Warren Murphy: Troubled Waters

He stared into her blue eyes for a moment, seeing love and hate mixed up there. He didn't take the animosity personally. She just needed somebody to vent on. "Okay," he said, "let's take a walk."

Outside, she kept pace easily with long, athletic legs. In other circumstances, Remo might have complimented Stacy Armitage on her appearance, but today, it would have felt like hitting on a widow at her husband's funeral.

"We're walking," she said at last. "Now what?"

"I want you to relax and trust me when I say that someone's working on the case. We haven't broken it, but I don't give up until I get results. You have my word."

"Your word? Trust you? For all I know, you could be someone from the tabloids. They've been sniffing after Kelly since those fishermen-"

"I'm not a newsman," Remo said.

"So, you're some kind of cloak-and-dagger character, is that the deal?"

"No cloak, no dagger," Remo told her. "But I get-"

"Results, I know. You said that. But these bastards aren't American. Suppose you find them in some pissant country where we don't have extradition treaties?"

"I'll come up with something," Remo said.

She stared at Remo for a moment, then she said, "I'll help you."

"Not a chance."

"Why not?"

"Because you're a civilian. Does that ring a bell?"

"My brother's dead! My best friend kidnapped, raped and God knows what else! So far, no one from the mighty FBI or any other federal agency has got a freaking clue about who did it, and you're telling me you don't need help?"

"Help, I can use," said Remo. "But an angry relative with no authority or diplomatic standing who starts raising hell with foreigners on their own soil doesn't qualify as help. You'd be a problem, and I've got enough of those already."

"And how do you propose to stop me, Mr. Remo Rubble?"

"Well, for openers, I think I'd call your father on the Hill and tell him that you're interfering with official business, jeopardizing any chance we have of tracking down the men who killed your brother. I don't think he'd take that very well, do you?"

Stacy went pale, and then her cheeks flushed brilliant crimson, anger leaping from a simmer to an instant, rolling boil. "You wouldn't dare!"

"There was a pay phone in the hospital lobby," Remo said. "I'll have it done in the next three minutes."

The angry color faded back a shade or two, her shoulders slumped, and for the second time in twenty minutes Remo found himself about to watch a woman cry.

"I have to do something," she said between clenched teeth. "I can't take any more of this infernal waiting, sitting on my hands while someone else goes out and sniffs around, then comes back saying that he can't do anything."

"You haven't heard me say that," Remo told her.

"Not yet."

"And you won't, I promise you," he said, all the while wondering why he was being sympathetic instead of trying to shake the woman loose. "I'm on this job until it's done. I can't think of a single reason why you should trust me, after what you've been through, but you can."

"I don't want them in jail, you understand? I want them dead."

His shrug was casual, but at that moment Stacy Armitage caught a glint of something in the face of the man who called himself Remo Rubble. It was the slightest muscular change along the corners of his mouth, like the start of an ironic smile that never came into being. She noticed his eyes then.

She had heard men described as having cruel eyes and harsh eyes, and that was always considered romantic. Rugged. The eyes of the man who called himself Remo were at once sardonic, and maybe a little friendly, and very, very dead.

Stacy Armitage was afraid for a fraction of a second when she knew that her remark had hit home with this man. She had said she wanted the perpetrators dead. This man had committed himself, before he even knew her, to accomplishing just that deed. This man was a killer. And if he was on the case, if he was working for the U.S. government, that meant he was a hired assassin.

Stacy Armitage was pretty sure that was against the rules. But at that moment she couldn't have been more pleased.

The man with the ridiculously false name of Remo asked, "Can I drop you somewhere?"

"No," she said. "I'm going back inside to spend time with Kelly."

"She's asleep."

"Maybe I'll wait," said Stacy Armitage, and Remo knew she was not referring to her visit at the hospital.

"That would be best," he agreed.

"But only for a little while."

"Let's hope," he said, "that's all it takes."

He left her standing on the sidewalk, and was pleased to find that his boring little Nissan rental car had attracted no hordes of angry civilian or military law-enforcement personnel. The shiny red Italian sports car he had rented in New York, he decided, was a lot like the handmade Italian shoes he wore-they were good for about a day's use before you got rid of them.

When he glanced in the Nissan's rearview mirror, Stacy Armitage had disappeared inside the hospital once more. Grimly he hoped that she was a problem solved.

All he needed was an emotionally involved relative-slash-friend mucking things up while he went hunting pirates.

Chapter 5

"You wanna check the damn chart again?"

"I checked the damn chart a dozen times already," Jon Fitzgivens answered. "It doesn't tell me anything. You want to check the damn compass?"

"Smart-ass."

Tommy Gilpin wasn't absolutely frantic yet, but Fitzgivens could tell that he was getting there. Beneath the deep suntan his cheeks were flushed an angry pink, verging on salmon, and he gripped the Salome's wheel with one big hand-the same one that had served him so well hurling footballs downfield for the Princeton Tigers before he had moved on to Harvard Law School. He had a kind of "sue the bastards" look about him now, but even after three years of the paper chase, he couldn't think of anyone to blame for getting lost at sea through his own negligence. Not yet, at least.

"Still lost there, Tom-Tom?" Barry Ward was annoyingly cheerful as he emerged from the Salome's companionway, leading to the staterooms belowdecks. The reason for good humor was close behind him, still adjusting her bikini top and patting at her cheeks to help disguise the flush of sex. As if they all wouldn't know she and Ward had just been doing the nasty belowdecks-if for no other reason than she never wore her bikini top except for an hour or so after getting laid.

"Looking good, Meg," Jon Fitzgivens told her with a rakish smile.

"We are not lost," Tommy said, glaring out to sea as if he were expecting helpful signposts to appear above the waves. "I know exactly where we are."

"Then share, by all means." Barry was goading him and enjoying the game, but took the precaution of remaining outside their self-appointed captain's reach.

"We're west of Saint Lucia, roughly southbound."

"Roughly?" Barry said. "Is that one of those nautical terms they taught you at yachting school, little buddy?"

"Listen, Bare, old chum, if you think you can handle this, by all means, step right up. I'm sure we'd all enjoy the show."

"I wouldn't dream of it, Tom-Tom," said Barry. "Not when we've all come to trust your navigating skills so much."

"Leave him alone for Christ's sake, Bare." Felicia Docherty was glaring back at Barry from her place on the forward deck, where her long brown body lay almost fully exposed to the Caribbean sun, her small bikini top untied, the thong between her buttocks looking more like a sensuous bookmark than swimwear.

Barry was considering a comeback when his own squeeze, Megan Richards, caught him with a graceful elbow to the ribs and shook her head in warning. Barry grinned at her and shrugged, leaned in to kiss her lightly on the lips, apparently deciding that he could afford to let it go-at least until they sighted land again. If Tommy lost his head and pitched somebody overboard out here, God knew how many miles from anywhere, there could be hell to pay before the others tossed down a life preserver. And how would they explain a missing person to their parents, much less to the staid authorities in West Palm Beach?