Chapter 10
CHAPTER
TEN
DEAN
A jagged pulse rockets through my body, the ache in my chest intensifying as my heart rate goes up. June’s skin pales under her tan, the wan light from the sliver of the moon turning her ghostly.
The boat’s drifting in the gulf, saltwater-soaked air turning chilly without the sun to warm it. It’s not a safehouse, but we’re likely as safe here for the night as we would be anywhere else.
“That can’t be true.” She clutches her stomach, staring at the navy expanse of water and sky.
I swallow, my throat dry. “It is.”
Goddamn, I’m no good at this.
“What proof do you have?” Her hands curl into fists on either side of her torso, then relax. Before clenching again.
“Dr. Legarde, all I can give you at the moment is my word.” An uncomfortable emotion ripples through me.
Guilt. But I need to press her, get more information, despite her apparent ignorance.
It could be an act.
June doesn’t strike me as a liar. For one, she is wildly different from my ex. My therapist would be proud of me, realizing not all women are like her, would probably call it a breakthrough and have me do a positive affirmation.
I cough to hide a chuckle at the thought.
“Why?” she asks.
“Why what?” For a second, I wonder if I’ve said a positive affirmation out loud.
“No way would he work with them,” she scoffs. “Not after everything that happened to me. Why would he…” She trails off, her face inscrutable under the heavy veil of night. “It’s not important.” She straightens her back, becoming little taller, like she’s ready to face the facts.
I’ve seen that look on fellow Marines before.
She sucks in a breath.
“What is important is that you think he did these things, and that there are,” she pauses, pressing her hand to her stomach, “ bad dudes after us.”
“Bad dudes,” I repeat. I choke back a laugh as her watch buzzes, the light from it briefly illuminating the scowl on her face.
“What is it?” I ask, concerned by her reaction. “Do you have service out here?”
“It’s telling me I need to move around, as though I haven’t been hunted down and chased or shooting and fighting. I swear on all that is holy I hate this mother fudging thing.”
“Mother fudging,” I echo, a real laugh finally bursting out. It seems like the wrong emotion at this moment. I rub the back of my neck, then wince as the bandage pulls at the wound.
“Dr. Legarde, I hate to ask you this…” I pause, realizing I don’t want to delve into her obvious grief. Wanting to keep her ranting about her watch. There is something so normal and sweet about it, about her . “Do you have any idea where your father might have hidden the shipment?”
“Are you being serious?” She wheels on me, even the darkness unable to hide the fury blazing across her face. “You come into my life, whisk me off like a hostage on my own gosh-darned boat, drop this… this bombshell on me and then expect me to know where a boatload of drugs are?” Her voice cracks, sadness seeping through her fury.
“Probably a sub full of drugs, actually,” I correct.
She makes a feral noise of frustration, her feet slapping against the fiberglass floor.
“Anything could be helpful,” I add.
She steps closer and I hold up my hands, trying to look as non-threatening as possible.
“Just think about it. Maybe he hinted at something. Or there is a place, some location, where he traveled often.” It sounds cold, but I don’t know what else to say to her. “Anything you can tell me about your father could help.” It sounds cold, but I don’t know what else to say to her.
I’m not good at warm and cuddly.
I doubt I ever will be.
She taps her foot against the deck, starlight reflecting in her eyes as she considers me. “The only thing my dad did was take tourists fishing and diving, and look for the wreck with me.”
I still. The wreck.
Is it as easy as that?
“What? Why is your face like that?” She leans down to me, her nose crinkling as she stares.
“The wreck? You really think this is about that ?” Clearing my throat, I run my good hand through my hair. It’s hard to think straight with her close enough to wrap my arms around.
“So you’re telling me you know where I live, but you didn’t bother to look up all my research?” She sighs, then looks to the sky. “Will anyone ever read my research?”
I laugh in spite of myself, and her gaze finds mine, a slight smile on her lips. “Your father was looking for the wreck with you, right?”
“Yeah, and if I had gotten that grant today, I could’ve found it. I know I could have. I would have earned tenure, made a mark for myself in academia. Heck, I would have written the history book. But nooooo, nope. Charlie had to run over a guy with a gun, and then I went and threw tequila in his eyes, and now drug smugglers and the government think I know where a bunch of crap I have nothing to do with is!”
A lead weight settles in my stomach. “Did your father go out a lot to look for it without you? How often do you think he looked for it?”
It would be a good cover, and I silently berate myself for not considering it before.
“Sometimes. Especially when I taught evening classes. You don’t think he was looking for the wreck.” Her voice is thick with disbelief. “You’re saying when he was out there… when he was supposed to be looking for the wreck, he... he was running drugs. Or whatever. Working with them. The smugglers.”
“‘Whatever’ is doing a lot of work there,” I say slowly.
“It’s not funny,” she says. A hand scrubs down her face.
“He could’ve been.” I stand.
Our bodies press together in the small space, but she doesn’t step back, doesn’t make any moves to distance herself from me.
I clear my throat, ignoring the dull throb of pain on my side. “Any chance he dropped any coordinates to, ah, the wreck? Or maybe something else?”
