Green-Eyed Monster (12 page)

She remembered the small boat engine she’d heard coming and going earlier. Could someone have taken advantage of her absence to burgle the boat? That would have been unheard of in the local boating community. But still, the damp patches on the deck told their own story. It had to be the electronic equipment that attracted a thief. There was nothing else of value aboard.

Steeling herself for a bunch of ripped out and severed cables, Mickey headed toward the cabin hoping the vandalism wouldn’t be too great. She ducked to descend the steps and slowly approached her navigation table. All the equipment looked intact.

What was going on here? What did the intruder want? She carried no money or guns onboard, and why weren’t there any footprints leaving the cabin?

Her eyes widened in the fraction of a second it took for the answer to sink in. And in that same second a sharp blow to the back of the head sent her spinning down into the depths of oblivion.

❖

The low thrum of the Perkins diesel and the soft roll of the hull woke Mickey into a world of pain. She tenderly touched her head and groaned. There was a nasty bump, but the skin hadn’t broken. It ached like hell. She fumbled for the first aid box and swallowed a couple of strong painkillers.

Motionless, she trained her ears to pick up any clues as to who had knocked her out and apparently hijacked her boat. A quick sweep beneath deck assured her there was no one lurking down here with her. She could hear no footsteps above either, but someone was in control of the vessel. The running engine told her she hadn’t been set adrift. But what had her assailant been after?The electronics were still intact. On closer inspection, they had all been carefully disabled. If she had the right tools, she could have easily reconnected to the outside world and called for help. But of course, the right tools were in a locker in the cockpit.

Someone obviously knew what they were doing.

Finally, she moved toward the latched mahogany doors. A gentle push confirmed they were locked from the outside. With her eye to the vent grill, she could just make out a pair of dusky bare feet placed boldly on either side of the ship’s wheel. From the size, she guessed that they belonged to a woman and had made the wet tracks she had followed earlier. She also guessed this was her lone assailant. This was the woman who had knocked her out and taken her yacht. But why?

❖

“Can you see anything? What if we’ve lost her? What if she’s running from us? That’s not her usual course. Why do you think she’s heading north today? Should we follow?” Ginette asked.

“No, I can’t see anything, but I can hear something,” Victoria replied.

“Oh? What?”

“You,” Victoria snapped, lowering her binoculars. “Will you stop yammering in my ear for one second so I can focus?” Ginette sniffed indignantly from behind the wheel of the rented powerboat. “So you can’t multitask? Can’t look and listen?

Good thing you’re only tracking the woman who stole your illicit millions. Heaven forbid you were trying to cross a road.”

“Got her. Two clicks north.” Victoria was peering intently through the lens again.

“Two clicks? We’re in the Caribbean, not ’Nam. What the hell does two clicks mean?”

Without breaking her link with the binoculars, Victoria pointed in the direction she wanted the boat to steer. With a vicious spin on the wheel, Ginette hid a grin as Victoria lost her balance and thumped inelegantly down onto the seat beside her.

Their small powerboat bounced over the waves, intent on following the sleek, white yacht at a discreet distance.

❖

The feet had moved, and no matter how frantically Mickey swiveled her eye, she still couldn’t see where the hijacker had gone. She silently cursed her limited field of vision through the vent aperture. All she could see was a few yards of deck at eye level, and then the blue Caribbean sky over the transom.

They had been motoring for hours, and in between bouts of trying to spy and sitting morosely on her bunk, Mickey was beginning to fume. Her shouts had been ignored, whether she chose to threaten or bribe. She still had no idea why any of this was happening. Was it piracy? Stealing her boat for gain, or was Mickey herself the target?

Eventually, the vessel slowed to a stop and the anchor winch rattled out a length of chain. It seemed they had arrived at some sort of destination. A peek through the porthole told her it was the middle of nowhere. Maybe now her questions would be answered. Face pressed against the warm wood of the door, she peered through the small vent looking for clues. Suddenly, a dark brown eye glared right back at her through the tiny opening.

“Boo.”

Mickey whipped back, alarmed.

“Gotcha.” She heard the deep throaty chuckles, then a growl.

