Dar handed over the milk jug and took a bottle of Yoohoo for herself. She closed the door and braced her foot up against the counter, freeing both hands to open the can and hold it.
Kerry did the same, and they drank in silence together for several moments. Then Kerry wiped the back of her hand across her lips and cleared her throat. “Paladar?”
Dar was caught in mid-gulp. “Mmph?”
“Next time, we call the police.”
“Mm?”
“Or the Coast Guard, or the Army, or the Navy, or the Secret Service, or whoever, whatever it takes,” Kerry rasped. “Because we’re not going to do that ever again.”
Dar put her Yoohoo down in the sink and leaned over, kissing Kerry on the lips for a long, sweet moment. Then she backed off a few inches and looked Kerry in the eye. “Deal.”
Kerry licked her lips. Then for good measure, she licked Dar’s, but her face grew serious. “I thought I’d lost you,” she whispered.
“I was going insane.”
From somewhere inside her, some echo, some inner core rarely tapped, Dar smiled. “Take more than that asshole and his entire crew put together to make me leave you,” she replied, resting her head against Kerry’s, the image of the gun, and the click, and the horror already fading. “Way more.”
Kerry studied Dar’s face. “Were you scared?’ she asked. “I was.”
Was I? “I think I was too freaked out to be scared,” Dar admitted, then fell silent, her brow creasing.
Terrors of the High Seas 327
Kerry took another swallow of milk, washing the taste of salt from her mouth with a sense of relief. “We should get dry,” she said. “I feel like warmed over puppy poo.” She held on as the boat rolled again. “But hey…you know we did it.”
“We did it,” Dar confirmed softly. “Bud’s okay. We’re all okay.” Slowly, she slid one arm around Kerry and hugged her carefully.
Kerry put down the milk jug and returned the hug, pressing her body up against Dar’s despite their mutual dampness. Then she pulled back a little and looked at Dar’s chest. “Oh.”
Dar looked down, at the pin. “Yeah. Don’t know why he did that.”
The blonde woman looked at it for a long moment, then tipped her head up to look at Dar. “Honey, you saved his life,” she said with a little frown. “Don’t you remember?” From the expression on Dar’s face, Kerry knew she didn’t. “You did. When we were in the little boat before you…before that bastard hit you.”
The pale blue eyes shifted and lost focus, then Dar gave her head a little shake. “I don’t remember. I remember getting out of the cabin…those guys were running around…”
“Dad was in the boat. They focused a light on us,” Kerry told her. “The guy on the yacht had a gun and he was going to shoot Dad. You tackled him.”
“I did?” Dar vaguely remembered being angry, and a lot of yelling, and... “Oh. Yeah.” The smell of hot blood came back to her.
“Now I remember,” she murmured. “Wow.”
Kerry put her arms around her partner and hugged her again, tightly.
“Let’s go change.” Dar rocked her back and forth. “Then see if they need any help up there.”
Kerry felt a faint laugh shake her body. “With three sailors driving?”
“Yeah.” Dar started to move toward the bedroom with Kerry stuck to her like a barnacle. “It’s my name on the captain’s license.”
“Little late to be worried about that.”
“Mm.”
Chapter
Twenty-seven
THE MARINA AT St. Thomas was in total chaos. Boats from all over were coming in to shelter there from the storm, and the tossing whitecaps made the possibility of collision a very real danger.
Dar put on her rain slicker and climbed up to the flying bridge to join Andrew as they rumbled at just over idling speed in a holding pattern. “What a mess,” she murmured to her father.
“Yeap,” Andrew agreed. “Told them dockmasters we had us a problem. They’re getting us a slip,” he informed her. “How’s Kerry doing?”
“She’s all right,” Dar said.
Andrew studied her. “You doing all right?”
Dar nodded. “I feel like I was hit by a bus, but other than that, Mr. Lincoln, I enjoyed the play.” She sat down in one of the seats at the console and rested her hands on it.
Her father chuckled. “Tough day.”
“Hell yes.” Dar tried to remember the start of it and found she simply couldn’t. “Crazy.” She glanced down the pin on her shirt, then looked over at her father. “I… um…” She touched the pin and shrugged one shoulder.
Andrew leaned on the console next to her. “Tell you something,” he said in a mild tone. “Ain’t never been nothing you ever done Ah wasn’t proud of.”
Dar interrupted him with quiet finality. “You don’t know everything I’ve done.”
Her father gazed at her. “That’s all right, Dardar. You ain’t heard everything Ah done, neither.”
Their eyes met in a moment of uncommon understanding. Dar nodded slightly and looked away, folding her hands together in an oddly pensive gesture. “Gotcha.”
“Anyhow,” Andy said, “one thing you can’t teach nobody is guts and when to use ’em.” He studied Dar’s profile. “Ah’m a damn lucky feller you got ’em and you know.”
Dar stared at a droplet of rain trickling down the gas gauge. “I didn’t even think about it,” she admitted. “I just...”
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“Yeap.” Andrew patted her on the back.
Unwilling to think about the logical extension of their talk and what she’d ended up doing, she went for a subject change. “I owe you a big one, Dad.” Dar leaned her elbows on the console. “I was pretty much out of my depth here.”
Andrew shrugged a little. “Happens.”
Dar looked out over the harbor chaos. “Yeah,” she murmured.
“But where do we go from here?” She glanced sideways. “Who do we tell about this? The cops? The Coast Guard?”
Her father tapped his thumbs together, giving her a surprisingly furtive look. “Let’s see what’s left coming back of those fellers,” he said. “Ain’t no point in telling more than you hafta.”
Dar’s head dropped forward a little. “Are you saying we should cover this up?” she asked in an incredulous tone. “Dad, they kidnapped Bud, they almost killed us! What the hell!”
Andrew stared evenly at her. “Chances are, they already done paid for that,” he stated. “Paladar.”
Dar stared back. “You think they sank,” she said. “And—”
“Ah do,” her father agreed. “And Ah do not feel sorry for that, and you shouldn’t neither.”
Dar sat back in her chair, her heart thumping erratically in her chest. “Could we have—”
“No, ma’am.” Andrew shook his head firmly. “We got lucky to get out of that storm our own selves, and you know that.”
She knew. “I called the Coast Guard for them,” she admitted.
Andrew’s face wrinkled into a frown. “You done a step more than Ah woulda,” he said. “So…wall, let’s see what comes of that then. Ain’t likely they found nothing, neither.”
Dar stared at her hands, clenched on the console. “You taught me—”
‘Yeah, Ah know.” Her father laid a hand on her shoulder. “But that was a long time back, Dar. Learned me about some rules between then and now.”
The rain cleared a little in front of them, and Dar could now see some order in the boats being shifted. “Like the difference between what’s right, and what’s legal?” she asked, watching his profile.
He gave a half shrug. “Somethin’ like that.”