Dark Waters (2013) (22 page)

Music blared and a disco ball glittered overhead. “You don’t dance?” Katherine asked Harvey, who grimaced. She’d avoided him after the whale-watching episode. It had seemed intimate and somehow wrong even though it had been completely innocent.

“Sorry, I’m being rude sitting here with you while your husband is partnering my wife. Would you like to dance?” he asked politely but with obvious weariness.

Katherine smiled. “No. Thank you. My feet are killing me.” She flexed them beneath the table.
Darn heels
. “I’m enjoying the rest.” She didn’t like dancing. Davis had loved to dance and his betrayal had ruined the act for her, although she danced with Ed to keep him happy. She bit her lip. She did a lot of things she didn’t enjoy to keep Ed happy.

“What is it?” Harvey’s voice grew quiet and he leaned closer.

She drew back in shock that she’d let her thoughts show on her face. “Nothing. I, uh, had some bad news this week, that’s all. I’m a little shaken up.” Why was she telling him this? She shot a nervous look to Ed, but he and Barb were lighting up the dance floor with a two-step.

“And Ed doesn’t know?”

Her eyes flashed back to Harvey.

“Don’t worry, I won’t say anything.” Kind eyes crinkled, then grew sad. “Barb is my second wife. My first wife died of cancer six years ago today.”

“Oh, I’m very sorry.”

He nodded. “Melanie would be pissed to see me now.” His eyes were on Barb as she flitted around the dance floor. “It isn’t even as if the sex is any good, you know?”

She choked on a sip of wine.

“Sorry.” He laughed. “Are you OK?”

She nodded, dabbing her mouth with a napkin.

He looked relaxed and more attractive than he had a right to be. “TMI?” He scratched the back of his neck. “Something about you seems to make an honest man out of me.”

Her laugh was sharp and bitter. “That’s ironic, because my first husband went to prison for stealing a million dollars from the city.” She slapped her hand over her mouth. She never mentioned Davis. Never admitted what he’d done to her and their daughter.
Anna
. She still needed to talk to Anna. She couldn’t reach her.

Harvey gave her a long stare. “Do you love your husband?”

Which one?

“Pardon me?” They’d shared a highly moving moment with the whale, but no deep dark secrets. And the subdued male interest in his eyes made her doubly wary. “I really don’t think that’s any of your business.”

“Because I watched you with him and although you listen to him, defer to him even, I don’t sense any great affection and certainly no lust—not on your part anyway.”

Lust?
Her brain screeched. She didn’t think much could shock her, but this man’s words hit her like a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky. “I-I don’t think that is any of your business.”

He put his hand over hers on the white tablecloth. Electricity burned her skin. “I didn’t mean to upset you or annoy you. I’m not some creep who’s coming on to you.” She squirmed in her chair. She was
married
, for heaven’s sake. He squeezed her fingers and let go. “Just that watching how you are with Ed made me see my own marriage in a different light. You made me acknowledge things I’d been trying to ignore.” His lips broke into a sad smile. “Now I figure I’d better do something about it while I’m still young enough to enjoy my freedom.”

She sat aghast. “You’re going to leave Barb?”

His face grew serious. “Please don’t tell her.”

“I’m hardly likely to, now am I?” The conversation made her extremely uncomfortable and hit a little too close to home. She started gathering her things. “Can you tell Ed I have a headache, please?”

“Katherine, please don’t go,” Harvey spoke with quiet desperation.

She paused. “Is telling me that you’re leaving your wife supposed to make me jump into bed with you?”

“Don’t you want more from life than what you have right now?” he countered.

“Like a tawdry fling with a man I barely know?” she snapped. Her head throbbed as if it was about to explode.

“That isn’t what I meant…this isn’t about sex.” He looked angry, but she didn’t care.

Men
.

She stood, knocking over her chair, desperate to escape the stuffy hot lounge. Harvey’s intimate conversation and a barrage of unwelcome questions made her want to keep running and never stop. But she was trapped on this damned ship.

And, OK, she wasn’t deliriously in love with Ed, but they were settled and secure. When Davis had left her bankrupt with no hope of getting a job in the city, Ed had been there to help her out. He’d been the only friend to stick by her. You didn’t forget that sort of loyalty.

She hit the deck at the front of the ship and stared up at the night sky. Pulled an enormous breath deep into her lungs. Then she felt like a fool.

Harvey was rich. Did she really think he wanted to go to bed with
her
?

She was an idiot some days—most days, it seemed.

Her heart squeezed as she remembered what it felt like to fall in love and then to find out your lover had betrayed you. Wasn’t that what Harvey was about to do to Barb? Even if she was a horrible person—and she was—did it mean it was OK to just discard her like a piece of trash?

Isn’t that what you did to Davis?

Her throat felt like she’d swallowed barbed wire as she held back despair.

She couldn’t bear the thought of going back to the room she shared with Ed, so she started walking, letting the chill night air that flowed off nearby glaciers cool her overheated skin. She walked and found the space to grieve for a man who didn’t deserve it.

They were heading onto the street when Brent grabbed Anna’s arm and started marching her forcibly toward their car.

Ouch
. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Someone is in a jeep back there, watching the front door of the apartment complex.” There was the sound of an engine starting, and Brent swore under his breath and dug out the keys. “Move it.”

