Superior Storm (Lake Superior Mysteries) (38 page)

She turned to stare at me with wide eyes. I pulled her closer.

“Leyla Bennett,” I said
softly
, “will you marry me?”

Her shoulders began to shake. Her face twisted strangely. Then her whole body was shaking. It took me a moment to realize that she might be laughing. I waited with difficulty.

“You – ” she gasped, “you – wouldn’t have
planned
it this way?” Now she was laughing in earnest. I felt Stone twist to look at us. A smile began tug at the corner of my mouth.
I could see her point.

“Yeah. I meant to salvage a bottle of wine and two goblets. And we were supposed to sink in Fish Lake, not Superior.”

Now we were both laughing out loud. The others were starting to stare at us. Suddenly
,
Leyla stopped laughing and hugged my neck with so much force that it set my head to aching again. She released me and looked at my eyes. There were tears in hers. “Yes,” she said. “Yes
,
Jonah. Yes, here, yes in Fish Lake, yes whenever, wherever.”

I wasn’t sure how much the others had heard, but I didn’t really care. We bobbed in silence for a while, holding each other tightly, alone
with each other
even the midst of that miserable huddle.

Another wave washed over us, and my head went under water. In the second before I bobbed back up, I heard a thin whine. I came up, and then dipped my head forward under water again
, though the cold
made it ache even more
. The whine was still there. Anyone who has ever swum in a lake in the summertime knows that sound. It is the noise
a motor
-
boat makes in the water when it is near.

“Boat,” I spluttered. “I can hear it.”

Several people thrust their heads under quickly. “I hear it too,” said Leyla.

“Where is it?” asked Phil.

“No way to know,” said Stone. He sounded very hoarse. The only one who did no talking at all was Angela.

After about two minutes
,
we heard a sound above water – the sound of
a
powerful
,
high speed motor.

“Here!” shouted Holland. He flung his hand over his head and shouted again. It was ridiculous, of course. They wouldn’t be able to hear us over the sound of their own engines. And seeing us was only slightly more possible.
However, they might slow and start to search when they encountered the wreckage of Holland’s boat.
A
ll of us began to shout and fling our arms into the air, especially whenever we were at the top of a wave.

And then, incredibly, Phil shouted, “I see it! Over here!” He let go of Angela next to him
,
and threw both hands into the air.
“Over here! Over here!”
Then I saw it too – a
powerboat, circling slowly,
through the flotsam,
about sixty yards away. We went insane, shouting and waving. I kicked my feet to try and rise up higher above the water. Miraculously, the boat circled closer, and then we could see that they spotted us. Less than a minute later
,
it pulled up next to us.

Iverson leaned out over the side and looked at
us, Felix
and Jones
beside him
. “You folks need a ride?” he asked.

With some difficulty, they got us all on board the launch. None of us had much strength to help, so Jones and Felix had to dead-lift us out of the water like fish.
Stone cried out once as they pulled him up by his arms, but after that he was quiet. When I was on board, I pointed to Angela, Phil and Red. “Those are the bad guys,” I said to Iverson. He jerked his head at Felix who moved and stood over them.

“Just sit still now,” he said.
It was probably the easiest guard duty anyone had ever had. Not one of us had the strength in our frozen limbs to even point a gun, much less lift one.

The rest of us
huddled forward
, sitting
up under the bow-deck, in front of Iverson’s feet as he piloted the boat. Jones
found two canvas tarps. He wrapped one around Angela, Phil and Red, and the other around Leyla, Jasmine, Stone and I. We all moved close together, and eventually began to feel a tin
y trickle of warmth, though n
one of us was able to stop shivering.

Iverson gunned the engines
,
and the noise was too loud for conversation.
I held Leyla’s hand under the tarp.
At
least, I hoped it was Leyla’s. She smiled at me, and the hand seemed too small for Stone, so I guess I was all right.

Time seemed to go on forever, but it was probably less than an hour when Iverson cut the engine back
,
and we slowed. From my low vantage point, I caught a glimpse of the great hull of the
Superior Rose
.
While Felix stood relentless guard on Angela and her gang,
we
were hoisted up the side of the freighter and swung into deck. I saw that this time we were at the forward superstructure, rather than the rear one where the engine was. After we were all off the launch, Iverson led us
into the ship
,
to a large room
walled with
cheap fake
-
wood
paneling
. The floor was shiny
,
dark
-
blue linoleum. There were tables and chairs and
inexpensive
wood-framed couches
bolted to the floor of the
room, and two long windows in one wall.

“This is our crew’s mess,” he said. “The captain will be down in a little while.”

We stood on the floor, dripping. After a minute
,
two sailors walked in, carrying towels, blankets and dry men’s clothing.
One of them was Jones.
Jasmine and Leyla held one of the blankets in a corner for each other while
behind it,
they dried and changed. Stone and I did the same. Phil held a blanket for Angela, and the
n
he and Red held it for each other.

