Gillian didn’t respond, so he turned his head to look at her; his aching shoulders would never forgive him if he tried to roll on his side. He took in the narrowed eyes, the single, determined vertical line between her brows, the way she’d sucked in her lower lip.
He’d like to chew on that lower lip himself. Guess if he was thinking about sex, or at least kissing, he was gonna make it.
Screw the shoulder. He rolled to face her, leaning close, touching his lips to hers. She tasted of salt water and sea air and home. He was where he was supposed to be. “Just don’t scare me again.”
“I won’t.” Still, she looked troubled, even when she kissed him back.
He’d expected her to be happy about his decision, but maybe today’s scare had changed her mind. She wouldn’t be the first diver to avoid the water after a close call, but it was a mistake. When you get thrown, you get back on the horse at the first opportunity. “You don’t have to dive if you don’t want to. I mean, a doctor might take one look at your head and tell you to stay out of the water anyway.”
“I do want to dive, and no doctor—for that very reason. I need to go back in. If I don’t dive again now, I’ll start being afraid of it and I’ve wasted too much time on fear and guilt.” She paused, frowning. “But what a freaking idiot! I came down with gold fever and almost got us both killed chasing after a coin.”
Her eyes widened, and she struggled to sit up. Her gaze pinballed around the room. “Where did Jagger put my BC? We didn’t lose it, did we?”
Shane was sure she’d been wearing the buoyancy control vest when they pulled her aboard. He even vaguely remembered Jagger removing it. “It’s probably still up on deck. Why? We can get you another one in Sydney if there’s nowhere in Main-à-Dieu to buy one.” Which he doubted, especially out of season.
“The coin. I know it’s illegal to take it, but I think I stuck it in one of the pockets of my vest. I want you to see it.”
Depending on where Jagger had stashed it, the vest might or might not still be on deck when they got in. Speaking of which…
“Hey.” He raised up on his elbows. “I think the boat’s settling down. Either the storm is dying or Jagger got us to a sheltered spot.”
The harbor at Main-à-Dieu was wide and relatively shallow, edged in breakwaters, and he hadn’t seen anything off Scaterie that would offer much protection for The Evangeline against the brunt of a serious storm. So with any luck, this blow had played itself out quickly and moved on.
He glanced at Gillian. “Think you can walk?” Hell, Shane wasn’t sure he could walk.
“I think so.” Gillian’s neoprene suit slid along the tarp as she struggled to her feet, using the wall for balance. “I’m good.”
Shane swung his legs off the bed and stood with his arms out, ready to break his fall if he tumbled. The Evangeline’s pitch and roll had settled to a gentle sway, though, and by the time he made his way around the bed to help Gillian, he felt the vibration of the anchor being released.
“I’m okay, although I’d hoped to be wearing clothes when I met Charlie’s friend. And maybe have dry hair.” Gillian’s walk to the door was slow, but steady. Shane followed her into the hallway, ready to catch her if she looked in danger of collapse.
By the time they traversed the crossover landing and started down the steps to the outer hatch, Jagger had lugged out the bags they’d packed before reaching Main-à-Dieu this morning. It had turned out to be a longer day than Shane could’ve imagined.
He grabbed his duffel and Gillian’s small rolling case, stopped on deck long enough to locate her buoyancy compensator, and followed them off the gangway and onto a short dock.
A man stood the end of the worn wooden pier, watching them with his hands stuffed in the pockets of heavy chinos. He wore a dark blue nylon jacket, a baseball cap, and a grumpy-old-man expression that made Shane feel right at home. Charlie had described Chevy McKnight as the most ornery fisherman to ever walk the earth, and this guy fit the part. He was every curmudgeon ever played by actors like Ed Asner and Ernest Borgnine come to life. A hell of a lot like Charlie, in other words.
Shane bypassed Jagger and Gillian, set down the bags, and stuck out his right hand. “You must be Chevy. I’m Shane Burke. ”
The old man looked at Shane’s hand, then jerked his head toward the central harbor. “No sir, you’re trouble in a diving suit. That’s who you are.”
