Red Hot BOX SET: Complete Series 1-4: A Patrick & Steeves Suspense (19 page)

T
he black SUV
careened along the rutted back road, wipers slashing double-time against the sheets of rain sliding down the windshield. “How much longer?” Jack drummed his fingers against the dash. “Drive faster.”

Miguel glared at him. “If I drive any faster, we’ll go off the road. If you can see farther than I can through this mess, why don’t you drive?”

“You must have some idea where we are,” Jack snapped.

Miguel’s cell phone, nestled in the center console, shrilled. Jack scooped it up, checked the display and answered. “Diego?”

“Yeah, boss, where are you?”

“About an hour out, hard to tell in this rain. How are things there?”

“Not so good, boss.”

“I thought you had things under control?” Leaving something like this in Diego’s hands had been a Plan B he’d been hoping to avoid from the very start.

“I did. But… things took a turn in the middle of the storm.”

“Jesus, Diego, spit it the fuck out. What’s going on?”

Diego paused and sounds of a scuffle came through the line.

“Talk, Diego. What the fuck?”

“I need to know when the timer is set to go off.”

“Don’t worry about that part. It’s all good.” Jack checked the clock on the dash. “Just follow the plan.”

“Jack… I have kids and a wife. I wanna make it home alive.”

“Relax. It will all work out.”

“No. It won’t.” The large man’s voice cracked through the receiver. Jack had a vision of him having a meltdown. What was with his men these days, was it the full moon or what? They were all going soft.

“Start at the beginning Diego. You still have Steeves and the girl?”

“That’s the thing… they all went overboard.”

He slammed his hand on the dash. “What the fuck do you mean they all went overboard? You mean the girl and Steeves went overboard? They left their friend tied to the bomb?”

Silence. Jack’s leg bounced against the glove box and he forced himself to take a breath. “Diego, speak.”

“They took the bomb off him and tied it to me—”

“Are you kidding me? How the hell—”

“Look the fucking details aren’t important right now.” Diego’s voice, bordering on hysterical, boomed through the phone. “What’s important is that I have a big wad of fucking explosives tied to my gut. You need to get me out of this. How long do I have, Jack? When is the timer supposed to go off?”

“The timer. Let me think.” Jack glanced over at Miguel whose jaw was clenched tight.

“Don’t let my cousin die,” Miguel hissed. “Tell him.”

“I don’t know exactly,” Jack whispered back.

“What?” Diego’s voice rang through the line. “Did you say you don’t know?”

“I said, I don’t know exactly.” Jack shot a venomous look at Miguel.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Jack checked the clock on the dash again. “I’d say you have a couple of hours at least.”

“You can’t be more specific than that? If I’m gonna die, I need to call my wife. You have any idea what’s gonna happen if I call her, tell her I’m gonna die and then I don’t die?”

“Tell him,” Miguel grunted.

Jack shrugged, palms up. “So don’t call her. We’re on our way to get you. Can you see the others?”

“They took off in the lifeboat. They’re out of sight now.”

“Goddammit Diego! What the—”

The line went dead. Jack stared at the phone in disbelief, poked the screen to call him back. It went straight to voice mail. He tried again, cursed and jammed the phone back in the console. “He hung up without giving me the damn coordinates. How does that bonehead expect me to rescue him if I don’t know where he is?”

“Wh—” Miguel started.

“Just shut the fuck up and get us there.” Jack turned his face to the window. If he’d looked for complete idiots to work with from the beginning, he couldn’t have gathered a more useless bunch of tools than these morons. The odds of him cleaning up this mess and getting home alive looked bleaker with every new piece of news.

“
T
wo hours
?” Emily turned the phone off and tucked it in the front pocket of the fleece hoodie Dal had found for her. Kris’s clothes hung off her, she felt like a scarecrow, but they were dry and warm. Sheets of rain skidded down the back of the slicker she wore. They’d stuck a ball cap with a wide rim on Diego’s head and wrapped a large tarp over him. He was already soaked through but at least the rain was no longer streaming down his face. He shot her a dirty look, his eyes hard.

