Nerd in Shining Armor

by Vicki Lewis Thompson

  “Come around here and loop the belt between his crossed hands,” Brogan said.

  Gen and her nice toes walked away. Then Jack felt the belt slide over the spot where his wrists were bound with the curling iron cord.

  “That’s right,” Brogan said. “Now put the belt through the buckle. Okay, now put both your hands through the loop.”

  The warmth of Gen’s wrists touched his. Then came a sharp yank, and the belt tightened, pinning their wrists together. The belt leather snapped a couple more times, and Jack figured out that Brogan was weaving it in and out of the binding so it wouldn’t pull loose.

  “Okay,” he said at last. The pressure of the gun barrel against Jack’s head eased and then was gone. “Now I can eat one of the damn guavas. But any funny moves from either of you, and I’ll just shoot you both. I could almost do it with one bullet, you being trussed up and cozy.”

  Jack got to listen to Brogan slurping eagerly while the other guava remained almost within reach of his tongue. Gen was being forced to listen to Brogan eat, too, and she had to be just as hungry and thirsty as he was. Jack hated to admit it, but as her knight in shining armor, he sucked.

  After they left Kauai bearing northwest, Matt took the helm. Lincoln’s inner radar was guiding them toward the Leewards, a string of islets, shoals, and reefs that were very tricky to navigate and could catch an experienced sailor unaware, let alone beginners like Annabelle or Lincoln. Matt’s gut was in a big old knot.

  The optimist in him had wanted Lincoln’s radar to beam them to some lavish resort in Kauai where Nick and Genevieve were kicking back, drinking mai-tais. In this scenario the two lovers had convinced Jackson to be a pal and go along with their little game of hooky. Nick had bribed somebody at the airport to say the Rainbow Systems plane hadn’t landed there.

  Although Matt would have been furious to discover all of that was true, he’d rather uncover that kind of hanky-panky than to be headed toward the most remote part of the island chain. Any plane that went down out there was in very serious trouble. Except for a couple of wildlife stations, the area was uninhabited until you got to Midway. Matt was no pilot, but he couldn’t believe there would be viable places to land until Midway, either. And that would put Nick more than a thousand miles in the wrong direction. Not possible.

  This boat didn’t have that kind of range. Matt hadn’t said so, but he’d decided privately that they’d go as far as a small piece of land about three hours away, a place so small it barely qualified as an island. By then the light would be starting to fade, anyway. They could anchor there for the night, but then they were heading back. Enough was enough.

  If Matt had been worried before, he felt dry-mouthed with terror now. He was afraid to ask either Annabelle or Lincoln if they still “knew" that Genevieve was alive. Even if she’d survived some kind of crash landing, she and the others would be stuck with no food, no water, no shelter of any kind. They could be injured and have no way to tend their injuries. The more Matt thought about it, the more scared he got.

  Lincoln was still in the cockpit with his earphones on, doggedly listening to Harry Connick Jr. Annabelle had gone below to make them an early dinner that Matt couldn’t imagine being able to eat. While they’d taken on fuel in Kauai he’d treated them all to fast-food hamburgers while he’d tried to talk them into going back to Honolulu.

  He’d had no luck selling that program. Lincoln had insisted they had to keep going this way. The kid had said it with such urgency that Matt finally had agreed, for the time being. If the plane was out here somewhere, time would be of the essence. Yet he couldn’t imagine how they’d ever find it, despite Lincoln’s radar.

  Before Annabelle appeared in the cockpit, Matt could smell the coffee she was bringing him. He could fall in love with her because of her coffee alone. Theresa made bad coffee, partly because she didn’t drink it herself, so she didn’t know good from bad. Matt should have taken over the job, but he’d accepted the bad coffee the way he’d accepted all the other disappointments in his marriage.

  Now that he was on his own he’d still been wimpy about his coffee, buying a bargain preground instead of pricey beans and a grinder. After tasting Annabelle’s coffee, he was ready to make the switch.

  “Here you go.” Annabelle handed him a mugful of heaven.

  “Thank you, Annabelle.” He said her name because he liked using it. You could smile and say her name at the same time. He’d never known an Annabelle before, and he couldn’t imagine the name suiting anyone else.

