COLLATERAL CASUALTIES (The Kate Huntington mystery series) (36 page)

            “Who is this?” Rob demanded. “Let me talk to Kate.” He heard only silence.

            He hit end, then punched the speed-dial number for the police detective.

            “Ander–”

            “Hendricks Marina. 895 Hilltop Road. Hurry! They’re in trouble.”

            “Got it.”

            Rob collapsed onto the chair next to Sue at the tiny table in the motel room. Sue took his big hand in both of hers. Rob opened his mouth to say something reassuring but nothing came out. Fear had closed his throat.

            “Our Father who art in heaven...,” Sue began. Rob joined in.

~~~~~~~

            The boat slips had narrow finger piers between them. By jumping from boat to finger pier to boat, Rose had made it to the boat next to her target. She heard heavy footsteps on the boardwalk. Cautiously peering around the boat’s cabin, she saw the silhouette of a man rounding the corner onto the pier. His face was caught in the moonlight for an instant.
The ambassador’s driver.
Rose crouched further down.

            As he moved past her hiding place, she realized he was carrying a bundle over his shoulder. She had a sick feeling in her gut. The bundle was the shape of a body.

            The boat’s engine started as the man lowered his burden into the cockpit. He leaped in after it.

            Rose dropped to the finger pier, then dove for the railing of the ambassador’s boat as it began moving slowly from its slip.

~~~~~~~

            The water hadn’t been as cold as Dolph had feared, thanks to a mild autumn. Head just barely above the surface, he was moving along the side of the boat furthest from the marina, looking for a boarding ladder. When the engine roared to life, he pushed off the side of the boat with his feet, back-stroking madly away to keep from being sucked into the churning propellers.

            The boat started moving. He swam as fast as he could to the end of the pier. There he did find a ladder. His wet feet slapped the boards as he raced along the pier, then tore across the lawn.

            Kate was gone. Dolph pulled a waterproof penlight out of his pocket and shone it around. His jacket, radio and Kate’s cell phone were scattered on the ground. He grabbed the radio and keyed the button. “Right side of the main building. Fast!”

            “Roger,” Manny replied.

            Dolph pulled his jacket on over his dripping clothes and searched for his shoes while he punched Rob’s number on the phone.

            “Hello.” Rob’s voice sounded far away, and scared.

            “You call Judith?”

            “She’s on the way.”

            “They’re headed out into the bay. Hang on.” Manny had come around the corner of the building, gun extended in both hands. “We need a boat,” Dolph yelled to him.

            “I’ll find us a fast one.” Manny took off for the piers.

            Dolph raced after him. “I’m leaving the line open,” he huffed into the phone. “Hopefully we won’t lose the signal over the water.” He put the phone in his jacket pocket.

            Manny had stopped next to a slip containing a long sleek boat. He jumped aboard and disappeared inside its small cabin. By the time Dolph caught up and released the lines from the cleats on the pier, Manny had the boat hot-wired. He came up through the hatch opening and slid behind the wheel as Dolph jumped into the cockpit.

            Manny maneuvered the boat out of the slip. “Hang on!” He shoved the throttle forward. Walls of water rose on either side as he brought the boat up onto a plane.

            Dolph dug the phone and tracking device receiver out of his pockets while he caught his breath. He shouted the coordinates showing on the tiny screen of the receiver into the phone.