When
we
were dry
,
and I was beginning to feel warmer tha
n
I could recall
ever feeling
, we sat down, wrapped in blanket
s
.
Leyla and I cuddled on a love
-
seat
under one of the windows
. Stone and Jasmine shared a couch to our right, while Phil and
Red sat at a right-angle to
our left,
against a wall.
Angela was across from us, next to the door, in a chair by herself.

“
Superior Rose
,” said Jasmine, looking at a life
ring
hanging on the wall, stenciled with the name of the ship. “Jonah, your life vest said
Superior Rose
.”

“Oh yeah,
Borden’s
been here already,” said Iverson. “He was here last night.”

Six pairs of eyes swiveled in unison to stare at me. So I told them briefly about my adventures of the night
before
. Then I turned to Iverson. “But what were you doing out there, still? I thought you guys would be long gone.”

“Cap’n got permission from the company to remain in the area,” said Iverson. “At least until the Coast Guard gets here.
”

“So you aren’t the
C
oast
G
uard?” asked Angela, speaking for the first time since we had all gone into the water.

“No,” said Iverson.

“
W
ait,” said Leyla. “You were safe aboard here, and you came
back
to the
Tiny Dancer
?”

I nodded.

“Stupid fool,” muttered Stone.

“We’d all be dead if he hadn’t,”
said Jasmine, looking at me.

I was getting uncomfortable. “But why were you out there in the launch?” I asked Iverson.

“No way
was I
going to throw you in the water and sail away,” he said. “We waited and made as sure as we could that you got back on board. It was hard to tell, but we came slowly up behind to pick you up, in case you hadn’t.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Anyway, Cap’n and I talked about it. We decided before I left that if we got permission, it wou
ld be best for me keep trailing
you
,
but out of sight, at least until the cavalry got here. With
such poor
visibility and the noise of the storm, we
were able to keep
pretty close to you.
You
weren’t using
running lights, but you did use cabin lights
, so that helped
.
T
hen
,
all of sudden
,
we lost you.”

“We veered off course for a while,” I said. “To try and buy time.”

“Plus we ran out the battery,” said Jasmine, “so you probably quit seeing our cabin lights about the time we went off course.”

Angela’s face darkened
,
and she looked at us with venom in her eyes.

“So that was it,” said Jones. “Anyway, we thought
it was over. We circled around for an hour
or
two along the course you were supposed to be on, but we couldn’t pick you up. And then all of sudden, just before dawn, there you are in high-fi sound, talking on the ship-to-ship channel. That was
the same channel
we were using to talk to the
Superior Rose
.
They heard you too,
so we triangulated your position between the launch and the
Rose
.
We were coming up kind of slow, trying not to let you know we were there, when all of sudden we he
ar
an explosion. After that we raced to your last known position and starting circling. You’re lucky we found you. Another fifteen minutes, you’d all be frozen to death.”

“Maybe not that long,” said Jones, leaning against a wall.

“What happened anyw
ay?” I asked, looking at Phil
. “Why’d you guys
detonate the bomb
?”

“Angela pushed the button before you
got
out of the
Tiny Dancer’s
c
abin,” said Jasmine.
“
Luckily they had
programmed
a two minute
delay between the activation and the
detonation;
I suppose
to give them a little time if something went wrong. It saved our lives.
When we saw you had the money, they figured it out and started jumping overboard.
”

There was a brief silence
,
and then the door squeaked open. Captain
Dillon stepped into the room. This morning he was in uniform, apparently in honor of so many guests. I felt a little hurt that he hadn’t dressed up for me the night before, but then, no one likes to be overdressed at midnight.

“Here they are
,
Cap’n,” said Iverson.

“Thank you
,
First,” he said. He found my face and nodded. “Borden.”

I opened my mouth to thank h
im
,
when suddenly
,
Angela stood,
threw off her blanket
and wrapped her left arm around the
c
aptain’s neck. Her right hand held a small pistol – maybe a twenty-five or thirty-two caliber. She pulled him into the center of the room,
pushed the gun into Dillon’s temple
and looked at Iverson.

“That’s my gun,” said Jasmine.

“Get on that phone, and tell someone to get the launch ready,”
said Angela to Iverson
. “We’re leaving again.”

He just gaped at her. We all did.

“Angela,” said Red. “It’s over.”

“Shut up R
ichard
,” she said. “
It will
never
be over.
I will not let them win. I will not let him hurt me again. We are going to get away, and he is going to die.
Phil
ip
, get Leyla. Richard, get Borden.
”

For three heartbeats
,
it was like we were in a wax museum. No one moved. We all stared at Angela’s white face, twisted and working with fury and desperation. Red was just starting to rise when there was a tremendous echoing boom. Angela screamed and dropped her gun, clutching at her shoulder and staring at her husband.