nick and Jace does not end here. I hope you will look for book #3, FALLING DARKNESS, in May.

  It has been great fun to use Naples, Florida, as a story setting since my husband and I lived there for thirty winters as snowbirds. I figure that adds up to ove
r nine years, but only several months and weeks at one time. We have visited the locations I use in this novel, including Goodland, which is a place and story unto itself.

  In March of 1997, we visited a fascinating person, Elhanon Combs, who owned the then Mar-Good Resort on Goodland and claimed that the cistern water under his property was Ponce de León’s actual fountain of youth, rather than the one claimed by St. Augustine, Florida, or other locations. He told us then (and told the local newspaper, The Islander, in a January 1997 interview) “I think old Ponce de León found the fountain of youth here... This tree [a rubber tree that kept rejuvenating itself] is living proof.” He showed us the underground water source. When I had the idea for this book and we revisited the site eighteen years later, Elhanon had died and the Mar-Good property had become a small park, but I remembered his claims.

  As we drove around Goodland in March 2015, and I took photos for research and my author Facebook page, I made plans for this novel, tying the Goodland fountain of youth to the youth cosmetic industry. People today spend billions worldwide, trying to stay young in various ways.

  I love eccentric, historic Florida, small-town ambience and unique settings, so it was fun to write this novel. We have also been to Grand Cayman twice, so revisiting that location was great author fodder too.

  Special thanks to Florida pilot and friend, John Hawkins, for his advice on flying into Key West and beyond and on private planes in general. Any mistakes are mine, not his. Thanks to Lee Ann Parsons for the information on the burrowing owls. Of course, special appreciation to my travel companion, proofreader and business manager, my husband, Don. And as ever to my editors, Nicole Brebner and Emily Ohanjanians, and agent, Annelise Robey. “Onward and upward!”

  I close with a quote that was at first attributed to the Italian actress Sophia Loren, which she recited on her eightieth birthday in 2014. However, I found this was taken from Hope Notes: 52 Meditations to Nudge Your World (2004) by Wayne Willis, “There is a fountain of youth: It is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will have truly defeated age.”

  “The thrilling finish takes a twist that most readers won’t see coming.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Broken Bonds

  Looking for more thrilling and suspenseful reads from

  New York Times bestselling author Karen Harper?

  Don’t miss a single moment in the captivating South Shores series:

  Chasing Shadows

  Drowning Tides

  Falling Darkness

  “A compelling story...intricate and fascinating.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag on Dark Road Home

  And be sure to follow each electrifying tale in Karen Harper’s gripping Cold Creek trilogy:

  Shattered Secrets

  Forbidden Ground

  Broken Bonds

  “Harper, a master of suspense, keeps readers guessing

  about crime and love until the very end.”

  —Booklist on Fall from Pride

  Complete your collection!

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  Falling Darkness

  by Karen Harper

  2014

  After their airplane skidded over the water and sank, their two life rafts tied together seemed so small in the vast, dark sea. Claire held her four-year-old daughter Lexi close to keep her warm and calm, though she was neither of those things herself. The child had gone silent, no more screams or sobs. Claire’s husband Nick’s arm around them felt like a band of iron, a moving one, since he too was shaking from the cold and shock.

  Her ex-husband, Jace—Lexi’s father—was the fourth person in their raft. He’d been the pilot of the borrowed private plane that had nearly plunged all seven of them beneath the surface to drown. So far, only Lexi’s nanny, Nita, in the next raft had been seasick, though they were all sick at heart and scared to death. Nita was praying aloud and, no doubt, the others were doing so silently.

  “Where are we, really?” Lexi asked. “Near a beach at home?”

  Her teeth chattering, Claire told her, “Not quite, but off the coast of Florida.” She didn’t add they were in the wide Straits of Florida but much closer to dangerous, forbidden Cuba.

  The sea, so rough at first that their little rubber islands had slid from trough to trough, seemed to be calming now. Breaks in the clouds revealed a scattering of stars that looked like they were dancing and a crooked sliver of moon like a sharp, tilted smile.

  “Nobody’s gonna find us till mornin’,” Bronco, their family bodyguard, spoke up from the other raft. The big, bold man was trying to be strong, but his voice quavered too.