She swiped the keys from his fingers. “I’ll drive.”

“What…?”

She climbed into the driver’s seat while he gaped at her.

“Get in.” She adjusted the seat closer so she could reach the pedals.

He got in fast. She put her blinkers on and pulled out. Stopped for a cyclist. Brent looked at her like she’d morphed into an alien species.

“What?” she asked pulling out sedately into the flow of traffic.

“If those guys are the people I think they are, you need to release your inner Indy 500 driver and ditch the schoolteacher.”

Her cheeks felt hot. “I told you, I’m not made for breaking the law.”

He looked over his shoulder. “Well, look on the bright side. You’ll be too dead to be arrested if these guys catch up with us. Why the hell did you insist on driving?” He sounded pissed and angry, and hurt unwound in her chest.

“Because,” she said with deliberate slowness, “if I get caught I get a ticket. If you get caught breaking the law,
you
go back to
maximum security
.”

He rechecked the mirror. “Better that than dead—although maybe not. Drive!”

She slammed her foot on the accelerator and took a turn, then another, until they’d almost gone in a full square.

Brent kept looking behind him. “Not bad. Did you see that on TV?”

“
Hawaii Five-0
.” She pulled out onto the main highway. “One of those rare shows that’s just as good with the sound off.” She swore when she saw the dark jeep cut back out on the street behind them.

“What do we do now?” This sort of excitement was not something she was equipped for.
Thanks, Papa.

Brent leaned forward. “If they shot a cop, they aren’t going to worry too much about injuring innocent civilians.” Anna looked around at the minivans and cars full of people on the road even at this late hour.

“They can probably trace the tags on this vehicle if they get close enough to read them. But from the way they’re hanging back, I don’t think they know we spotted them. Maybe they figured we just got lost back there.” He gave her a look. “Try not to let them get close enough to see our tags.”

Anna bit her lip and nodded. It meant getting off the freeway. Now. She took the next exit and kept going into the burbs, turning into a supermarket parking lot in the hopes she could cut through some back alleys and lose this guy.

“Over there.” Brent pointed to the railway line running along the southern edge.

Anna heard the low rumble and whistle of a train.

“We’ll make it if you’re fast,” Brent urged.

Was he nuts?

“The barriers are starting to come down.” Her heart hammered her chest. She flashed a look in the rearview and saw the jeep moving ever nearer. It was hard to judge distance at night, but the jeep looked a hell of a lot closer than the train.

Red lights flashed and the barriers were almost down. It was now or never.

“Do it.”

She held tight to the wheel in case the tracks wrenched it out of her hands and pressed her foot to the accelerator. Brent braced his arm against the dash. There was a car in front of them and one approaching the crossing from the other side. Anna saw a lot of bright lights and felt the rumble of the locomotive through her clenched teeth. Accelerating hard, she pressed her foot to the floor, whipping past the compact in front and causing the driver to swing in her direction with a look of openmouthed horror. Her throat went dry as she crashed through the first barrier, the sound harsh and loud despite the roar of the train. She lost control as she hit the first rail and the car slowed to a crawl. She swung to face the locomotive. A train had killed her father just a few days ago and now she was staring into her own nightmare scenario. It was going much faster than she’d realized. Her heart thundered. Black spots danced in front of her eyes as she hyperventilated.

The train blew its whistle, brakes screaming through the night.

“Floor it!” Brent yelled. If she’d been in the passenger seat, she’d have gotten out and run.

The train wailed again angrily. She revved the car hard and finally broke through the barrier on the other side and shot away with only moments to spare. There was the sound of brakes squealing on the other side. But a quick glance in the rearview told her they’d lost their pursuers, and from the half-mile-long
line of containers on the track, they were going to leave these guys way behind.

“Nice driving, slick.”

She tried to talk but couldn’t utter a word. Her skin steamed with perspiration.

“It’s OK. They rarely give jail time for first offenders.”

Anna tried to swallow but her mouth was too dry. “If you’re trying to make me feel better, it isn’t working.”

Brent rested a large hand on her shoulder. It burned through the cotton of her blouse. “We need to get out of here before they send reinforcements.”

Crap. Her pulse pounded and her skin grew clammy. “I want to go home.” A deep longing rose up inside her. She wanted to return to her normal life.

He looked at her as if considering. “It might not be such a bad idea. We can be in Minnesota in a few hours. But you can’t actually return
home
until this is over.”

“We could check the mail at school and at my house.” These were the most likely places her father would have mailed the evidence, and damned if she’d let these people find that envelope and get away with murder.

“We can swing by and hole up somewhere else in the city. Figure out our next move. There sure as hell isn’t anything at your dad’s place.”

The need to regain some normality swelled inside her. “Let’s do it.” She longed to see her white picket fence and rambling rose. Talk to people she knew and trusted. See places she was familiar with. And if she didn’t find the envelope, she was going to the cops. She was done being chased by killers.

It was early in the morning. Rand got out of the shower and toweled off. He’d caught a combat nap. Tension and rage had racked up, before condensing into a solid core of anger. He’d dumped the
redhead in the bush—more or less alive—and driven to Victoria, then retrieved his and Marco’s belongings from the motel. Then he’d stolen a small plane from a man who wasn’t going to report it any time soon and made his way back to the mainland, heading across the border into Seattle and catching a commercial flight.