“Hell, yeah!” I yelled.
I twisted them together with damp fingers, ignoring the jolts of electricity.
“Green for go,” I said.
I held the green wire to the jumble of red and yellow ones and the engine turned over. And turned and turned and turned.
“Come on, you piece of crap!”
The engine roared to life, and I dropped the green wire. I pulled myself onto the seat, slammed the door, and jammed the gearshift into drive with the accelerator nearly to the floor. I’d never peeled rubber before, never knew how satisfying the spin of the tires as they raced to grip the pavement could be, the jolt as they found traction, the squeal, and the wind in my face through the open windows. The truck rocketed out of the parking lot. I didn’t let off the accelerator for the turn, and the tires squealed again. I ran the red light at the next corner, earning myself a middle-finger salute from an old lady who could barely see over her steering wheel. Now I had one mile of straightaway and I asked the truck for all it had. I prayed no one would pull out in front of me as the speedometer crept past ninety.
At the last turn, I slammed on the brakes and made a sliding left onto Nate’s street. His house was only halfway down the block now. I drove straight through his side yard, laying on the horn all the way down to the water.
Nate jumped up from where he was working on his deck. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he hollered.
I all but fell out of the truck as I propelled myself toward him. He met me halfway across the lawn.
“My baby, kidnapped, on a boat coming out of the harbor. Gotta stop them.” I gasped for air.
“Katie Kovacs?”
“Yes, Nick’s Katie. Help me. I need to stop a boat.”
And then I saw her. I stopped and stared, stricken mute, at Annalise. She was standing on Nate’s deck, holding up the end of a fishing net covered with orange balls that Nate had been working on. She gestured at me with it, then turned and pointed behind her to the mouth of the harbor. Approaching from a half mile away, moving slowly through the no-wake zone, was Derek’s boat.
“What is it?” Nate asked. He was probably about two seconds away from calling the psych ward.
“Net!” I screamed. “Nets stop boat engines. Help me get a net across the harbor. He’s taken our baby, and he’s coming.” I pointed.
Nate finally snapped to it. “Someone’s got your kid in that boat? OK, I gotcha. I’ll drag the net across the mouth of harbor. I think I’ve got just enough. Can you hold one end until I give you the signal?”
“Yes, go!” I screamed.
Nate turned and ran to the dock with me right behind him. He handed me one end of the net.
“I’ll give you an OK sign when you need to let go, but you’ll feel it because it’s heavy and it’ll get tight. Don’t let it drag you in.”
“Got it,” I said.
He took the other end of the net onto the Juggerknot and tied it around a cleat on the back corner. He threw off the lines in seconds and clambered up to the flying bridge, started the engines, threw the boat into gear, and pushed the throttle forward, all with amazing speed and dexterity.
I carried the net to the end of the dock, looking at the orange baseball-sized Styrofoam floats and realizing that’s what would keep the net at propeller level. I hadn’t even thought about the net sinking. What luck.
I felt the pressure from the net almost immediately, and as I leaned back to steady myself, two black hands took position by mine. My friend’s fingers were long and slender. Beautiful like her, but work-roughened. I snuck a glance at her face. Tears were running down her cheeks, and I realized that I was crying, too.
“Thank you,” I said.
She nodded.
I turned back to watch the Juggerknot move directly into Derek’s path. The speedboat was not far from him now. Nate shot me an OK sign.
“Now,” I said to Annalise.
Our four hands released the net at once, just as another boat entered the harbor. The ferry. It was practically a traffic jam. I held my breath. Derek was steadily increasing speed. A hundred twenty-five feet. A hundred feet. My heart pounded in my throat. Seventy-five feet. Fifty feet. Please, God, I prayed, please. Twenty-five feet. And then Derek and his boat were passing the floating net.
My heart sank. It wasn’t going to work. He was going to get away with Taylor.
I looked back at Annalise. She was gazing out into the harbor with a slow smile on her lips. I looked back at Derek’s boat, which was still moving forward.
Until it wasn’t.
