The Lieutenant by Her Side

by Jean Thomas

  The car. She could have gone out to the car, thinking she’d catch up to him there.

  He wanted to convince himself that was the explanation. Except for one thing. Why wasn’t she answering her cell?

  Are you going to go on standing here, or are you going to hunt her down?

  Yeah, he was wasting time with these speculations. The certainty was barely out of his head before he was racing toward the elevator. He looked for her when he reached the lobby. There were people there, but Clare wasn’t among them.

  Approaching the reception desk, he got the attention of one of the attendants. “There was a young woman with me when we arrived earlier. We got separated. Have you seen her, maybe passing through the lobby? Blonde, in her twenties, wearing—” What the hell had she been wearing when they’d left the motel? He tried to remember. “A kind of sundress affair, I think. Green maybe. Yeah, green.”

  The woman shook her head. “We’ve been busy all morning. If she was here, I didn’t notice her. Sorry.”

  He didn’t bother asking the other attendant. Time. He was wasting time again. He needed to try the car.

  A heavy heat blasted him when he exited the air-conditioned building. Ignoring it, he sped toward the parking lot. Reached the SUV. She wasn’t there. No sign of her. This time he wasn’t just alarmed. He was borderline desperate.

  Now what? The hospital security. He’d have to go back and alert the hospital security, report a missing woman, demand that they search both the building and the grounds for her.

  He was trotting away from his SUV when the cell phone, still in his hand, buzzed an incoming call. Clare. The display showed him it was Clare. Thank God.

  Punching the talk button, he answered her with a fast “Clare! Where are you?”

  “She’s right here beside me, Lieutenant.”

  Not Clare. This was a woman, but with a deeper voice and a slight accent. What in the name of all that was holy was going on? “Who are you? What are you doing with her cell phone? Let me speak to her.”

  “That won’t be necessary. The fact that I’m calling on her cell phone is proof enough that we have her.”

  We?

  But Mark didn’t need that we explained to him. It took him only an instant to realize that it had been Roy Innes he had spotted here in the parking lot earlier. And that Innes had an accomplice. A woman they had known nothing about, who had snatched Clare while Mark had been kept busy elsewhere.

  He knew why. His pendant, of course.

  “If you hurt her,” Mark raged, “if either you or Innes so much as touch her, I swear that I’ll—”

  The woman cut him off with a threatening “Providing you do what you’re told, she won’t be harmed.”

  “You want the pendant in exchange for Clare. How do I know you’ll let her go once you have it?”

  “You don’t have a choice, Lieutenant, but to accept my word for that. I’ll be calling you again with instructions on exactly what we want you to do. Do I need to warn you that in the meantime you will not go anywhere near the police or make any effort to contact them? Because if you do, you’ll never see your Clare again. That’s all for now.”

  “Wait! Don’t hang up!”

  Too late. There was silence on the other end.

  Mark stood there, shaking with anger and cursing himself for not having remained on guard outside the restroom door. Fool that he was, he had gone and let himself be lured away.

  Innes and his female accomplice. How had they learned he and Clare were here in Florida, never mind at the hospital?

  This was no good. He was losing time, when what he needed to be doing was finding Clare and getting her back. Because he sure as hell didn’t trust Innes or the woman to release her once they had what they wanted.

  He couldn’t risk the cops, not after that warning. He had to do this alone. He was a ranger, after all. And rangers didn’t just stand by and wait. They were resourceful, and they acted on that.

  Now that he had armed himself with his resolve and was steady again, Mark remembered something. There had been background noises during that phone call. The chug of an engine, the throb of a motor, the honking of a horn. Not the sounds connected with vehicles, either.

  Boats. That’s what he’d heard, boats. The traffic of a busy harbor. The call had originated from somewhere close by a harbor. Conch Beach was located on the Gulf. It figured the place would have a harbor, a marina at least.

  He would start there. It was all he had.

  * * *

  Just as she had been ordered, Clare had parked the small van between two rotting, abandoned boat sheds. Also as ordered, she’d lowered the windows on both sides, turned off the engine and handed the keys to the woman beside her in the passenger seat. She hadn’t dared to disobey the brunette, not with that gun still pointed at her.

  A good fifteen minutes must have passed since the phone call to Mark. Silent, unnerving minutes without a single exchange of dialogue. Clare didn’t have to wonder what they were waiting for. The conversation between Mark and her captor had been enough for her to guess why they were waiting here.

  The arrival of Roy Innes.

  Without air-conditioning, the van, even with its windows down, was like a furnace. Stifling. Clare could feel the perspiration collecting under her breasts. But her state of fear could be as much to blame for that as the heat. She tried not to think what was going to happen to her. Or to imagine what Mark might be feeling in this moment.

  Unable to bear the sight of the gun, she focused her attention on the view in front of her. It wasn’t much of a view. The boat sheds close on either side narrowed it to a strip of water with a crumbling pier somewhere on the far side of the harbor they had passed to reach this deserted spot.

  The muted sounds in the nearby harbor were suddenly joined by the louder sound of a car engine. Startled, Clare turned her head to see a blue sedan pulling in beside them. There was just enough room to accommodate the sedan between the sheds that concealed the two vehicles.