            “They’re headed east, toward the shipping channel,” he yelled over the roaring engine.

~~~~~~~

            Kate woke to total darkness. A splitting headache was her only assurance that she was indeed awake. She struggled to get her bearings. She was lying face down. Something hard dug into her stomach. She tried to bring her arms forward to push herself up. She couldn’t move them. It took her groggy mind a few seconds to realize her hands were tied behind her back. She couldn’t move her feet either.

            Why wasn’t she gagged? The thrumming of an engine and the slap of water against fiberglass hull gave her the answer. Her captors didn’t care if she screamed. She was on a boat, out on the water somewhere.

            She started to shake her head to clear it. Pain shot through her skull, just as she recognized the naggingly familiar scent coming from the warm lumpy surface under her. She heard a low groan and the lumpy surface shifted.

            “Skip,” she hissed in the direction where his ear should be. He groaned again. Kate wiggled, trying to roll off of him. She managed to slide to one side so his tied hands were no longer jammed into her stomach. She moved her head around in the darkness until she found his cheek.

            “Skip, wake up!” she whispered.

            He moaned, then muttered, “Where are we?”

            “Best guess is the floor of a boat headed out to sea,” Kate said, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. “Are you okay? What happened?”

            He moved his head and collided with her nose. “I was standing on the pier. Garcia was saying something to me. Felt something sting my arm. Then my legs just went numb under me and I was falling.”

            “Stun gun?”

            Skip’s head shook slightly against her cheek. “Most likely a dart from a tranquilizer gun. How’d they get you?”

            “Rose and Dolph took off to try to get onto the boat, told me to stay by the building and call Rob. Last thing I remember is punching his number on my phone.”

            “He’ll call Judith anyway, when we don’t check in,” Skip whispered. “We just have to stall Garcia until the cops arrive.”

            “Rose was jumping from boat to boat and Dolph went in the water. One or both of them may have managed to get on board.”

            They fell silent for a moment. Then Skip said, “We need to stay calm.”

            Kate was surprised to discover that she was calm. The clinical detachment that served her well when her clients were in crisis had kicked in. Nonetheless, she touched her lips to his cheek, drawing comfort from the contact. He turned his head and kissed her hard.

            They were blinded by a bright light. A deep, heavily-accented voice sneered, “Look at de lovebirds.”

            “Shut up, Raul,” Garcia’s more cultured voice responded. “Untie their feet.”

            Rough hands yanked at Kate’s ankles and she looked up into cold dark eyes. Raul moved on to untie the rope around Skip’s ankles. Then he grabbed her and hoisted her up. She stumbled, wincing as blood rushed back into her feet.

            Garcia took her by the arm. They were in a small sleeping cabin. Raul leaned down to drag Skip to his feet.

            Garcia nudged Kate ahead of him out the door and across a spacious living room. A sliding glass door led to the cockpit.

            Once out in the open, Raul shoved Skip toward a bench at the back of the cockpit. Skip tripped over something on the deck, swayed, then caught his balance. The ambassador led Kate around the obstacle and over to sit next to her husband.

            Garcia nodded and Raul climbed the ladder to the flying bridge.

~~~~~~~

            As Skip’s eyes adjusted to the relative darkness, relieved only by the moonlight, he realized Garcia was holding a gun on them. Moonlight glinted off the mother-of-pearl handle.

           
The son-of-a-bitch is pointing
my
gun at us.

            “This grieves me deeply, Mrs. Huntington, to put you through this,” Garcia said to Kate. “I assure you that you and your husband will come to no harm as long as you cooperate. We just need time to get out of the country.”

            Skip didn’t like the sound of that. Where the hell was he taking them?

            “This boat’s not seaworthy enough to go out into the ocean.”

            “Of course not,” Garcia said. “We’ll put in to harbor further south. We have passports and airline tickets in our new names. I have put money away through the years, for just such an emergency. My family and I will live comfortably overseas for the rest of our lives.”

            Kate nudged his shoulder with her own. Skip followed her gaze to the bundle of cloth he’d tripped over. It wasn’t the rolled-up tarp he’d assumed it was. Lilly lay on the deck, bound hands and feet. She wasn’t moving.

            Anger surged through him. Did these bastards kill her? Wait, she’s probably alive. They wouldn’t bother to tie up a corpse. He took a deep breath and brought his mind back to the task of stalling for time.

            “Did you know we are expecting a child?” the ambassador was saying.

            The question seemed to be aimed at Kate. “Congratulations,” she said in a strained voice.

            “What are you going to do with us?” Skip demanded.

