Читать книгу Dead Reckoning - Sandra K. Moore - Страница 11

“What you’re proposing, Ms. Hampton, is suicide.”

Chris lifted her chin, annoyed by Antonio Garza’s pronouncement. As a private investigator, he was there to inform, not to advise. “What I’m proposing is saving my sister from an abusive husband.”

She surveyed Garza’s small conference room where she sat with her friend, Gus Perkins, Antonio Garza and an innocuous-looking man who’d been introduced to her as Special Agent Smith of the DEA. “The fact her husband is an extremely dangerous drug smuggler is news, but it doesn’t mean I’m giving up.”

She clasped her hands together on the conference table’s edge and willed them to stop trembling. The shoulder squeeze Gus gave her felt affectionate, supportive. As well it should, all the years she’d taken sailing lessons from him after he retired from the Houston Police Department. She trusted him, at first with her safety on the water—he had never let her down—and now with this.

When Gus had told her his old partner had become a P.I. based in Galveston, she’d hoped to get some information about Jerome Scintella before she headed out after Natalie. Did he, for example, have a history of violence? Have an arrest record? Own a gun?

“Extremely dangerous drug smuggler” pretty much had all of that covered.

Suddenly she wasn’t just talking to a P.I. about snatching her sister. The minute Gus and Antonio Garza heard Jerome’s name, they’d been on the phone to old contacts at the DEA. Hence Special Agent Smith, who reminded her of the boy who used to live next door.

“It’s clear we can’t take him in Rome.” Smith rose, tall and lean, to pace to the window. He braced his arm in the window casing as he said, almost to himself, “With Scintella so jumpy, moving around every night, it’ll be next to impossible to get a fix on him.”

“That’s why I’m proposing my ‘suicide’ mission,” Chris retorted. “Natalie’s too hemmed in by her bodyguard to ditch him, so I couldn’t go to Rome myself and have any chance of getting her.”

“And you think taking your motor yacht to this private island improves your odds?” Smith asked the window. “It’ll be covered up with armed guards.”

“It’s a very long shot. And dangerous.” The private investigator’s deep brown eyes were soft with concern, as though he was practiced at cautioning others. Given that Garza specialized in finding missing children, Chris suspected he might be.

“I knew it was going to be difficult before you told me about Jerome,” she said. “But I can’t just let this chance go by without acting on it.” Smith’s longish blond hair raked his collar as he turned to look at her. She continued, “Natalie phoned again this morning and said she’d sweet-talked Jerome into telling her the island’s name. She’s not sure if Isladonata is in U.S. waters. I checked the charts but didn’t find it. Maybe Isladonata is a nickname. I’ll ask around the transient cruising people in my marina and on the newsgroups to see if they know anything.”

“So she’s able to get some information from him.” Smith’s words sounded almost like an accusation.

“Every question she asks is a risk,” Chris retorted. “Jerome gets more suspicious of everyone around him every day. I don’t like asking her to stretch that envelope.”

Smith sighed and returned to the table. His white shirt, tucked carelessly into snug jeans, both set off his tan and made him look more like a horse trainer than a DEA agent. “I hope I don’t sound like I’m asking you to do that,” he said as he dropped back into his chair. “It’s good she’s able to find out a few things for us. It’ll help us find Scintella.”

And get her out, Chris thought.

“But,” his tenor deepened slightly, “there’s no guarantee she’ll take the chance of leaving even if you show up with your boat. No telling what orders the bodyguard will have been given by Scintella.”

Chris’s stomach clenched with fear. Would Jerome order Natalie’s bodyguard to kill her if she strayed? God, why would he not? He seemed to see Natalie as a possession, not a wife.

“How were you planning on finding Isladonata?” Smith asked.

“All I need is a fifty-square-mile window. In theory, I could track other boats or choppers from the mainland and project which island they land at, then dead reckon my way in.” Though her chances of actually succeeding, she knew from having been in the Gulf of Mexico, were incredibly slim. Too much water, too many islands, too little time.

“Navigation by the seat of the pants is risky,” Gus said.

Smith nodded. “It’d be better if your sister could get us the exact location.”

