Cassidy Jones and the Seventh Attendant (Cassidy Jones Adventures, Book Three) (24 page)

I held my breath.

He extracted his arm from under the car empty-handed and stood. Shaking his head at his suspicion, he opened the door. My breath came out in a relieved
whoosh
. Emery had obviously hidden the tracking device well.

When he closed the car door, the phone vibrated in my hand.

I answered it. “Hi, Emery.”

“Put the phone away,” he said, his voice coming through the earpiece. “I’ll tell you his movements. Don’t speak unless necessary.”

The car started, and Mr. Phillips pulled from the curb and made a U-turn. I zipped the phone into my windbreaker pocket and watched him drive in the direction I had hoped he wouldn’t: Queen Anne Avenue, a main thoroughfare.

“Cut through the park,” Emery instructed, his voice edged with frustration.

“Copy that.” Was it the route Mr. Phillips had taken that caused Emery’s frustration, or did it cover other emotions? No matter how well he could compartmentalize, this
had
to be getting to him. If all went according to our plan, his father would be arrested within hours.

But what choice do we have?

My feet flew across the dark expanse of grass in the park. There was no choice. Mr. Phillips had set the wheels in motion. Emery and I were just along for the ride.

~~~

Mr. Phillips returned to the same marina that Emery had previously followed him to. I showed up five minutes later.

“I’m at your car,” I whispered to Emery as I crouched behind it. I surveyed the deserted parking lot. Thumping music from a nearby dance club penetrated the air, its deep bass throbbing against my eardrums. “I don’t see your dad.”

“Can you hear him?”

I cocked my head and concentrated. The music and other sounds that came with late-night city life receded. I picked up a murmur of voices and turned up the mental dial. Mr. Phillips’s voice struck my inner ear.

“Moreau, Sanchez, after you.” The soles of shoes scraped wood against a background of lapping water.

“They’re on the docks,” I whispered to Emery. “Getting on a boat, I think, probably the yacht. I’m going down.”

Slinking low, I scuttled across the parking lot to the chain-link security gate that gave entrance to docks lined with moored boats. There wasn’t a soul in sight.

An engine powered up. The high frequency sounded like a speedboat.

I hurriedly climbed the chain link, jumped from the top, and landed on the asphalt in a run. A speedboat appeared on the other side of a moored yacht’s stern. Mr. Phillips, Moreau, and another goon, Sanchez, were in it.

No, no, no, no, no
, I thought, sprinting onto the dock too late.

The villains’ boat backed out of the marina and zoomed into the dark waters of Elliot Bay.

Despairing, I stopped at the end of the dock and watched the thieves race away, presumably with the microchip. Why couldn’t I have gotten there two minutes earlier?

While I updated Emery on the situation, the boat sped toward a ship floating about a mile offshore. I squinted to pull the boat into my enhanced vision. It was a huge fishing trawler with
Enchantress
plastered across her stern.

“I’ll swim after them,” I told Emery.

“Bad idea. That water is forty degrees. Find another way to pursue them.”

“Done,” I said, spying a rowboat tied to a floating dock. Seven sea lions slumbered next to it.

I shot toward the dock, leapt over the steps, and landed on the metal structure, causing it to rattle violently and bounce on the water. The sea lions lifted their heads in my direction and barked their irritation.

“Hush,” I barked back, and looked around to make sure they hadn’t woken anyone sleeping on a nearby boat. No lights switched on, and no heads popped out of portholes to investigate.

“Sea lions?” Emery asked.

“Loud sea lions,” I confirmed as I weaved my way around their yapping, blubbery bodies toward the rowboat. One sea lion tried to drag his body after me along the dock. His friends followed suit.

“Weird. They’re following me,” I said as I stepped into the rowboat. The crazy sea lions lined the edge of the dock, barking.

“They actually harmonize.” Emery’s voice echoed my own irritation. Clearly he hadn’t worked a sea lion encounter into the evening’s equation.

“Will you hush,” I hissed at them and went to work untying the rowboat.

One lurched forward and caught hold of my windbreaker between its teeth.

I yelped in surprise. “He bit me!”

“Cassidy, keep it down.”

“I can’t get him off.” I shook my arm. The sea lion clenched the fabric like a rabid badger. His buddies cheered him on.

“Fine,” I growled. I unzipped the windbreaker and wiggled my arms out of the sleeves. “Take it!” I went back to work on the knot.

