“Mmm. Want to start that way, like an ol’ bull and a heifer?”
“Why not?” I made a lot of noise unzipping my trousers, and when I saw that her eyes were closed I quickly picked up her shirt. “Give me your hands,” I ordered, touching the inner part of her thigh to keep her mind on what she thought I was doing. She did as she was told, wiggling her bottom in anticipation.
With a sudden movement I seized both her wrists and wrapped the cloth around them. Before she realized what was going on I had her secured, her arms lifted up painfully high behind her back.
“Nick!” she yowled. “You son of a bitch!”
She fought, as I expected, but I yanked her to her feet; she was small enough so that I could get her on tiptoes without any strain, and in that position she couldn’t use her wiry strength against me.
“Now let’s get the hell out of here, Sue-Ellen,” I hissed in her ear. “I’ve got things to do; we can play some other time.”
“You bastard!” she screeched, lashing back at me with her heels. I pulled her a little higher and she choked with pain. “Dino!” she yelled. “Dino, come in here!”
That was something I hadn’t figured on. The door burst open and the watchdog pounded into the room. Even though Sue-Ellen was in front of me, she wasn’t big enough to make any kind of shield, not at that range.
“Shoot the son of a bitch!” the girl screamed. “Blow his goddam head off!”
Dino smiled as he slowly brought the .45 up. He had plenty of time to aim and squeeze the trigger.
But not as much as he thought he did. I shrugged and released Hugo into my left hand. Still holding Sue-Ellen with my other hand, I slung the double-edged knife underhanded straight at his throat; I didn’t wait to see if it hit the target, but dragged the girl down and away as the automatic thundered in the confined space.
When I looked up, the watchdog was still upright, a look of utter surprise on his face. He looked at the smoking .45 in his hand, then slowly raised the other to touch the hilt protruding from his neck. For a moment I thought he was going to fire again, but a sudden gush of blood from the hole my knife had made settled everything. He toppled slowly to the floor, landing on the thick carpeting with hardly a sound.
I still kept my grip on Sue-Ellen as I walked over to look at the new corpse. First I pried the gun loose from his fingers, started to toss it aside and thought better of it. It might come in handy, and I wasn’t going to have to pass through customs on the trip coming up. Then I pulled the knife from Dino’s throat; he made a gurgling sound, and a lot more blood spilled out.
“Damn you, Nick Carter,” Sue-Ellen snarled. “Look what you’ve done to my wall-to-wall rug!”
But even the rich and tough Texas girl was shaken by what had happened, and I took advantage of it. First I kicked her in the tail, not too gently, and made her get back into what passed for her clothes. She obeyed sullenly, speechless for a little while. I checked the dead man’s pockets, just as a matter of routine, but found nothing to indicate he was anything but what Sue-Ellen had said.
“What are you going to do with it?” I asked her, pointing to the corpse.
“Me? What do you mean me?”
“He’s your boy. On your boat”
“Well you killed him!”
“In self defense. After you’d had me kidnapped.”
“Huh! Achillion, he’ll take care of that mess.”
“Only he’s in Japan. Your watchdog will start to smell before your husband gets back, you know.”
She stared at the bulky body on the rug and gnawed at a fingernail. “Yeah...”
“Where’s your crew?”
“I sent ’em mostly on shore leave. Except a couple o’ fellas in the engine room and one in the galley.”
“They don’t hear?”
“I told you. They’re deaf and dumb. Oh, not literally, Nick; they’re just trained not to pay attention to anything that happens on this big old tub. You know?” She was losing most of her Texas accent and, strangely, I liked her better for it.
“Will you take some advice? From an old friend?”
“Maybe.”
“Get hold of your deaf and dumb crew and get the hell out of this port. Dump the body or whatever you think is best, but if you report this to the police you’ll have nothing but trouble. Did this guy have any relatives?”
“How would I know?”
It figured. “Okay. Do as I told you. It’s up to you now, Sue-Ellen.”
“Yeah...” She was still staring at the corpse, and she looked liked a little girl who had started to play a practical joke and wound up way over her head. Which was about the size of it, in a monstrous way.
“Is there a boat I can take? Back to my sloop?”
“Uh-huh. Tied up alongside out there.” She gestured vaguely.
“Then I’m going.” I hefted the heavy automatic.
Suddenly she rushed to me and flung her arms around my waist. “Oh, Nick! I’m so damned Sorry!”
“Me too.”
“Won’t you stay and help?”
“No way, sweetheart. I’m... in the middle of something.”
“Honest?”
“Honest. And if you ever see me again, anywhere in the world, you’d better figure the same thing before you pull a stunt like this again.” I tapped her nose with the muzzle of the .45.
She kissed the warm metal and looked up at me. There were real tears in her eyes. “How about in Bari next week?”
“What?”
“I mean, I’m supposed to meet some people there. And if you’re still in this part of the world and... and not working.”
“Oh for Christ’s sake!” But then I had to laugh. I kissed the top of her blonde head, she’d been a redhead the last time I’d seen her, patted her marble-hard bottom and went to the door. “Maybe,” I said.
I took the overpowered runabout over to Scylla; it was mid-afternoon by then, the sky still bleak above, and the boat looked ominously quiet. As I climbed aboard I cast the runabout adrift; someone would pick it up in the busy harbor, and I doubted it made much difference to Sue-Ellen or her absent husband whether it was ever returned to them or not. There were plenty more where that came from.
“Hello? Christina?”
The companionway was open, but there was no sign of life in the gray darkness down there. I pulled the .45 from my jacket pocket as I approached the door, but I was a fraction too late. As I peered inside I found myself, for the second time that day, staring into the black tunnel of death.
Fifteen
“Put it down very slowly, Nick. I will kill you if you don’t.” Alex was glaring up at me from the main cabin, the revolver rock-steady in his hand. I didn’t doubt him for an instant, and did as I was told.
“You don’t need that,” I said.
“Now I do. You have destroyed everything. Everything!”
“I hope not.” Cautiously I eased down the short ladder as he backed up to keep a distance between us. It was the first time I’d seen him standing up in a decent light, and though he was thicker through the middle than he’d been fifteen years ago I wasn’t tempted to try to take him. Even if he hadn’t had a gun. “Where’s Christina?”
“Forward. Crying.”
“Look, Alex, there was a problem...”
“McKee? Nick?” Christina’s voice came from the forward cabin, and a moment later she appeared. “What happened to you?”
How do you explain to a desperate man and a girl you semi-love that you’ve been kidnapped by a spoiled rich-bitch because... well, I did the best I could. At the end it was Alex who was grinning, Christina who looked dubious.
“Do you mean, those men in the car, they were watching her?”
“And I guess me, a little. The hotel in Pirgos.”