Chris studied her hands, resting so still and lost on the wood tabletop’s vast, empty expanse. “I’m sure it would. But I don’t like asking her to take that chance.”

“Understood,” Smith replied softly.

She looked up to find him staring at her. He was handsome in a vague way, as though the artist painting him had left him unfinished. It showed in the way his hair roughly brushed his neck, in the slight unevenness of his lips. His eyes, she realized absently, were the color of her own.

“And your yacht can make that trip?” he asked.

“Obsession’s not a true blue-water boat, so she can’t take on an ocean,” Chris admitted. “But she’ll handle the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean just fine. An old ship’s log I found aboard said she made two trips down and back in the seventies.”

Gus snorted. “The seventies? A little time has passed, hasn’t it?”

“I tore down and rebuilt both engines myself,” Chris replied. “She’ll make it. It’s the cosmetic work I’m worried about.”

Smith leaned his brown forearms on the table. “What do you mean?”

“If these Isladonata guys are high-dollar bad guys, they’ll have high-dollar hobbies. When I inherited Obsession nine months ago, she needed a lot of work. I’ve got her mechanical systems in order, but it’s the spit-and-polish that’ll convince them she’s legit and get me onto the island.”

“What were you planning on doing once you were there?” Garza asked.

“I’m going to have to look like a private captain on my way to drop off or pick up someone important.”

Gus grunted. “If Scintella’s going to be on the island in three weeks, that’s not much time.”

“Two weeks to dress up the yacht, one week to get down there,” she confirmed.

Garza scribbled some notes. “Is that enough time?”

“Not really,” Chris admitted, thinking about chalky fiberglass and cracked windows. “And I need a lot more money than I have to make it happen.”

“How much?” Smith pulled his hands from his jeans pockets and crossed his arms.

“This is where my plan needs some work.” She ballparked the repair price tag. Gus whistled softly. Once Garza’s brows dropped back from the ceiling, she said, “Look, a brand-new yacht of her build quality would cost upwards of five million. Obsession’s old and needs a serious facelift, but she’s fundamentally sound. I’ve worked on the basic systems myself and sunk most of my savings into her. All I need now is the window dressing.”

“That’s a helluva dressing,” Smith muttered.

“She’s a helluva window,” Chris retorted. “I’m not talking about installing Waterford chandeliers. Just reasonably good quality furnishings and carpet to make her look like she’s been pampered. The external work includes a full-on paint job, replacing windows and railings, that kind of thing. I could do it all myself if I had the time.”

She glanced out the window. Her rusted Chevy pickup, the truck she’d bought as a hobby project but that was now all she had for transportation, stared back at her blankly. “And the cash,” she added, thinking about how soon her remaining savings would run dry even paying only her living expenses.

“You have your captain’s license. Can’t you just rent a vessel?” Garza asked.

She shook her head. “Large vessels carry their own captains and crew. Even with a license, I’m an unknown, an insurance risk. Nobody’s going to let me hire a yacht that size even for twice the going rate without taking their crew. And maybe I’m assuming here, but I bet if I show up in anything shorter than seventy feet, I won’t get within a mile of the island.”

Smith settled back into his chair and studied her for a long moment. “Let’s say money’s no object,” he said finally. “What would your schedule look like?”

Money no object? Fighting down the hope swelling in her throat, Chris forced herself to concentrate on facts, not pipe dreams. “Two weeks in the boatyard for as much as we can get done here in Galveston, then a shakedown cruise to New Orleans to make sure everything’s working. If there’s any cosmetic work left, we may be able to get it done in New Orleans if they’re not still covered up with hurricane repairs. Then I’ll head south for Isladonata.”

“We could take a page from your book and bluff our way onto the island,” Smith mused. “Maybe say we’re coming to drop off a player.”

Garza nodded. “One of the Delacruz family. Enrique Delacruz.”

“They wouldn’t see us coming.”

Gus’s chin jutted like a battering ram. “A private island’s going to be heavily guarded. They’ll be running radar and spot a fleet of choppers and cutters coming from two hundred miles out. Scintella will be gone before you get there.”

“It doesn’t have to be a major operation,” Smith replied.