Derek ran to the back of the boat, and I could see from a distance he was screaming, probably cursing Taylor’s ears blue, for all the good it would do. No amount of screaming would move that boat forward.
But my elation was replaced by a fearful uncertainty. What now? We’d stopped him, but he still had Taylor, a lot of water around him, and a gun.
The ferry pulled through the inner mouth of the harbor, passing the Juggerknot on its port side. And then the ferry did the strangest thing. Instead of going into the marina, it cut its engines and floated up next to Derek’s boat. I shielded my eyes against the dull glare off the midnight-blue water to try to see if the ferry was going to offer Derek a tow.
Two bodies jumped off the stern of the ferry as I watched. I waited for the splash, but it didn’t come because they landed in the cigarette boat. In fact, it looked like one of them landed right on top of Derek, because Derek was down.
“Be careful of my son!” I cried into the sea wind.
Every passenger on the ferry had crowded against the railing to watch the drama. I heard the voice of the captain over a loudspeaker ordering them to return to the safety of their vehicles. But no one seemed to listen. Instead, as I gaped, a cheer went up on the deck. People raised their arms in air. I could hear whoops, hollers, and clapping.
And then the Juggerknot pulled up between me and the speedboat, completely blocking my view.
“No, no, no!”
Chapter Fifty
For five minutes I hopped and paced, trying to get a look to no avail. Then the Juggerknot started back toward its home slip, toward me. Could it go any slower?
Nate brought the Juggerknot around to back it up to the dock, and that’s when I saw them. Nick, holding Taylor, and Collin holding onto the handcuffed wrists of Derek. I glanced back out to the harbor. Someone on the deck of the ferry was throwing a line to someone in the cigarette boat. But my interest wasn’t out there anymore. I waved to Nick and Taylor, and Nick waved back.
It took everything I had not to jump for the boat. I looked behind me for Annalise, knowing she would be gone, but wishing she was still beside me. And, of course, she was gone. Maybe forever. But I couldn’t think about that right then.
The Juggerknot bounced off the bumpers on the far side of the slip and eased toward me. “You’ve got him!” I yelled. The sound of the engines drowned my voice.
Nick walked toward me and shouted, “Wrap the lines around the cleats.” He tossed me a line.
I caught it and wrapped it around the cleat nearest to me. It seemed to do the trick, enough that Nick leaned over and handed Taylor to me. I snatched him greedily and squeezed him tight while Nick redid my line and tied the others.
“I’ll get off in a minute. I have to help Nate with the rest of the lines.”
“OK,” I shouted to Nick. Then I looked into Taylor’s big, round eyes. Teardrops were clinging to his thick, dark lashes. I admired the little nose that looked nothing like the rest of his family yet. This child was beautiful. “Oh, Taylor, I am so glad to see you. You had a scary boat ride, but everything is going to be all right.”
For once, he didn’t struggle to get down, but laid his head into my shoulder. His soft curls tickled my neck, and my heart grew three sizes.
The Juggerknot’s engines stopped and I backed up to let Collin by with Derek. I didn’t trust Derek, even in handcuffs.
And it turned out that
I was right not to, because when Derek stepped off the boat behind Collin, he barreled headfirst into him. Collin took a heavy step back, and one of the boards of the dock broke under his foot. His foot fell through, and his body followed, shades of Katie, backwards into the water.
Derek made a break toward the yard, but with his hands cuffed behind his back he wasn’t very fast. I was the only one near him, so I took off after him. There was no way I was letting that asshole get away. As soon as I hit the grass, I set Taylor down, told him to sit still, and sprinted after Derek.
I could tackle an unarmed, handcuffed man. All I needed to do was slow him down. I pulled within two feet of him and grabbed the back of his collar. I pulled back on it and launched myself onto him. He didn’t go down at once, and I rode his back awkwardly, like a really bad bull rider, or a monkey riding a dog’s back. But I refused to let go.
Three steps later, he went to his knees. I ignored the shouting behind me. Hand-to-hand combat was my strong suit, thanks to the martial arts training my dad always thought I’d use to escape some jock in high school. I’d never had to, but I thought Dad would like this even better.
