One Forgotten Night Page 22

  The little procession had reached the end of the dock. Nina’s mind went blank with helpless terror. She thought that Irons was going to shoot her in the back and shove her off the dock. Instead he pushed her roughly toward a big sailboat. “Get aboard,” he said. Julien jumped lightly onto the boat’s deck, and Nina realized that this must be his boat.

  She scrambled aboard awkwardly, hampered by her bound wrists and by the motion of the boat, which was straining at its moorings, tossed by the sea’s angry chop.

  Irons followed her. He picked up the attaché case from one of the side benches and, with a scowl at Julien, carefully stowed it in a cuddy under the bench.

  Julien laughed. “Look, I know you don’t like boats, Irons, but it’s perfectly safe. Things don’t just fall overboard. We’re tied up at the dock, for God’s sake.” He opened the hatchway and hurried down into the cabin. Irons motioned for Nina to follow.

  “Marta? Marta?” called Julien. He turned to Irons, alarmed. “She’s not here.”

  Irons shoved Nina onto a seat and shrugged. “So? We still have a job to do.”

  “I don’t like casting off without her,” Julien said worriedly.

  “We’ll pick her up later. We need to get moving. Now.“ The menace in his voice was unmistakable, and he had taken the gun out of his pocket. Its barrel was still trained on Nina, but Julien went pale.

  Now it’s your turn to be afraid, Nina thought vindictively. The alliance seemed to be breaking down.

  The boat gave a little lurch, and the room bobbed up and down. Nina felt a shock of recognition: The tableau in front of her matched the first of the visions she’d had, the one she’d experienced while eating lunch with Mike on the first day of her amnesia. She’d seen Julien and Irons talking in a small, moving room, and here they were. Unfortunately, the vision hadn’t shown Nina how to prevent what was going to happen next.

  “Back on deck,” Irons ordered her. “I want you where I can keep an eye on you.”

  The three of them trooped back up the stairs and out the open hatchway into the cockpit. With a sullen look at Irons, Julien began preparing to get under way, checking the engine’s fuel gauge and casting off the mooring lines. Irons sat down on one of the side benches, motioning with his gun for Nina to sit opposite him.

  “I hope you like boats,” he said to her with a hard smile. His eyes were two beads of obsidian, as heartless as those of a reptile. “We’re going to go for a little boat ride. But I’m afraid you won’t be coming back with us. Once we get out far enough, you’re going into the drink.”

  He watched her, waiting for her to show fear, and Nina defiantly kept all expression off her face. She’d be damned if she would give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry again, or beg.

  “Oh, I’ll take the cuffs off, first,” Irons continued. “I don’t think your body will ever be found. I hear there are a lot of sharks in these waters this year. But even if they find enough to identify you, there won’t be anything to suggest foul play. You’ll just be a tragic drowning victim who hit her head on something—” he hefted the gun “—and fell overboard. Too bad.”

  Julien started the engine and took the wheel. The boat churned slowly away from the dock and then headed out to sea. The wind freshened, whistling through the rigging and blowing Nina’s hair across her face. The boat bounced as it cut across the choppy waves. Irons turned up the collar of his coat and grimaced. “And some people do this for fun. Jesus!”

  Nina gazed back as the coast receded into the distance. Her eyes stung from the tearing wind and her whipping hair. She knew that Irons and Julien were going to kill her and give her body to the sea once they were far from shore, but she was unafraid. She had passed beyond fear into a numb, hopeless grief. Facing death, she thought only of the life that she and Mike would never share. He would never know what had happened to her. And she would never know what had happened to him. She had never told him that she loved him. She regretted that now. From the depths of her being Nina sent up a silent, heartfelt request: Let him be alive. Please, let him be all right. She asked for nothing for herself. All her thoughts now were for Mike. Her sorrow for the life they might have had together was lost in the intensity of her prayers for the one who was dearer to her than her own breath and blood.

  Julien left the wheel and stripped the canvas cover from the boom. He started untying the lines that lashed the big mainsail down.

  “What’re you doing, you idiot?” yelled Irons. “Leave that thing alone. Just use the motor, damn it!”

  Julien grinned at him, a manic glitter in his eye. “You want this done fast, don’t you?” he called mockingly. “Well, I can double our speed with the sail up.” With a series of sharp tugs he raised the mainsail. He tied off the line and jumped back into the cockpit, and the sail bellied out with a loud snap.

