Below the Surface (26 page)

“Shooting a speargun at Cole and me. Helping Mark break into this place and search Daria's room—and tamper with our computer?”

“It
is
quite a list, isn't it? But we have to end it all now. Ric won't talk, because he's an accessory. Besides, Mark's going to be my chief congressional aide—at least until we can find the appropriate time to get married. So I'll need a new strong arm, and Ric's agreed to become that.”

Bree could have sunk through the floor. She'd assumed Ric was talking to Sam about a detonator cap and explosives on the phone yesterday. But if Nikki and Mark had killed Daria, were they purchasing those items from Ric on the sly? Josh had said he'd arranged for Sam to get the job blowing up a bridge in Sarasota. He'd probably told Mark or Nikki how Sam had a vendetta against Bree, or maybe Ric, their supplier, had filled them in on that.

A damn spiderweb, but one that looked like it would hold. Bree felt not only helpless but furious. Think! Think, she told herself.

“How did it happen—with Daria? Did you and Mark know she'd be alone on the boat?”

“She brought it on herself—with Josh's help, of course. I don't totally blame her. Blame fate, if you must. I just happened to overhear Josh take a call at our home in Tallahassee when she called him on his business phone. She probably thought I'd never intercept a call coming into his office. But I picked up on the line and heard her tell him she was pregnant—pregnant with his child, when two of mine had died!”

The gun shook in Nikki's hand; she gripped it so tightly her fingers went white. Bree could hear Mark in the back room. What was he doing? She almost wished he'd come back to calm Nikki down. Surely they didn't want to shoot her, at least not here. But Nikki seemed to get hold of herself as she spoke again.

“You were such a smart girl to grill Josh at our little getaway in the cane field by the pond. You were on the right track.”

“You didn't go back to the house,” Bree accused. “You eavesdropped from that thick cane. It was all a setup.”

“
You
were trying to set Josh up. Mark and I both heard every word you two said. Well, you can guess why I got off the handsome, the clever, the
lying
Josh Austin's bandwagon, when he lied to you. Believe me, he's lied to me for months. And, in the middle of a key election, managed to spend time with your sister. Looking at you right now makes me sick—Daria revisited, Daria déjà vu.”

“I may look like her, but I am not my sister. I didn't even know her as well as I thought.” Bree meant every word she said. Daria had not deserved to be killed, but she'd made a mess of things.

“Mark had told me of Josh's affair earlier—or let's say, I managed to entice it out of him,” Nikki went on, as if she had to rid her soul of her guilt in this defiant confession. “But neither of us knew about Daria's pregnancy until I overheard that phone call. Daria told Josh she was going to make up a story to get you to dive alone while she just stayed with the boat. Here's a good one for you—the rocky sea didn't make her ill, but Josh's baby did. Anyway, she was surprised that it was me in the plane, with Mark, instead of Josh. She thought her lover boy had come to surprise her. Mind you, she'd fallen and hit her head and was barely conscious when we arrived. Mark set the detonator and we towed her into Marco Pass before it went off in that fierce storm. I knew she wouldn't resist our plans when she called me by your name and said she was glad you were there.”

Tears blinded Bree. If Daria thought her twin sister was with her at the end, maybe it was some comfort to her. It comforted Bree, though it came from the demented woman who had caused Daria's death. Bree hugged herself around her waist as if to hold herself up. “But when you and Mark became lovers, that was the same deceit you detested Josh for.”

“His was worse! He deserted me because I can't have children. Mark and I joined forces to clean up the mess Josh had made.”

“I can understand how you felt betrayed—especially because of your two losses.” Stunned by all this and desperate to warn those on Verdugo's boat, Bree knew she was struggling for words.

Mark came back out into the office, carrying a big salvage net with a long handle and a length of cord he must have cut off a lift or buoy. “That's not going to work,” Nikki said, pointing at the rope. “We can't have ligature marks on her if she went out in her boat and drowned herself. Take off your shirt and tie her wrists with the sleeves of it.”

Bree's mind seemed to clear. She kept a dive knife under the backseat of
Mermaids I,
but it would do her little good with her hands tied behind her. After Mark shed his sports jacket and stripped off his shirt, she thrust her wrists out in front of her.

“Turn around,” he said, and shoved her toward her desk. She had no choice but to obey, though she knew it might be better to take a bullet here that could be traced. A shot from the distance Nikki was standing couldn't be construed as a suicide, whereas her drowning would. She could see the headline now: Despondent Over Sister's Loss And Failure Of Sea Grass Project, Briana Devon Drowns Self Same Night Casino Boat Is Blown To Pieces. And there would be no one—Cole, Amelia, Ben, even Dom Verdugo—to say different about her.