  “You’re welcome.” She looked so serious. No smiles for her.

  He’d tried not to communicate his concern, but she was no dummy. She had to know this was a desolate place for a crash landing.

  He longed for some way to make her feel better. “You make the best coffee.”

  “Thanks.” She handed Lincoln a can of Coke.

  Maintaining his cool-guy slouch, he took it and thanked her.

  Matt wondered if posture was another thing Annabelle had decided not to hassle the kid about. Every time Matt noticed the curve of Lincoln’s spine he fought the urge to tell him to sit up straight. That was probably another reason Annabelle didn’t date, so she wouldn’t have to deal with guys thinking they could step in and demonstrate their own brand of parenting.

  “I’ll be back with the rest in a minute,” Annabelle said. “I made ham sandwiches so you could eat and drive at the same time.”

  “Perfect.” Matt vowed he’d choke down that sandwich. Not eating it would let her know that worry had taken away his appetite. That could only upset her more.

  While she was down in the galley getting the sandwiches, he sipped his coffee and allowed himself a small escape from reality. In his world, he’d have married someone like Annabelle the first time around, someone who cherished good coffee and understood kids. Then Matt would be sitting here with his son, Lincoln. His son of the wild and crazy hair and the gentle heart.

  Genevieve didn’t fit into the picture very well, though.

  Annabelle had admitted during lunch that she’d had Genevieve when she was fifteen. Matt had been raised not to get fifteen-year-olds pregnant. He’d always heard that teenage pregnancies screwed up everything and everybody, yet Annabelle and Genevieve seemed to be fine, so there went that theory.

  This time as Annabelle climbed the steps to the cockpit, Matt smelled her perfume and got hard. Certainly inappropriate under the circumstances, and yet emotions were running high with all of them. Sexual urges could be closer to the surface now, at least for him, maybe even for her.

  He glanced over at Lincoln, afraid that the kid would sense something and check out Matt’s fly. Having an adolescent around as a chaperone meant no public displays of lust. Knowing the adolescent could be psychic ruled out private lusting, too. Matt started reciting baseball statistics in his head and finally got his erection under control right before Annabelle approached with her plate of sandwiches.

  “Can you manage a sandwich and your coffee?” she asked.

  “Sure.” He set his mug into a cup holder and picked up a sandwich.

  “Yikes!” Lincoln bolted upright. “What is that?”

  Annabelle dropped the plate of sandwiches. “What, Lincoln? What?”

  Heart pounding, Matt looked in the direction Lincoln was pointing.

  “That big freakin’ bird! It looks like a seagull on steroids!”

  Matt gazed up at the large gray and white bird gliding in the sky just ahead of them. Then he sank back against the seat and gulped for air. “It’s an albatross. They’re more common out here in the Leewards than back in Honolulu, so I guess you’ve never seen one before.”

  “Lincoln, you got us all excited about a blessed bird?” Annabelle sounded all choked up. “I ruined this whole plate of sandwiches for a gol-danged bird?” Then she turned and ran down the steps.

  Lincoln pulled off his earphones and looked miserable. “Aw, geez. I didn’t mean to—”

  “Go after her.”
Matt couldn’t leave the cockpit, couldn’t even slow the engine and let Lincoln take over.

  “But I didn’t think she’d—”

  “Go after her, damn it! She’s hanging on by a thread, and I think the thread just snapped. She needs somebody to hold her and tell her it’s gonna be okay. I can’t do it or we’re liable to end up on a reef somewhere with a hole in the side of this boat. So it’s up to you.”

  “Right.” Looking shaken, Lincoln headed down the steps.

  Left with sandwiches underfoot and an albatross flying ahead of the boat as if showing the way, Matt shivered as a chill ran down his spine.

  He’d picked up the old superstition about albatrosses from his father and his father’s sailor friends. It wasn’t logical, and it wasn’t modern, but many old salts still thought of the big birds as the reincarnated souls of dead seamen. Matt had been indoctrinated early, and the sight of the bird always gave him the creeps. He wished to hell they hadn’t run across this one.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Genevieve wished Nick would choke to death on the guavas. He’d already eaten three of the five they’d brought in the suitcase. He reminded her of a hog with his snout in the slop bucket. To think that she’d once thought he was the spitting image of Cary Grant. Right now he looked like Frankenstein.