The choir of sea lions grew louder, celebrating their buddy’s victory.

“Psychos,” I muttered. “I had to give him my jacket,” I told Emery.

The sea lion slid into the water, clenching the prize between his teeth.

Emery said, “Your phone—”

The earpiece went dead.

“—is in your pocket,” I finished for Emery through my teeth, “which is now submerged in forty-degree water. Sorry, Emery, and forget this.”

Abandoning the knot, I ripped the hook clean off the dock with the rope still laced through it and tossed it over my shoulder and into the boat.

The other sea lions slid into the water as I took up the oars.

“What is wrong with you demented beasts?” I complained at the half dozen heads bobbing up around me. The thief wasn’t among them.

I dipped the oars into the water and pulled back, expecting the rowboat to shoot in a straight line like in the movies, but this wasn’t the movies. The rowboat veered left, ramming into the boat moored next to it, the
Annah Lee
.

My progress out of the marina was slow and frustrating. I turned in circles, knocking into boats, while a parade of sea lions mocked me. It would have been hysterically funny—if I hadn’t had to catch up with a speedboat that was in the process of being lifted onto the
Enchantress
by a crane. And there I was, still in the marina, spinning a rowboat in useless circles. Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, a shout rose from the direction of the music.

“Whoa, what the—?”

I jerked my head around to the nightclub at the edge of the marina and saw a man with a wild mop of hair standing on the patio that hung over the water, staring at me. Mouth ajar and wobbly on his feet, Mop Head rubbed his eyes and looked at me again. Another man joined him.

“Dude, do you see what I see?” slurred Mop Head as the rowboat clipped another boat.

I caught a glimpse of my arm. The white costume seemed to glow in the harbor lights. I knew what was coming next.

“You see a mummy in a rowboat?” the second man said, leaning so far over the rail I thought he might fall in.

Mop Head unsteadily made his way to the patio’s door.

The sea lions swam around the rowboat, mocking me with their barks.

“Hey, everyone, there’s a mummy!” Mop Head bellowed into the nightclub. “It’s rowing a boat.”

Five club goers stumbled onto the patio.

“If I don’t get this right now, at this very moment, I’m going in with you and swimming to the
Enchantress
,” I told the sea lions. As if some magical pixie dust had been sprinkled over me, I pulled back on the oars, and the rowboat shot forward in a straight line. The next stroke was even better. Six perfect strokes later, I cleared the docks and entered Elliot Bay. Then I threw some real power into it, leaving behind the cheering club goers and sea lions alike. The rowboat sliced through the water in time with the oars’ rhythm, the cold wind licking my costume and biting through the layers of fabric like icy needles. The temperature had dropped significantly.

Within minutes I was approaching
Enchantress
, which was much larger than it had appeared at a distance. Around three hundred feet long, the deck loomed at least twenty-five feet above me at its midsection and forty feet in the bow. The three-story cabin and bridge, lined with a row of windows, doubled the height. Through the window, I saw a couple of men sitting at a control panel.

I slowed my paddling and surfed the airwaves, picking up a conversation between two males from somewhere on the deck. Moreau was one of them. The other man had a Dutch accent.

Now to be the element of surprise
. I evaluated the exterior of the vessel. An anchor chain had been lowered into the bay off the bow. It appeared to be my best way on board.

I paddled to the bow and contemplated the chain. I considered tying the rowboat to it, but promptly dismissed the idea. If the anchor were drawn, the rowboat would come up with it, clattering against the trawler and revealing that an intruder had snuck aboard.

It isn’t like I can’t swim
, I thought, untying my shoes. If I was going to do this, I was doing it right. What mummy would wear black sweats and Nikes?

After removing shoes and sweatpants, I grabbed hold of the thick, corroded anchor chain and climbed. Stopping about six feet below the guardrail, I listened to the conversation being carried on by the two men exchanging pleasantries.
Some lighthearted conversation before buying top-secret biological weapons
, I thought, trying to gauge where the men might be on deck. It proved to be a nearly impossible task, since I didn’t know how the deck was laid out. Two sets of footsteps strolled past at a pace that suggested they belonged to men patrolling the deck. Fortunately, neither sounded as if they were directly overhead—for now.

