On Borrowed Time (5 page)

The fact that Sully's warning had worked and the driver hadn't smashed into the rock was cold comfort. Lindsey didn't think there was any way they could catch them now, but still, Sully pressed on.

“Who knows?” she asked. “Maybe their boat will break down and they'll need us.”

“I just hope they don't shoot us and take our boat,” he said.

Lindsey gave him an alarmed look and he frowned. He turned back to the controls, driving the boat faster as he rounded the island. They now had a straight shot out into Long Island Sound, and Sully pushed the water taxi to go as fast as it could.

Lindsey was scanning the water, looking for the speedboat even though she knew it had probably rocketed out of the area and the odds of catching it were slim to none. Frustration made her ball her hands into fists, which was a bad idea, as her frozen fingers exploded with painful prickles.

“We lost them, didn't we?” she asked.

“Maybe,” Sully said. Clearly he was not ready to give up. His narrowed gaze searched the darkness.

A light in the distance flickered over the water. Sully headed for it.

“That's not good,” he said.

“Why, what is it?” Lindsey asked.

Sully was still for a moment and then he cursed. He pushed the throttle hard and shouted, “Hang on!”

Lindsey grabbed the seatback just as he jerked the wheel in a hard turn. Out of the darkness, a boat the size of a whale, a really big whale, was coming right at them. Just before it neared them, its lights all came on and Lindsey felt her jaw drop. The boat was huge! And on the helm, with the captain, she saw the woman and her brother Jack. He was pressed up against the glass as if he could break through and save her.

Lindsey yelped and clenched her eyes tight. The impact she was waiting for never came. Sully managed to get them out of harm's way and the yacht missed smashing into them by a salty sea air kiss. Its waves smashed against them, drenching them and leaving a large puddle in the bottom of their boat, but they were intact.

When Lindsey unclenched, all of the breath that had stalled in her lungs came out in a whoosh. Sully glanced over his shoulder at her as they continued speeding away from the yacht.

“You didn't think I was going to let them harm my favorite boat, did you?” he asked.

Lindsey gave him a shaky smile.

As the yacht moved out into the big water, Sully slowed their significantly smaller craft down and Lindsey knew what he wasn't saying. There was no way they could catch them now.

H
e opened his arms to Lindsey, and she did not need encouragement. She dove at him, partly for his warmth and partly for the affirmation that, yes, they were alive and also for comfort. In Sully's arms, she found that she could fight off the fear that she would never see her brother again. With Sully, she felt safe.

She was soaked and shivering and Sully was, too. She didn't think they had enough body heat between them to stave off hypothermia. She wiggled her toes just to see if she could feel them. She could not.

Sully let her go and Lindsey immediately missed the little warmth there had been. He lifted off a seat cushion and opened a hatch. Mixed in with some life jackets were a couple of bags. Sully pulled them out and tossed one to Lindsey.

“I just bought these,” he said. “I've been dying to give them a try. I didn't realize that death would be so imminent when I did.”

Lindsey's stiff fingers had a hard time with the drawstring, but she managed to get it open. Fuzzy fleece wrapped itself around her hand and she snatched the blanket out of the bag.

“Warmth!” she cried.

“Oh, it gets better than that,” Sully said. He knelt down and foraged on the floor for a moment and then he plugged a hose into her blanket. Warmth from the boat's heater filled her blanket and Lindsey practically purred with how good it felt.

It took her a second to realize that Sully just had a blanket with no heater. She opened her blanket wide, imagining that she looked like a big fleecy bat, and said, “Come on.”

Sully didn't hesitate, and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, trying to cover him with the blanket, too. It felt as if they were in a heated cocoon. Lindsey gave in and rested her head on his shoulder. His hands moved around her back and pulled her close. It took several long minutes but Lindsey finally stopped shivering and so did Sully.

He leaned back to look at her face and said, “I think we're going to live.”

She laughed. “Thanks to you. When that yacht appeared out of nowhere, I figured that was it.”

They were both quiet for a moment, letting the fact that they had survived sink in. Lindsey became overly aware of the silence, especially as Sully was so close.

