Sandra K. Moore - Dead Reckoning

She’d already suffered one setback. Bright and early this morning, Dave had had to confess the air compressor on his spray-painting equipment had failed. No hull painting, he’d said, until the new compressor came in on Thursday morning. And the other boatyards were booked up because it was prime boating season. It was one of the ironies of pleasure boating: no one wanted to fix up their boats until it was weather-fit to use them, which meant they lost half the season to repairs.

But not repairs like the kind she was going to have to do now.

At least Natalie had called yesterday. Three minutes away from the bodyguard she called Igor was all Natalie could grab. While in a public pay toilet, no less. The disposable cell phones she’d bought were extremely handy. Chris just prayed she didn’t get caught with one.

First things first.

The bilge’s overhead lamps cast dim vee’s along the catwalk. Glad I’m not claustrophobic, she thought as she shimmied on her stomach a little farther forward toward the hardest-to-reach through-hull fitting. Damp mustiness filled her nostrils, made her skin clammy despite the growing morning heat. Around her, color-coded wiring and grimy hoses snaked along the hull. A few feet of belly-crawling brought her even with the fitting she was looking for.

The through-hull, placed several feet away on the starboard side, looked pretty rough from the catwalk. The flashlight picked out minute cracks in the hose that fed seawater into the engines’ cooling systems. The clamps securing the hose in place showed specks of rust, too. Chris wiggled off the catwalk and balanced herself over the bilge to get close to the fitting. One good yank and the clamp snapped. Another yank and the hose popped off the through-hull barb. She looked at the crumbling heavy-duty rubber. Were all the hoses this bad?

“Captain Chris?”

A man’s deep voice drifted through Obsession’s dimly lit bowels.

Her stomach clenched until she realized Eugene Falks wouldn’t be casually calling her name. No, this had to be a workman or something. She’d seen the revolver Smitty wore in his shoulder holster this morning and the way his gaze constantly flicked from door to window while he tore out the salon carpet. Nobody was going to get past Smitty upstairs while she lay prone down here.

She leaned against the hull wall to lever herself back onto the catwalk. Nearly there, her hand slipped from the hull and plunged into the bilge. The flashlight clattered, then splashed next to her and went out.

“Dammit.” She fished the dead flashlight out of the filthy bilge water, trying not to use her imagination when her fingers touched solid, shifting objects near the bottom. God only knew what was down there.

“Chris?”

The man was close by, inside the engine room, and still calling her name. She crawled backward to the open crawl space door. Going ass-first into the engine room wouldn’t be much of a greeting for the workman, but what the hey. He could learn to call before showing up.

She wriggled her butt through the hatch, got to her knees, straightened and said sharply, “What is it?”

The first thing she saw was an astonishing pair of gray eyes, very pale irises rimmed with a much darker slate. The man squatted about a foot from the hatch. They were nearly nose to nose, and his gaze pumped every ounce of blood in her body straight to her core.

She registered all of this at once: he hadn’t asked permission to board her yacht, he was in his late thirties, he wore expensive Italian leather shoes, she was smeared with grease and oil, he had thick black hair, her right hand was now bleeding, he smelled wonderful.

Not your average Galveston boat monkey schlepping down to a job.

“Special Agent McLellan?” she asked.

“Connor.” His remarkable eyes gleamed at her, kicking her pulse into high gear.

“Smitty said you’d show up today.”

“He told me you’d had some excitement.” His voice resounded through the engine room. “He also showed me around a little upstairs.”

Chris got to her feet, then closed the bilge hatch. “Obsession’s not much to look at right now,” she said as she looked around for a shop rag to wipe off with, “but she’s built like a tank.”

“I noticed.”

She glanced up to find him staring at Hortense. “You won’t have to worry about the engines. Detroits were made for tough lives. Some built back in the fifties and sixties are still powering shrimpers and tow boats. Hell,” she said, running the dirty cloth over her arm, “these old ladies will outlive me.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“Come on upstairs. I’m ready to look at some daylight.”

He followed her out of the port engine room into the lower deck passageway. “Will all this need to be fixed, too?” He waved a hand at the crumbling wall panels.

“Eventually. Hold your ears.” She shoved the engine room door closed and winced at the metal-on-metal shriek. “Sorry about that. Out of WD-40. The two aft staterooms here were actually in decent shape when I got her, very livable. Mine’s on your right. The one on the left needs a little work.”

She opened her door to flash him a glimpse of her queen-size bed and wall of drawers. The mariner’s compass quilt stretched across the bed’s foot. Two frilly, decorative pillows, a nod less to traditional femininity than to homeyness, lay propped up against the real ones.

He stepped closer, caught the door as she was about to close it. “Very nice,” he said, leaning in.

Chris suddenly realized just how big he was, how his shoulders filled the narrow space they stood in. What was she thinking, showing him her private space? She stepped back to cue McLellan to do the same, then closed the door when he let go. “You and Smitty can fight over the other big cabin.”

She headed for the stairs, tapping doors as she passed them. “Engine rooms, starboard and port. Laundrette. Crew cabin, for the loser.” She turned right up the steps to the upper passageway. When he reached the hall, she pointed to a forward door. “Another crew cabin, smaller than the one below. And behind it, the office.”

She stood at the edge of the salon, looked at the disaster that was once merely a fashion-challenged salon. All of the ratty brown Naugahyde furniture had been shoved onto the aft deck, waiting for a landfill run. The good furniture—the mahogany tables, the brass lamps, a mahogany bench seat with a hand-embroidered cushion—sat on old blankets in the galley. A shirtless Smitty was hoisting a roll of torn and ugly carpet onto his bare shoulder.

“How’s the flooring?” she asked.

Smitty grinned under his rime of dirt. “Solid as a rock. Marine planking. Thirty years old and still has the battleship gray primer.” He headed toward the aft door with his filthy carpet mangle, but paused long enough to say to McLellan, “Change your clothes, boy. You gonna git yo’ ass in gear for a change.”

McLellan raised a brow, unruffled in his crisp white dress shirt and dark slacks. He looked pointedly at the brown carpet strips hanging over Smitty’s bare chest like a furry vest. “Staple some of that to your chest and you’ll stop having woman problems,” he remarked mildly.

“Hey,” Smitty called from the aft deck, “don’t go south with the mouth, pretty boy.”

McLellan just shrugged.

“Have a seat.” Chris waved at the bench seat as she threaded her way through the tables to the galley sink. “I’ll wash up and be right with you.”

“Smitty said there’s a lot of work to be done.” McLellan came to stand by the island counter that separated the galley from the salon. “He told me you were very resourceful.” He paused.

She glanced up at him and found his gaze thoughtful, considering. And admiring as it slid from her chin to her collarbone, then lower. She realized suddenly the thread-bare tank top and satin demi-bra she wore for hot and dirty boat work showed almost as much as they concealed.