Please don’t let anyone see me
, I prayed, swinging my legs back and forth like a pendulum. When my momentum had increased so that my body swayed horizontally in the upswing, I released the chain and soared over the guardrail feet first. Landing on the deck, I pivoted around, preparing to come face-to-face with crew members. There was no one on the bow, and the conversation between the men flowed without interruption. I had boarded undetected.

I ducked behind the anchor winch and peeked down at the lower deck where the criminals had congregated. Moreau wore a navy peacoat and cap, getting into the seafaring theme. The robust man he talked to looked equally harmless, bundled in a mud-colored down jacket and a striped knit hat that rested above bushy gray eyebrows on his weathered face. The five men surrounding them looked anything but harmless: powerfully built, watchful, silent, and poised to pull out concealed weapons. Stony-faced Mr. Phillips was the most intimidating of all.

Scattered around the deck were objects I expected to see on a fishing trawler: nets, big spools wound with chains, gaffing poles, a hoist to lift nets from the sea, and barrels—lots of barrels. What they were for and what was in them, I hadn’t a clue.

The smell was what I expected, too: fish, salt, and diesel. Apparently, the trawler was used as it should be—to catch fish—and as it shouldn’t be—to sell out humankind.

Something clanged against the metal stairs leading to the bow. I scrunched down lower, assuming one of the guards was coming up.

A rumble shook the lower deck, and the footsteps on the stairs paused. Mr. Phillips and Sanchez had their weapons out in a flash, sharp eyes darting around. The other men drew their weapons in turn, training them on Mr. Phillips and Sanchez.

“Visser, what was that?” Moreau demanded of the man he had been talking to.

“
De Duivel
,” the man on the stairs whispered to himself in Dutch. The words sounded like “the devil.”

Visser put his hands in the air. “Gentlemen,” he said with a disarming smile. “There is no need for concern. We are working on our engines. Please—lower your weapons.”

Moreau looked skeptical. Mr. Phillips displayed no emotion whatsoever and kept his eyes and weapon on Visser’s men.

“Lower your weapons,” Visser ordered his men, to show good faith. They obeyed.

Sanchez looked to Mr. Phillips for direction. Mr. Phillips nodded, and they both lowered their weapons, too.

“You had better not be up to anything, Visser,” Moreau warned.

Visser smiled. “I wouldn’t think of it, my friend. We’ve conducted business in the past. You know I am an honest man.” Both men laughed at this. I gathered it was a joke.

Feet clanged up the steps. I ducked lower.

“Honesty is relative.” Moreau jovially slapped Visser’s shoulder. “And overrated. Why don’t I show you what you came all this way for?”

A rough-looking face appeared at the stairs. I curled into a ball and mentally cursed the sea lion for taking my windbreaker. If it hadn’t, I wouldn’t have gone for dramatics and taken off my sweatpants. And I wouldn’t have resembled an enormous snowball.

“Spectacular,” Visser said. I assumed he was looking at the crown.

The man’s unhurried footsteps moved toward me. He hadn’t seen me yet.

“Yes, it is,” agreed Moreau.

The man’s foot came down next to me. I sprung up like a jack-in-the-box and clamped his mouth and the back of his head between my hands, I brought my knee into his groin and he doubled over, screaming into my hand.

“Priceless, as is what is behind the amber,” Moreau said. “Take a closer look.”

I slammed the man’s head into the anchor winch, hard enough to knock him out. He went limp. I lowered him to the deck, grabbed his collar, and dragged him to a round hatch door several feet away.

“Observe that the stone hasn’t been tampered with, as requested by your employer,” Moreau said to Visser as I lowered the unconscious man through the hatch. When my arms wouldn’t stretch anymore, I released his collar. He dropped with a thud, sprawled in the narrow corridor like a discarded rag doll. Cringing at the sight, I closed the hatch door and crept forward on my belly to get a better look at the deck.

Visser examined Queen Kiya’s crown, specifically the amber stone behind which the microchip was hidden. The other man who patrolled the deck sauntered down the right breezeway toward the stern.

Eyeing the crown, I contemplated what to do. I could grab it and go overboard before anyone realized what had happened.