She had read about the aftermath of near-death experiences. People tended to react with abandon and have wild, life-affirming sex. She had to admit she could see the appeal. Sully kissed the top of her head and stepped out of the blanket. Or not.

“I think they abandoned their speedboat. I want to find it,” he said. He picked up the other blanket and wrapped it around his shoulders while he started up the boat again.

“Do you think it will give us a clue as to who they are?” Lindsey asked.

“If we're lucky, they may have left paperwork or personal effects or maybe even fingerprints behind,” Sully said. “We can tow it in and let Emma take a look at it.”

He flipped on the searchlight. Lindsey moved in beside him and offered to take the controls so he could sweep the water with the light.

“Just keep it slow and steady,” he said. “The current would have pushed it toward shore. If we get lucky, we'll be able to catch it before it smashes into a rock.”

Lindsey moved the boat forward at what felt like a doggy paddle. She stared at the water ahead of them, but it seemed to be nothing but unrelenting liquid black. If it weren't for the stars above them and the tiny distant lights onshore, she would have thought they were lost in a shadow.

The heat was still pumping into her blanket, and she was feeling toasty warm. She felt badly that Sully had only a blanket, but he seemed oblivious as he scanned the water, looking for any trace of the abandoned boat.

“Turn to the right a bit,” Sully said.

Lindsey turned very slowly, trying to see what he might have seen. And then she saw the white hull reflect the searchlight's glow.

“That's it!” she cried.

“Switch positions,” Sully said.

Lindsey took his spot and he took over the controls. The speedboat was riding the low waves in toward the islands. Without bodies for ballast or anyone at the controls, it bobbled like a buoy cut loose and Sully had to maneuver around it, trying to anticipate which direction it would go so that it didn't slam into them.

They were close to the islands now, and several rocky outcroppings jutted out of the water. The empty boat got caught on one and Sully couldn't get close to it for fear of bottoming out his own craft on the rocks.

They watched as the speedboat rode a wave and slid over a pile of rocks, slipping effortlessly away from them as if it had planned its escape route all along.

Sully heaved a sigh. “Looks like we'll have to go around the island and meet it on the other side. I can't risk following it through the rocks.”

Lindsey nodded. She'd always had a fear of water over her head, and dark water in particular freaked her out. She didn't like not being able to see what was in the water around her. She had no desire to wreck their boat. Swimming to safety through the dark, cold ocean held zero to no appeal.

“Sounds like a plan,” she said.

She braced herself while Sully took over the controls and fired up the engine. They were just picking up speed when a horrific explosion sounded behind them. Sully grabbed Lindsey about the waist and dove for the floor.

He threw his blanket over both of their heads for protection from any debris as they huddled on the cold wet floor.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yeah, I think so,” Lindsey answered. Her voice came out in a croak and she knew it was a combination of shock and fear that had seized hold of her throat. “What was that?”

“I'm not positive,” Sully said as he poked his head out from under the blanket, “but I think it was our evidence.”

Lindsey shoved the blanket off her head and joined him as he cautiously knelt on the floor, easing his way up. He reached for the controls and cut the engine. They both glanced back over the stern at where they had left the speedboat to wind its way through the rocks.

There was no question. The speedboat was now no more than a floating bonfire.

Lindsey could feel the heat from the flames consuming the boat all the way across the water. If there had been any clue as to who'd taken Jack, it was gone now. As the waves battled with the flames, Lindsey felt her hope for finding her brother evaporate just like the hisses of steam rising from the charred hull of the boat.

“They blew it up so we wouldn't be able to trace them, didn't they?” she asked.

“Among other things,” he said.

Lindsey gave Sully a questioning glance.

“That was a timed detonation,” he said. “They didn't blow it up when they abandoned it, which means they left it behind, hoping we would do exactly what we did. Go after it in the hopes of finding a clue as to who they are.”

“Meaning that we'd either be towing it or be on it when it blew,” she said.

“Yeah.”

Despite her cocoon of warmth, Lindsey shivered. This proved to her beyond any doubts or hopes she'd been clinging to that whoever had taken Jack meant to do him harm.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Same thing,” he said. “We pick up what we can of the boat on the other side of the island, and we go to the police.”