Shane turned to see a boat anchoring not far from them, and his heart jumped to his throat. He’d noticed the red-hulled workboat offshore at Scaterie just before he dived and hadn’t thought much about it. The hull read The Breton.
He should’ve paid more attention before. Standing on the deck of The Breton was a guy who appeared to be watching them through a rifle scope.
A guy who looked a hell of a lot like Tex.
“Better hit the wood.” Chevy’s voice was gravel and concrete, more growl than statement.
“What?” A blow between his shoulder blades sent Shane face-first into the pier just as a boom sounded above him. It was followed by another blast, this one from the south.
Gillian, who must have tackled him since she was now lying on his back, face down, whispered, “Holy shit, I think Chevy just started a war.”
CHAPTER 26
Gillian waited for a full-fledged gunfight at the Main-à-Dieu harbor to break out, but after the second shot, silence fell. She’d knocked Shane over, covered him like a wet neoprene blanket, and tucked her head down next to his. But now she hazarded a look up. People had wandered out of several of the buildings nestled around the harbor, looking toward them on the dock and toward The Breton, anchored nearby.
It wasn’t exactly a crowd, maybe five or six people, but it was enough that when she rolled off Shane and craned her neck, Gillian saw The Breton chugging away from them. There was no sign of Tex.
Chevy uttered his first words since the gunfire: “Damned communists.”
Shane sat up, wiping blood off his face from the scratches he’d gotten when he hit the pier. Gillian reached up and pulled out a splinter. “Sorry about that,” she said. “I wasn’t sure you saw Tex.”
“I almost didn’t.” He looked up at the old man, who was tucking a small pistol back in the pocket of his pants. “I was watching Gary Cooper over here, trying to reenact High Noon.”
Chevy looked down at them for the first time. “The hippie got shot. Might want to help him instead of worrying about me.”
Jagger! Gillian hadn’t even thought about him. She twisted around and found him sitting on the deck behind her, holding his Goats Head Soup sweatshirt out to look at the source of the spreading bloodstain near the front of his left shoulder.
“Are you okay?”
He treated her to the first genuine smile she’d seen out of him in a few days. “I always wondered what it would feel like to get shot.” He sounded genuinely pleased.
Obviously, he was suffering from shock. “Well, how does it feel to be shot?”
“It hurts like hell.”
“Here.” Shane climbed to his feet and held out a hand, grasping Jagger’s left wrist and pulling his friend to a stand. Jagger swayed once but found his balance.
They all faced their host, who had crossed his arms over his barrel chest, his weathered face a study in neutrality. Gillian had no idea if he was going to yell at them or inquire after their health.
“Well, come on then,” he said, turning and walking toward the junction of the pier and the wooden boardwalk that circled a wide swath of the town’s harbor front. “Truck’s over at the store, and I don’t have all evening to waste on you. I’m hungry.” Gillian thought she heard him mutter something about “damn fool Americans” before he got out of earshot.
Shane picked up his duffel and Jagger’s pack. Gillian grabbed her bag and BC vest before he could be gallant and try to tote everything like a mule. “Did you pack your gun?” He eyed her rolling case. “I have mine in my duffel, but we might need both of them if that
little adventure was any indication of what’s to come.”
“I got it.” She walked alongside Jagger down the boardwalk, with Shane trailing behind. The Breton had almost reached the wide mouth of the harbor but was slowing down near the southern breakwater. “Looks like he might be planning to drop anchor over there. Reckon where he got the boat?”
“Probably leased it at…” Jagger trailed off and stopped at the sound of Gillian’s ringtone—a tune they’d all come to dread.
She dug her phone from the front pocket of her bag. “What a surprise—‘Private Caller.’ I’ll put him on speaker.”
She punched the talk button and held the phone up. “Hiya, Tex.” The more she thought about him shooting into this little town, the more pissed off she got. He could have killed an innocent bystander. Never mind that Chevy had started it. “You do realize that if you shoot your divers, your boss’s chances of getting that cross in the next two weeks fall to zero.”
Never mind that it was little better than zero anyway. Despite her excitement over that coin, today’s adventure had shown her what a needle-haystack situation they were in.