“You’re not going to sneak up on him.” Gus shoved his creaking chair back and stood to glare down at Smith. “Not on an island.”

Smith raised his face to meet Gus head-on. “We can set it up. With the right hardware, the right men, we can take this guy.”

“And his army?” Gus asked. “Sounds like you’ll be taking in your own army to handle it.”

“Scintella won’t be the only target on that island,” Garza pointed out.

Finally. Let’s talk about Natalie. Chris crossed her arms and willed herself to relax.

Then Garza said, “If he’s doing business you’ll have the Mendoza family on your hands, too. That’s a lot of firepower in one place.”

“If you can even get there.” Gus thrust his hands in his pockets and started filtering change through his fingers. “I’m tellin’ you, he’ll catch you on radar. By the time you get there, the only people left on that island will be the cook and the gardener.”

But not my sister. Chris tried to still her nerves but the jingling coins might as well have been dancing in her dental fillings. If the DEA spooked Jerome with their he-man tactics, Chris thought as the men continued to argue, Natalie would be swept away, as though she’d never existed. She listened to their voices, heated now, Special Agent Smith standing to square off against Gus. Guns, choppers, ammo. Always Scintella. Always his arrest. Never a word about what really mattered.

“All I want is my sister,” Chris said loudly into a break in the argument. “I can get onto that island myself, one way or another, before you bring in the cavalry. Give me that chance to get Natalie out, and you can do whatever the hell you want after we’re gone.”

“That’s a good way to get yourself killed,” Garza remarked.

“If I do nothing, Natalie gets killed. None of you sound very interested in her except as a source of information.”

For a long moment, no one spoke. Gus’s face screwed into his characteristic scowl. Antonio Garza stared at his shoes beneath the table.

“I’m not leaving my sister at Jerome Scintella’s mercy,” she said quietly. “I’ll take Obsession to Isladonata if I have to do it on my own.”

Long seconds passed while she held Smith’s gaze. She wasn’t bluffing and she knew that showed in her face—she was scared, but she wouldn’t back down. She didn’t trust this agent to look after Natalie once he and his team had Scintella in view. Sure, they might be honorable men. But her experience had taught her to be wary. The nice mutt sitting placidly with you on the front porch one minute could become a mindless part of a howling, uncontrollable pack when the quarry was sighted.

She was the only one in the room putting Natalie first.

Smith must have read her correctly because he said to Garza, “I need to make a phone call. Can we talk outside?”

Garza sighed and faced her, his dark eyes soft with what looked like fatherly concern. “Do you mind waiting?”

“Go ahead.”

Garza grasped the cane that leaned against the table and levered himself from his chair like a much older man. After he’d limped from the room behind Smith, Chris asked, “Was he injured in the line of duty?”

“Domestic violence case. Guy beatin’ up his wife, the neighbor calls, we go over there. We’ve got the guy cuffed and headed out the door when the wife goes ape-shit with a handgun ’cause she wants to ‘save her man.’”

Chris heard again Natalie’s voice: He didn’t mean it. It’s not like he broke anything.

“God,” she murmured.

Gus shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m no shrink. I just know it happens sometimes. They usually don’t come out firing, though. Tony got a bad break.”

She was silent for a moment before she asked, “What do you think they’re talking about?”

His heavy sigh could have been anything: fatigue, resignation, exasperation. “I don’t know,” he said finally, kicking his chair back onto two legs. “I got an idea but I never cared much for guessin’.”

He had a point. Guessing invited a lot of wondering, and that would turn into worrying. She had enough of that on her plate already.

While Gus jangled quarters and dimes, Chris tried to concentrate on not wondering if Jerome was hurting Natalie. Live today, right now, she reminded herself. Maybe it was time to go back to meditating. That practice had helped when she was having a tough time with the rig roughnecks. Funny how the simplest things got so easily swamped by worry and fear. You get busy, then you forget how to stay centered, sane.

“What I don’t understand,” Gus said abruptly, “is why these boys sound like they need your boat. The DEA could use any old tub they’ve seized recently.”

“I thought smugglers used Cigarette boats and fishing trawlers,” she said, thinking back over cruising posts and magazine articles she’d read.