“If I’m gonna die, I need to call my wife.”

“We all need to call somebody,” Dal said. “Don’t plan on being first in line.”

“I want to get out of this alive,” Diego said.

“You should have thought of that before you threw the radio overboard,” Kris said. “Or maybe before you came on board with the bomb.”

“Look,” Diego continued, “you can all go overboard, and I’ll be stuck here to blow up with the boat. Do you think I wouldn’t tell you if I knew?”

“You already said that,” Dal huffed. “Shut up for a while, why don’t you?”

The deck shifted beneath Emily’s feet and she struggled to stay upright. At least they knew when the bomb was going to go off now - it was something. But it wasn’t much. Her heart sank thinking she might blow up in the middle of the ocean so close to her childhood home. Strange how life worked. She’d traveled halfway around the world, survived a war, and yet, she might die just miles from where she’d grown up.

Kris leaned in to check the GPS. He called out the coordinates and turned to Dal and Emily. “Let’s get below so we can go over some charts.”

Dal nodded and reached out to take Emily’s arm at the same time Diego placed a large paw on her shoulder.

“Lady, listen to reason, please. I have kids and a wife. You might not think much of me but they’re gonna be devastated if I don’t make it home. I’m just asking for two minutes on the phone with my wife.”

Emily’s eyes slanted to Dal, who shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Dal said.

“Two minutes,” Diego insisted. “Just let me tell her I love them all so she can tell the kids. Also,” he paused, “I have a little money buried out back. I need to tell her how to find that.”

She looked into his dark eyes. Her head told her it was a bad idea, but her heart was warring with her mind. What would she want in the same situation? She’d already set him up to die so they could live, and now that he was rigged to the bomb, she believed that he didn’t know how to defuse it. Nobody sane would leave a bomb strapped to their gut if they knew how to stop it.

“Please,” he said.

“All right,” she said quietly and held up two fingers. “Two minutes.” She turned to Dal. “Can you grab his phone?”

“Are you sure about this?” Kris asked. The wind thrummed in the lines overhead, a loose piece of sail slapped in the air, canvas against canvas.

She shrugged. “I’m not sure about anything anymore. But what can it hurt?”

Dal passed her the phone, Emily put it on speaker and dialed the number Diego gave her. A man’s voice answered and her gut surged in alarm.

“My brother,” he explained. “Oye, Pepe, I need to speak to Maria. Tell her …” at this he lapsed into Spanish. She listened to him say he loved her, he loved his kids and then he reeled off some numbers she didn’t understand. Presumably the directions for where to find his buried treasured.

Kris lunged past her and grabbed the phone from Diego, whose lips curled upward in an ugly sneer. “You fucking asshole.”

“What?” Emily asked, moving back into some shelter, the rain not relenting, her feet slipping through the puddled water on the deck. Beside her, Diego laughed and looked out to sea.

“He was giving the coordinates for our location,” Kris explained.

Dal got up close and personal with Diego and looked into his hooded eyes. “Who did you call?”

The big man puffed out a laugh. “Fuck. You.”

Grabbing the gun, Dal shoved it against his neck and repeated his question. “Who did you call?”

Diego leaned his head backward, away from the pressure of the barrel. The boat pitched sharply to the side and his feet scrambled for purchase.

“Wait,” Emily said, reaching for Dal’s arm. “Don’t move him around too much. Kris, where’s his phone?”

“Here,” he said, waving it in his hand.

“Put it on speaker and hit redial.”

Kris sheltered the phone from the rain and set up the call. He held the receiver out. A man’s voice answered. “Diego? Why’d ya hang up?”

“That sounds like the little guy that was at the ranch,” Emily hissed. “Hang up.”

Dal glared at Diego. His mouth opened, but he swallowed his words and shook his head in disgust. “I don’t care if the asshole does blow up with the boat,” he said to Emily, grabbing her wrist. “Let’s go below.”

Grateful to get out of the storm, Emily followed him down through the hatch. She shook water out of her hair and crossed to the small table where Kris was already unfurling a chart. “Shit, I’m sorry guys.”

