“Oh, great,” Frank said, disgusted. “Law enforcement today must receive little or no training.”
“Excellent,” Bob told Darcy. “Now, your backup. The one in your left ankle holster?”
“Sure, no problem.” Darcy kept both hands outstretched, then reached down with one and hitched up the leg of her jeans. She pulled a small gun out of a hidden holster and placed it next to the other one.
“Kick them into the water,” he ordered.
“Good Christ!” Seavey exclaimed “Order her not to comply, Jordan!”
Darcy hesitated, then sighed. “Those guns cost good money, Bob. I don’t exactly have the department budget to replace them.”
“Shut up. I’m not going to ask you again.”
Darcy gave him another quiet look for a couple of beats, then did as she was told.
Jordan closed her eyes. Think, dammit. She had to do something that would distract him, that would give the others the opening they needed. But what?
“The marine charts,” she said suddenly, opening her eyes.
Everyone looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.
“Who gives a shit about the marine charts?” Bob asked.
“I do,” Jordan insisted. “You didn’t go out to Holt’s to retrieve marine charts—you went out there to try to find the documents Holt had discovered at the hotel. Right?”
“Who the fuck cares?” Bob started dragging her backward down the docks, his gun trained on the others.
“I care, dammit,” she gasped, bringing both her hands up to claw his arm where it pressed against her windpipe. “If I’m going to die, I want my friends to make certain Hattie and Michael Seavey know the truth about the shipwreck.”
“You found out something important?” Hattie asked.
“Not now, my dear,” Seavey said.
Charlotte hissed and flew over Bob’s head, missing by mere inches.
Jase’s expression had turned more frantic. Tom was looking from Jordan to Darcy, waiting for some kind of signal.
“No one cares about your lies, got it, Jordan?” Bob grunted. “Christ. If I didn’t need you to get me off this dock right now, I’d shoot you and dump you into the water. Normal people freeze in terror and behave. But no, you can’t quit mouthing off—”
Jordan took as deep a breath as she dared, then closing her eyes and praying, she let her knees fall out from under her, throwing her weight to the side.
Bob started swearing. Charlotte swooped down, knocking the gun partially out of his hand.
A loud boom echoed right next to Jordan’s ear, and Darcy started to fall. Seavey closed in, grasping the gun and struggling with Bob, who started screaming, not understanding what was happening.
Darcy fired as she went down. The bullet went through Seavey, hitting Bob, who fell on Jordan, pancaking her against the wooden timbers, his weight squashing the air out of her lungs. She wheezed, her vision blurring, her fingernails scrabbling for purchase on the wood as she struggled to crawl out from under him.
Bob’s weight was suddenly gone and Jase was holding her tight, his arms banded in a vise around her. “Don’t you know any self-defense moves?” he growled into her hair.
“No,” she said, holding onto him just as tightly, “but I’ll let you teach me some.”
“A little warning would have been nice,” Darcy groused, holding her arm, blood flowing freely between her fingers.
Tom dropped to the dock beside her. “How bad is it?” he asked urgently, pulling her fingers away from her arm. “Let me see.”
“I don’t fucking believe it!” Darcy snarled, ignoring Tom and keeping the gun pointed at Bob, who was lying facedown on the dock, moaning and gurgling oddly. “You got me shot two times in one month?”
“I think that was Charlotte,” Jordan sniffed, reluctant to leave Jase’s arms.
Charlotte huffed. “I saved you!”
“You certainly did,” Jordan agreed, giving her a weak smile over his shoulder.
“Well done, Seavey,” Frank said grudgingly, having pulled Hattie to safety.
Seavey made an elaborate show of dusting off his suit coat. “A life of crime can come in handy at times, can it not?”
Jase pulled Jordan well away from Bob, then retrieved Darcy’s cuffs. He walked back over to Bob, kicking his gun into the water, then knelt to flip him over and cuff him. Tom was on the phone, calling 911.
“You carry three guns?” Jordan asked, faintly incredulous.
“Middle of my back,” Darcy replied, standing as two more patrol cars and an ambulance drove into the marina parking lot, sirens blaring. “Son of a bitch is still alive, more’s the pity. You complaining about me being armed to the teeth?”
“No.” Jordan shuddered.
“Don’t ever do this again,” Jase said fiercely, coming back to hold her. “My heart fucking stopped.”
“But I didn’t do anything,” she protested, her voice muffled against his chest. She was fairly certain she didn’t want to quit holding onto him, either. Any time this millennium. “I had an appointment for a conference call. I had no idea.”
“Fine. Just don’t ‘not do anything’ ever again. Got it?”
“Shook us up real good, babe,” Tom said from beside Darcy. “When Jase got your call …” He paused and shrugged. “I’ve never seen such a laid-back guy move so fast.”
“So I called you?” Jordan asked, finally easing back. “I thought I called Darcy.”
“When you didn’t respond and I heard Bob’s voice in the background,” Jase explained, moving her out of the way of the medics who needed to get to Bob, “I borrowed Tom’s cell and called Darcy.”
“How’d you find me?” Jordan asked. “GPS tracking of the cell signal?”
Darcy rolled her eyes. “You’ve really got to quit watching crime shows. Small towns don’t have that kind of capability. I knew about your meeting with Bob this morning and put it together. My guys were at an accident out on Highway 20, so I told Jase and Tom to back me up.”
She turned to the medics, who were starting to work on Bob. “He’s got a sucking chest wound. You two would be doing the world a favor if you didn’t try all that hard to revive him.”
“Tsk tsk.” One of the medics winked at her without pausing. “So bloodthirsty. I had no idea, and I don’t mind telling you, I find that pretty hot.”
Jordan let her head fall against Jase’s shoulder and waved a limp hand. “I really do need to pee now.”
Chapter 22
JASE drove Jordan’s Prius home because she was shaking too badly to be trusted behind the wheel. At her insistence, he and Tom then left her in the care of the ghosts and went back to nailing siding onto the library wall. Amanda had hip-hop blaring on a boom box in the backyard while she weeded. Occasionally, Tom fired up what Jordan assumed from the deafening, grinding roar could only be the sawsall. The cacophony sounded eerily, blessedly normal.
She sat in the kitchen with everyone around her—Hattie and Charlotte at the table, Frank in his usual place, leaning against the counter behind her, and Michael Seavey standing nearby. Malachi lay at her feet where she could reach down and rub his stomach while she sipped the chamomile tea Charlotte had made for her.
Seavey brought out a cigar, preparing to light it. She glared at him, and to her surprise, he slid it back into his suit coat pocket.
“Pray, explain to us once again the ludicrous reason this man tried to kill you,” he ordered.
“He thought I was going to expose a part of his past—the fact that he was related to Sam Garrett,” she said. “He had a reputation to uphold as the president of the Wooden Boat Society, and he was desperately afraid unsavory details would come out that would cost him his position or harm the charitable contributions to the society. Evidently, the board of governors gets together once a year and determines his salary based on his fund-raising efforts.”