  Nita, who had been moaning, began to cry again, though she was sheltered in the other raft between her cousin Hector, called Heck, Nick’s tech genius, and Bronco, who had his arms around her.

  Heck said, “Yeah, well, we’re valuable to the FBI, so they’ll have their net out for us. Just hope someone else doesn’t, and they tampered with the plane. You-know-who has a long arm—and an army of spies.”

  “That can’t be,” Nick said. “Before we took off, Jace checked the plane, and Bronco guarded it. It had to be a malfunction, not sabotage.”

  Bronco said, “But you know, boss, the plane was parked by that dark Key West field. I didn’t tell you, but some guy came up and asked me how much it cost. Took my eyes off the plane to get rid of him, head him back to the terminal.”

  “I did all the checkups,” Jace told them, “but that was before I hit the john when all of you were still in the terminal. I still can’t believe it. And, since the FBI arranged for that plane, who knows if we can trust them? Maybe you-know-who got to them too, or at least to that contact guy Patterson. I don’t trust anyone anymore—except you, Lexi,” he added and rubbed the child’s back.

  “And you trust Mommy and Nick too!” she insisted.

  “Listen up, all of you.” Nick took over the conversation again, like them raising his voice to be heard over the wind and waves. “So far our adversary’s dealt in torment, not total annihilation.”

  Lexi stirred against Claire. “What’s nilation?”

  “Don’t worry about that, or anything,” Claire whispered to her. Nick was evidently using big words so Lexi wouldn’t catch on to the deadly mess they were in whether they were rescued from the water or were on shore.

  They had fled Florida with the help of the Federal Witness Protection Program, WITSEC, to stay safe until the US government could locate and extradite Nick’s nemesis, a powerful international businessman with a long reach. The FBI wanted their hands on Clayton Ames as badly as Nick did, but Ames made a habit of living abroad and moving around. When it came to catching, extraditing and prosecuting the man who was now among the US government’s most wanted, Claire knew Nick wished he was a vigilante or hit man instead of a criminal lawyer who could only accuse and testify.

  “Okay, enough about all that for now,” Nick said. “Whoever rescues us, the new identification papers I have for all of us in this waterproof pouch are what we will have to go by. Lexi, we are going to have new, pretend names for a while, but it’s a secret only the seven of us can share. I was telling you on the plane that we are going to live in a new place for a while, and we
need to learn these names and the story of where we came from.”

  “Is it like a game?”

  “Yes, but a very serious, important game.”

  “Like life,” Jace muttered. Then he said louder, “That box I had strapped to me has some drinking water, some medical supplies and a few rations. Semper paratus, semper fi. Listen up, everybody. You’re with an ex-navy pilot who has never crashed before but has training for it. We’re going to be rescued, but meanwhile, we need to keep our heads up and work together. Like Claire said when we first made it into the rafts, we’ll be okay.”

  Tears stung Claire’s eyes and not just from the saltwater spray. The only two men she’d ever loved were with her: Jace, her ex, who had claimed he still loved her when he’d helped her out of the sinking plane and into the raft; and Nick, who had taken her life and love by storm. They had been forced by his nemesis Clayton Ames to marry, but she had come to not only desire but love Nick. Thank God, the three of them were getting along in this desperate flight. But to live all together as the WITSEC program had planned? That scared her almost as much as this shifting, sliding, endless sea.

  * * *

  As dawn broke, raising their hopes they would be spotted, Jace passed around the water canteen again so they could each take a drink as a chaser after a tasteless biscuit. Nick saw that Jace had put the dry jacket he had loaned him around Lexi. Jace looked like a Viking at sea, ruddy and blond compared to Nick’s dark hair dusted with silver.

  The two men’s gazes met. They’d been at loggerheads over Claire, so Nick hoped they could work together to be rescued. But their hideout plans for that had been for northern Michigan, not on a rubber raft in the middle of the Straits of Florida.

  Nick looked away and hit his fist hard on his knee. He’d left his prosperous Naples, Florida law firm of Markwood, Benton and Chase in the hands of the other partners. He’d used the cover story he was leaving immediately for Belgium to assist an important government figure with legal advice. He’d told them he was taking his family and a small support staff with him and asked them to cover his cases.