“Lisa, please,” Scott had said, pulling the girl aside. “Just calm down. Let me handle this.”
Lisa crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.
“My girlfriend is missing,” he went on.
“Ex-girlfriend,” Lisa piped up. “Gina is so over you, Scott.”
Zeke, the one dressed in black, cleared his throat. “Gina is Lisa’s big sister,” he’d said apologetically. “We’re all staying here at the lodge, shooting a television show, and this afternoon, Gina—that’s the sister—just disappeared.”
“I’m her executive producer, Scott Zaleski,” the older man said. He pulled a business card from the wallet and handed it across to Coyle, who nodded, but didn’t take it. “Maybe you’ve seen our show—Fresh Start with Regina Foxton?”
“Nope,” Coyle said. He jerked his head at Zeke. “What makes you think she’s not still on the island?”
“We found her golf cart parked by a shell bank on the creek, but there’s no other sign of her,” Zeke said eagerly.
“She’s been gone for hours,” Lisa wailed. “I told Scott there was something wrong when she didn’t come back on time—”
“Gina’s very focused on winning this competition,” Scott said. “There was no reason to get alarmed, especially since Moody also missed the deadline.”
“That’s the other thing,” Zeke added. “We found Tate’s golf cart parked right beside Gina’s. Their fishing equipment is gone, and their coolers, so we’re thinking—”
“Tate?” Coyle said. “You mean Tate Moody?”
Zeke’s glasses slid down his nose. He pushed them back up. “Well, yeah. Tate’s missing too. Nobody’s seen either one of them since this morning, and one of the women who works at the lodge seems to think they might have found a boat and decided to go off together. Although I think that’s highly unlikely—”
Mick put his beer down and headed for the Maggy Dee. “Why didn’t you say it was Tate missing to begin with? We never miss Vittles. Man! My old lady would kick my ass if she knew I turned down a chance to meet the Tatester.”
The three of them had followed him down the dock to the boat, ready to board, until Coyle held up two fingers.
“Two of ya can come, but that’s all. This ain’t no cruise liner.”
“She’s my sister, and I’m going,” Lisa had said, and without further ado, she nimbly jumped from the dock onto the deck of the Maggy Dee.
Scott Zaleski looked down at the waves slapping up and over the deck of the shrimp boat, and seemed to have second thoughts about this mission. “Maybe it would be better if I stayed on the island, just in case she turns up,” he said. “I can coordinate things from here.”
“Wuss,” Lisa called. She held out a hand to the other man. “Come on, Zeke.”
The younger man took a deep breath and jumped. His foot slipped when he hit the wet deck, and he went sprawling on his ass at the girl’s feet.
“Christ,” Coyle said, stepping over the man in black. “Gonna be a long night.”
Lisa picked up a pair of binoculars from the Maggy Dee’s console. She stepped out onto the deck and swept them slowly to the right and to the left. Zeke drifted over and put an arm around her shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll find her. Barry had me put in a call to the Coast Guard earlier. They had a Liberian tanker grounded on a sandbar down near Jacksonville, but as soon as they get the crew transported to land, they’ll have a cutter on the way. And when it turns daylight, we’ll send out a spotter plane.”
“Daylight!” Lisa shrieked. “It’s nearly ten o’clock. We can’t wait till morning to find her. Anything could happen if she’s out here. Mama’s been calling nonstop since this morning.” She clutched Zeke’s collar in both hands. “Do you want to be the one to tell Birdelle Foxton that the Coast Guard was too busy rescuing some stinking old Liberians to find her daughter?”
“Nooo,” Zeke admitted. Lisa had replayed some of the messages Birdelle had left on her cell phone. She sounded formidable, to say the least.
“Go!” Lisa urged, pointing toward the Maggy Dee’s cabin. “Talk to the captain. You’re a man. He’ll listen to you. Make him understand that we have got to keep looking. Gina’s out here, somewhere, I just know it.”