“Yeah, look we can’t trust him. I know you meant well, but just remember what this asshole has already put us through. What he’s put Kris through. And I was dead serious when I said I don’t care if he blows up with the boat.” Dal spun away and walked to the galley to put on a kettle of water.

“Wait a minute, I do,” Kris said. “I mean… well, that bastard can blow up but I don’t want my boat to blow up.”

“None of us want that,” Emily said, looking up at him, as she slid into the bench behind the table. “I don’t understand Spanish enough to know what he was saying.”

“He gave the coordinates, real quick. I didn’t realize what he was doing because I was expecting him to give directions anyway, but… he just repeated the coordinates I’d just given on deck, so…”

“I’m really sorry,” Emily said, feeling miserable. She leaned against the back of the vinyl seat, exhaustion seeping into her bones.

“Em, you couldn’t have known. He played on your good nature, forget it. I can’t imagine Jack will be able to reach us before the Coast Guard does.”

She forced a smile, tipped her head in thanks, and turned her attention to Kris and the chart. “How does it look?” she asked, peering down at the lines and tiny numbers.

Tapping a spot on the chart, Kris said, “We’re here. And,” sliding his finger across the laminated paper, “this is San Diego. We’re still about two hours out.” He brushed his wet bangs off his forehead and she saw the strain in the lines around his eyes, the weight of the exhaustion in his face. “This storm is really slowing us down.”

Setting the mugs of steaming liquid on the table, Dal slid onto the bench beside Emily. “What are you thinking?” He looked up at his friend.

“I don’t know what to think,” Kris said, wrapping his hands around the warm mug and blowing at the steam. “I hope they can get to us in time. The bomb is set for two hours - or something before or
after
two hours - and we’re still two hours away.”

Emily glanced sideways at Dal and cleared her throat. “We need to call again.”

T
he phone rang
once before Dispatch answered. Dal turned away while he asked the operator on duty if there was anyone from the bomb squad to help them yet. He leaned against the counter in the galley, watching Emily and Kris at the table while she patched him through.

“Sandal Steeves?”

“Yes, sir.” He didn’t recognize the voice but he did recognize the ring of authority. The muscles in his back tightened as he stood up straighter.

“I understand you have a situation there,” the man continued, not bothering to introduce himself.

“We do, sir. We just determined the bomb is set to go off within the next two hours.”

“Where are you, Steeves? Let’s start with that.”

“We’re… Hang on.” He walked over to the table and addressed Kris. “Where are we now?”

Kris reeled off the coordinates and Dal repeated them into the phone.

“Hang on,” said the man. Dal could hear muffled voices in the background. He tapped his foot, turning away from Kris and Emily’s questioning stares.

“Steeves, we’re going to do what we can to help you get that bomb defused.”

Dal let out the breath he’d been holding and relief teased at his taut muscles. “That’s great news, sir. What’s your ETA?”

A pause on the other end of the line stretched into an uncomfortable silence. Dal wondered if he’d lost the connection, pulled the phone away from his ear to look at the screen. “Sir?” he asked. “Sir?”

“Steeves, I’m on the Coast Guard cutter Alicia out of San Diego. But …” He muffled the phone again and Dal could hear voices in the background. He thought he heard him say ‘Are you sure’.

“Sure of what, sir?”

“Not you, Steeves, I was talking to someone here. Look, we have no jurisdiction in those waters. We can’t help you until you’re inside U.S. waters.”

Dal’s heart sank. Aware of Emily and Kris watching, he struggled to keep his expression neutral. “How far is that?”

A pause. “A little under two hours.”

“Jaysus,” Dal said under his breath.

“I know, son,” the voice came. “You should reach here in time. We’re on standby to help the minute you cross over.”

“And in the meantime?” He slapped his hand against the counter.

“We’re going to try to defuse the bomb over the phone. Dispatch advised that you have army personnel on board with some knowledge of bombs.”

