Mere hours after we had scooped his limp body off a rock, Nick was preparing to go to battle.
“Yup. I see,” Kurt said. “Do you know how they plan to attack?”
“Through the harbor. They plan to destroy the harbor and blow up the tank fields. To cripple the pipeline out of St. Marcos,” Nick replied.
Kurt finally seemed to have heard what he needed. He was on his feet now, headed for the satellite phone.
“One more thing,” Nick called after him. “Their plan is to stage a diversion, an emergency that seems legitimate, to draw the attention of all the refinery’s personnel and resources away from their attack zone.”
Kurt nodded and then disappeared from view. Nick fell back onto his pillow. If it were possible for a sunburned olive-skinned man to be deathly pale, he was. Time to intervene.
I held up my scissors. “I need to finish cutting you out of your clothes, put you in a shower, and then slather aloe vera over your whole body. Scat, Collin.”
“Yeah, this is not something I want to see.” He leaned down and squeezed Nick’s shoulder. “Good to have you back with us, Nick.”
Nick put his hand on Collin’s. “Thank you, Collin. Thank all of you for coming for me.”
“Katie’s the one that found you, but you’re welcome,” Collin said, and he followed Kurt out.
“So you’re the one who figured out where I was?” Nick asked.
I nodded. “I had lot of help, though. And I had dreams. Dreams where you talked to me and gave me clues. Annalise even gave me clues.” I picked up my blue spiral notebook from the bedside table and handed it to him.
His eyes softened. He rubbed his palm against the cover of the notebook, and then flipped its pages, nodding his approval. “Did you dream about a rubber dinghy full of presents?”
I moved my face down to his, nose barely touching nose. “I did. And I dreamed about the Wild Irish Kate, and much more. Were you really there?”
His nose rubbed up and down against mine as he nodded. “I guess I was. I dreamed about you, too, that I was talking to you, but I didn’t realize until just now that, well, they were more than dreams. But nothing surprises me anymore.”
“Nor me.”
He studied my face. “You are gorgeous, you know.” His eyes swept my body. “And really thin.”
In only days, I’d lost the rest of the baby fat. I remembered what Kurt told me, that Nick was worried about my weight. My husband and I were going to have a very unpleasant conversation when he was strong enough to live through my temper. About a lot more than my weight. About his subterfuge, his outright dishonesty. About cutting me out of the Petro-Mex case. I snuffed the wick as my temper flared. For now, I would just enjoy having him back alive.
“And you are a sight for sore eyes,” I replied.
Nick puckered, hinting. I leaned in and kissed him.
He winced. “Hurts so good,” he said.
I wiped his blood from my lips and smiled at him.
“How are the kids?” he asked.
A long story that would wait. “Great,” I said. I left off “I hope.”
“Good. I miss them so much. I want to call everyone myself soon.” Kurt had called Julie already, as soon as we found Nick. “Um, Katie, I need a favor.”
Uh oh. “Maybe,” I said.
“After I ask for the favor, I want you to tell me all about what has happened since I left.”
“That part sounds fine,” I said. “Just keep drinking.”
Nick took a sip. He folded his lips in and inhaled, then said in a headmaster voice, “I want to go straight back to St. Marcos. I don’t want to go to the hospital.”
I glared at him.
“Seriously, I’m fine,” he said. “So I’m a little hungry and thirsty. I floated in a life raft for a day. I got a little dinged up on some rocks.”
“You were in a plane crash, too!”
“It was really more like a rough landing, that’s all.”
“And you don’t have any clothes,” I said. I knew this was a weak argument, but it was all I had left.
“I can wear some of Dad’s.”
“Nick,” I started to protest.
“Katie, I know you’ll take care of me, and I just want to get back to St. Marcos, quickly and quietly. More people are going to die if we don’t stop the cartel. And then all we’ve been through will be meaningless. Let’s finish this. Let’s do some good.”
I thought of the young busboy, dead because he had helped me. Of the man I’d never known who died outside my driveway. I sighed. The long-suffering sigh of a woman who knows her husband well and is certain she has no prayer of winning the argument.
