Dead Reckoning

She swung up the ladder to the aft deck and dropped her bag on the teak table she’d recently coaxed from weathered and stained back into golden glory. Her first varnish attempt, and it looked pretty darn good. Now if only the rest of her “little projects” would go as well.

Her heirloom quilt drooped across a pair of deck chairs in the shade, drying after a careful hand wash early that morning. She tested the material between her thumb and forefinger. Yes, nearly dry, the fabric just as fine and solid as the day she and her mother had pulled it from the quilting frame after months of hand stitching. Chris traced the intricate mariner’s compass that emblazoned the exact center like a bull’s-eye. Funny how all things come together, she thought. Never in a million years would she have imagined at the age of eight that she’d live on a boat or drape the mariner’s compass across her stateroom bed or have earned her captain’s license.

Snagging a bottled water from the minifridge, she settled into a third deck chair and tried not to see visions of her destroyed life jacket, its yellow-white stuffing sticking out like a half-popped kernel of corn. At least her hands had stopped shaking.

Her cell trilled and she fished it out of her bag with a sigh. The screen flashed UNKNOWN. Probably Natalie, calling from overseas on the never-ending, globe-hopping honeymoon.

Natalie, perfect granddaughter that she was, had followed their grandfather’s wishes and married a rich businessman. It was like Natalie to do it a mere two months after meeting the guy at the old man’s funeral. There’d been plenty of business acquaintances, but Natalie had latched onto the blond bodybuilder type’s arm and held on with a bulldog persistence that somehow managed to be both feminine and suitably mournful. Predictably, she had failed to introduce him to her sister.

It was like Natalie to get everything she wanted at the drop of a hat, Chris thought. And she had impeccable timing, too, always knowing when Chris would be home and available to talk.

“Chris?” echoed hollowly over the connection when she picked up.

“Hey, Natalie. Where are you this time?”

Natalie gave a slightly breathless laugh. “Rome! I never thought I’d be here. It’s gorgeous. You’d love it!”

“Last week France, this week Italy,” Chris said, feeling the accident’s presence fade from the edges of her mind at Natalie’s energetic voice. “Where to next?”

“Who knows? Jerome always surprises me. Greece, I’m hoping. They’ve got some great bazaars there.”

“Shoes and designer dresses, right? Scarves and figurines and upholstery fabric? Not that you need to upholster anything,” Chris teased. “You don’t stay in one place long enough. At least you’re out of the Far East.”

“Hey, we’ll make it back to the States. Eventually. But wait till you see the clothes I’m shipping to you. Don’t you dare wear them to work on that awful boat.”

Chris grimaced. “Frilly girlie-girl wear.”

“A more feminine style, yeah.” Natalie laughed again. “Something that shows off your legs, proves you have a waist, attracts men. You know.”

Chris let her groan signal the end of that bit of conversation. “Tell me about Rome.”

“You’d love it. Crammed full of smelly little cars and everyone driving too fast. Jerome says he’s never seen chaos on the road like this.”

“Sounds like Houston,” Chris remarked dryly. “Except the cars are SUVs here. How is Jerome? Still treating you like a queen?”

“You know how it goes.” Natalie’s voice dropped. “Sometimes the honeymoon’s over even when it’s not.”

Chris frowned. The strained note in Natalie’s lowered voice was always the first clue that something huge was going on. Had it truly been nothing, she would have laughed it off. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s okay, really.” A pause, then she said brightly, “Rome is so gorgeous. I’d love for you to see it.”

Chris hesitated a beat. Natalie typically spoke her mind, no dancing around the subject. Did her avoidance of the question mean she couldn’t talk about it? Was she afraid of something?

An old protective instinct flared in Chris. “Tell me more.”

“It’s a place you’d have to see for yourself. In person.”

Meaning Natalie wanted her to come to Rome?

The silence was filled only by a rush, like holding a seashell to the ear. Natalie finally said, “This connection is crap. Let me call you another time.”

The phone died. What the hell? Chris stared at the flashing numbers onscreen for a moment. The connection had been fine, so why had Natalie hung up on her? She put the phone down. With no caller ID, with no number to call, Chris couldn’t call her back.

Her cell trilled again and Chris snatched it up. “Natalie?”

“Yeah, it’s me. I had to switch phones, get outside.” Behind her voice, faint road noise: a car engine growling up a hill, tires hissing on wet pavement.

“What’s going on?”

“I guess I didn’t really know Jerome when I married him,” Natalie confessed, her voice now at normal volume. “You hear about men changing after they get married, and he’s one of them.”

“Changing how?” Chris rose from her deck chair, too keyed up to sit.

“He used to be proud of other men looking at me and making comments, but now…” Natalie sniffed. “At first it was just little things. We’d be at a friend’s party and he’d smart off to another man when the guy said something about how I looked. Just a compliment, nothing out of line. I told Jerome he was being silly. I married him because I wanted to be with him. Period. That would usually settle him down, but then after a while it didn’t.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this when it was happening?” Chris asked, trying not to sound accusing.