“Yes, sir. Emily…” He paused. “Patrick. Emily Patrick, sir. She was in Afghanistan.”

“Good. Look, Steeves, here’s what I need you to do.”

“
A
re you serious
?” Emily’s voice rose half an octave and she took a breath to bring it back down to her normal tone. “Surely this is a different situation?”

“Afraid not,” Dal said, his face ashen. “He said he can’t help until we get to them.”

Kris paced the small space. “We’re almost two hours out. Shit.” He jabbed at the chart. “Here’s the fence that defines the border. We need to reach this spot and cross into American waters. With the weather the way it is, we’ll need to be right on top of them before they can reach us. Visibility is horrible.”

Emily shifted in her seat and raised her eyebrows. Dal had been on the phone a while, and she wanted to hear what else they’d told him. “What do we do in the meantime?”

“That’s what I wanted to know,” he said, finding safety against the galley counter. “We’re going to send some photographs of the bomb, and then—”

“Then we’re going to try to defuse it over the phone.” Emily completed his sentence.

“Yes.”

She laid her palms flat on the table, spreading her fingers out over the chart. At least this time she’d have help. “I’ll get the photos,” she said, sliding to the end of the bench.

“I’ll do it,” Dal said, holding his hand up. “You stay down here and warm up. We’ll need your hands steady.”

“Okay,” she said, somewhat relieved. “Be sure to get photos of the wires going up his arm and as much as you can get of what’s beneath his hand. Take close ups and—”

“We’ve got it,” Kris said, following Dal toward the hatch. “You collect yourself for the next round.”

Collect herself indeed. She sipped from the cup of tea, chamomile with an undercurrent of mint she thought, grateful for the warmth. With the photographs and the bomb squad, she’d have a much better chance of defusing the bomb. Her eyelids slid closed and she allowed her body to relax into the vinyl cushion of the bench, her torso sliding down, her legs stretched out under the table.

Her head rested against the back and she focused on what her boss used to refer to as armchair flying. She remembered the day he’d told her about the technique. They’d been standing in the open desert, the sun beating relentlessly on her brain until she thought she might explode, and growing more frustrated by the second. Her colonel had told her a story about when he’d learned to fly as a teenager.

Out of the blue, he started telling her how he passed his flight test. How he would sit for hours in an armchair, imaging he was in the cockpit, working the controls, seeing the instruments. Armchair flying. It was how he’d learned to touch the nose wheel down on the white line when others had struggled. At his urging, she’d closed her eyes and walked through each step of the task before her in her mind’s eye. When she opened her eyes, she calmly set about executing the necessary steps to complete the lesson.

It was worth a shot. She conjured a mental picture of the bomb as she remembered it. The snake pit of wires, the strands of tape and bulky belt of explosives. In her hands, she held a small set of wire cutters. Her fingers deftly separated the wires near Diego’s large hand and —

“Got them,” Kris said, sliding down the ladder and thudding onto the lower deck. “Were you sleeping?”

She shook her head. “Just resting my eyes.” She wouldn’t, couldn’t, tell Kris she was imaging herself defusing the bomb for a more successful outcome. It sounded woo-woo somehow. Whatever happened from here on out, she wanted Kris and Dal to feel confident that she would succeed. It would lower the tension and help relieve some of her own stress.

Dal squeezed her shoulder. “Want to have a look at these before I send them?”

“Send them right away. I’ll study them after.”

He fumbled with the phone a few seconds before passing it to Kris. “You mind doing this?”

Kris took the phone and sent the photos while Dal slid in beside her on the bench. He was damp from being above deck, but the solidness of him beside her lent her strength. She gave herself over to the moment and leaned her head on his shoulder. His arm went around her without hesitation.

“Nervous?” he asked.

“Yeah, a bit,” she said. “How could I not be?”

“No, I get it. I couldn’t do it.”

“There’s no guarantee that I can either,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut. She didn’t want a repeat of her earlier attempt and meltdown. The only thing they had on their side right now was a little bit of time and that advantage was dissolving with each minute that passed. “When are they supposed to call back?”