He didn’t even need to wait for a yes to know my answer.
Chapter Twenty-seven
After I had Nick cleaned up, I deposited him back into the safari room on the zebra sheets. His eyes were already closing, his words slurry whispers. I tucked the leopard spread around him and walked to the door.
“Aren’t you going to stay with me?” Nick asked.
“I’ll be back in five, love. I just have to take care of something,” I said.
“Hurry,” he mumbled.
I had fudged my answer a little. I needed a powwow with the guys up top. I climbed the ladder and stepped onto the flybridge.
“Yoo hoo,” I said, startling them. “We have a change of plans that I need to run by you guys.”
Bill said, “This mission is defined by changes.”
“By George, I think this man understands my motto now,” Collin said.
“What’s that?” Bill asked.
“Flexibility is the key to air power,” Collin said.
I rolled my eyes. “Your fiancée’s motto. When you’re done, if you don’t mind?”
“The floor is yours, sis.”
“Nick feels good. Well, he feels fine, anyway, relatively speaking. He just needs rest and fluids. I promised we wouldn’t take him to a hospital. He feels responsible for finishing this thing with the refinery, probably in part to flip the bird at the bad guys who tried to kill him, but also because he is Nick.”
Kurt liked this plan. “Good, no need to waste time with doctors.” I should have guessed he would say that. Mainers.
Collin didn’t disagree either. “So, what’s next?”
“We can catch a plane home from Rincón,” I suggested.
Bill piped in. “My boss isn’t due back for another week. Nick is my friend. And I can get you home just as fast and keep Nick in an air-conditioned bedroom. Let’s just fuel up in Rincón and keep going.”
His answer shouldn’t have surprised me by now, but it did. Collin shrugged.
“Are we still follower-free?” I asked.
Kurt said, “Yup. Nothing out here but us.”
“Good,” I said. “Keeps our names off airline manifests and out of customs logs, too. Fine by me.”
Bill added, “Plus, I’m having fun and Kurt’s teaching me a lot of great stuff.”
Kurt said, “I’m keeping him off the booze is more like it. Amazing what you pick up when you’re sober.”
Collin and I laughed.
Bill said, “That reminds me how much I’d love a rum and cranberry juice.”
“Noooo,” we all chorused.
“So, Rincón, fuel, and Bill plots the fastest course back to St. Marcos. What did the Coast Guard say, Kurt?” I asked.
He ticked the points off on his fingers. “They’re notifying Petro-Mex of a potential terrorist plot by the Chihuahuas, and they’ll increase surveillance around the harbor. The threat level will go up at the refinery. And they agreed not to release information about Nick’s rescue.”
Nick really couldn’t ask for more.
I said, “Nick wants to call his mom and the kids when he wakes up. But for now, I’m going to help him stay asleep for as long as possible. If we don’t come out when we get to Rincón, buy lots of Gatorade and food for my patient. And some more aloe vera and antibiotic cream.”<
br />
I went below and slipped into bed with Nick, my entire body sighing “ahhhhh” as it touched his. He mumbled and flipped over, pulling me to him with one arm with all the gentleness of a dockworker throwing bags of cement into a cargo hold.
“Welcome home,” I whispered.
I nestled close and we drifted off together.
Six hours later, I woke up with Nick still snoring beside me. I wriggled out from under his arm and was nearly strangled by his “don’t go” reflex. I headed up top, from the dark of night to the lighted bridge.
“Hi, Red,” Bill said from the helm. “We’re almost to Ponce. Last fuel stop before St. Marcos.”
Kurt and Collin didn’t register my presence. They sat at the table, engaged in a heated battle.
“You cheat,” Kurt said to Collin, pushing his backgammon marker forward.
“I do not, and besides, you can’t prove it,” Collin replied.
Boys.
“Whoa-oa-oa. What’s this?” Bill shouted. “Hey, Kurt, come take a look.” His head craned toward the gauges on his dashboard.
