Then he heard a low-pitched voice coming from a patch of marsh. He stopped short, turning in that direction.
“Shane.”
His name floated toward him from out of the reeds.
“Elena,” he answered, relief flooding through him as he changed directions and sloshed toward her. When she came out of the foliage, looking bedraggled but unharmed, he reached her and folded her in his arms. The air was mild, but he felt her shivering and stroked his hands up and down her back, trying to reassure her.
She’d done what he’d asked without question. And to tell the truth, he hadn’t known how it was going to come out. He kept his hold on her.
“Are you all right?” they both asked.
“Yes,” they both answered.
“I was worried about you,” she murmured.
“Same.”
“What are we going to do?” she whispered.
He eased away from her and looked around. “We can’t spend the night in the water.”
“Is it safe to get out? Won’t they come down the shore looking for us?”
“First, the explosions and the firefight at the safe house would have attracted attention. There are probably police all over the area now. Which means the bad guys will get out of here. And if they do stay on the river, they’ll find that the shore is lined with multimillion-dollar estates. They’d have to come onto private property to follow us. And if they did, they’d probably get shot.”
“Isn’t the same true for us?”
“Not if we do it right.”
He waded into the reeds and looked toward the nearest mansion. A few lights were on, which he hoped would discourage the goons from approaching. At the same time, he was hoping that the house was actually vacant, and the lights were set on a timer.
He came back to Elena and motioned for her to follow him along the water’s edge.
A hundred yards farther on, he found what he was looking for, a dock where a large cabin cruiser was moored.
“Wait here,” he whispered.
She huddled in the water by the edge of the pier while he climbed out. He looked around for signs that he was being followed or that anyone in the house had spotted them. When he saw and heard no one, he climbed a ladder onto the horizontal planks, staying low as he crossed to the cabin cruiser and climbed onto the long back deck lined with bench seating. At the far end was a custom-made brown tarp with snaps closing the entrance to the interior. He figured it wouldn’t be closed from the outside if someone was in there.
Still, he was cautious about entering. After pulling a couple of the snaps open, he stuck his head and shoulder inside, waiting for his vision to adjust to the moonlight coming through the windows. Inside was a spacious and comfortable cabin with teak paneling and leather sofas. If it was any indication of the level of luxury in the house, these people were quite well off. And hopefully rich enough to use this property as a vacation escape, not a permanent residence. He saw stairs at the far end of the room, which he assumed led to staterooms.
Ducking back out, he returned to the dock and looked around again to make sure nobody was watching. After several moments, he returned to the ladder where he found Elena still standing in the water, shivering as she wrapped her arms around her shoulder.
“Come on. And stay low when you get up here.”
When he gestured toward the ladder, she climbed up, and he led her toward the yacht, then onto the rear deck. After they were both on board, he crossed to the tarp where he opened more of the snaps.
“Go in.”
“Is this okay?”
He repressed a laugh. “You mean are we trespassing? Yeah, but that’s the least of our worries.”
She ducked through the opening, and he followed, pulling the tarp closed behind him and securing it with an interior hook at the top right edge.
“I can’t see much,” she murmured.
“We can’t turn on any lights. We’ll have to wait for our eyes to adjust. There’s some moonlight coming in through the window.”
He waited until he could see a little, then walked around her to the companionway, taking the stairs carefully in the dark. He felt his way along the narrow passage to one of the cabins and called softly. “Come on, and watch the stairs. They’re steep.”
The windows let in more light down here, and he looked around the small cabin, seeing a wide bunk with storage drawers underneath. He began opening them and found various items of clothing.
When he heard Elena come in behind him, he looked up. She was trying to keep her teeth from chattering and not succeeding very well.
“We need to get out of our wet clothes. There’s stuff we can wear in here. Nothing that fits well, but it will do.”
He rummaged through the items and found T-shirts and sweatpants for both of them.
“We passed a head on the way down the hall.”
“A what?”
“That’s what they call a bathroom on a boat. You can change in there,” he said, handing her a set of clothing.
When she took them from him and turned back the way she’d come, he watched her leave, thinking that he hadn’t planned to spend the night in the same room with her—and certainly not in such close quarters. There were other staterooms on the craft, but he didn’t want to be separated from her now. For a lot of reasons.
He was trying to protect her, and at the same time, he didn’t entirely trust her. After all, she’d gone into S&D to take something that didn’t belong to her. On the other hand, she’d brought it to him. And then she’d offered to grab the bad guys’ attention while he circled around in back of them. All that had to count for a lot, he told himself.
Max and Jack had stayed in the office, hoping for a call from Shane. When he failed to check in, they got out their statewide police scanner. It was all routine stuff, until they caught excited chatter about explosions and a firefight in St. Stephens on the Eastern Shore.
Max gave Jack a long look as he turned up the volume.
“That’s where one of our safe houses is located,” Jack said. “I’m betting that Shane went down there with Elena Reyes. He probably thought they’d be out of the line of fire, but it looks like they ran into trouble.”
Jack’s expression hardened. “And I don’t think we can do anything about it.”
“From the police chatter, I think he got away,” Max said. “At least there was nobody on the property.”
“Or the bad guys scooped them up,” Jack added in a low voice.
“Let’s assume he got away,” Max said. “Too bad we have no idea where he went after that.”
“And if we go down there and get stopped by the cops, we’re going to have to answer a bunch of questions.” He got out his cell phone and stared at the blank screen, willing their partner to call—like that was going to do any good.
Elena retraced her steps, looking along the hallway and finding the bathroom that Shane had mentioned.
She slipped inside and started to close the door. But that left her in total darkness, so she cracked the door again and began tugging at her wet clothing, the blouse and slacks she’d put on for her trip to S&D earlier in the evening.
Quickly she pulled the wet blouse off. Her bra was wet too, and she unhooked it, which left her naked from the waist up. The cold had contracted her nipples, and she looked down at them before reaching for a towel on the rack and drying off the upper part of her body. She thought about taking a shower, but the river water seemed okay.
When her torso was dry, she pulled on the T-shirt, which was a size too big for her. Then she slicked off her wet slacks, panties, and sandals and dried her bottom half before pulling on the sweatpants. When she got the pants on, she pushed up the legs, then draped her wet clothing over the shower rod.