He sighted a lobster, dove, and released his spear. He missed, and the lobster bolted backward into a hiding spot in one of the coral’s many caverns. He swore, and water entered his snorkel. He kicked his fins, broke the surface, and spat salt water.
He tried for the lobster a second time. He caught a shadow in the corner of his eye and figured Shannon or Charlie had followed him. He pulled the rubber sling tight and let go. His spear hit the target, but before he lifted the lobster, a sharp pain radiated from his leg.
He put a hand on his leg. Blood gushed from his calf, spreading at an alarming rate through the water, and he let go of the wound. He shouldn’t have assumed the shadow he saw was a person. He swam to the surface and spat out his mouthpiece.
“Get out of the water now! I’ve been bitten!”
They swam to the dinghy. Charlie bolted up first, then gave Shannon a hand, pulling her over the pontoon on her stomach. Rubber squeaked against rubber. Jake was the last in and swiftly removed his feet from the water, expecting a second hit at any moment. His breath came in quick, shallow intakes and his heart pounded.
“I’m sorry,” Charlie said.
“What happened?” Shannon shifted to the same side of the dinghy as Jake, and water dripped out the bottom of her wetsuit.
Jake checked the puncture wound in his leg and realized he hadn’t been bitten. “What the heck?”
“I thought I could hit the lobster, but I missed. I didn’t mean for the spear to hit you,” Charlie said.
Jake took Charlie’s spear away from him and placed it where he couldn’t reach it. “Are you out of your mind? You could’ve killed me. I told you not to aim near anyone.”
“My goggles were foggy. I thought you were out of the way. I said I was sorry.”
“You’re not twelve. You think sorry cuts it?”
“I don’t know what you want me to do.”
Jake slammed his mask on the dinghy floor, not caring if it broke.
“Drive us to George Town, so I can get to the clinic.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Shannon
George Town Clinic
Shannon, Charlie, and Jake entered the George Town clinic. A local had given them a ride in the back of his pickup, so they hadn’t had to walk in their wetsuits and bare feet. Shannon’s suggestion they stop at the boat to change and get shoes had been ignored. Jake’s temper had frothed over, and she hadn’t wanted to be on the receiving end of his barbs.
His anger with Charlie seemed extreme considering Charlie hadn’t meant to hurt him. Shannon sat beside Charlie on a plastic bench. The rubber on her wetsuit squeaked when she shifted position. Neither spoke. Her wetsuit chafed at her ankles, and she was chilled. Rings indented Charlie’s cheeks where his mask had left pressure marks. She assumed she had the same funky look going.
“He’ll be okay,” Shannon said, more to break the silence than to say anything useful.
“Yeah, I know. Your superhero is invincible.”
“Why don’t you like him?”
“I don’t trust him. He’s a cat guy. Did you know that? He only pretends to like Peanut because you do. Maybe he’s the one who poisoned her.”
“You have no reason to say that. And why do you think he’s into cats?”
“He told me he grew up with one.”
“That’s not a reason to treat him badly.”
“Sometimes you are so naive. The guy is not the hero you think he is. I don’t see why Debi is wasting her money on him. He could leave and you and I could sail the boat. We should get out of George Town anyway.”
“We’re not going anywhere without Jake. Don’t you like it here?”
“It’s boring.”
Shannon shivered. A change of clothes, and she’d feel better. “But you don’t even like to sail.”
“I don’t like sitting around here doing nothing. Talk to Debi. She’ll sail somewhere else if you ask her, oh favorite one.”
“Charlie!” a local woman, wearing black dress pants and a silk blouse, called from across the waiting room. Her large bosom bounced when she waved.
Charlie smiled at her.
She put her hands on her hips and tilted her head to one side. The red of her lipstick matched the polish covering her claw-like nails.
“It’s been so long. I think maybe you weren’t coming back.”
Charlie stood and greeted the woman. “It’s not been that long.”
Shannon wondered how often Charlie came to town and if this was the woman he’d been spending his nights with. She stood to meet Charlie’s friend, but he ushered the woman out the door before Shannon got close to them.
She returned to her seat and sat on the damp spot she’d created with her wetsuit.
Jake returned from the examining room. “Four stitches and antibiotics. Nothing serious.”
“I’m so glad. I guess this means you have to stay out of the water for a while.”
“Yup. Where’s Charlie?”
“Outside, talking to someone.”
“Let’s go. I want to get out of this suit.”
“You mean what’s left of your suit.” Shannon pointed to the ragged end of the material cut off just above his knee. “You can always cut the other leg and make it into a shorty.”
They exited the clinic. Charlie stood on the opposite side of the road talking with his friend. Jake stepped off the curb and headed in their direction.
Charlie pressed the woman’s shoulder as if urging her to go. She left before Jake reached them.
“Who was that?” Jake asked.
“Just a friend from town, Dad.”
“Don’t you get sick of the sarcasm? And by the way, I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Jake
Sand Dollar Anchorage, George Town Area
Jake stepped down the companionway stairs of Night Wind, and Shannon followed close behind, her hand resting on his shoulder for guidance in the dark. He used his flashlight to examine the electrical control panel to the left of the stairs and found a light switch.