“Hey, I’m coming below now, so stand back. I’m armed, and if you even twitch I’ll shoot you in the guts without a blink, got it?” The latch clicked, and Mickey cautiously backed off as the small mahogany doors opened, allowing sunlight to stream into the dark wooden interior. The bulky Glock 33 glinted evilly as she was waved even farther into the recesses of the main cabin.

“That’s right now. Hands on your head where I can see them.”

The owner of the semiautomatic slowly descended the wooden treads into the cabin. “Turn round. Arms behind you.” The woman darted quickly forward as Mickey complied, and with a double click, cuffed Mickey’s wrists together. Mickey was then spun around and pushed down to perch on a bunk.

“Who the hell are you and what—hnghf—” A bandanna appeared, and she was gagged before she could complete her angry question.

Her assailant stood back with a cocky grin. Her grip on the Glock relaxed, letting it hang from her neck on a lanyard, and she folded her arms across her muscular chest. A gleaming smile flashed across a handsome dark face, framed with long, finely twisted dreads, pulled back and tied at her neck with a red cord.

“I’m Bar Jack, and I’m your hostess for today. Now if you’ll excuse me, I see we have some company. A little powerboat’s been trailing us all morning, so I guess I better go and make them welcome.”

With a chuckle, the dark woman turned to leave, clearly satisfied Mickey would not be a nuisance while she dealt with this new threat. As she disappeared above, she called nonchalantly over her shoulder, “Nice to meet you, Ms. Gresham. Welcome aboard.”

For the better part of the day, Victoria and Ginette had attempted to look like sun-seeking tourists, zooming about in their rental powerboat, blending with other pleasure craft. And always just on the periphery of the yacht’s heading.

The movements of the white sloop had made no sense, weaving at first in a northerly direction, and then veering off into the shallower waters of a tidal shelf closer to Little Cayman than Cayman Brac. A popular fishing spot, it lay deserted by late afternoon.

This behavior was not the usual routine for Mickey’s typical midweek sail, as far as Victoria’s privately procured information was concerned. She had paid handsomely for a concise account of Mickey’s movements, to be as prepared as possible. Uncertain of her next step, Victoria slowly followed the yacht into the scattered group of reef and rock.

“Have we got the right boat? That’s not her at the wheel. In fact, I haven’t seen her topside once,” Ginette said as she peered through the binoculars.

Victoria cruised to a gentle halt close to a rocky outcrop and roughly propped fishing rods over the side as a rudimentary camouflage for their clandestine activities. It was incredibly difficult to casually stalk someone on the high seas, and she wasn’t sure how good a job they’d made of it.

“Let me see,” she said as she swapped places. She had been pondering for the past few hours over the irregularity of Mickey’s navigation. There was no possible way for the woman to know she had closed in on her here in the Caymans, never mind that Victoria was actually sitting on a small boat spying on her through binoculars. She’d been slowly closing the net on Mickey Rapowski for months, waiting for this very moment. The last thing she needed was to be following the wrong boat.

“No, that’s her sloop all right. We even saw her climb aboard as we entered the cove. But I didn’t know she had company.” Victoria was unhappy with this news. She’d been told Mickey was a loner, a solitary figure never mixing with locals or visitors.

On some perverse level, Victoria liked that.

“Maybe it’s her girlfriend?” Ginette asked, forever the agent provocateur.

“My source said she didn’t have one.”

“Maybe she’s having a secret affair…”

“No. She’s definitely not seeing anyone.”

“…and this is where they go for some afternoon delight,” Ginette persisted.

“No, it’s not her girlfriend. She doesn’t have one.”

“Maybe they’re down below right now, all hot and naked and sweat—”

“It’s not her girlfriend,” Victoria bellowed, startling nearby seabirds into the air. Ginette innocently reached under her seat and produced the flare gun.

“Why don’t you make it a little more obvious that we’re sitting behind this rock?”

Victoria glowered as she wobbled back to her passenger seat.

Ginette looked at her speculatively, enjoying her baiting game.

“So what now, Captain Softheart? Maybe we should swim over there with knives clenched between our teeth and steal aboard, m’hearty.” Ginette rolled her
r
’s and saluted jokily.

Victoria whipped around to stare at her.

“What?” Perplexed, Ginette returned her stare, until the penny dropped. “Oh, no. No way. Not me. There’s sharks in there.”