Then Bree heard the distinctive sound of Manny's old truck. He was here! Could she warn him, or would they shoot her to shut her up? Her heart pounding, she strained to hear his footsteps and his key in the lock. What was taking him so long?

When Bree heard him approach, she opened her mouth to scream. Mark must have heard something, too, for he jammed a handkerchief in her mouth and shoved her to the floor.

“Get over here—cover her,” he ordered Nikki, and darted out from behind the desk. Nikki knelt behind Bree, pressing the gun to her neck. The woman's hand was shaking. Bree dry heaved, choking into her gag.

Manny unlocked the door and the familiar bell rang.

“You upstairs or in the back room, partner?” he called out. “Light's on back in th—”

With a sickening thud, Bree heard Mark strike Manny and his body crumple to the floor.

It was hard to slip away, but Cole finally managed it. Verdugo probably expected him to keep pretending to be part of the
Fun 'n' Sun
team, but he was done with that. He wondered if the guests were swallowing Verdugo's promises of no pollution from this boat half as easily as they were swallowing free drinks and the lobster and lamb entrées.

Keeping an eye out to be sure none of Verdugo's lackeys were on the lower level, Cole went below decks. As far as he could see, the coast was clear.

A glimpse out a porthole he passed revealed a calm night. Stars, no moon yet. He wished he was with Bree to enjoy it and wondered what she was doing. Waiting for Manny or Lieutenant Crawford's call? He was tempted to phone her, but he needed to check out this storage room first, then decide if he was going to search further. He'd have to calculate the timing, the risks.

The storage room was locked, but there was a closed flat cabinet on the wall with keys. Yes, this one was for that storage space. Twice he'd seen Verdugo's goons take keys from here and go into the room. Glancing up and down the corridor, he unlocked the room and darted in. Even when he found the light switch and clicked it on, the small, windowless room was dim. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust.

Not a storage room, but a bedroom. And a naked, Latina-looking young girl was gagged and tied to a single bed, her eyes wide with fear.

“H
er man coming in here is an unfortunate complication,” Mark told Nikki.

Bree strained to listen. As far as she could tell, Manny hadn't moved. Was he unconscious or dead?

“Since we're eliminating anyone who might get in our way, what's one more?” Nikki said, standing and taking the gun barrel from Bree's neck. “It's still best if she commits suicide. Maybe he tried to stop her, and she hit him over the head?”

“Let's go with that. Or maybe Sam came back, stumbled onto this guy and knocked him out.”

This was all her fault! Bree had to get them talking to her again, but they ignored her muffled protests as they dragged Manny behind her desk and relocked the front door. Bree tried to catch a glimpse of him as they pulled her to her feet. He lay facedown, a dark pool of blood spreading under his head. When he'd come in, he'd called her
partner.
They would have worked things out, and he would have worked things out with Lucinda.

Mark pulled Bree to her feet. When she balked, he dragged her through the back room, out the door and down the dock toward her boat slip. Nikki followed, carrying the large net and the key to the boat. Bree had finally put
Mermaids I
in the dock space where the larger, newer boat used to be, the one that had become Daria's coffin. She was the last mermaid left, and
Mermaids I
would be the hearse that took her to her grave.

“Say goodbye to Nikki, because she's not coming,” Mark told her, shoving her into the boat on her belly. She saw he was going to pull the dinghy behind them so he could get back in after staging her suicide. “She's going to campaign headquarters to lie down with a raging headache, while I get rid of its cause for her. A few volunteers are working late tonight, so they'll be a good alibi. I'll walk over there later, and everyone will assume I was with the car the whole time.”

Bree was barely listening. She was near enough to see the knife, but she'd never reach it with her hands tied behind her back. Why didn't someone come along the dock? Nikki kissed Mark passionately—“for good luck,” she whispered—and hurried away.

Everything they did went off like clockwork. Clockwork, like the timed bomb they must have put on the hull of the
Fun 'n' Sun
, where no one would see it.

Cole covered the trembling, naked girl with his suit jacket and carefully pulled the masking tape off her mouth. Despite all that, she spread her legs for him and he had to shove them together. He whispered to her in Spanish that he was here to help her.

Tears filled her eyes.
“Cuidado! Cuidado!”
Careful, she kept whispering.