Zeke hesitated. The only reason Mick Coyle had agreed to this particular search-and-rescue mission was that he was a huge fan of Tate’s. That and the five crisp hundred-dollar bills Zeke had folded into the man’s grubby fist before they’d left the dock. Coyle made him nervous. This shrimp boat made him nervous too. Not to mention seasick. He’d already logged serious time hanging over the side of the Maggy Dee, tossing his cookies. He was a rising star in the galaxy of culinary entertainment. What was he doing out here in the middle of nowhere, on this oil-belching garbage scow?
“Zeke.” Lisa wrapped her arms around his neck, stood on tiptoe, and pressed her body close to his. “Please, lover. Help me find my sister.”
Oh, yes. Now he remembered.
He sighed and went into the pilothouse to have a word with Captain Coyle.
The boat’s radio crackled with ghostly disembodied voices, men’s voices, checking in from boats like the Little Lady, the Craw Daddy, and Hellzapoppin.
“Maggy Dee, Maggy Dee,” a man’s voice called. “This is the BadDawg. You folks still lookin’ for that party missing out of Eutaw?”
Coyle flipped a button on the boat’s console and spoke into a microphone. “Roger that. You got something?”
“Could be,” the voice came back. “We’re headed back to port, but just went by the south end of Rattlesnake Key. I didn’t see it, but my mate swears he saw a light out there.”
“Light?” Coyle repeated. “On Rattlesnake?”
“Roger that,” the voice repeated. “He says maybe a fire, something like that. Could just be campers. Teenagers out of school for the summer. Or maybe it’s them folks you’re looking for.”
“Thanks, BadDawg,” Coyle said. He flipped the switch again, and put his own binoculars to his face.
“Rattlesnake Key,” Zeke said eagerly. “How far off is that?”
Coyle shrugged. “Not far. We’ve been by there twice tonight, but I didn’t see nothin’. We’ll check it out, though.” He swung the boat’s steering wheel hard right and shoved the throttle forward, sending the trawler surging through the waves.
Chapter 57
It occurred to Tate that he was living every red-blooded American man’s fantasy. He was alone, on an island, with a gorgeous, willing woman who was urgently trying to undress him.
And yet…
He hesitated.
“What?” Gina saw the uncertainty in his eyes.
He hardly knew how to articulate what he was feeling. But he had to try to explain himself. Somehow.
He took her hands in his and kissed them gently. “You’re ready to make love to me tonight—but why? Is it because we’re out here in the middle of nowhere, and you think nobody will ever have to know?”
“No!” She snatched her hand away from his. His rejection felt like a bucket of icy water had been splashed over her head. She scrambled to her feet. “I thought…you wanted to…as much as I did. I’m attracted to you, damn you, Tate Moody.”
He stood up too, and reached for her, but she pulled away again, turning her back to him.
He grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her around so that they were facing each other again, but she wouldn’t look at him. “Don’t get me wrong, Reggie,” he said. “I want you. Here. Now. Wherever. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been working really hard not to want you. But it’s no good. Hell, I think I loved you even when I didn’t like you.”
She was crying now, dammit. “Then why…”
“I don’t want to be your last resort,” he said. “I won’t be that. I won’t ever be a hookup. Not for you or anybody.”
“That’s not what I want, either,” she insisted. “I’ve changed, Tate—”
Sudde
nly Moonpie, who’d been drowsing by the fire, leaped to his feet. He dashed to the edge of the campsite, barking ferociously, his tail up, on point.
“Stay here,” Tate told Gina, glancing around in search of something to use as a weapon. “There’s something out there on the beach—”
“Uh, people?” a voice called from the darkness. “Tate? Gina? Is that you? If it is, could you please call off the dog?”
“Moonpie!” Tate’s voice was sharp. “Here!”
The dog sat on his haunches, his ears quivering with anticipation.
“Who’s that?” Tate called.
Slowly, a slightly built figure crept toward the firelight, dressed all in black, water streaming from his clothes and every orifice. The creature’s eyes loomed unexpectedly large and dark without their customary horned-rim glasses.
Gina blinked in disbelief. “Zeke?”
Chapter 58
They’re coming!” Lisa leaned so far over the bow of the Maggy Dee, Mick Coyle feared she’d fall over. He’d have hauled her back over the rail, if he hadn’t been so thoroughly enjoying the view of her cute little ass, complete with a cute little tattoo….