“Then why don’t they take a damn go-fast boat then?”

“You know I won’t let them go without me,” she warned.

Before Gus could work up a head of steam, the office door opened. Chris watched Smith and Garza file back in and settle across from her again. Gus tipped his chair onto all four legs, clearly ready to do battle.

“Ms. Hampton,” Smith said, “you’ve given us the best chance in years to put our hands on Scintella. It’s a major break for us.”

“I’m sure of that,” she said flatly. “What about my sister?”

“We want to see her home with you safe and sound.”

That she wasn’t sure of. Smith didn’t seem to notice.

“We’ll put a team together and go to Isladonata, intercept Scintella and bring your sister back.”

“On what boat?”

“I phoned my partner, Special Agent McLellan, while Mr. Garza and I were outside. McLellan wants to pay for the upgrades in exchange for using your yacht.”

“Why can’t you take a seized boat?” Gus demanded.

“Logistical problem,” Smith snapped. “Last year’s hurricane season took out our suitable yachts. Ms. Hampton’s right. We need something that won’t make them suspicious.”

“And you’ll find a captain who can handle a hundred-ton vessel?” She ignored the yank on her gut at the thought of handing the yacht—her home—over to a bunch of weekend sea cowboys she didn’t know.

“It might be tricky,” he admitted.

“How will you find the island?”

“Hook us up with your sister and we’ll take it from there.”

She shook her head. “It’s not going to work that way.”

“Why not?” Smith asked sharply.

“She won’t talk to anyone but me.”

“That’s not wise—”

“Of course it’s wise. She doesn’t know you. She doesn’t know your voice. What if Jerome tricks her into talking to one of his thugs? It’s bad enough that he could tap her phone.” Chris paused, lifted her chin. “But she knows me. She trusts me. If she does happen to come up with fresh information, she’ll call.”

Smith hesitated, clearly tempted. “We can set up a phone relay.”

Chris shook her head. “Not good enough. I’m going with you or there’s no deal.” When she saw that mule look come over Smith’s open face, she added, “This isn’t negotiable.”

“You don’t understand.” Smith leaned forward. “Two operations failed to bring Scintella in. Believe it or not, the long shot you’ve dropped in our laps may be our best opportunity to nail him. He might anticipate his men turning on him, but he might not guess that his wife would.”

“I just want to know Natalie’s going to be safe. If it comes down to a choice between catching Scintella and saving my sister—”

“There aren’t any guarantees where Scintella’s concerned,” Smith said bluntly. “Except that he’s dangerous and he’ll fight being brought in. He’ll do everything he can to stay free.”

And the DEA agents, no matter how well-meaning, would have their sights set first on Scintella, then on Natalie.

I’m the only one who’s going to be looking out for her.

“I’m captaining my vessel on this trip,” Chris told Smith as she stood. Before he could start lobbing objections her way, she said, “When you and your partner come out to the boatyard, I’ll be prepping my yacht.” Then she turned on her heel and walked out.

The small, silver key dangled on a chain held lightly in Special Agent Smith’s fingers. Behind him, late afternoon sunlight swept into Obsession’s salon, haloing him, making his blond hair almost golden, his roughly sculpted features classically Grecian in their shadows and highlights.

“I wouldn’t deposit or spend this all at once,” he said around a smile.

Safety-deposit box key.

Chris scrubbed her hands with a shop rag, feeling suddenly as if plucking that key from his fingers would change everything, that she’d be cast out into the perilous unknown. The end of innocence. The end of everything she knew and the start of a journey she might not complete.

The rising tide of fear was swallowed by the image of Natalie holding out an ice-cream cone to Chris. Chris had been fourteen and Natalie four. “Share!” Natalie had shouted and laughed, tossing her dark, curly hair.

Leave everything she knew behind? Risk her boat and her life to save her sister?

So be it.

She took the key from Smith’s hand and shoved it deep in her shorts pocket. “Thanks.”

“My partner doesn’t like the idea of your captaining us.” Smith stepped farther into the salon, abruptly losing his godlike demeanor as he glanced around, seemingly taking everything in at once.

