Hot Mercy (Affairs of State Book 2) (38 page)

“As long as you can hear me, I’m good. How are you going to hide the transmitter?”

“
Done vorry, dahling—ve have our vays!
” Margaret’s cartoon Natashya impersonation, though spot on, failed to make Mercy laugh. Her chest tightened. She took a long, slow breath to relieve the pressure. It didn’t work, not even a little.

They waited while Bellamy’s crew—three men in spiffy tropical-white uniforms—secured the yacht to a mooring ball in the pristine blue cove. Soon Kristen appeared on deck in her bikini. Amos was nowhere in sight.

Mercy hoped Margaret was right—that the hi-tech mini-microphone in the bra of her jade-green maillot would still function after her swim to the yacht. She donned fins, mask, and snorkel—and dropped off the stern platform of the little fishing boat into the water. She swam at a leisurely pace toward the bow of the yacht, surfaced in front of a sunbathing Kristen, flipped up her mask and pulled the snorkel from her mouth.

“Hey, Kris!” she shouted up at her.

Kristen looked up lazily from the paperback she’d been reading then grinned down at her. “Wow! Where you been, girl? You left without saying good-bye.”

“Would I do that?” Mercy treaded water, letting the fins do all the work against the bathwater-warm sea. “Just had some family business to take care of.”

“Well, come aboard.” Kristen waved her toward the swim ladder at the stern where one of the crew stood polishing the stainless steel rails to a blinding gleam. “I’ll mix us a batch of Margaritas.”

“Fantastic!”

Kristen met her at the top of the ladder with a dry towel. “I wish I could swim like you. Big fish creep me out. Aren’t you afraid of sharks?”

“I haven’t seen even one the whole time I’ve been here.” Mercy patted her face dry. “The biggest thing I’ve seen are the sea turtles, and they’re lovely docile creatures. Just curious about us.” She let her hair drip down on her shoulders, cooling them from the hot sun. “Where’s Amos at?”

Kristen pouted and poured them each an icy drink. “He’s in one of his moods.”

“Maybe one of these will cheer him up.” Mercy sipped the chilled, salty-sweet margarita. “Ooh, that’s good!”

Kristen wrinkled her nose and threw herself down onto one of the deck loungers. “The islands are wearing thin on me. I just want to go home. This world adventure stuff gets old real fast.” She sighed deeply. “No, I lie. It’s more than that.”

Mercy sensed something important coming. “Oh?” She held her breath, waited. Prying might seem suspicious.

Kristen stared morosely into her glass for a long moment then pushed out a loud sigh. “I think Amos has found another woman.”

“Oh, Kris. I’m sorry,” Mercy said, meaning it.

Kristen dissolved before her eyes. She burst into heaving, hiccupping sobs. “Used to be…just a quickie. You know, in a hotel room with some stupid broad he’d never see again.” She bowed her head, her shoulders slumped. She looked for all the world like an injured animal overcome by pain. “Well, fuck him, I thought. Someday he’ll grow up and realize what real love means. I didn’t worry about him getting serious. He always came home to me.”

“I’m so sorry.” Mercy didn’t know what else to say. How could she not sympathize, remembering how deeply her husband Peter’s affairs had cut her. But she couldn’t ignore habitual infidelity the way Kristen had. Mercy had caught Peter once and let him know she wouldn’t tolerate such behavior. The second time it happened—at least, the second time she’d found out he’d taken a lover—she walked away from the marriage.

“I’m scared I’ve lost him.” Kristen’s bottom lip trembled. “He even tried with you, didn’t he?” Her pretty eyes flickered up to meet Mercy’s.

Caught by surprise, Mercy took a sip of her drink. How could she respond without hurting the poor woman more?

“You don’t have to protect me,” Kristen whispered, voice shaking, tears spilling down her cheeks. “I know what he is. Goddamn him. Sometimes, I just feel so close to the edge. You know? I mean, how many times does he think I’ll look the other way? The jerk! I love him, but he is a jerk.”

“He is,” Mercy agreed. She touched Kristen’s arm. “You deserve better.”