I changed my grip to a headlock, keeping my face safely away from the back of Derek’s head. We lay entwined, intimate in a horrible way. He started to thrash, and I wrapped my legs around him so I could dig my heel into his crotch.
“Rot in hell, Derek,” I whispered in his ear.
“Let go of him, Katie, and stand back,” Nick said. It sounded like he was right next to me. I looked up to see him pointing Derek’s nine millimeter at the ground.
“Move, Katie. I can’t point it at him with you there.”
I covered Derek with my body instinctively. No way in hell was I moving.
“Yo, brother-in-law, the suspect is in custody. Put your weapon away before we have any civilian injuries,” a dripping wet Collin said as he came toward Nick.
Nick didn’t seem to hear him. He was staring at Derek.
Derek took advantage of the diversion and used his weight against me to duck, twist, and roll his body over mine, exposing his torso to Nick. “Go ahead, coward. Shoot me,” he yelled.
“NICK, NO!” I screamed. But I knew ordering him around wouldn’t work. Softer, but just as firmly, I spoke again from under a hundred and seventy pounds of asshole. “We won. Please put down the gun.”
Nick made no move to give up the gun. After several tense seconds he spat out, “I hate him, Katie. He doesn’t deserve to live.”
“No, but you do. And I deserve you.”
He altered his gaze to meet my eyes. He sighed. “Can I at least shoot him in the knee or something?”
I looked at Collin and let go of Derek, and my brother pulled him off of me. “No, not even one little kneecap,” I said. I crawled to my feet and brushed away grass and dirt as I made my way to my husband.
“It would make me feel so much better.”
“So would putting your arms around me,” I said. “The gun?”
He put the safety on and shoved it in the back of his waistband.
Nate walked up, beaming, with Taylor in his arms. “Good thing I radioed Kurt. I had a feeling he’d know who to call.”
Apparently so.
Nick said, “I’m glad he didn’t tell the ferry captain about Derek’s gun, or Ole Cap might not have been so eager to pull alongside him.”
It had taken all of us. Annalise’s face flashed through my mind and I turned back to Nick. “You were right,” I said.
“About what?”
“That by the time you picked me up, we’d have Derek out of our hair.”
He kissed the tip of my nose. “I wish you would have let me shoot him.”
I stood up on tiptoe and placed my smallish, pale freckled nose against his largish olive-skinned one.
“You, Nick Kovacs, are my hero because you didn’t shoot him.”
He harrumphed. “You, Katie Kovacs, are my hero, too.” And then he smiled.
Chapter Fifty-one
Two weeks later, Nick and I got ready for court together in the tiny bathroom of our apartment. I massaged moisturizer into his face and snuck some down his neck. He kept his eyes closed and his face completely relaxed. I put my hands against both his cheeks for a few seconds, then said, “All done.”
“Thanks, baby.” He opened his eyes and the look in them was mischievous. He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Well, I was going to wait until after the hearing today to give you something, because I didn’t want to jinx it, but I’ve decided I can’t hold out.”
“Stop!” I broke in. “You can’t risk it.”
“All that voodoo stuff has gone to your head.”
I had finally broken down and told Nick about my fear that Annalise killed Junior. For some crazy reason, it felt like confessing to the crime myself. The body still hadn’t shown up. I just hoped that wherever she’d put him, he would never be found.
“Put this in your purse, then,” Nick said, handing me an envelope, “and after we get our ruling, you can open it.”
I stuck the envelope in the side pocket of my brown suede bag. “Well, just so you know, I have a little something for you in there, too.”
“What?”
“I can’t tell you. It’ll jinx it.”
“Argh,” he said, and swatted my behind, which earned him a swat back.
Since we had already delivered Taylor to his Mothers’ Day Out teacher’s house for the day, we loaded ourselves into the Tahoe for the drive to the courthouse. We clasped hands during the walk from the car, but neither of us said a word.