“You told him I won’t take no for an answer.”

“Yes.” He paused. “For what it’s worth, I’m in your corner on this.”

Surprised, she glanced at him. His face showed nothing but the certainty of a man who knew what he wanted to do. “I appreciate that,” she said. “Where is your partner?”

“Busy. He’ll show on Monday.” He flashed a quick and charming smile. “Call me Smitty.”

She relaxed a little. Funny how nicknames knocked people down to size or elevated them into legend. Thank God his nickname hadn’t been something like Nine-Fingered Sam or Chainsaw Larry. “Smitty” was a guy you could trust. Like “Gus.”

Then she asked the sixty-four-dollar question. “How much boating experience do you have?”

“I’ve done a little Coastie work up the eastern seaboard.”

“Coast Guard, huh?” she shot back, surprised. “What’d you do?”

He shrugged, wandering past her to the aft deck’s sliding door. “A little search and rescue, a little cruise ship escort, stuff like that. Nothing too exciting.”

“Not exciting?”

Smitty chuckled. “If I never see another drunken offshore fisherman with a bad bilge pump, it’ll be too soon. Can I have a tour or are you in the middle of something?”

“No, I’ve got time. You’ve seen the aft deck there.”

“Yeah, it’s a great space.” Smitty’s gaze automatically moved from the port cleat to the storage compartment marked LIFE JACKETS to the round life ring and its attached line. His priorities fit hers, she noted with approval.

“She was under a shed and neglected for almost twenty years,” Chris said. “I’m surprised she even floats.”

“Old girl like this? She’ll never sink. That your distribution panel?” he asked, hooking a thumb at the sliding wooden door in the salon wall.

“Yes.”

She slid open the panel’s door to let him study the shore power switches, generator start-and-stop mechanism, the breaker switches for all the boat’s electrics.

“Nice setup. You wire all this up?”

She nodded. “The electrical wiring on the old panel was so frayed I’m surprised she didn’t burn to the waterline when the surveyor switched on the shore power.” She watched him close up the panel as she said, “I still have some wiring to check. There’s a light switch here in the salon that doesn’t work.”

He stood again and his gaze traced the probable route from the distribution panel to the light switch on the other side of the salon. “Take half a day to track down, probably.”

“Low priority,” she replied. “Come on down below. I’ll show you the engine rooms.”

Smitty might turn out okay, she thought as she led the way down the spiral staircase to the lower passageway. He seemed to know his stuff and appeared comfortable with the fact this was her vessel. Even Dave had wanted to jump in and fix things for her rather than wait for her to ask for help. But Smitty just put his idea out there—half a day to fix the light switch wiring—and left the decision up to her.

She opened the starboard engine room door and squinted against the door’s piercing screech. Note to self: Oil the hinges. She flicked on the overhead light and the starboard engine’s massive bulk sprang to life.

“A Detroit!” Smitty said, clearly pleased. “Twelve-vee-ninety-six?”

“Yep. Naturally aspirated, no turbocharging. One thing I wanted to do was paint the engine room floor here before the shakedown cruise so the leaks would show. I overhauled both Hortense and Claire, but—”

“Excuse me?” Smitty asked, turning from his examination of the engine’s coolant, collection tank cap in hand.

“Claire’s the starboard engine. Hortense is the port, just across the hall in her own engine room.”

His grin split his mobile face. “Claire and Hortense. Named after…?”

“Great-aunts on my father’s side.” Chris smiled, faintly remembering lemon squares and tatted doilies and sunshine on a back porch surrounded by maple trees. No faces anymore, but feelings of warmth and contentment. Happiness.

“Nice to meet you, Claire.” Smitty patted the engine’s solid block, then turned back to Chris. “I’ll paint in here for you.”

Chris looked around the engine room’s still stout flooring, at the little worktable sitting below the pegboard she’d organized just last month, at the tool cabinet and hatch leading to the bilge compartment, all smeared with grease and ages-old dirt. “Nasty piece of work.”

“That I am,” he said with a grin, “but I’ll do my best.”

