Born Ready (25 page)

Disconcerted, Jackie took a walk on the beach to clear her head, but instead of finding clarity, she’d been painfully reminded of her walks with Scott.

Why couldn’t she stop thinking about him? Every time an image of his face popped into her mind—which it did with alarming frequency—her heart gave a strange hitch. Dejected, she tracked back to her apartment, her spirits heavier than ever.

Once inside, she clicked the door closed and sank down onto the couch. Her butt had no more than settled onto the cushion when the alarm went off on her monitor just as it had the evening Scott had messed with her equipment in the mangrove channel.

Adrenaline surged through her veins as all the data recordings disappeared from the screen.

“Here we go again,” she muttered, jamming her feet into her sand-dusted flip-flops.

She was in the boat and out on the water before she remembered her promise to Scott that she would not go into the mangrove channel without his go-ahead. Surely that edict didn’t pertain to an emergency. She kept driving, headed for the estuary. Besides, he wasn’t the boss of her.

Remember how scary it was when you thought he was a drug smuggler?

Yes, but that had been stupidity on her part. If she found someone monkeying with her equipment this time, she would back off and call the Coast Guard. She would not confront anyone as she’d done before. She had learned a thing or two.

It was probably nothing more than the equipment had somehow gotten dislodged. Since she hadn’t checked on it since before Megan’s wedding; almost anything could have happened.

When she rounded the bend, the sun was starting to slip down the horizon, but it was still an hour or more before sunset. She had plenty of time to at least check things out, if not fix them.

The mangrove channel was completely empty. Not a soul in sight. The estuary stretched up ahead. No boats. No people. Nothing.

Scott had been alarmist, she assured herself. There was absolutely nothing to worry about.

WHILE JACKIE WAS HEADED down the mangrove channel, Scott sat on the front porch of his bungalow, his cell phone on the small table alongside a half-empty bottle of beer. Over and over again, his mind kept returning to the foiled drug deal. What had he done wrong?

He’d made mistakes, but sitting here doing nothing felt like an even bigger mistake. Yes, his boss had pulled the plug on the operation, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t continue to investigate on his own. He had to redeem himself for losing the fifty thousand dollars of government money to the conniving Juliette.

He needed more evidence. If only he could talk to the tourist Carl had arrested. Why couldn’t he talk to Carl’s informant? Maybe he could get something from the guy that Carl hadn’t.

Strengthened by having something constructive to do, he got up and headed toward the rental car. It wasn’t until he was halfway to the county jail that he realized he’d left his cell phone back on the porch.

JACKIE ANCHORED her boat beside the small buoy she’d put out to mark the spot. Through the wavy blue depths, she could see something big and dark underneath the surface.

What was it?

She hoped the object wasn’t too far down. She had brought diving equipment with her, but she knew better than to dive alone. Diving 101. The buddy system or nothing.

But she was just slipping underneath the water a few feet. She’d be down no longer than she could hold her breath to see what was lurking just underneath the surface.

Probably nothing more than some strange flotsam that had floated up and gotten entangled in the Kevlar cable. Maybe it was simple. She could give it a good shake, dislodge whatever had gotten caught up in her equipment and everything would be right in her world again.

She put on goggles, stripped down to her swimsuit and slipped into the water.

Something had gotten entangled in the cable. But what in the hell was it?

The object was metal. Six feet long. Curious, she cocked her head, ran a hand over the surface. It looked like some kind of undersized submarine. Was it an elaborate remote-control toy?

Her lungs began to hurt. She needed to go topside and get another breath of air. Or better yet, call Scott and ask for help.

Call Scott? No dice. They were through. Calling him now would be like ripping the Band-Aid off a wound before it had a chance to heal.

She turned to head back to the surface, air hunger urgent now, and that’s when she spied it.

The thing she’d been searching for.

Her heart took flight and for a brief second she forgot about the need to breathe.

There, darting in and out of the mangrove roots, swam the
Starksia starcki.

“WHY SHOULD I TALK to you?” the defiant prisoner asked Scott.

“I’ll speak to the judge on your behalf. Tell him you cooperated fully in my investigation. You could get several years shaved off your sentence.”

The thirtysomething guy with shoulder-length, greasy brown hair, hangdog mustache and a Margaritaville tattoo on his right forearm looked skeptical. “I’ve been hearing a lot of reassurances, but I ain’t seen any results.”

“You haven’t come up for trial yet.”

“You’re not going to catch him, ya know.”

“I’ll go to my grave trying to put him behind bars,” Scott said. “One way or the other, I
will
get him.”

The guy slumped in his chair, tossed his head to fling dirty strands of hair from his eyes. “DeCristo never comes to the States. He uses intermediaries. He’s too smart to get caught by the Coast Guard.”

Scott looked at the folder in his hand. It was one he’d gotten from Carl. “I see you’ve got a family, Mr. O’Hara.”

“Are you threatening me?” The guy hardened his eyes.

“Not at all. I’m assuming you’d like to see them again before you’re gray-haired and using a walker.”

O’Hara shifted in his chair. “Can you make me any solid promises?”