Smooth as fucking sandpaper. I wince at myself.
“No.” The word is flat, final. She moves away, bracing herself against the metal deck railing.
“What was he like in the weeks leading up to his death?”
“Sure, why not interrogate me about that?” she says, throwing her arms up. “Let’s just make this day as crappy as possible. Maybe I’ll cry! Would you like that?”
“I would not like it if you cried. Not at all.”
She seems startled by that, freezing in place.
I blow out a slow breath. “Were there any changes to his routine?”
She pauses, searching the starry night sky as though it holds the answers. “He was crabbing more. Brought me blue crab every night. But they’re in season, that’s not out of the ordinary… Well, not by much.”
I step closer, her eyes now wider as though she, too, has the same thought.
“How many traps does he have out?”
“About thirty.”
“That’s a lot of crab.”
“He has… he had a commercial license.” The words turn thick. “It was a hobby. With crab as the result.” She levels me with a glare.
“Did he leave you anything, any letters, anything at all, when he was killed?” I ask it gently as I can manage.
“He was killed? I thought…” Her face crumples.
“Most likely.” No reason to lie to her. “June, I don’t know how to break this to you easier. I don’t know about you, but I want to make it out of this alive, and with any luck, find the lost sub before the smugglers do. We want it in the right hands, and not with them.”
She nods once. Twice.
I inhale deeply, breathing in rhythm with her.
“The crab traps.” She lifts her chin, her pretty brown eyes finding mine, wide with surprise.
“What about them?” I’m suddenly afraid to ask too much, afraid to ruin this momentary peace between us.
“For the record,” she holds up a finger, “I am not sure I buy what you’re saying about my dad willingly working with the smugglers.” She spits out the last word. “But what if he was using the crab traps to leave me a message? About the wreck?” Her lips purse. “He did seem more invested in talking to me about them than he usually was.”
“Then we’d have to find them.”
I don’t like that she doesn’t believe me about her dad, but denial is a helluva drug, and I’m the last one to judge her on that.
Regardless, she’s loyal . That means something to me. Always has.
“He might have left me coordinates for the traps. On his fishing spots list.” Her hands shake as she pulls the wad of papers out of her dress pocket. “I guess it’s a good thing you tried to steal it.”
“Crab traps.” Why not? It’s a better lead than anything else I have.
“He loved puzzles. Loved this kind of thing. It would be like him…” She’s talking to herself, riffling through the papers I tried to swipe off her fridge. “It would be like him to leave me clues and let me work it out for myself.”
“Okay.” I nod. “Then we need some sleep.”
“Huh?” She tilts her head.
“Gotta be well-rested if we’re gonna haul up traps all day tomorrow.”
“We should go now,” she says, her face pinching in irritation.
“Right. Because we want to pull crab traps into the boat in the dead of the night. That seem safe to you?”
She juts her chin up, then her gaze flicks to the bandage on my torso. “Fine. You probably do need your beauty sleep.”
“You sure as hell don’t,” I blurt out. “Couldn’t get any prettier.”
Her jaw drops, and she stares at me. “What?”
“What?”
“Are you trying to hit on me?”
“Babe, if I was hitting on you, you’d know it.” I am an idiot. Idiot.
“Right.” She scoffs, and I’m glad the moon isn’t any brighter, or she might be able to tell I’m flushing in embarrassment.
“I’ll sleep up here. You can have the cabin,” I offer.
“No.” Her face pales against the dark fall of her hair.
“What?”
“No. I’ll sleep up here.”
“It will be more comfortable inside the cabin. There’s no need to be polite.”
“I’m not being polite . I’m telling you no.” She crosses her arms over her chest.
“If you sleep down there, I’ll be the first line of defense.”
“If they get close enough to the boat to where you have to protect me, you’ll be the last line of defense, not the first. Besides, I can protect myself. I don’t need protection.”
“Uh, yeah, you do.” I roll my eyes, exasperation and exhaustion making my tone sharp.
She takes four steps, and hinges squeak as she lifts up one of the boat’s banquette seats. The sound of plastic wrinkling is barely audible over the noise of the waves, followed by the unmistakable click of a magazine being loaded in a gun.
“Not this again.” I can’t help but laugh at her sheer audacity. “Listen, I’ve already been shot once today. That’s my quota.”
“I’m not sleeping down there,” she says, taking a step toward me.
“You don’t have to point a gun at me to get me to agree.”
“Sure seems like it.”
“Fine. You can sleep up here. With me,” my lips say, with no regard for my brain or self-preservation.
“I’m not sleeping with you! You… you donkey.” She gapes at me, but lowers the gun.
I bite my cheeks to keep from laughing. “That’s not what I meant.”
Though my heart races inside my chest at the sudden image of us together, her hair tickling my neck, my mouth trailing kisses across her jawline.
“We both sleep on deck. You can keep your gun. On one condition.” And there go my lips, saying whatever the fuck they want again.
“What?” She tilts her head, the dim moonlight caressing her features.
“You tell me why you won’t sleep down there.”
A choked noise erupts from her mouth.
Shit . I made her cry after all.