Karen Harper - Drowning Tides

* * *

“I wish my daddy was flying this plane,” Lexi told Nick as their flight took off from Grand Cayman the next morning.

Claire silently wished he was too, that she knew he was all right, at least.

“I’m sure he’s a very good pilot,” Nick said.

Lexi was in the seat between them with Claire next to the window. They had made a few hasty plans during their beach walk earlier this morning and agreed again not to talk about serious strategies until they were home. They’d learned to put nothing past Clayton Ames, including trusting no one on the plane, even if Nick had arranged the tickets.

Claire was grateful he was handling Lexi so well. She sighed and pressed her forehead to the window and watched below as the plane circled to head north. In a stretch of blue-green water, she glimpsed the outline of what might be one of the many wrecked ships that had run aground on the rocks or reefs here over the years.

“Lots of sailboats out today, and new cruise ships are putting in,” she observed.

“I like boats,” Lexi said. “Ones with sails like big wings, lots bigger than Tinker Bell’s wings in Peter Pan.”

“So you like boats?” Nick asked her. “You know, that gives me an idea about where we could live for a while. And it would be lots of fun.”

Claire’s head snapped around. If he meant on a boat, at least that might keep Ames’s lackeys and their eyes and ears away from them.

“But your boat isn’t big,” she said.

“No, but I know someone whose boat is.”

“Mr. Kilcorse doesn’t like boats,” Lexi said, still holding her green stuffed turtle they had checked again for listening devices, though Nick intended to have it x-rayed too. “Just like Daddy, he likes airplanes. I heard him talking on his cell phone, walking back and forth. He was telling someone he had to pay a lot of money to fly into Cubes.”

“Cubes?” Nick asked. “Could he mean Cuba?”

“Maybe. They locked me in a bedroom and said to sleep but I was too scared and peeked and listened under the door. And then he said—”

“Okay, enough for now,” Nick said with a pointed look at Claire. “You and Mommy and I will talk about this later.”

Claire nodded. It was going to be interesting to use her forensic psychologist training to depose her own daughter as a witness. She’d vowed she was all in to help Nick solve his two cases. One, what was Ames up to and how could they expose and stop him? They had to get something on Ames so the FBI or IRS could step in.

And two, she’d told Nick she’d question witnesses or people of interest in the so-called Mangrove Murder case he’d promised to take to defend his friend. So much for her promise to herself that, after surviving the St. Augustine murder/suicide case, her next Clear Path assignment would be for a local department store that wanted her to question office workers about possible embezzlement.

While Lexi had skipped shells into the water this morning, Claire had told him that she’d help. This trip to Grand Cayman had been bad enough but communist, Castro-held Cuba? That sounded more risky than any other offshore hideout Ames could have holed up in.

Since Nick had said that Ames just disappeared sometimes, could it be to Cuba? The place was off-limits for American businesses and visitors, but Claire knew Cuba had tourists from Canada, so an American could surely sneak in, especially one with money and clout. She’d ask Nick if people had to do big business with the Castro brothers to get a foothold there. No one was going to play with people’s lives—forcing them to marry, kidnapping children—not if she could help it. She knew Nick was dedicated to that devil’s demise, and surely Jace was too.

As if Nick had read her thoughts, he leaned over Lexi and said in a quiet voice, “I’ll get Heck on it, since he has Cuban heritage, but I’ve learned to put nothing past ‘Uncle Clay.’”

“I see that now. I understand.”

“Do we have to whisper?” Lexi asked. “I can’t hear good with the sound the jet engines make. And I know we’re not there yet, ’cause Daddy says you can always tell when you’re going down to land. Mr. Nick—I mean, Nick—sometimes Mommy says, don’t keep asking this, but are we there yet?”

“Mommy is absolutely right,” Nick said with a laser beam look at Claire. “We are definitely not there yet but we’re going to be soon, in more ways than one.”

8

“You did what?” Claire’s sister, Darcy, cried. She jumped up to close the kitchen door to the living room where their daughters were playing.

“It’s no secret. Lexi knows, and she’s happy with it,” Claire insisted, crossing her arms over her chest. “We just got back last night, and I didn’t want to tell you over the phone. I’m surprised Lexi didn’t blurt it out. It was all rather rushed, but—yes, Nick and I got married in Grand Cayman at the house of a—a friend of his.”

Her blue eyes wide in her freckled face, Darcy collapsed in her seat across the kitchen table and raked her fingers through her spiky blond hair. “Claire, you eloped once before but you were young and crazy. And look what happened to you and Jace—”

“That’s way in the past. I wanted you to know about this.”

“How thoughtful, after the fact, after all we’ve been through together. So you won’t be an almost neighbor to us anymore. How can I watch Lexi for you, how can the girls stick together—how can we?” Her voice rose to a shrill pitch and tears clumped her eyelashes together.

“I’m so sorry I let you down—all of you, Steve and Drew too. But it was—it happened and it was necessary, and you’ll just have to trust me on th—”

“Necessary! You’re pregnant?” she gasped. Finally, Darcy leaned across the table and reached for Claire’s clenched hands when her body language before had been stern and standoffish. One of Claire’s skills was reading body language and Darcy was hurt as well as mad.

“No, not that kind of necessary,” Claire assured her.

“I guess not, now that I think of it.” Darcy sat back again. “You’ve barely known the man three weeks. You could be pregnant, but you wouldn’t know this fast. Don’t tell me you married him for his money. For financial security? You said you were going to build your consulting company. But it looks to me like you can’t even walk a straight line right now, let alone a clear path. You’ve been bound and determined to be self-sufficient. I get it that the guy is Nick Markwood, eligible bachelor, great-looking, well-off and all that but—I—I just wish I’d been there.”

Blinking back her own tears, Claire got up and went around the table. She was almost afraid to touch Darcy at first, but she leaned close and put a hand on her shoulder. She’d always leaned on Darcy. Right now Claire hadn’t exactly lied, but she could hardly tell her the truth. She prayed she wasn’t endangering Darcy, her husband, Steve, and two kids by sharing even this much. But word would get out, and her family—what was left of it—had to know.

Worse, wait until Jace heard. Once he’d arrived back in US airspace, he texted her from the plane that he’d heard they were headed home with Lexi so he was coming back too. But he’d go absolutely ballistic when he heard his daughter had a new stepfather. He’d feel so betrayed if she couldn’t explain it to him—and could she?

“M-m-maybe,” Darcy said through sniffles, “I’m more like our mother than I wanted to admit—like, I mean, maybe I’ve had my head in the sand, like she always had hers in a book.”

“No, it isn’t that. I—I just didn’t level with you about Nick. This is all on me.”

“And here, I was psyching you out that you still cared for Jace and vice versa, but then you’re the psych major, not me.”