Sully didn't wait for her response, but restarted the boat and began to motor around the island. As the smoking hull disappeared from view, she hoped there was enough of the boat left to give them something, anything, that might lead them to Jack.

*   *   *

I
t was a wet, exhausting and complicated process to catch the remnants of the flaming boat. But after dousing it with an extinguisher Sully had on board and using a long lead of rope with a grappling hook, they managed to haul the boat's sorry carcass into shore.

Lindsey jumped out of the boat and tied it up while Sully shut it down. He then stood on the end of the dock and hauled what was left of the speedboat in. While the bottom was intact enough to float, the top of it was a charred mess and the instrument panel had been blown to bits, making Lindsey think that was where the bomb had been located.

“Lindsey!” a voice cried from the pier above. “Lindsey! Where have you been?”

Beth came running down the stairs to the smaller dock below. She was still wearing her bomber jacket and scarf but had lost the pilot cap and goggles.

“Oh, hey, Beth,” she said. She glanced at Sully. How was she supposed to explain this? “Something happened.”

“So I gathered when you left two hours ago and never came back for your purse.” Beth held up Lindsey's bag as if she were showing her evidence. She then turned to Sully and the rope he still held in his hands. “What is that?”

He tied up their catch as if they had just gone on a fishing trip and caught a whale.

“Long story,” Lindsey said.

“My favorite kind,” Beth said. She looped her arm through Lindsey's and led her to the stairs. “Come on, you look like someone drowned the steampunk right out of you.”

“They did,” Lindsey said. She dragged her feet until Sully fell into step behind them.

At the top of the steps, Lindsey was surprised to find the lights on, the office open and Sully's office clerk, Ronnie Maynard, sitting at her desk. At a tick of the clock past eighty years old, she was as spry as a woman half her age. She wore her cranberry red hair in a puff on top of her head and accessorized her look with big, plastic rings and bangles that reminded Lindsey of polyester and macramé.

Mercifully, Ronnie had let the rest of the seventies go and dressed in stylish corduroy gray slacks and a black turtleneck with matching Uggs. Lindsey's frozen toes had serious Ugg envy.

“Ronnie, my darling, what are you doing here this late at night?” Sully asked.

“Drama queen here”—she paused to gesture at Beth— “saw me at the Anchor and asked me to open up the office to see if you were inside,” Ronnie said. She was pouring hot cups of coffee from a stand in the corner as if she had fully expected Lindsey and Sully to be stone cold when they arrived.

“Well, they just vanished,” Beth said. “One minute they're all owning the dance floor”—she paused to give Lindsey a significant we'll-talk-later look, and then said—“and then they were gone, and when I saw that the boat was gone . . .”

“You panicked,” Ronnie said.

“Yeah, that's true,” Beth admitted. Then she looked at Lindsey. “I thought Jack would be with you. Did he go somewhere with
her
?”

Lindsey looked at her friend. Subtle, she was not. Beth was fishing to see if Jack had taken off with the woman, and he had. Although not in the way Beth thought, which put Lindsey in the tricky position of trying to figure out how much to say. She didn't want to encourage Beth's crush on Jack, but she didn't want to send her into a panic about him either.

“Well, now that you're all accounted for and seemingly just fine, I'm going to get back to my date,” Ronnie said. She was just shrugging on her coat when the phone on her desk rang.

“Who is calling the main line this late?” Sully asked. “I thought the phones were rolled over to my cell for late-night taxi calls.”

“They were, but since you didn't answer your cell . . .” Ronnie's voice trailed off and Sully dug his cell phone out of his pocket.

“Battery died,” he said.

“Yeah, I figured,” Ronnie said. “This had better not be my date canceling. I had him on the hook for a lobster roll.”

“He wouldn't dare,” Sully said. Which was true. Ronnie was a fearsome woman and Lindsey couldn't imagine anyone canceling on her.

“Thumb Island Tours and Taxi,” Ronnie answered the phone. “How may I help you?”

She listened for a moment and then frowned. She held out the phone to Lindsey. “It's for you.”