Kristen’s laugh carried a sharp edge. “Sure. But better usually doesn’t come with a yacht and a mansion with a staff.” She shrugged. “Who am I kidding? I won’t give all of that up on principle. I like the kind of life he can give me.”

Mercy heard a scraping noise, then a splash. “What’s that?” She looked down over the rail.

“Just Amos. He’s messing around with his dingy again. Probably off to the beach for his daily swim.”

Mercy studied the deserted strip of clean white sand a few hundred yards away. “Why doesn’t he just swim to shore? It’s so close.”

“Don’t ask me. Lazy, I guess.” Kristen wiped away her tears, yawned, then tilted the lounger back and rolled onto her stomach. “Thanks for listening, Mercy. It helps. Think I’ll catch me a little sun.”

“Any time.” Mercy looked down to the water again. Amos sat in an inflatable close to the yacht’s hull. Two of his crew were lowering a second Zodiac from the deck with ropes threaded through pulleys.

“How many dinghies does your boat carry?” Mercy asked.

“Who knows. Amos is nuts about equipment.” Kristen’s muffled voice sounded as if she was already half asleep. “Had a fight with Jobson over that. Bringing three extra dinghies on board, Jobson argued, was overkill. But Amos insisted. Geesh!”

Mercy scowled down at Amos Bellamy’s thinning pate. He was wearing a cherry-red Speedo. He didn’t look all that bad for a man of his age and weight. But probably not as good as he thought he looked. He lifted his head, glancing up in her direction. She stepped back from the rail and bumped hard into a wall that shouldn’t have been there.

Not a wall, exactly. A hard body. She spun around.
Jobson!

“Lose something overboard, Ms. O'Brien?” The captain’s striking, ebony face gleamed with perspiration. And obvious annoyance.

“No.” She desperately wanted to turn back to see what Amos was doing. “I was just enjoying the view across the water.”

“It is beautiful here.”  His bass-drum voice reverberated in her stomach. “Deceptively so.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Sometimes it’s wise not to look too closely at what’s going on around you. Sometimes it’s best to stay out of other people’s business.”

Mercy’s gaze slipped away from his menacing glare to Kristen, but her hostess seemed to have fallen asleep. Jobson appeared unconcerned that his boss’s wife might overhear them. Mercy drew herself up to her full 5’10” but still had to look up at the man facing her.

“I’m not one of your crew, Captain. I don’t have to take orders from you.”

“Whose crew are you on?” His expression was unreadable but the threat and suspicion in his tone was clear. Her heart raced.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She stepped around him, sat down then stretched out on the blue-and-white striped canvas lounger beside Kristen’s. Folding an arm across her eyes to shield them from the blazing sun, she dismissed him.

One heartbeat…two heartbeats.

It wasn’t working. Mercy could feel the man still looming over her. She controlled a shiver of apprehension. He wouldn’t attack her here, in front of Kristen. Would he?

Ignore him! Show him he doesn’t frighten you.
But her pulse rapid-fired in her ears, and the air felt suddenly so thin her chest ached as if starved for oxygen. She began to feel light headed. Mercy calculated the distance from her chair to the nearest deck rail, in case she had to dive overboard and swim to the fishing boat.

At last she heard him moving away, his footsteps firm but padded. Like a panther’s, she thought.

She sat up and looked around to make sure he was out of sight—which meant she was out of his sight. At least she hoped so. Leaping to her feet, she looked over the rail and down at water so crystalline clear she could see a pair of speckled rays, like great underwater kites, sailing beneath the surface. And halfway to shore, Amos was standing in his Zodiac, putt-putting along and steering for the beach. But the second dinghy was nowhere in sight.

Where the hell did it go?

Mercy stared down into the water directly below her. The rays had moved on, but a flash of something silvery caught her eye. A big fish? Or one of those enormous green sea turtles basking in the sunny water? 

Mercy turned from the rail and started toward the swim platform where she’d left her fins, mask, and snorkel. Kristen’s breathing had slowed and gone shallow with sleep. Mercy whispered into her breast mike. “Something strange is going on. I’m swimming to the island.”