  Within seconds, the single occupant of the sedan had popped out of his car and installed himself in the rear seat of the van. Clare gazed at him in the rearview mirror. And shuddered at the sight of his grinning, brutal face.

  “Missed me, did you, Ava?”

  “You’ve been gone long enough,” she complained.

  “Couldn’t be helped. Preparations for our guest, remember? She give you any trouble?”

  The woman called Ava shook her head. “But I don’t like this elaborate plan of yours. It’s risky.”

  “But necessary after tangling with the teacher’s solider boy back in New Orleans and learning he’s no pushover like the others. It’s working, isn’t it?”

  “As long as we don’t make any mistakes.”

  “You take care of your end of it, and we’ll be fine. Give me the gun.”

  Ava passed the gun back to him.

  Innes, who had ignored Clare until now, trained his attention on her. “Get out of the car,” he commanded her. “You and I are going to take a little voyage together.”

  When she hesitated, he held the barrel of the pistol under her nose.

  “Be smart, Clare. You won’t like it if I have to use force.”

  Trying not to let him see how frightened she was, she climbed out of the van. He exited it at the same time. Clare had wondered why, with a temperature that had to be high in the nineties, he should choose to wear a jacket, even though it was lightweight. She learned the answer to that when he shoved the gun into one of its deep pockets.

  “Yeah, it’s out of sight,” he said. “Doesn’t mean I can’t fire it. Don’t give me any reason to do that. All right, we’re going down to the pier there. You walk close beside me, just like we’re a happy couple.”

  She looked back at Ava, who remained
in the van.

  “No, she’s not joining us,” he said. “Our Ava isn’t fond of being on the water. Not to mention she has business to take care of here on shore.”

  Another phone call to Mark, Clare realized, to arrange a rendezvous.

  Innes called back to the brunette. “Give me plenty of time to get where we’re going and to make sure everything is secure at that end before you call soldier boy.”

  Clare wouldn’t miss the woman’s company, but she didn’t like the idea of going off alone with Roy Innes. The man was capable of anything. No choice about it, however, but to fall into step beside him.

  Not until they reached the pier did she see what had remained out of sight until now. Waiting for them was a sleek, inboard cruiser.

  “Down the ladder, teacher.”

  Descending the ladder into the open cruiser, she started to settle on one of its back seats. “Not there. Up in the bow. I want you next to me where I can keep an eye on you.”

  The cruiser was obviously a powerful one, which had Clare wondering why he kept the craft at a crawl as they left the pier and moved out into the open water. Leaving the engine idling, Innes produced a roll of duct tape. “Turn around, arms behind you.” He wanted her helpless, and she didn’t want to be helpless. “Stop stalling,” he growled. “It isn’t going to do you any good.”

  Clare knew that, which was why she submitted, turning her back to him. He began to bind her wrists together with the tape.

  “I don’t want you jumping overboard and trying to swim for shore. You’re too important to me, teacher, for me to risk losing you. You’re going to win me that fifth pendant.

  “Know what it’ll get for me when I have it?” he gloated. “Treasures worth more than a man can imagine. Ancient coins and jewelry, objects of gold and ivory, even Alexander the Great’s drinking cup...”

  He isn’t going to let you live when all this is over. He wouldn’t be telling you this otherwise.

  It was a realization that should have terrified her. But all she could think about was Mark. The possibility of never again seeing the man she loved so deeply. The prayer that, even if she didn’t survive, Mark would remain safe.

  “There,” Innes said with satisfaction, using a sharp knife to separate the tape wound around her wrists from the roll that had supplied it. “All snug and tidy. Now we can go.”

  This time he opened the throttle wide. The cruiser leaped forward, roaring toward the horizon and an outcome she didn’t permit herself to think about. The only thought in her mind now was hope. Because if there was an opportunity for her to escape, she would seize it. She might go down, but she would go down fighting.

  Chapter 19

  Mark stood on Conch Beach’s public dock and gazed out beyond the harbor to the open waters of the Gulf. He had already dismissed the buildings on both sides, as well as the boats moored in the harbor, as unlikely targets for his search. Too much activity here, too many people about.

  Innes and his accomplice wouldn’t have hidden Clare in an area where there was the risk of her being discovered. Of course, there was the possibility that she’d been driven away from the harbor to somewhere inland. But he didn’t think so. Because if that were the case, then why would she have been taken first to the harbor?

  And Clare had been here nearby. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have heard those unmistakable nautical sounds in the background when the woman had phoned him. He just had to determine where she was being held. It was why he continued to stare at the horizon.

  There was a haze out there over the waters, but nothing so thick that it prevented him from seeing a cluster of small islands separated from each other by narrow bands of water. He judged them to be a mile or two away from shore. The more he looked at those islands, the more they interested him.

  An elderly man, seated on a camp stool, was fishing off the end of the dock. Mark approached him.

  “Mind if I ask you about the islands out there?”

  “What d’ya want to know? Those are the Sister Islands. Though calling them islands at all don’t make sense. None o’ them is bigger than an islet.”