Friday evening, Chris eased her pickup onto the Galveston-Port Bolivar ferry and parked where she was directed by a bored ferryman. After an afternoon spent poking through Old Man Templeton’s salvaged spares, she was ready to get home and snag a late dinner. She’d found several items she could use, including a fuel pump to replace Hortense’s aging one. But she hadn’t found a propeller. The starboard prop was so gouged and chipped that the shaft had started vibrating. A few hours of that and Claire, the starboard engine, would shake to pieces.

Leaving the pickup’s windows rolled down and her wallet and cell phone under the seat, she slammed the door, then headed toward the bow where a small contingent of hardy souls braved the still-warm breeze. In a few minutes the last car came aboard and the ferry cast off.

The ferry’s bow wave arced below her as she leaned over the rail. Texas City refineries plumed white smoke into darkening sky. Laughing gulls shrieked as they careened toward her, then banked and slipped back to the wake to fish for minnows stunned by the ferry’s engines.

She turned to watch the birds. That’s when she saw him, leaning casually against the shoulder of a dark blue Buick, watching her. He wore a white T-shirt, jeans and black biker boots, his clothes a size too big for his rail-thin frame. His thin blond hair lifted in the wind. One hand rested on the Buick’s hood; the other fingered a cigarette. He could have been anyone.

Only she’d seen him before.

She pivoted slightly as though looking back toward Port Bolivar, not moving from the rail. He raised his head and looked at her, squinting against the ferry’s bright house lights. His thin lips stretched over his gaunt face in that same grimace of fear she’d seen as his out-of-control powerboat veered toward her. Except she’d changed her sailboat’s direction, and his powerboat should have kept going the way it was headed.

But it hadn’t. It had changed direction, too.

She looked again. The grimace wasn’t a grimace.

He was smiling.

Eugene Falks, she thought. The name on the police report was Eugene Falks.

“Nice evening,” he called. His voice was thin and razor-sharp, like him.

She said nothing. Her pickup sat directly behind the Buick. She’d walked right past him and not known it was him. He could have touched her. She shuddered.

She folded her arms across her chest, but that made her feel vulnerable—not easily able to move or defend herself—so she relaxed enough to let them drop to her sides again. Better. Deep breaths. Keep him in view but don’t let him rattle you. Settle down and wait.

Consciously, muscle by muscle, she released the tension from her body. The ferry plowed through the darkening water. Over the opposite railing, Chris watched whitecaps kick up. The man tucked one hand in his front pocket and hunched farther against the car, still watching her.

Was he a stalker? Had he picked her out in the grocery store parking lot and decided for whatever twisted reason to target her? Maybe being a natural blonde, dishwater or not, wasn’t such an advantage after all.

As the ferry pulled up to its dock, she faced Falks. He pursed his lips and sniffed, tossed his cigarette onto the ferry’s deck and toed it out with his boot. Then he reached into the front seat and pulled out a cell phone. In a moment, she heard her cell trilling in her truck.

He knows my phone number.

People streamed back to their cars. Chris gripped the railing with one hand as the ferry jolted into place. Falks snapped his phone closed, then yanked his Buick’s door open and folded himself inside.

The good news was, Falks would have to drive off first.

The bad news was, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t follow her.

Don’t walk like a victim. Chris strode toward her pickup, head up. She’d have to walk past his car again, but she’d do that on the passenger side, where he couldn’t reach out the window or door. At least it’d be harder.

She braced herself as she walked around the car’s nose. When she drew even with the Buick’s passenger side headlight, the car’s engine spat and clattered to life. Falks didn’t move, didn’t look at her, didn’t put the Buick in gear. She dug the keys from her jeans pocket. On impulse, she took a couple of steps back from her pickup until she could read the Buick’s license plate. Falks made eye contact in his side mirror.

He didn’t grin this time.

The first cars started bumping up and over the landing ramp. Behind her, an SUV revved its engine. She waited until the Buick eased forward, then quickly opened the pickup’s door and hopped inside. One tap on the accelerator and the Chevy roared, settled into its purring rhythm.

“Go ahead,” she muttered at Falks as she put the pickup in Drive. “Follow me.”

Because her first stop would be the Galveston Police Department.