Kristen stirred. “What? Did you say something?”

Shit!
She’d been sure the woman was out cold. “I’m hot, going for a swim.”

Kristen cracked open one eye. “With Amos?”

Mercy rolled her gaze skyward. “Relax, sweetie. I’m not after your husband.”

“Of course not,” Kristen said after a moment, looking straight at her before closing her eyes again. “Have a good swim. Just one thing, Mercy.”

“What?”

“Just don’t. Okay?” An unfamiliar brittleness sharpened her words. “Don’t fuck Amos. Cause I don’t know what I might do if I found out.”

                                          43

Mercy walked up and down the beach where Amos had left his dinghy. Nothing. She hiked inland through the tropical forest above the beach. Again, nothing—not even glimpse of Amos, or anyone else for that matter.

By the time she returned to the beach, the merciless sun had passed its zenith and shadows were lengthening as the afternoon wore on. The Zodiac was gone. Somehow she’d missed Amos, or he’d known she was following him and he’d intentionally avoided her. She swam back to the Chris-Craft where Margaret helped her out of the water and up into the cockpit.

The agent handed Mercy her terry wrap. “See anything?”

“Nothing but fish…fish…fish,” Mercy muttered, cinching the robe's belt around her waist. “And a few well-fed pelicans. Where’s Glen?”

“On recon. Bellamy returned to the yacht. You must have just missed him when you slogged off into the brush. Another thing you might have missed—we saw him intentionally sink a dinghy while he was still tied up to his boat.”

“Seriously? He punctured the thing and sank it?”

“We couldn’t make out how he did it, but it definitely went under.”

“When was this?”

“Just before you followed him to the beach. When he left there in the dinghy, he circled around the cove to a spot over there—” she pointed “—in the center of those cliffs.”

“What the hell?”

“And just about the same time,” Margaret continued, “one of the dive boats showed up. Glen went to investigate.”

Why would anyone sink a lifeboat? Zodiacs were pumped full of air. Did Bellamy intentionally slash the heavy rubber hide, destroying the thing? Or just let the air out through the nipple? Either way, he’d rendered it useless. It made no sense to her, none at all.

Nearly half an hour later, Glen dragged himself up out of the water in full wetsuit with SCUBA gear.

“So what’s going on?” Mercy asked.

He yanked off his mask and grinned. “Just the answer to where the opals have been all this time, how they got here, and who brought them.”

“Oh my God!” Margaret’s eyes widened. “Details. Now.”

Glen spoke excitedly between gulping breaths. “First, Bellamy is definitely our man.” Glen peeled away his neoprene skin, seawater sluicing off of his tanned limbs and down between slats in the deck. “The opal ore has been on his yacht all along.”

“But I searched everywhere!” Mercy protested.

“Whatever,” he mumbled, casting a less-than-forgiving look at Mercy.

Margaret snapped around to face her, eyes narrowed in accusation. “O’Brien, you swore the yacht was clean. How the hell did you miss half a ton of rock?”

Mercy felt desperately sick to her stomach. How indeed? Even if the precious stone had been semi-extracted from the rock to reduce the size of the cargo, she should have found it. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know—”

Glen cut her off. “Who can say how the weasel kept his haul stashed away. The point is, he’s transferring the stone in batches by way of a fleet of inflatables. Each Zodiac has just enough air still in it to make it semi-buoyant; the weight of the stones forces the dinghy to sink beneath the surface but not to the bottom. Sort of like a weighted dive belt.”

“You’re kidding,” Margaret breathed, eyes wide.

Glen laughed at her look of disbelief. “Seriously. It’s ingenious. Nearly every part of the unloading process is done out of sight. Bellamy’s rafts are loaded from a water-level hatch in the yacht’s cargo bay then towed by a diver, under water.”

Mercy shook her head. “But Amos looks so out of shape, not very strong at all.”

“It’s his plan, and he oversees the process. But men from the dive boat provide the muscle. They swim the raft away from the yacht and toward the cliff on the western edge of the cove.”