Secret Assignment (2 page)

Besides, she doubted she could have worn anything that would impress Gideon Stone.

She walked around to the back of the boat where a set of low steps gave her a more dignified entry to the boat. The boat’s name was painted there, in straight blue letters.
Lorelei.

She darted a glance at Gideon Stone, wondering for the first time if the boat belonged to Mrs. Ross or to him. She tried to picture the grim boat pilot as the sort of romantic who’d name a boat after a lover but gave up quickly.

Her brother had given her a job to do. It might be boring grunt work, but she was going to do it as well as she’d ever done anything in her life. Then maybe he’d take her contributions to Cooper Security more seriously and let her take part in more challenging assignments.

Gideon finished fueling up and nodded toward the steps. “We’re ready to shove off.”

“Want me to get the other rope?” she asked as he bent to unlash the back rope from the mooring.

“I’ll get it.” His tone set her teeth on edge.

Once the boat was untied, he showed her into the cabin on the main deck, waving toward a worn but comfortable-looking L-shaped sofa inside. “There are life jackets in the cabinets under the sofa if you need one. You do know how to use one?”

She forced herself to smile as if his gruff manner didn’t make her want to swat him. “Practically grew up in a marina.” She’d spent half her childhood at Cooper Cove Marina with her aunt and uncle while her father was on duty with the sheriff’s department.

The cabin was larger than it looked from outside, though perhaps the illusion of space was a result of its well-placed accommodations. The sofa ran the length of the port side, while a long set of storage cabinets lined the starboard, ending where a small but well-appointed galley took up the rest of the wall space. Gideon waved his large hand toward the small refrigerator. “There’s bottled water and soft drinks in the cooler. Mrs. Ross thought you might need something to drink on a day like today.”

His tone suggested he couldn’t care less about her comfort, and he didn’t stick around to make sure she found something to her liking, heading out to the deck without another word. He went straight up the ladder to the pilothouse overhead.

“Lovely meeting you, too, Mr. Stone.” She shrugged off the jacket of her lightweight suit and crossed to the nearest air vent, sighing with pleasure as the cold air blew across her sticky skin. The boat surged under her feet, knocking her temporarily off balance. She caught herself, flattening her hand on the wall until she felt steadier. Keeping contact with the wall in case the boat hit any choppy water as it crossed the bay, she circled to the refrigerator and opened the door, smiling at the sight of several bottles and cans chilling inside.

Her sweet tooth argued for a soft drink, but her good sense went straight for the bottled water. She waited until she reached the bench before she opened it, saving herself a small mess when the boat lurched again just as she was taking her seat.

Good thing she didn’t get seasick, she thought. Not that Gideon Stone had even asked if she might.

She pulled up the shade over the windows and saw land growing more and more distant as they moved out of the sheltered bay and into the choppier waters of the Gulf of Mexico. She wished the surly boat captain hadn’t more or less ordered her to sit down and stay put. Now that she’d had a chance to cool down and rehydrate, she’d love to be outside, taking in the panoramic view of the Gulf.

Who says you have to listen to ol’ Growly Gus?
a rebellious voice whispered in her ear. The water wasn’t much choppier than a windy day on Gossamer Lake, and she’d ridden out those kinds of swells in less sturdy boats than the
Lorelei
.

Why not?

The breeze blowing off the Gulf was cooler out here than it had felt back on the dock, countering the blistering afternoon heat. The cloud cover starting to gather overhead showed no sign of dropping moisture yet, and now that she had her sea legs under her, the walk across the deck to the railing posed no problem at all.

She glanced upward and saw Gideon Stone sitting in the pilothouse, his back to her as he steered the boat into the open water of the Gulf. She craned her neck to see around the bulk of the boat cabin, wondering if Nightshade Island was in sight yet.

She knew from studying a map of the coast that Nightshade Island was a tiny speck of land barely visible on the map of the Alabama Gulf Coast. From preparatory research in the library and online, Shannon had learned the island had belonged to the Stafford family for over a hundred years, passed down generation to generation until it finally fell in the hands of the only remaining member of the original family, Lydia Stafford Ross.