She was afraid to say anything at first, evidently thinking he was another of Verdugo's guys who had access to her. Finally, he coaxed out of her that she was from Guatemala, where he knew most of the women involved in the human trafficking trade had been taken from their homes or sold by their destitute families. She'd been promised a job as a waitress in a Miami casino, but
Señor Verdugo, he bring her here for his boys.

It was enough to make Cole throw up, but at least it proved he'd been right about Verdugo. Sam might be behind everything else, but Verdugo was dirty, too. He'd get years, not on a luxury yacht but in the state pen, for this.

Cole explained in Spanish that there were some important people on board who could help, but he would have to leave her here for now.

“No, señor! No, por favor!”

Thank God, no one was in the hall, because he could kill Verdugo and his men with his bare hands for this. Wait until he told Bree he'd found a way to stop Verdugo and it had nothing to do with gambling.

Wearing gloves, just as Nikki had, Mark took
Mermaids I
out of Turtle Bay toward open water. As she lay facedown in the boat, Bree felt the vibration of the motor, the rush of water against the hull as they cut through the bay.

Back to the place where this horror began, she thought. The Trade Wreck, where Daria's and her life was wrecked. If he'd just untie her and throw her in, she could swim in again. Piece of cake—no storm, maybe no sharks. But she knew, with the way he and Nikki had set everything else up, he would not just toss her into the water.

And then, as she saw the handle of a large, long-handled retrieval net he'd brought, she realized his possible plan. Maybe he meant to keep her underwater with that net until she drowned. Could she hold her breath long enough to convince him she was dead? If he untied her hands before he threw her in, could she yank him in or swim down and away from him? Did he have the gun or had Nikki taken it? If only she could get control of the boat, could she make it out to the casino yacht in time to tell everyone to get off? How much time was left? It had to be less than half the sixty minutes Nikki had mentioned.

Too soon, they reached the site of the Trade Wreck. Mark cut the motor and let the boat drift.

“Sorry about this, really,” he said as he hauled her to her knees. “If you had just let things go, not played detective after your sister was dead, this never would have happened. You should have taken the warning at the Gator Watering Hole, but we couldn't have you running around knowing what Josh did, because that could point to Nikki in Daria's death. Soon, everyone will point to her as the next senator from Florida, then on to the stars.”

Bree looked up at the stars through her tears. So beautiful but cold and distant. He finally pulled the gag out of her mouth. Her throat was so dry she could hardly talk.

“If she turned on him—she'll turn on you,” she rasped. “In D.C., a stunning and ambitious woman like that, she'll meet someone who can help her move up more than you. Her father won't want her to marry a mere—”

“No,” he interrupted and gave her a shake. “Everything we've done together bonds us for good.”

“She got someone to get rid of him, didn't she? She'll get—”

“Just shut up. That's it.”

He
was
going to use the net to hold her down, and he did not untie his shirt from her wrists. He planned to take it back later, when he was sure she was dead. Could she twist out of the shirt in the water? Could she get free from the net to swim down instead of trying to come up for precious air?

The boat rocked as Mark half picked her up, half rolled her in. She hit backside down and fought to right herself so she could dive, but he put the big net over her. It was a strong-webbed one, meant to bring up large, heavy items. He yanked it down over her and twisted it to entrap her so she couldn't dive or escape.

Then, he shoved her underwater and held her there.

“Amelia, are you all right?” someone asked. She jolted back to reality and jerked away from the rail. It was Cole DeRoca. He looked upset.

“I'm fine.”

“You don't look fine, any more than I do. Would you do me a favor and get Ben out here without drawing attention to it? I have something I have to tell him.”

“Sure,” she said, and started away, then gripped the railing because she felt unsteady. “Is it—not something about Bree?”

“No. Hurry, would you?”

She was back with Ben in less than a minute.

“I was checking a storage room downstairs,” Cole told them, “and stumbled on a young woman tied up there. She's been abused, she's naked and she's terrified. Says she's from Guatemala and Verdugo's keeping her here for his guards—for the whole damn crew to rape, for all I know.”

“Got him!” Ben said, smacking his palms together. “I don't care what kind of lawyers he pays for, I'll get him at least ten years for harboring a sex slave. And we get rid of the casino boat at the same time. Bingo!”

“But so we don't have a knock-down drag-out fight when they realize we've found her,” Cole said, “we'll have to leave her there until we get back to the dock or get the coast guard out here.”

“You can't leave her there for one more second!” Amelia cried. Both men had obviously forgotten she was here. But how dare Verdugo or anyone else treat a poor girl like that!