“I can promise that if you don’t help I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you serve every second of the sentence you’re handed down.”

“If DeCristo gets word that I was the one who squealed, he’ll kill my family.”

“We can protect them,” Scott said. “And if you help me, you won’t ever have to worry about DeCristo again.”

“You underestimate him.”

“No, I don’t. I fully understand what he’s capable of. He killed my father.”

That got the guy’s attention. “You’ve got a vendetta against him.”

“I do.”

The guy thought about it a long moment. “Then maybe you can catch him. It will take someone with a strong sense of revenge to make it happen.”

“I’m that someone.”

O’Hara said nothing for a long time, then finally he nodded. “Okay.” Then he proceeded to tell Scott everything he wanted to hear.

When O’Hara finished, Scott tore out of the jail. He had to get to the mangrove channel
immediately.
According to O’Hara, Juliette had lied about the delivery date. It wasn’t two days ago, but now.

The drone submarine was coming up from Cuba this evening.

JACKIE SAT IN HER BOAT, hauling in great gulps of air, feeling both giddy and concerned. At last! She found the Key blenny. Her theory was correct. Her father was wrong.

Was it petty to take joy in being right? Probably. She tried to suppress the smile. Her professor would be ecstatic about her discovery.

But for now she had other fish to fry.

That submarine thing down there belonged to someone and from Scott’s warning it was most likely not a friendly someone. She needed to call him and let him know what was going on.

Yes, he was going to lambast her for coming out here, but if she hadn’t she wouldn’t have discovered the Key blenny.

A fresh thrill of happiness had her shivering in the warm rays of the descending sun. Never mind. She’d put up with the chewing out he was sure to give her because she needed his help dealing with that submarine. She fished her cell phone from the console on the boat and punched in his number.

It rang several times, and then finally went to voice mail. Dammit. Where was he when she really needed him?

“Scott, this is Jackie. I know you told me not to go to the mangrove channel, but I’m here and I’ve found the strangest thing—”

The answering system cut her off.

Technology. What a pain. She thought about calling him back and leaving another message, but a sense of urgency told her she needed to get out of here. It would be dark before long and the last thing she needed was to be out here alone if the owner of the submarine showed up to retrieve it.

What to do?

Thoughtfully, she glanced around her boat and her gaze landed on the box that contained her oceanography supplies. She had a tracking device called a D-tag in there that was used to temporarily track whales, dolphins, manatees and the like.

What if she attached the D-tag to the submarine? That way, if it did turn out to be something nefarious, Scott would have a way of tracking the sub.

And if it didn’t, you’d lose expensive tracking equipment that belongs to the university.

So what? If it got lost, her father could pay for it. He owed her for not believing in her.

But if she attached it to the submarine, she needed to put on her scuba gear. She couldn’t accomplish her task on a single breath of air. It would take several minutes.

Jackie paused, torn.

She knew better than to dive alone. It was the number one thing drilled into every diver’s head. Never, ever dive without a buddy. No exceptions.

But she had no time to go looking for a diving buddy. The sub wasn’t that far down. It wouldn’t take long to attach the D-tag. One quick dive and she’d be right back. No harm, no foul, no worse for wear.

Okay. Right or wrong, she was making an executive decision, even though she could mentally hear Scott bawling her out.

What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

Taking a deep breath and pushing back the teaching that was screaming “no, no, no!”, Jackie got in her diving gear, took the tracking device from the metal box and went over the side of her boat.

She saw the Key blenny again. There were dozens of them, none longer than two inches long. The silver fish with a dark line running down their middles had her grinning wide. They might look insignificant to most people, but Jackie had never seen a prettier fish. She paused a minute to admire her splendid discovery before finally moving on.

The submarine lay about eight feet below the surface wedged in between a snarl of mangrove roots. She swam deeper until she was underneath the sub.

It was inky dark down here. She switched on her flashlight, and holding it tucked underneath one arm, she rolled onto her back to attach the tracking device to the hull.

It took her a good ten minutes to get the D-tag secured. Anxiety at diving alone gripped her. She needed to get out of the water. It would be dark soon, if it wasn’t already. Time to head back to Key West and try to call Scott again to let him know what was going on. Besides, she couldn’t wait to share her good news with him. He understood what this find meant to her and she realized he was the one she most wanted to tell.

Experiencing an unsettling mix of conflicting emotions—joy over the blenny, smugness at besting her father, guilt over diving alone, hope at the thought of seeing Scott again—she broke the surface and stripped off her mask.

Only to find herself looking at the receiving end of the double barrel of a shotgun.

“JACKIE, JACKIE, JACKIE.” Gary Howard shook his head. “Diving alone. I can’t believe it. You bad girl.”

Jackie sat shivering in her wet suit on Gary’s boat, staring incredulously at the man who was her father’s assistant. He had the shotgun tucked under his arm and a roll of silver duct tape in his hand.

For one crazy moment, she thought he was here to highjack her research. It was the sort of cutthroat thing he would do. Steal her research, claim it as his own and present it to her father, argue that
he
found the Key blenny. “What are you doing?”