According to Jesse, who’d spoken to Mrs. Ross when he took the assignment for Cooper Security, Mrs. Ross and her husband, U.S. Army General Edward Ross, had lived there most of their married life, although the general had obviously spent a good deal of time away during his military career. “It was his home base,” Jesse had told her. “He kept all his papers, correspondence and collections there.”

Lydia Ross, he’d explained, had agreed to the State of Alabama’s latest offer to purchase the island as a wildlife preserve, so she needed Cooper Security’s help archiving and securing the general’s belongings for the move.

Jesse had tried to make it sound like the best field assignment available, but Shannon knew when someone was throwing her a bone. Clearly her brother was tired of her nagging him to let her out from behind her computer screen and this was his punishment.

“You didn’t like the accommodations?”

Stone’s voice, closer than expected, made her jump. She gripped the railing, fighting a sudden rush of vertigo as she lost her sense of equilibrium. It returned quickly, however, and the world righted beneath her feet.

Squinting against the bright sunlight, she spotted Gideon Stone at the back edge of the pilothouse, gazing down at her. He loomed there, enormous and imposing.

“No, everything’s fine.” She shielded her eyes with her hand. “Is the island in sight yet?”

He hesitated before answering. “Come up. The view’s better.”

He said no more, turning back to the wheel and sitting in the pilot’s chair. She scurried up the ladder before he changed his mind and took the seat beside him.

The view from the pilothouse
was
better, a 360-degree panorama of Gulf water ahead and shoreline disappearing behind them. In the distance, Shannon spotted a speck of dark green on the hazy turquoise horizon. “Is that Nightshade Island?”

Gideon didn’t answer, gazing at the instrument gauges with a frown on his face. This time she sensed his expression had nothing to do with her.

She followed his gaze to the gauges and didn’t see anything alarming, but now that she thought about it, their speed had slowed noticeably. “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know.” He throttled back until they were just idling, then cut the engine.

She shot him a wary look, beginning to wonder if coming onto a boat with a strange man had been her smartest move. “What are you doing?”

“Fuel’s not getting to the engine. I need to find out why.”

“Are we stranded? Should we radio the Coast Guard?”

“Not yet. It may be something easily fixed.” He got up from the pilot’s chair and headed down the ladder.

“Do I need to go get my life jacket now?”

He paused, just his head and shoulders visible now. “We’re not sinking.” He kept climbing down.

“Yet,” she muttered.

She eased over to the pilot’s seat and found it still warm from Gideon’s body. An odd tingle of feminine awareness jittered through her, making her feel vulnerable and intrigued at the same time.

She liked big men. Tall men, men with broad shoulders and strong backs. Men with battle-hardened faces and feral intensity. She knew such men were good to have around when the world went crazy.

But she also knew such men could be very, very dangerous.

Which are you, Gideon Stone?

She looked around the pilothouse and spotted a small olive drab canvas bag sitting next to the console. It lay partially open.

Looking inside it would be wrong. She knew that. Gideon’s private possessions were just that—private. And maybe if she weren’t stranded at the moment on a boat with a man she’d met less than an hour earlier, she’d mind her own business and let it lie.

But her skin still prickled with wariness, and ignoring her healthy fear would be stupid.

She crouched next to the bag and carefully nudged it open until she could see the contents. Inside were a small first aid kit in a blue canvas pouch marked with a white cross, a couple of protein bars and, in the gloomy depths of the bag, the unmistakable outline of a Walther P99 pistol.

Shannon sat back on her heels, her heart pounding.

* * *

O
NE LOOK AT
the water trap of the engine’s water separator filter and Gideon’s heart sank. It was full.

Sitting back on his heels, he wiped sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. He’d fitted the system with a new water separator filter the evening before. He’d checked the bowl of the water trap, too, and it had been clean of all but a small amount of condensation.

No way had this much water collected overnight from mere condensation.

Think, Stone. Think.