❖

Much, much later, Victoria really did appreciate the distortion of distance at sea. She felt as if she’d been swimming for a million years. Granted, she was a strong swimmer. A sailing holiday in the warm waters of the Caribbean or off the Pacific Coast was a popular vacation choice for her, but she still felt trepidation as she drew alongside the silent hull. Treading water, one hand on the boarding ladder, she listened for any clues about what was going on onboard.

Her first instinct this morning had been to go back to the harbor, await the return of Mickey Rapowski, then confront her on dry land. However, the unusual activity on the boat and the strange course it had followed alarmed her. She was worried her quarry was fleeing, and her immediate reaction was to follow and hunt her down. Now, after seeing a stranger onboard and no further sign of Mickey, her gut reaction was that something was wrong. But what? And aside from getting her money back, why should she care?

“If it ain’t the little mermaid.”

She looked up and found herself staring along the barrel of the butchest gun she had ever been on the wrong end of.

“Let’s get those little webbed feet up on deck, eh?” the woman holding the gun instructed. Reluctantly, Victoria hoisted herself out of the water.

Slowly, she mounted the boarding ladder and emerged on deck under the watchful and appreciative eyes of the lone gun woman. She was suddenly self-conscious of the scarlet bikini she wore. It now seemed like an extremely stupid idea to swim stealthily out to the yacht to find out what was going on. What was going on was the
last
thing she needed to know. It seemed she wasn’t the only one who had a beef with Mickey.

The woman’s dark gaze roamed over her body, raising a slight blush to her cheeks.

“So tell me why you been following me around all morning.  And just now tried to sneak up on me?” The gun still remained steadily leveled at her while the deep, melodious voice lilted questions.

“Actually, I’m not following you. I’m following the owner of this boat. I have business with her, not you. But finder’s keepers, so I’ll just jump back in and—”

The dark woman laughed.

“Oh, I can imagine you got business with that one. But there’s a waiting list.” She turned her head and nodded at the shadowed hatchway to the cabin below. “You have to bide your time to see the elusive Ms. Gresham.”

The momentary glance away was all the recovery time Victoria needed to hide her shock.
Ms. Gresham? This woman thought she had Ms. Gresham down below?
What the hell was going on? Why was everything concerning Mickey always so goddamn difficult?

“After you, friend.” With a sly smile, the woman with the gun motioned her forward. It seemed she was going to find out.

Doing exactly as indicated by the Glock’s muzzle, Victoria climbed down into the cool recesses of the cabin to meet Mickey’s startled stare head-on. Victoria’s heart lurched. She had forgotten the intensity of that blue gaze. She had seen it in a million shades of sky, and thought of Mickey Rapowski each and every time. And now Mickey was finally before her. Gagged, bound, impotent, and nearly within throttling distance.
And this happens.

From the corner of her eye, she could see the Glock glinting in the dim light from the portholes
. It’s so unfair. This woman took everything important from me, and I’m still scrabbling around in her viper’s nest of a life.
How hard could it be to get unqualified revenge?

Victoria kept her face passive, giving away nothing of the emotional undertow dragging her under. But she could feel her body betraying her with subtle little tricks she tried to rationalize away.The tips of her ears heated, but that could have been the beginnings of sunburn. Her vision blurred momentarily, but that could have been the darkened cabin interior. Her stomach lurched nervously, and she felt light-headed, but that could have been the semiautomatic pointing at her. But her heart had no rationale to hide behind. It got straight to the point of the matter. Her heart simply fell in love all over again with the woman perched on the berth before her. With her poker face firmly in place, Victoria ignored Mickey and turned to her armed companion.

“Yes. That’s Victoria Gresham, all right. What do you want with her?”

Behind the gag, Mickey was suffocating with an errant heartbeat and hitched breathing. The cabin felt claustrophobic, so crammed with Victoria there was no room for air. Her gaze flicked over Victoria in total confusion, picking up every little hint from her body. Unerringly Mickey read the subtleties. She saw dismay in Victoria’s eyes and noticed her flushed face and breathlessness. Mickey drank everything in, every move, nuance, and scent. Every one of her senses jolted and hummed at Victoria’s proximity.
Why is she here? Has she arranged this kidnapping?