“A rope!” Lisa yelled, turning toward him. “We need to throw them a rope or a life ring or something.”
“Christ,” Coyle muttered. It had been more than an hour since he’d left the little twerp off on the sandbar that surrounded Rattlesnake Key. He’d tried to explain to the chick that the Maggy Dee’s hull was too deep to make it over the bar, but she wasn’t exactly a rocket scientist when it came to such things.
By then, they could all see the glow of firelight coming from the key’s south end, and Lisa had been insistent that her sister and Moody were on the key. She’d been ready to dive overboard and swim to the key herself, until Coyle had inquired about her swimming skills.
“Oh.” She’d hesitated.
“You can’t swim worth a damn, can you?” Coyle asked.
“I’m more like a dog-paddler than a swimmer,” Lisa admitted.
“I’ll go,” Zeke had volunteered. “I rowed crew five years in prep school.”
In the end, Coyle inflated the Maggy Dee’s never-used navy-surplus life raft, fitted Zeke with a neon orange life vest, and instructed him on how to use a signal flare once he’d reached Rattlesnake Key to let them know he was safe.
Despite Coyle’s deepest doubts, Zeke had apparently not only reached the island unharmed, he’d also managed to ferry the two marooned sailors, plus a dog, back out to the Maggy Dee.
Coyle flipped the trawler’s rope ladder over the side of the boat and barked orders to Zeke, and against all odds, not to mention the tide and the wind, which kept driving the life raft away from the Maggy, soon the three sailors were hauling themselves over the trawler’s bow rail.
Tate Moody carried the dog under his arm. He set him down on the deck, and the dog immediately shook about twenty gallons of water on the rest of them.
“Gina!” Lisa cried, throwing her arms around her sister. “Oh, my God. I can’t believe it. You’re safe! You didn’t drown.”
“I’m fine,” Gina insisted. “We were never in any danger of drowning.”
“Zeke!” Lisa cooed, turning toward the kid in black. “You saved them.” She draped herself on him, even though he was soaking wet, and covered him in kisses, which he didn’t seem to mind at all.
Coyle watched the reunion with an amused air of detachment. Ever since he’d heard the details of the couple’s disappearance, he’d wondered just exactly what Tate Moody was up to.
The guy was no dummy. He’d been in and around these waters a lot. If he’d gotten himself marooned on an island, he clearly had something in mind for the little lady who’d accompanied him.
The big sister was kind of a surprise. Coyle had been expecting some really hot television babe—after all, Tate Moody could have any woman he wanted. Coyle’s own wife had frequently commented that she’d happily hop in the sack with the Tatester, given the opportunity.
It wasn’t that Gina Foxton wasn’t attractive. Even soaking wet and sunburned, she was more than pretty, although clearly not in the same foxy category as Lisa, Coyle thought.
As soon as he laid eyes on her, and on Tate Moody, he knew the two of them had done the deed. They tried to be discreet, but Mick Coyle was a man of the world. He knew what was up.
Once the Maggy Dee got under way again, Gina allowed herself to be hustled into the pilothouse and wrapped in a blanket from his bunk, although she wisely refused a cup of Coyle’s two-day-old reheated coffee. The two sisters huddled together in the pilothouse, carrying on a heated, whispered discussion.
Tate Moody and the kid, Zeke, wrapped themselves in some old jackets Coyle had dug out of a gear locker and dried the dog off with a towel. The men stayed out on deck, well away from the women. Moody and the girl stayed as far away from each other as possible on a forty-four-foot shrimp boat. But they couldn’t fool Mick Coyle. Oh, yeah, the Tatester had definitely hooked himself a piece of tail on Rattlesnake Key.
The filthy blanket the shrimper had fetched her stank of dead fish and rancid grease, but Gina welcomed its warmth. What she didn’t welcome was her sister’s sudden and astonishing transformation into the world’s most annoying mother hen.
“Oh, my God,” Lisa repeated, for about the tenth time. “Do you have any idea of what you’ve put us all through? I was going crazy! When you didn’t show up this afternoon, I was sure something awful had happened. I even called Mama, just on the off chance she’d heard from you. She went apeshit when I told her you were missing.”