When we were inside, Nick opened the courtroom door for me, and I entered for what I prayed was the last time. My husband followed me to the front row and I slid in next to my in-laws. I kissed Julie on the cheek and whispered hello to Kurt. Julie reached for my hand and gripped it tight as Mary turned around at the counsel table at the front of the courtroom. She waved and gave us a thumbs-up.
I wriggled in the wooden pew, which seemed even harder than usual. I hated being there. I hated courtrooms in general, except for maybe the one in St. Marcos where Bart and Trevor had been indicted on drug charges ten days before. Morris had come through for his partner Jacoby in a big way and busted Fortuna’s new kitchen manager in their walk-in cooler with his hands wrist-deep in Chilean sea bass and vacuum-sealed bags of cocaine. Rashidi said the restaurant was boarded up tight. The police had reopened the investigations into Tarah’s and Jacoby’s “accidental” deaths. I just hoped some of it could be tied back to Derek and Slither, since their names were listed as officers on the company’s official records alongside Bart’s and Trevor’s. It wouldn’t bring Jacoby back, but justice still mattered.
“All rise,” the bailiff said.
We got to our feet as Judge Nichols entered in a swirl of black robes. She sat, and the bailiff motioned for us to follow suit. I allowed myself a glance at Derek. As scary as he’d been in the Port Aransas marina, he looked far more malevolent that day, even shackled to a chair with his eyes fixed on the floor. He radiated hate. He sure didn’t look like anybody’s loving father to me.
He had accepted a plea bargain deal with the state, thirty-five years for first-degree kidnapping. Aggravated, since he’d used a gun on me. He got off easy, but the sentence still looked convincing to me of what a giant loser he was and the horrible impact it would have on Taylor for Derek to remain in his life in any capacity. I just hoped the judge agreed.
Judge Nichols went through the formal preliminaries, then got down to business in a Law-and-Order-type voice that rang throughout the courtroom, the kind of voice that makes me want to salute and put my hand over my heart. “This court loathes terminating parental rights, except in the most extreme circumstances. Had only one factor in the child’s best interests supported termination, I would not have granted it. However, in this case, the respondent has made it difficult for the court not to find in favor of granting petitioner’s request for termination; correction, th
e respondent has made it impossible.”
The judge read off Derek’s crimes and failings toward Taylor. It was a long list. I wanted to jump to my feet and pump my fist over my head, but I restrained myself.
“It is the ruling of this court that the respondent’s parental rights be hereby and irrevocably terminated. Full custody is granted to the petitioner as requested by the deceased mother in her last will and testament, with named petitioner as guardian.”
Basically, it was a whole lot of mumbo jumbo confirming that Derek was the cretin we all knew he was, and that Nick, my Nick, was forevermore Taylor’s father. Making me, by virtue of the gold band on the third finger of my left hand, our vows, and our enthusiastic (and frequently repeated) consummation of the union, Taylor’s mother.
Judge Nichols rapped her gavel. “Bailiff, call the next case.”
I turned to Nick and he put his forehead against mine. I closed my eyes. It was official. We were three.
Mary whispered back at us, “You did it! Congratulations.”
Nick and I pulled our foreheads apart, but we stayed nose to nose, looking into each other’s eyes, holding the rest of the world out as long as we could. Kurt pushed his way down the row to hug Nick, and we allowed ourselves to be pulled away from each other. A little separation didn’t stop the magic. And then we were all hugging each other and talking in excited whispers as the bailiff glowered.
I felt a coldness on the back of my head and I swiveled toward Derek. He was staring at me, smiling with his lips, his eyes flat and narrowed. It looked like a threat. It felt like a threat. Could he still hurt us while he was in jail? Derek had proved he had friends before, and we were on his turf. Hell, his little brother had survived the shooting and was growing up fast. It was a sobering thought. But I wouldn’t let Derek see it. I forced myself to return his stare. I concentrated on sending him a silent message: Don’t mess with me and my family ever again, you asshole.
Leaving Annalise (Katie & Annalise Book 2) Page 27