“Because it’s a drag. I know you, Chris. You’d just worry about me and it wasn’t that bad.”

“And now?”

“It’s worse,” Natalie admitted, her voice quavering a little. “He got into a fight last month, nearly got arrested for punching out the party host. He’d been drinking, which never helps. Now we don’t go to any parties at all. A bunch of his friends who were traveling with us left last week and went off on their own trip.”

“Is he treating you badly?” Chris paced to the railing, stared unseeing over the boatyard.

“He won’t let me go anywhere without either him or one of his bodyguards. I have to take a bodyguard with me when I go shopping and the whole time the guy’s watching to make sure no one even looks at me the wrong way. I can’t even go pee without asking his permission.” Natalie sniffed again. “I used to think having a bodyguard would be fun. You know, a status thing. But it’s more like being in prison.”

Chris scrubbed her face with her hand. Yes, Natalie would think having a bodyguard would be “a status thing.” She’d directly inherited their grandfather’s penchant for power, except now she was seeing firsthand what that kind of power, misused, could do.

“Have you talked to him about it?” Chris asked. “Told him you don’t like having a guard?”

“He won’t listen. I can’t get through to him.”

Just like their grandfather. “What are your plans?” Chris asked.

“We’re spending another three weeks or so in Europe, then flying to some private island one of his business associates owns.”

“Private island? Where?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere south of Florida. I don’t really care about it. Just a bunch of guys drinking and fishing.”

“Visit me instead, then. It feels like forever since I’ve seen you. Let Jerome go to his buddy’s private island and you come here.”

“I can’t. I mean, I want to, but Jerome…he has plans and we have to keep to his schedule. He’s doing a lot of business and I need to be with him. You know.”

No, I don’t, Chris thought, annoyed with this man she’d only ever seen at a distance. Why did they have to get married in London? Without family present? Why would he care if Natalie saw her sister? “Can’t he give you a couple of days to see me? It’s not much time. And it’s not like it’s a horde of people. Just me.”

“You don’t know Jerome very well.” Then the connection echo was so bad Chris heard her say, “Neither did I” twice.

Chris suppressed a sharp retort. Yes, Natalie had acted, as usual, on impulse. Last year, it was the Jaguar. The year before that, the high-priced condo. In both cases, Chris had managed to get Natalie out of the deal during the three-day grace period. But buyer’s remorse wasn’t so easy to remedy when you suddenly realized you were married to the wrong man. And bitching Natalie out about it now wouldn’t help.

“Listen,” she said instead, “why don’t you and Jerome stop here before going to the island?”

“That’s not a good idea.” The strained note was back.

“Why not?” When Natalie didn’t answer, Chris’s stomach felt heavy. “Why not?” she asked again.

“I told him I wanted to see you and he…didn’t like it.”

Chris took a deep breath. “What do you mean?”

Silence.

“Talk to me, Natalie.”

After a moment, she said, “He…really…didn’t like it. Look, it’s nothing.”

“Nat,” and Chris’s breath curled with dread as she forced herself to say the words, “is he hitting you?”

“I—I should get off the phone.”

Fighting down the rage threatening to boil up in her chest, Chris made an effort to speak calmly. “Listen to me. Are you listening?”

“Y-yes.”

“Is he hitting you?”

Natalie’s indrawn breath shuddered over the line. “Just that once.”

“Goddammit!”

“It was just one time, Chris,” she cried, her voice high, rattled. “He didn’t mean it. And it’s not like he broke anything—”

“There’s no excuse. None.” Chris gripped the mahogany railing so tightly her finger bones ached. “Do you want to come home?”

“He’d never—”

“I don’t care about him. I’m asking about you. Do you want to come home?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Natalie said in a low voice, tears clogging her voice. “He won’t let me. I tried once. That’s when he got so angry and he…” She hiccupped a sob. “He’s jealous of everybody. Even you. He knows how close we are.”

“Oh, God, Nat.”

“I have to get off the phone before he comes outside. We have to move again.”

“Move again? What do you mean?”

Natalie’s breath hitched as she inhaled. “He won’t stay in one place for more than one night. I never know until he comes home and then we pack up and go. Or sometimes he just calls and I have to go meet him.”

“What the hell does he think’s going to happen?”

“I don’t know. But I hate this! I hate living out of a suitcase.” A loud sniff sounded. “Look, it’s been long enough for me to have a cigarette. I have to go back inside.”

“Answer my question, Natalie. Do you want to come home?”

“You don’t understand. Jerome will never let me leave.”

No, Chris thought. There was always a plan. There was always a way of getting out of places you didn’t want to be. It just sometimes took brainpower and usually needed guts.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Chris’s voice was calm as she said, “Fuck Jerome. I’ll come get you.”

Chapter 2

“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.”