“…so let's come up with a story,” Cole went on, “that someone's ill, and Verdugo needs to head back in early.”

“I can do that,” Amelia told them. “I'll claim an appendix attack, but I'd like to help that girl afterward. Yes, Ben,” she interrupted as he started to speak again, “I know she'll be handed over to the authorities, but someone's got to be her advocate. You'll be busy with media interviews galore when all this hits. Cole,” she added, patting him on the shoulder, “you've saved another woman from destruction. Wait until Bree hears this. That young woman must be traumatized, maybe suicidal, and I know I can help her.”

Bree fought. Grabbing the metal frame of the net with both hands tied behind her, she tried to yank him in. Is this how a netted fish felt, pulled from the realm of the sea where it could breathe only drowning air?
Daria, is this how you felt in the wheelhouse when our boat went down?

Cole. She'd wanted to have a life with Cole. She wanted to build bridges with Amelia, teach the boys to dive.

Should she not struggle, save air? Just accept this? Needed a breath, save air…save herself.

Strange colors pulsated before her eyes, blues and greens, bright gold. Like a lovely underwater dive. Like the sun in the sky with the sea beckoning beyond…

Going to suck in seawater now…going to die…just hold Daria's hand and sink into the soft earth under all the sea grass with her…Cole, smiling, sailing away with Cole…The bright colors in Bree's brain were fading, fading to gray and black. She had been certain she could fight death below the surface. The sea was her friend, but it had taken Daria, and now…now…

With a whoosh, someone pulled her up. Her head broke the surface. She sucked in a huge breath of air.

Had Mark changed his mind? Was she hallucinating? Was she dead?

Bree blinked water from her eyes, took another deep breath into her burning lungs. Not Mark, but Sam Travers. He hauled her over the side of his dive boat, scraping her belly, but she didn't care. If Satan himself had saved her, that was just fine.

Bree lay on her back, gasping in blessed breaths as Sam unwound her from the sopping net.

“Where—you—come—from?” she got out.

“I wanted a quiet boat ride, and I saw the bastard take your boat. Thought he was stealing it, so I followed him. When I figured out he had you in that net, I yelled at him. The SOB took a shot at me, so I shot him with a speargun someone stupidly left loaded here in my boat.”

Perfect justice, she thought. Her head cleared in a flash as she sat up and saw Mark Denton's body, sprawled against the prow of
Mermaids I
with a spear in his chest.

“I should have let him drown you, of course,” Sam went on as she was finally freed. “Here I come back to help Josh Austin with your cause and find out I've been served with a search warrant. If you had anything to do with th—”

“Sam, I know we've had terrible times, but you have to help me,” she said, getting to her knees and then her feet. She was dizzy, but she scanned the horizon beyond the Trade Wreck site. Thank God, Verdugo's big yacht was heading in, not out.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“What?”

“Time! I can't explain now but to say the guy you just shot has planted some kind of bomb—the same kind that blew a hole in Daria's boat—aboard that ship. He got the supplies from Ric.”

Sam swore only once, then seemed to go into combat mode. “It's nine twenty-three,” he told her, glaring at the luminous dial on his watch.

“Then we have twelve minutes to get the explosive off the hull.”

“Twelve minutes? They put a timer on it? Even at full speed, they won't make it in. And I'll never get a diver, let alone the bomb squad, out here by then.”

“Sam, I'm the diver and you're the bomb squad,” she said, grabbing one of the two tanks she saw on board and seizing a mask someone had left near the speargun. She spit in it and started wiping off the plastic to clear it. “And we have to catch that boat while you tell me how to get rid of a demolition cap with a primer cord, like you use to blow up bridges.”

“It's Primacord,” he said. “Just pray we catch that yacht.” He started his motor, leaving
Mermaids I
with the dinghy Mark had planned for his escape in their wake.

“I'll bet you had assignments harder than this in Vietnam!” she shouted. “And I'll bet Ted did in Iraq, too! No matter what you think, Sam, I was proud of him and what he did there.”

Their eyes met. She thought she might have made a mistake mentioning Ted, but Sam nodded fiercely and revved the motor on full speed. “Wish I could have gone after Ted's killers the way you did Daria's!” he shouted.

Fighting tears, Bree nodded and braced herself in the bouncing boat, struggling into the unfamiliar gear and checking the gauge on the tank. Not much air in the tank. “Lights?” she yelled at Sam. “Do you have dive lights?”