He heard footsteps above, distant enough to reassure him that the woman was still up in the pilothouse, but also a reminder he was about to take a stranger to Nightshade Island, a stranger he wasn’t sure he should trust. She’d be sleeping under Mrs. Ross’s roof, where he couldn’t watch her every second.

He’d heard of Cooper Security, but only in passing from an old Marine Corps buddy who’d known the company’s CEO. Greg had assured him Jesse Cooper was a good man—a good marine. Under any other circumstances, his buddy’s word might have been enough for Gideon.

But bad things had been going down recently, starting with General Ross’s death.

The initial judgment was that the single-car crash just north of Terrebonne that had taken the general’s life had been an accident. But the Terrebonne Sheriff’s Department had recently assigned a detective to the accident investigation, which suggested that no matter what the official stance was at the moment, local law enforcement thought there might be more to it.

Gideon had thought so from the beginning. Edward Ross had been the most careful, conscientious driver he’d ever known. And at seventy years old, he’d still had the reflexes and physical stamina of a man twenty years his junior. The idea that the general had misjudged a curve in the middle of the afternoon was entirely unbelievable.

He drained the water from the trap into a bailing bucket. Then, on a hunch, he removed the hose from the electric fuel pump and let the contents of the fuel tank drain slowly into the bucket.

More water, he saw, anger battling dismay. Too much water.

Definitely not just condensation.

The bucket was over half full before the liquid flowing into it switched over from water to fuel. Since water was heavier than diesel, it had poured out first, which meant that most of what remained in the tank should be fuel. More than enough to get them back to the dock to refuel.

He returned the fuel pump hose to its proper position and covered the bucket with a plastic lid to keep the contaminated water from spilling. Still mulling over the implications of the excess water, he removed the saturated water replacement filter and went to the storage bin nearby to get the replacement filter he’d stored there a couple of months ago.

It wasn’t there.

He knew it had been in the bin last night when he checked the boat for this afternoon’s planned trip to the mainland. He hadn’t checked right before the trip because he’d been running hard all morning, helping Mrs. Ross prepare her house for Shannon Cooper’s arrival.

He left the engine well and climbed the steps to the main cabin, suffering a brief moment of suspense before he found a box of supplies—a few brand-new filters included—where he’d left them a couple of days ago when he’d gone out on a supply run.

As he refitted the engine with a replacement filter, he retraced his steps from the night before. System checks. Checked for life jackets in the benches. Checked oil levels, fuel levels. He’d checked the water trap for condensation, finding damn little even after almost three days of disuse.

He’d checked the supply cabinet to make sure the spare filter was there, damn it. He always made sure he kept spares of anything vital because that’s what marines did—hoped for the best and prepared for the worst. And if it hadn’t been there, he’d have grabbed one of the new filters and put it in the cabinet so it would be close at hand.

But clearly, he hadn’t prepared well enough. He should have put some sort of early warning system on the boathouse, at the very least, to make sure nobody could tamper with the boat while he wasn’t around.

Of course, the more pressing question was, why
had
someone tampered with the fuel? It wouldn’t pose a particularly dangerous situation; the worst it could do was strand him on the water, and even if the radio had been sabotaged, there was enough boat traffic to ensure he wouldn’t stay stranded long. Simple vandalism made no sense as an explanation—maybe if the boat were docked somewhere on shore where there was easy access to someone on foot or in a car. But to sabotage the
Lorelei
docked out on Nightshade Island, someone would have had to take a boat well out from the mainland, make a no-engine approach and sneak into the boathouse.

No vandalism was worth that effort.

Which left...

He checked his cell phone. No bars. With a sigh, he headed upstairs to the cabin and crossed to the satellite phone attached to the wall near the galley. Lydia Ross answered on the second ring. “Gideon, I was just thinking of you. I forgot to pick up any cherries when we were in town, and I so wanted to cook a cherry crumble for our guest.”

“We’re already behind schedule, Mrs. Ross, and I’m—” He stopped before he said he was heading back to the dock to refuel. Even considering the bucket of water he’d drained from the tank, he had plenty to go back and forth from the island to the dock. Refueling could wait.