The subtle glow of LED lights illuminated the main salon. A teal L-shaped settee sat across from two matching armchairs. The wooden interior sparkled, indicating a well taken care of vessel. The navigation station filled the port side of the hull and had a leather chair matching the rest of the furniture. Two computers rested on the desk beside the electrical panel.
“Is your leg okay?” Shannon asked.
“It will be.”
“You’re limping. Are you sure?”
“I’m fine.” Jake turned in the direction of the aft cabin first and bumped into Shannon. He felt her warm skin against his arm. He sizzled every time he touched her. She’d dressed like a burglar. Black tank top, black shorts, and black ball cap. Too bad her light skin had been visible in the moonlight. “You check the forward cabin. I’ll check the aft.”
“Yes, sir.” Shannon saluted.
Each gave the boat a quick scan and returned to the salon. Shannon waved her arm, indicating the interior of the boat. “Don’t you think the boat’s unusually clean? You think Nicole kept it this way even though the owner was away?”
“You have a point. I think the forward cabin was hers. Let’s search there first.”
They emptied the cabinets and drawers, putting the contents on the bed. Clothes, books, makeup, jewelry. All the usual things.
Shannon searched the head. Jake lifted the floorboards, took pillows out of their cases, and stripped the bed. He found a baseball cap underneath the sheet and held it up for Shannon to see.
“Orion. It has to be Darren’s.”
“Yup. When I was on his boat, I noticed he has a lot of things embroidered with Orion. Gotta be his, but it doesn’t mean he was here.”
They searched the rest of the boat with the same thoroughness.
When they were done, Jake sat on a chair in the main salon, and Shannon plopped across from him at the navigation station. She flipped open the li
d of one laptop. Night Wind appeared as the user id, and the computer requested a password. “This is probably the owner’s computer. Weird that he left it here.”
“Not necessarily. Lots of boaters have a computer dedicated to navigation.”
Shannon opened the second laptop. No user id showed up, and the computer didn’t request a password. She clicked on the documents folder.
Empty.
She clicked on the email icon.
Empty.
Everywhere she clicked, she found a vacuum of empty computer storage.
“I think the computer has been cleaned.”
Jake leaned toward her. “What do you mean?”
“There’s nothing on it. Kinda like a brand new computer.”
“You think it’s Nicole’s and someone erased everything?”
Shannon nodded. “Did you find her phone?”
“No.”
“She wouldn’t have taken it swimming, so where is it?”
“I don’t know.” Jake pushed his hands against the chair to stand and one hand slid down the crack between the arm and the seat. “There’s something stuck in here.”
He slid his fingers deep into the crevice and removed a long pearl earring. He held it up for Shannon to see. “Recognize this?”
“Your band-aid is leaking.”
Jake handed Shannon the earring and checked his leg. A red line of blood made its way from his wound to his ankle. He looked around for something to wipe the blood before it hit the floor.
Shannon was at his side in an instant with a paper towel. She gently wiped the blood from his ankle up and then pressed the towel on his wound. “I’ll keep pressure here until the bleeding stops. We can have a better look at it when we get back to the boat.”
Jake reached forward and tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. She kept her head lowered and didn’t look at him. He wanted to lift her chin, to bring his lips to hers, but he let the moment pass.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Shannon
Sand Dollar Anchorage
“Hey, we have a good Internet connection right now,” Shannon called to Jake. She sat on her bunk with her laptop on her knees. Jake was tucked behind the salon table reading. Sometimes the quality of the connection depended on the direction A Dog’s Cat was swinging. The antenna was installed on the aft side of the mast, so if the Wi-Fi provider was somewhere off the bow, the signal got interrupted.
Debi and Charlie were out for a walk with Peanut, and Shannon was happy to have the berth to herself.
She logged on to her Facebook account. She hadn’t looked at it in weeks and hoped the connection was fast enough to post a photo. She chose a photo showing the color of the water, wanting to share the transparent blues. The full senses were lost in the photo. The slapping waves and the smell of the ocean added to the beauty, but unless a person experienced it firsthand, they’d only get a partial sense of how amazing it was.
She wrote Beauty above the photo and waited for it to post. After a minute, it loaded, and she browsed through the pages of posts. One of her Facebook friends had commented on a photo of Charlie. Her friend was connected to a friend of Charlie’s and that friend tagged him. Happiness shone from his face. With one arm, he held a beer up to the camera, with the other, he pulled a woman close to him. Shannon didn’t recognize her. The comment above the photo said, “Remember this party?”
She scrolled through a few more pages and then stopped abruptly and scrolled back to the photo of Charlie.
“Shit,” she said under her breath.
“What’s the matter, Champagne?”
She’d spoken louder than she meant to. “I thought we agreed you were going to stop calling me that.” Just because he’d almost kissed her last night didn’t mean he could call her Champagne again, although if she were honest she liked that he had a nickname for her. He probably thought she hadn’t noticed the desire in his eyes. If he’d understood the passion she’d felt, would he have touched his lips to hers? Would she have let him?