  He didn’t scare her as much as Frankenstein would, though. When he’d first grabbed her, she’d about jumped out of her skin, but she’d found out that a person couldn’t stay scared forever. Sooner or later the feeling wore off, and now she was busy calculating how to get out of this fix.

  Cousin Festus down in the Hollow used to like to jump out and grab folks like Nick had, until the day Lyda Mae kicked him in the balls with the heel of her army-issue boots. Genevieve had meant to practice that move herself, but she’d left the Hollow and forgotten all about it. She could have used that move when Nick grabbed her.

  Except Cousin Festus never came at anybody with a gun. Maybe kicking Nick in the balls wouldn’t be such a good idea. But she needed to think of something, because once he figured out how to dispose of their bodies, he’d kill both her and Jack. He could feed them to the sharks, but Genevieve had seen Jaws and she knew you couldn’t count on a shark to eat everything. A shark could leave the exact body part with a bullet in it that would incriminate Nick.

  No, if Nick was thinking straight, which he might not be, the only way to dispose of two bodies was to tie a rock on them and sink them out in the ocean. That would require a boat, so logically Nick shouldn’t decide to kill them until his pickup men arrived.

  Genevieve was worried that Nick might not be logical, though. When she looked into his eyes, which she mostly tried not to do, he reminded her of Uncle Rufus’s old hound dog Sour Mash, who got bit by a rabid skunk.

  Anybody using logic wouldn’t drink all the water and eat all the food. All three of them could be stuck here for a while, and although Nick certainly didn’t care if she and Jack died of thirst, he ought to have sense enough to save something for himself. Genevieve thought maybe the strain of being so close to getting all that money and not being able to finish the job might have affected Nick like the skunk bite had affected Sour Mash.

  Sure enough, Nick ate the fourth guava, and all that was left was the one that had rolled in front of Jack’s face. Grabbing his gun, Nick stood up, probably to walk around and get it.

  A moment later, Jack cursed softly.

  “Hey!” Genevieve struggled against the belt holding her wrists. “Whatever you’re doing to Jack, cut it out!”

  Nick came back into her line of vision and grinned, revealing the guava seed stuck in his teeth. “You have a thing for Farley, don’t you, Genevieve?”

  She started getting scared all over again. Nick had that crazy look in his eyes, and if he thought she cared about Jack, he might start torturing Jack just to pass the time. “No, I don’t. Just like you said, he’s a computer geek. Not my type.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” Nick’s gaze swept over the two of them. Then he glanced down. “Well, look at that! If it isn’t a condom!” He stuck the guava in his pocket and scooped the condom from the sand.

  “So what?” Genevieve tried to look bored with his discovery. “I always carry one in my suitcase, for emergencies.”

  Nick tossed the condom in the air and caught it again. “I don’t believe you for a minute. You brought this in case you needed it on Maui. And with all the rumors about me, I doubt if you only brought one. So I ask myself, what happened to the rest of them?”

  “She only brought one,” Jack said. “She knew you were a one-shot-and-it’s-over kind of guy.”

  “Fuck you, Farley.” Nick walked back over in front of Jack.

  From the sound of it, Genevieve figured he’d kicked sand in Jack’s face. “Jack, shut up.” She nudged him from behind. “I did have more condoms,” she said. “And we used them to…to hold rainwater. Which we already drank.” They could have used them that way, she realized now, but they hadn’t thought of it. The condoms had been too precious to think of using them for anything besides their intended purpose.

  “Considering what a geek Farley is, I can picture you doing that. Better to have something to drink than to waste a condom on somebody who can’t get it up unless he’s looking at pictures on a porno site, isn’t that right, Farley?”

  “I guess you know all about that,” Jack said. “I’ll bet you get off calling nine-hundred numbers from the office.”

  “Jack.” Genevieve clenched her jaw and punched him hard in the back. He was going to get himself shot any second, talking that way.