“If I’d wanted to shoot Mr. Burke, I would have. Mr. Mackie is expendable. He’s lucky people started coming outside or I’d have finished the job.”
“Harsh.” Jagger pulled his jacket around him more tightly, glancing down at the rip in the nylon made when the bullet passed through. He no longer looked amused.
“Yeah, lucky,” Gillian said. “And to answer the question you haven’t asked yet, no, we didn’t find the cross today.”
“Then I suggest you work harder. I’ve made arrangements for you to stay at…hold on.” Tex spoke to someone in muffled tones in the background. Son of Tex, maybe? “At a guest house on the outskirts of town, the Brown Seal. You will not stay with that old fool Clarence McKnight.”
Gillian looked at Jagger and Shane, eyebrows raised. “Sorry, Tex,” Shane said. “We’ve made our own arrangements, and if you want me to dive for you and your boss, you’ll live with it.”
Gillian nodded her approval. If Tex didn’t want them with Chevy, it made her more determined to stay with him. “We think Mr. McKnight’s knowledge of the local waters and all the shipwreck legends will help us,” she said. “You do want us to succeed in this mission, don’t you?”
The long pause told her they’d won this round. “I’ll be in touch,” Tex finally said. “And tell that lunatic McKnight that if he takes one wrong step, I know where he lives. It’ll take more than that fortified lighthouse to keep him safe.”
“Duly noted,” Gillian said, ending the call without waiting to see if Tex had more to say.
“Fortified lighthouse?” Jagger asked. “Oh, this is going to be interesting.”
Yeah, maybe too interesting.
“And if Tex thinks Chevy is a lunatic, does that mean the guy’s really smart or really crazy?” Shane asked.
“The two aren’t mutually exclusive.” Gillian stuffed the phone back in her bag. “Guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
Down the boardwalk, the old man already had a hundred-yard head start and showed no signs of slowing down. An ancient green pickup sat near the harbormaster’s office, and Gillian suspected it would be their ride. She hoped Chevy lived nearby. Her wetsuit had been a good-enough choice for the dive, but now that the gunfire adrenaline had drained, she couldn’t stop shivering.
Jagger walked alongside her, and Gillian was worried both by his silence and his downcast eyes. Unless the bullet had gone all the way through his shoulder—and she hadn’t spotted any damage to the back of his jacket—he’d need it removed. Gillian suspected Main-à-Dieu didn’t have a hospital. That would be a question for Chevy.
She didn’t want to walk too fast herself. She’d had a couple of waves of dizziness she didn’t dare let Shane know about, or he’d never let her back in the water. A hot shower and a nap would work wonders. After that, if she still felt wonky, she’d put away the wetsuit and leave the diving to Shane without an argument.
Shane had surprised her with his decision to let her dive, and she’d surprised herself by admitting that he had to make the call. She’d been stubborn, stupid, and rash to go in the water alone in those conditions. She could have killed them both, and it wasn’t a lesson she planned to forget. This was no vacation.
If Shane said dive, she’d dive. And if he said she needed to keep her feet planted on The Evangeline, she’d respect that.
“Okay, that’s enough.” From behind her, Shane stuck a foot out and knocked the suitcase handle out of her hand. “You guys are creeping along like old ladies. If you go any slower, you’ll be going backward. Stay here with the bags, and I’ll get old Speedy up there to pick you up at the nearest corner in the truck.”
Gillian turned to argue but stopped when she got a look at Jagger’s face. He was shivering worse than she was, and for the first time she thought about what a stressful day he’d had, even before he got shot. She’d been so focused on her own drama, and Shane’s, that she’d given no thought to what it must’ve been like for Jagger with the weather worsening, Tex nearby, and both divers staying down too long. Then navigating through that storm. He’d done it all with no fanfare and no complaints.
“Good idea,” she told Shane. “Make sure Chevy doesn’t leave without us.”
Shane edged past them and started off down the boardwalk at a weary-looking trot, his navy duffel and Jagger’s heavy green knapsack bouncing over his shoulder. They all needed some rest.