“Oops. I forgot. So, what are you swearing about?”
“Nothing.”
Jake stepped down the three steps to her berth. He filled her room with strength. He placed his solid butt on the edge of her bed, careful not to hit the puncture wound on his leg.
“You don’t usually swear, so what’s up?”
His brown eyes said, “You can tell me anything.” But what if she couldn’t. What if Charlie was right about him?
“Did you know Nicole before coming to the Bahamas?”
“You know I met her in Nassau.”
Shannon closed her laptop and set it beside her on the bed, putting some distance between her legs and Jake’s thighs. She swore she could feel his heat, and she couldn’t think objectively with him so close. “You seem obsessed with her death. I thought maybe you had feelings for her.”
“Not in the way you’re thinking.”
“In what way then?”
Jake toyed with the edge of his shorts, and she gave him time to think.
“When my fiancée drowned, I was with her and couldn’t save her.”
Shannon swallowed hard. “I read the articles. You can’t blame yourself for her accident.”
“I can blame myself for not getting to her quicker.”
“Was that because you saved the boy first?”
Jake’s eyes moistened, and he cleared his throat. “My instinct took over, and I grabbed for him before Becky. I didn’t have a good foothold in the rushing water. I looked the other way, toward Becky, just for a second, and the boy’s head went under. I lost sight of him and swam in his direction. I didn’t think I was making a choice between him and Becky.”
“You miss her and feel guilty.”
“I do, but I haven’t told you the worst.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know, but I want you to understand why Nicole drowning bothers me and why I can’t get involved with you.”
Shannon felt heat rise in her cheeks. “I never—”
“I know that, too. I can feel something between us, and I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. If we’re going to figure out what happened to Bobby and who killed Nicole, you have to trust me.”
“I do.”
“I don’t think so. I know Charlie’s been planting ideas in your head. I think if I explain about Becky, you’ll understand me better.”
Shannon waited.
“On the day Becky died, I asked her to go for a hike. I’d realized I didn’t want to marry her. I loved her, I think, but we didn’t have enough in common to get married. For most of the hike, I avoided the topic. Maybe if I’d told her sooner, I don’t know… A few minutes before we found the overturned raft, I broke off our engagement. She hadn’t expected it. I should have prepared her better.”
Shannon put a hand on his shoulder.
“She was angry and upset. When we discovered the raft, I don’t think she was thinking clearly, and she jumped into the river before we properly prepared. Her death is my fault.”
“I think, maybe, you’re being too hard on yourself. She might have done the same thing even if you hadn’t broken up with her. You don’t have to rescue everyone.”
“You say that, but I didn’t follow up on Darren hitting Nicole. I should have made sure Darren didn’t touch her again. If I’d checked up on her afterward, she might still be alive.”
“You don’t know that. We aren’t even sure Darren killed her.”
“If he didn’t, then who did?”
“I don’t know, but I keep wondering if it’s related to Uncle Bobby. The coincidence of her traveling with him right before he disappeared is a bit much.”
“So, can you trust me?” Jake asked.
“I can.” Shannon understood choices and how they could change her life. She was about to pick sides. “I found something. I don’t know what it means.” She opened her laptop and showed Jake the photo of Charlie and the woman.
“Maybe i
t means Charlie had a girlfriend.”
Shannon shook her head. “It might, but that’s not what I care about. You remember when Debi came back from the Turks and Caicos?” She didn’t wait for Jake to answer. “She brought a suitcase with her. I searched the contents. I don’t know why, but I did. I feel like a jerk about it.”
“And you found something you didn’t like?”
“Look at the t-shirt Charlie’s wearing in the photo. Kinda unique, don’t you think?”
“Sure…”
“I found the same one in Uncle Bobby’s suitcase.”
* * *
Shannon waited for Charlie. Her need to see his face when she asked him her question overrode the churning in her stomach and her desire to forget what she’d seen.
She’d asked Jake to leave the boat so she could be alone with Charlie. He wouldn’t open up to her if Jake were around.
While she waited, she played Scrabble on her computer. Anything to keep her mind busy. The computer won three games in a row. Not her best performance, but what else did she expect from herself. She heard the dinghy engine, got up from the settee, and waited for Charlie in the cockpit.
“Hey,” she said in what she hoped was her friendly voice.
“What’s up?”
“Do you have a minute? I want to talk to you about Uncle Bobby.”
Charlie sighed, and his shoulders drooped. “Don’t you think it’s time you let that go? Uncle Bobby fell off his boat and couldn’t get back on. It’s not unheard of for a single-hander.”
“I just—”
He entered the salon before she finished her sentence and headed to the fridge. He bent and opened the door, leaving it open while he stared at the contents.
Shannon resisted the urge to tell him to shut the door and be careful with the amps he was throwing away. This was not the moment to cause an argument.
He continued to search the fridge, randomly taking items out and shoving them back in. “I think you’re too obsessed with Uncle Bobby. Just like Debi is.”
Look the Other Way Page 21