  “You weren’t by chance hacking your way into company records, were you, Farley?”

  Jack laughed. “No, just a lucky guess.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m beginning to realize that you’re a dangerous guy to have around. With your computer skills, you might be able to figure out how I cooked the books when I made my withdrawals. I’d planned to kill you anyway, but the urge is getting stronger by the minute. Time to say bye-bye, Farley.” Nick crouched down and aimed the gun at Jack’s head.

  “No!” Genevieve screamed.

  “What’s the matter, Genevieve?” Nick kept his attention on Jack. “Maybe you’re more attached to this nerd than you think. That’s a little joke, there. Attached. Get it?”

  “Nick, you don’t want to shoot Jack.” The blood whooshing in her ears was louder than the surf. “You said yourself that you can’t let somebody find either of us with a bullet that could be traced to you. Jack’s feeling a little cranky tied up like this, so that’s why he’s—”

  “A little cranky?” Jack said. “Try pissed as hell! You eat our food, you drink all the damned water, and then you throw sand in my face and insult me! I’ve had it with you, Brogan!”

  “And I’ve had it with you, asshole!” Nick pressed the barrel of the gun to Jack’s forehead.

  “Stop it, both of you!” Genevieve couldn’t believe that Jack was being so stupid. “Nick, you can’t shoot Jack right now, and you know it, so quit acting like you’re going to! And, Jack, shut your trap! We’re in enough trouble already without you making it worse.”

  “I’ll shoot Farley if I want to!” Nick said. “No secretary is going to tell me if I can shoot somebody or not. And I really feel like shooting this guy. I’ll worry about what to do with him later.”

  “Brilliant,” Jack said. “Act now, think afterward. You’re a regular mental giant, Brogan.”

  “Whatever. I have the gun and you don’t. Any last words, boy genius, before I blow a hole in that super-size brain of yours?”

  Genevieve’s fingers brushed the inside of Jack’s wrists, where the blood pumped fast. One bullet, and that blood would stop pumping. She didn’t know how to stop Nick, with Jack egging him on, acting more like an idiot than a genius. “Nick, don’t,” she said.

  “Give me one good reason.”

  “You’re not a murderer yet. If you don’t kill anyone, this could all be cleared up. You
could plead temporary insanity. I’m sure Matt—”

  Nick’s laughter cut her off. “And give up my millions? Not likely, sweetheart. Nope, you two are in my way. Time to get rid of one of you, at least.” The soft click as Nick pulled the hammer back with his thumb seemed to echo in the lava rocks surrounding the beach.

  A large shadow passed over them, and Genevieve looked up quickly, praying it was a plane or a helicopter, although she knew immediately it couldn’t be, because there was no engine noise. In the sliver of time, she recognized the albatross soaring above them and instinctively went for the diversion.

  “Omigod!” she yelled. “Look out!”

  Nick’s head jerked upward. He leaped to his feet and raised the gun.

  Frantically Genevieve tried to squeeze one hand out of the belt loop.

  Before Nick could register the fact that what was circling overhead was only a harmless albatross, he had reflexively pulled the trigger.

  There was a click, and nothing.

  “Son of a bitchin’ gun!”

  Genevieve worked harder, like a fox in a steel trap, not caring if she tore the skin from her hand if she could work it free. She and Jack had just gotten lucky. Something seemed to be wrong with Nick’s gun.

  Another loud click echoed in the rocks.

  “Fucking thing’s loaded, it’s dry, and it won’t fire. Stupid fucking gun.”

  Genevieve tore one hand loose, skinning it good in the process. Then the other hand came free. She glanced over in time to see Nick point the gun at the sand, pull the trigger, and then howl in pain. Somehow he had managed to shoot himself in the foot.

  “Help—I’m shot!” he yelled hysterically.

  “I wish I could help you,” Jack said. “But I’m all tied up at the moment.”

  Genevieve murmured to Jack, “I’m free. Here—” She began to work on the knots she’d tied so well earlier, but her fingers were shaking so badly she was having trouble. And the hand she’d forced through the belt loop was bleeding.

  She struggled with the knots, but the blood dripping on the curling iron cord made it slippery.