  “Looks like there are four of them,” Mark observed.

  “Yeah, four o’ them, it is.”

  “Any of them inhabited?”

  “Naw, like I say, too small.”

  “I was just wondering, because I think I can see the corner of some structure peeking out from the side of the third one from the right.”

  “Wouldn’t be anything permanent. There’s no building over there. More likely to be a rental houseboat. Them houseboats is meant for the canals, but sometimes one o’ ’em gets parked out there in a sheltered spot. Fishing is good there.”

  A houseboat. The more Mark thought about it, the more convinced he was this was where Clare was being held. And why not? It made a perfect hideaway, isolated, not easily reached.

  He prayed he wasn’t deceiving himself. He couldn’t afford to make a wrong choice. Not when he could be receiving that second phone call at any time, and to try to stall the caller would be a mistake. It was imperative that he rescue Clare as soon as possible.

  “Think I’ll try my own luck fishing out there in the vicinity,” he told the old man. “Know where I could rent an outboard?”

  “Sure thing. The fishing store down there off the foot of the dock has it all.”

  The guy knew what he was talking about. The store was not only able to provide Mark with a small, fiberglass boat whose transom featured both a gasoline motor and a battery powered trolling motor, but all the other gear he needed. Securing his swimsuit from the SUV, he found a public restroom where he changed.

  When Mark chugged away from the harbor, seated at the tiller of the boat, he looked like nothing more than some yokel in a hokey cap and T. Those, together with his sunglasses, should make him unrecognizable to any suspicious observer on that houseboat, as long as he didn’t get too close. Which was why he was headed, not directly to the islands, but well off to the right.

  The snorkel mask was out of sight at his feet, the knife, the pendant, his car key and cell phone squeezed into the waterproof pocket inside the waistband of his swimsuit. His wallet and watch he’d left behind locked away in the SUV.

  Even out here on the open waters, the air was sultry, almost suffocating. Mark didn’t let it bother him. He was too busy concentrating on his mission, one that was every bit as vital as any he’d been assigned as a ranger.

  Clare. Rescuing Clare was all that mattered. And if Innes had harmed her, or worse, he would make it his business to send the bastard to hell. But he didn’t want to think about that something worse. He was as afraid of it as he was of his feelings for Clare. Feelings he didn’t permit himself to examine, that would have to wait for later when she was safe again back at his side.

  All he knew in this moment, and was unable to deny, was that he couldn’t lose her. If that happened, it would kill him.

  But you’re not going to allow it to happen, Mark promised himself fiercely.

  He waited until the first two islands off to his left were between him and the outboard, when there was no longer a possibility of being sighted from the houseboat, before cutting the engine. Tilting it out of the water, he moved on to the trolling motor that shared the transom, easing it down into the flat waters.

  The battery powered trolling motor, unlike the gasoline engine, was quiet, no more than a soft hum whose sound couldn’t be detected from the houseboat. Stationing himself back at the tiller, he aimed the bow toward the first island. Slowly, steadily, the boat glided smoothly to the shore.

  Just before the prop scraped bottom, Mark switched off the power and swung the motor out of the water. Barefoot now, he hopped out of the boat and waded to the narrow beach where he dragged the boat up on the sand.

  His first order of bus
iness was the cell phone. Removing it from the pouch, he muted it before returning it to the zippered, waterproof pocket. Even though silenced, he would know if it rang, would feel it vibrating against his hip. He knew if he didn’t or couldn’t answer the call, Innes would be alerted. Stripping off the T-shirt and tossing both it and the cap into the boat, Mark scooped up the snorkel mask and took off into the interior of the island. The tropiclike growth was so thick and the insects so bad it was like a jungle. He was relieved he had only to go a couple of hundred feet before he was able to break through to the beach on the other side.

  Swimming from there across a channel to the second island, he struggled through another heavy vegetation and swam another channel to the third island. It was here when he waded ashore that he heard it. The sound of country music carried from what was probably a radio on the houseboat.

  It can’t keep you from being seen, but it can help you from being easily heard.

  Remembering the houseboat was positioned between the third and fourth islands, Mark felt his safest approach was to edge around the beach that faced the wide open sea. When he judged he could go no farther without being seen from the houseboat, he pulled the snorkel mask over his face, moved quietly into the Gulf and sank beneath the water, breathing through the tube that poked above the surface.

  A moment later, after rounding the curve of the island, he worked his way underwater into a lagoon between the third and fourth islands to the hull of the houseboat anchored there. Feeling his way along its side, pinning himself against the hull to prevent the discovery of his arrival from onboard, he risked surfacing.

  His glimpse was both silent enough and brief enough to provide him with all he needed to know. Roy Innes was seated on the open front deck of the houseboat, listening to the radio at his feet and looking out toward the coast. There was no sign of Clare. She was somewhere inside.

  Mark felt it was best, if it was at all possible, to avoid a confrontation with Innes, who might have a gun by now. Hoping he could reach Clare from the back of the houseboat, he worked his way to the rear. There was a second deck here, a shorter one.