Kurt lumbered over for a look-see, moving like he had ingested a few of Bill’s rum and cranberry juices. The rosy liquid in the two glasses by the backgammon set supported my theory. Kurt looked at the gauges and flicked his finger at one. It didn’t seem to change the reading, because he stood back and scrubbed his hand through his hair.
“She’s starting to overheat in the starboard engine,” Kurt said.
Bill pushed a button that slowed Kate down abruptly. “Can you run down to the engine room and take a look?” he asked.
“Yup,” Kurt said over his shoulder. He was already weaving toward the stairs.
“I’ll come with you,” Collin said. Which came out as “wischoo.” Oh, my.
I stared at the gauges until I found Temperature. The dial had inched into the red zone, that much I could tell. My limited mechanical knowledge exhausted, I fretted. That, I excelled at.
“Is this a problem?” I asked Bill, pointing at the gauge.
“Well, it could be. I carry spare parts for the easy stuff. Let’s see what Kurt says.”
“Why did we slow down?”
“I cut the engine so it won’t damage itself. We can run on one, just not as fast.”
Kurt’s salt and pepper head appeared, then the rest of him, without Collin. Odds favored Collin lying prone and snoring in bed by now.
“No leaks, belts are good. Engine room checks out fine.” His speech was much clearer than Collin’s had been.
“That eliminates the things we can fix on the fly. Unless you can think of something else?”
“Nope. I think we need a mechanic to look under the hood,” Kurt replied.
I nudged my fretting up a notch.
“Yeah, that’s what I think, too. Well, Ponce has a big marina. We’ll find someone. I’m gonna run down and check her exhaust pipes, though. Take the wheel?”
“Yup.”
Now Bill’s sun-streaked head disappeared down the stairs. Out of an abundance of caution, I decided to stand beside my tipsy father-in-law. Although I was sure he’d captain a boat stumbling drunk better than I could sober. I’d driven boats, just not a lot. But I could take over if he passed out.
My visions of Nick waking the kids up with snuggles in the morning evaporated and were replaced by an image of a slowly limping Kate overtaken by a fast, sleek black boat. I shook it out of my head and searched the night sea for boat lights.
Bill was back fast. “It’s too dark. I can’t see a thing.”
Kurt said, “Well, we can still hope that’s what it is because otherwise . . .”
“You’ll be seeking alternate transportation,” Bill said, finishing Kurt’s sentence.
Chapter Twenty-eight
“Hello, guys? Can you explain what’s going on?” I asked.
They looked at me like I’d just stepped off the short bus. Kurt nodded at Bill, granting permission for his junior officer to take the lead.
Bill’s enthusiasm level rose as he talked about “his” boat. “Sometimes Kate sucks up junk—seaweed, usually—in her seawater intake. It gets wrapped around the impeller.”
“What’s an impeller?”
“It’s a propeller that pushes seawater instead of air.”
That actually made sense. “Why is it important?”
He sounded a lot less like Spicoli on this subject. “The seawater keeps the engine cool. So if the impeller’s not working, the engine overheats. And if the engine overheats, we can’t use it. Kate has two engines, and you saw me turn the hot one off. We can keep going at this speed for as long as we want, but if we lose the other engine, we’re dead in the water.”
I knew this was bad news. Now I was imagining Kate surrounded by multiple sleek black boats filled with armed terrorists. Still, understanding this made me a little bit excited. As in, “I’m not a completely hopeless idiot about boat mechanics.”
Bill continued. “The impeller is just made of rubber. It tears itself up trying to turn with the junk wrapped around it. Kate’s had it happen before. A mechanic can fix it in a few hours. The other possibilities left after we rule out the impeller, leaks, and broken belts are major problems. Problems that would keep Kate in Ponce for days.”
I sure as heck understood what that meant. “And us on a plane. Which would put Nick back on the grid where the cartel could find him, and us,” I said. “Very bad.”
“Exactly,” Bill agreed.
Bill reached for his radio and clicked it to life. He hailed the marina and started talking boat-speak to someone. Ten minutes later, we had secured the services of an overpriced mechanic who swore he was an unparalleled expert on the sixty-foot Hatteras. He promised to meet us on the dock.