            “Raul has found a small uninhabited island on the map. It is not far from here. We will leave you there with food and water. Once we have a sufficient head start, I will call your friends and tell them your location.”

            Skip was half tempted to believe him. It was a plausible plan. But he was still going to look for an opening to overpower their captors. Of course the fact that his hands were tied behind his back was a small problem.

            He wiggled his hands. Some sensation was returning to them. It felt like he might be able to work the rope loose, given enough time.

            Garcia was shaking his head, the moonlight reflecting off the shiny black of his hair. “This was all so unnecessary. It is regrettable that you chose, Mr. Canfield, to send the young woman to investigate.”

            “She came on her own. She was just trying to help.” Skip’s mind belatedly registered that the engine had stopped. They were drifting in the water.

            “And now you are here, instead of waiting for me to contact you as I said I would in my letter to Mr. Franklin.”

            “What do you mean, Garcia? Your second note told us to come here.”

            “What second note? I only sent one note, Mr. Canfield.” The ambassador’s expression in the moonlight seemed genuinely confused.

~~~~~~~

            The coordinates on the tiny screen said they were getting closer to their quarry. Dolph read them into the phone. Its signal was starting to break up but he heard Rob repeat the information to Sue, who was on another phone with Judith.

            Manny had slowed to an idle. Dolph couldn’t hear the other boat’s engine. Looking across the water, he thought he made out a dark lump ahead.

            Manny shut off the engine. “Tell Rob we’ve found them,” he said in a low voice, as they continued to drift toward the dark lump.

            Dolph was about to tell him that the phone signal was gone when the roar of a gunshot surged across the water.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

            Kate froze. Skip stiffened beside her. For a horrible instant, she thought he had been shot. Then the ambassador’s look of confusion deepened as he slowly pitched forward.

            The elegant woman from the newspaper picture stepped out of the shadow of the cabin doorway. An impressive-looking pistol was in her hand. She looked down at her husband sprawled at her feet. “Juan, you were such a fool.”

            Raul climbed down from the bridge, stepped over his boss’s body and started to move past the woman. She put a hand on his arm. “
¡Apurate, mi querido!
” He nodded and went into the cabin.

            “They’re lovers,” Skip whispered to Kate. Louder he said, “Are we at the island,
Señora
? We won’t give you any trouble.”

            The elegant woman let out a not very elegant snort. “I’m afraid Juan’s plan has been aborted. I have no intention of living in obscurity for the rest of my life, unable to contact my family or return to my homeland. Instead I will take my poor husband’s remains home–the ambassador cut down by an American assassin. After a period of mourning, I will campaign for the presidency of my country. We will stir the masses into a frenzy of hatred for the country they thought was their ally. As a widow I will get much sympathy. Once I am elected, we will crush the rebels and restore my country to its glory. We will no longer be a puppet of the United States.”

            A swell caught the boat, making it rock.
Señora
Garcia staggered. She grabbed for the ladder to the bridge to steady herself as the boat rocked again.

            Kate could feel Skip’s shoulder moving against hers.
He’s trying to get his hands free.
She wiggled her own. The rope cut painfully into her wrists.

            “What about the disgrace when it comes out that your husband used to be one of those rebels?” Skip said. “That won’t go over very well with your conservative friends.”

            She saw a flash of white teeth as
Señora
Garcia smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. A shiver ran down Kate’s spine.

            “Ah, that hideous rumor will be exposed as yet another American plot when my countrymen learn that the person spreading it is my husband’s murderer.”

            “You can try to discredit me that way,” Skip said. “But our friends will come forward with the truth.”

            The woman laughed. “That is who I am speaking of. I will swear that I saw
Señor
Franklin leave my husband’s study just after I heard a shot. I ran in to find my beloved Juan dead on the floor. You,
Señor
Canfield, will already be dead, along with your meddling wife.”

            He shook his head. “Won’t work. The medical examiner and crime scene analysts will be able to tell your husband died elsewhere, and earlier than you’re claiming.”