“You called Mama? Are you insane? Lisa, why in God’s name would you do something like that? I’ll never hear the end of this now.”
“Why in God’s name would you go off in some leaky piece of crap—in the middle of a storm, yet—without telling anybody?” Lisa retorted. “And with Tate Moody, of all people?”
“It wasn’t storming when we got into the creek,” Gina said. “The water was perfectly calm—unlike you.”
“Easy for you to say. You weren’t the one searching every inch of Eutaw Island, expecting to find your sister’s broken and bleeding body at any minute.”
“I’m fine!” Gina repeated. “Nothing bad happened, except that we missed the deadline. I’m sorry everybody got themselves all worked up about me, but the bottom line is, I’m not dead.” She sighed. “Not dead. Just deeply, deeply humiliated.”
Lisa stared at her. “Something happened on that island. Between you and Tate.”
“Nothing happened, believe me.”
“You lie like a rug,” Lisa said. “You think I’m blind? After all the crap you put me through today, you owe me, big-time. So spill it, Sis. Was he better than Scott? What am I saying? Hello—we’re talking about the Tatester, so it had to be like, ten times better. Was he totally amazing? I want all the dirty, smutty details.”
“Lisa, look at me,” Gina said, grabbing her sister by the chin and swiveling her head until their faces were only inches apart. “Read my lips. Absolutely nothing happened between me and Tate. Okay? He was a perfect gentleman. And I was a perfect…fool. End of story.”
“Whatever.” Lisa gave her a knowing wink.
Gina leaned back against the pilothouse wall and closed her eyes. The Maggy Dee’s diesel engines churned, and the boat rose and fell over the waves. She would not allow herself to think about the day’s events. She wanted sleep. And a long, hot bath. And a one-way ticket off this shrimp boat.
Chapter 59
The cell phone clipped to Mick Coyle’s hip rang loudly enough to be heard over the drone of the Maggy Dee’s engines.
Coyle jerked the phone off his belt and flipped it open. “Who the hell is this?” he bellowed.
“Who?” Coyle asked. “Barry who?”
Lisa and Gina had dozed off, and Zeke and Tate had just come into the pilothouse to get out of the wind. At the mention of Barry Adelman’s name, everybody was on full alert.
“Yeah,” Coyle said. “That’s right. We got ’em. The girl, Tate. Even the friggin’ dog. Although, if he takes another leak on my deck, we might come back minus the dog.”
Coyle listened, and his belligerence quickly dissipated.
“Well, sure,” he said enthusiastically. “Yeah. Well, thanks, Barry. I think that would about take care of my time and expenses.” He listened again, then held the phone out to Zeke.
“Barry would like to have a word with you.”
Zeke took the phone, nervously wetting his lips.
“Hello? They’re right here, Barry. They were on Rattlesnake Key, this little island less than a mile from Eutaw. They found a boat and got caught out in the storm…. Oh, yeah. They’re both fine.”
Zeke listened. He held his hand over the phone for a moment. “Barry’s thrilled that you guys are all right,” he told Gina and Tate.
“Yeah. I agree. Absolutely,” Zeke said. “Yeah. It does have all the elements of excellent television. Drama, suspense. Danger…”
“We were never in any real danger,” Tate said, through gritted teeth.
But Zeke was listening to his boss again. He made a writing motion with his hand, and the suddenly cooperative Mick Coyle handed him a clipboard and a stub of a pencil.
Zeke scribbled furiously. “Um. That’s a thought. Of course. I think that’s a brilliant idea. But let me check.”
He held the cell phone to his chest. “People? Barry wants to know if you did, in fact, catch any fish on this nutty excursion of yours.”
“I did,” Tate said wearily. “A spot-tail bass.”
“And I caught a bluefish,” Gina put in.
Zeke scribbled again. “A spotted bass and uh…”
“Bluefish,” Gina repeated.
“Bluefish,” Zeke said. He was listening and frowning.
“Gee, Barry, I don’t know. They’ve had kind of a long day. No, they’re not injured or anything. It’s just that everybody’s wet and kind of sunburned—”
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