By the time she and Jagger reached the nearest thing that could be called a road, she’d had a chance to get a better look at Main-à-Dieu. Its French name translated to Hand of God, and Gillian thought it was pretty enough to have been crafted by God’s hand. The shallow half-moon harbor featured a narrow beach and scrubby growth that gave way to rolling hills. Farther up the coast, the terrain grew dramatically rugged, with cliffs and rocky highlands, but here it was gentle. Or it seemed that way in the sweet freshness that always seemed to follow a violent storm, as if nature had worn out its fury and felt the need to atone.
Most of the two dozen or so buildings in sight of the harbor were neat white one- or two-story clapboard rectangles, and a colorful fleet of workboats gathered near the water’s far end. Chevy was a lobsterman, Shane had told her, and he and Charlie had struck up a friendship back when the elder Burke was an itinerant fisherman traveling with the seasons. Summers belonged to Nova Scotia, and she figured Main-à-Dieu was probably a lot like Southport fifty or sixty years ago. It reminded her of Cedar Key, only smaller and colder.
“You look as wracked as I feel. Let’s wait here.” Jagger sat on a boulder next to the road. “How’s your head?”
Starting to pound like the surf hitting the sunkers offshore, but part of that could be attributed to hunger. It had been a long time since this morning’s sandwich. “It’s been better. How’s your gunshot wound?”
He smiled and broke into a warbly verse of an old Stones song: “He shot me once but I shot him twice.” Jagger’s smile faded as he stared at the edge of the harbor, where The Breton sat like a harbinger of doom. “Nice to know I’m expendable.”
“Tex is an asshole.” Gillian’s heart lifted at the sight of the green pickup bouncing down the street toward them. “When it comes right down to it, as far as Tex is concerned, we’re all expendable once our two weeks is up.”
Jagger didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to. There was nothing to stop Tex’s boss from ordering them all killed as soon as he had what he wanted. If it was Weston Flynn, letting them live was too risky. He had too much to lose. Their only advantage right now was that if their culprit was the secretary of state, he didn’t know they suspected him.
For now, all they could do was play along, buy time, and hope for a brainstorm about how they could keep everyone safe. A lucky break would be nice, or an intervention from the real hand of God. Too many people had already been hurt. Harley. Viv. Now Jagger.
Wh
atever happened, Shane and Jagger had to survive this. Even if Gillian had to call the freaking New York Times and publicly declare the secretary of state a blackmailer and would-be murderer. The only thing that had stopped her from doing it already was lack of evidence. They had to tie Tex to Flynn somehow more than being born in the same Texas town. If she found a way to expose Flynn and Tex, by the time they tracked her down and had her killed in a way that didn’t throw any suspicion toward Washington, Shane and Jagger could be long gone. There was enough of the initial money left for them to disappear to somewhere like Montana or Wyoming—or Nova Scotia.
Not that they’d ever agree to run, so she’d have to find a way to convince them.
The pickup lurched to a stop, and Shane stifled a grin when he opened the door and climbed out. Something about Chevy had amused him. “Gillian, why don’t you ride in the back with me? Jagger looks like he needs some heat.”
She agreed, although she was freezing and could do with some heat herself. A temperature drop had followed the storm, and her wetsuit had stopped trapping in warmth and begun trapping in cold.
While Shane helped Jagger into the passenger seat, Gillian walked to the back of the truck and looked into the ridged bed. There was no graceful way to do this, so she shoved her bag and BC ahead of her and rolled herself in. The hard plastic liner was cold and smelled like eau de fish. Awesome.
Shane slammed the passenger door and had to make an awkward leap to get in the truck bed before Chevy pulled away. He settled into the corner with his back to the cab, and held out an arm. “Come here; I have some body heat to share.”
“Well, how could I pass up a romantic invitation like that?” Gillian slid next to him and had to admit his arm felt good around her shoulders even through his bulky drysuit, which might be dry on the inside but was cold and damp on the outside. “Is our host as cheerful up close and in person?”
Shane smiled. “Yeah, he reminds me of Charlie. Heart of gold trapped in a body of barbed wire. Except he makes my uncle look, well, normal. He thinks the aliens and communists are in league.”
Lovely, Dark, and Deep (The Collectors) Page 23