We entered the marina and Kurt eased back on the throttles for the no-wake zone. I took in the town of Ponce, whose lights were just beginning to twinkle against a backdrop of mountainous rainforest. Pretty. I preferred sleepy beach villages with goats tied up under palm trees, myself, but anywhere with a live-and-healthy Nick looked wonderful to me tonight.
“I’m going to roust Nick,” I said, and scurried below.
The view in the safari room did far more for me than the view of Ponce had. Nick lay sprawled across the bed, snoring softly with zebra-striped sheets wrapped around his lower leg and his arms akimbo beneath his pillow. I dropped in beside him and kissed his cheek in front of his ear.
He stretched in protest. “Whaddyawannawakemeupfor?”
“We’re overnighting in Ponce. Boat issues. We’re paying an after-hours mechanic an arm and a leg to work on Kate. We just entered the marina.”
He yawned and slung his arms around me. “Damn. That slows us down.”
“Yes, and it gets worse. If this isn’t a quick fix, we have to fly home.”
“Sumbitch,” he mumbled into my neck.
“There is better news, though. Kurt already has the Feds working with Petro-Mex on security issues and threat level. Don’t worry, they won’t announce your rescue, either.”
“That part sounds good,” he said. He sat up and dragged himself from the bed and I helped him dress. He looked gaunt, especially in the clothes I’d gotten from Kurt, who was about forty pounds heavier than his son. Nick stood up and took a few cautious steps toward the door, where he leaned against the frame.
“Can I have my watch?” he asked.
I retrieved it from my pocket, clipped the chain in place, and handed it to him. He rubbed his thumb over the cover, then tucked it into his pocket. My heart swelled.
“We’ll grab dinner, take real showers, sleep in full-sized beds, and leave whenever the mechanic calls with news, one way or another.” I grasped his hand and tugged him along behind me. “We’ll Skype with the kids and your mother. Let them see you alive and well.” And let me see them alive and well.
This made him shuffle faster. “I’m thirsty like a camel.”
“Come along, then, there’s a cure for that c
ondition.”
Nick and I joined the others above deck, where Bill and the mechanic, whose clothes and hands were in need of a proper degreasing, were discussing repairs.
“You guys go. I’m staying on Kate,” he told us. “She’s my responsibility, and I have everything I need here.”
“We’ll keep in touch by cell,” I replied.
“We’re docked at La Guancha Boardwalk,” Bill said. “It’s got it all—food, music, and local color—so have some fun for me.”
So, off we went to Ponce, which locals called the Pearl of the South. It was the second largest city in Puerto Rico, but a distant second, less than two hundred thousand people, compared to San Juan’s four hundred thousand plus.
Kurt and Collin were sleepy after their afternoon rum party, and Nick was moving like a zombie too, so I walked them to the end of the boardwalk and grabbed a taxi for the hotel the mechanic had recommended, a Howard Johnson. HoJo’s was cheap enough to pay for in cash, a must to avoid the reach of the cartel. It was nearby and had a restaurant, which made it perfect. So much for local color. We’d have to catch the views of the Cardona Island Lighthouse and Coffin Island next visit.
At the restaurant, we ordered plantains, rice, beans, and fried fish, and Nick devoured all of his food and most of mine. Kurt and Collin ate, too, but mostly they refreshed their rum buzz. While Kurt had a good influence on Bill, Collin had a terrible one on Kurt.
After dinner, we settled into our hotel room. The décor in HoJo’s Ponce was identical to the décor in any location of HoJo’s U.S.A.: nondescript green comforter with yellow and purple stripes, green squeaky carpet. Our window looked out onto the parking lot instead of the courtyard pool and gardens, but it was clean. After I’d shanghaied Nick into a recumbent position, Kurt and Collin weaved over to our room and we connected the laptop to the Annalise crew.
I pulled the desk closer to the bed and angled the laptop to catch Nick’s face. Our screen filled not just with the faces of Julie and the kids but with Ruth, Rashidi, and Ava, too. So many voices pealed at once, we sounded like a street full of New York cabs.
Finding Harmony (Katie & Annalise Book 3) Page 21