  Again Nina was startled by a sense of recognition that was far stronger than déjá vu. For an instant Julien’s profile was silhouetted against the white, flapping sail, exactly as she’d foreseen it in her vision. Number five, she said to herself. Now they’ve all come true.

  But they hadn’t! What about the last vision: the one of Mike and Irons fighting? Nina swallowed hard, trying to make some sense out of her clamoring thoughts. The fight she’d seen in her vision could have happened already. Irons could have grabbed Mike when Mike left the cabin this morning to telephone Hecht. They could have fought then, and Irons could have killed Mike or turned him over to confederates. Nina’s imagination ran wild. Maybe Mike was now in the hands of drug dealers who were extracting revenge for his years as a vice cop—

  She didn’t believe it. For one thing, all of the other visions had come true just as she’d seen them. They weren’t about things that happened somewhere else; they foreshadowed things that she was going to see. So the fight between Irons and Mike couldn’t have taken place without her knowledge. Besides, Irons had been unrumpled, positively dapper, when he showed up at the cabin, and Nina just wasn’t willing to believe that he could have tangled with Mike Novalis and walked away without a scratch. Or walked away at all, she added.

  She looked up, startled. While she’d been trying to figure out whether her psychic visions were sufficient grounds for hope in a desperate situation, Julien and Irons had started arguing again, and now Julien sounded half-hysterical.

  “What do you mean, we’re not going back?” he cried.

  “I told you, it’s over. Thanks to your screwup, there’s too much heat. My bosses will be looking at you, and they’ll be looking at me.”

  “We could ride it out,” Julien pleaded.

  “I’m not taking the chance. You’re getting us out of here. We’re going to dump the excess baggage and then work our way south to the islands. We’ve got a fortune in stones—we can disappear down there and live like kings.”

  “But what about Marta?” Julien’s face was haggard.

  “You’re awful damn worried about that sister of yours,” said Irons. “You know, I was starting to wonder about the relationship between you two. Maybe you’re a little closer than a brother and sister should be?”

  A howl of animal rage erupted from Julien’s throat, and he tensed as if to spring at Irons. But Irons swiveled the gun and Julien stopped in his tracks, his face working convulsively.

  “Hell, I don’t care if you are making it with your sister,” Irons said contemptuously. “She’s not a bad-looking broad, if you like the bitchy type. But get this, you fool. She’d double-cross you in a second.”

  “She wouldn’t.” Julien ground the words out, and then screamed, “Not Marta! She wouldn’t!”

  Irons laughed. “While you were in Switzerland, you poor chump, she came to me and offered to cut you out if I split fifty-fifty with her. She even offered to do me on the spot, any way I wanted it, just to seal the deal.”

  The hatchway door slid up and Mike Novalis stepped through it into the cockpit. Nina’s first wild blaze of hope died as quickly as it had been born. Mike’s hands w
ere clasped behind his head. Behind him stood Marta Duchesne, holding a gun.

  “Don’t believe him, Julien,” she said.

  Julien stared at her. “Marta! Thank God you’re here. It was Irons, he made me leave without you.”

  She ignored him and spoke to Irons. “Did you really think you could double-cross me and get away with it, you piece of—”

  “I didn’t say anything about double-crossing you, Marta,” Irons replied smoothly. “We were going to send for you.”

  “I’m sure you were.” She laughed. “And split three ways instead of two? Or maybe you planned to dump Julien, too, once he got you to safety, and keep it all for yourself?”

  Irons was as still as a statue, but she must have seen the answer in his face, because she said, “I thought so. Well, isn’t this an interesting situation? There truly is no honor among us.”

  Julien’s eyes were riveted on Marta. “Is it true? Were you really going to...to sleep with him?”

  “Forget about that and get his gun!”

  “But—”

  “Do it!” she shrieked.

  Marta and Irons stared at each other with naked hatred in their eyes, covering each other with their guns. Julien looked from Marta to Irons, gnawing his lip in indecision. Locked in their standoff, the three conspirators seemed to have forgotten Mike and Nina, but Nina knew that if she moved an inch, or if Mike did, one or both of those guns would instantly turn on them. She looked at Mike. Drizzle and spray were plastering his thick black hair to his head and neck, and the contours of his cheekbones and jaw stood out sharply. In the pallid light his indigo eyes looked almost black. He shot her the roguish grin that she loved so much, and her heart turned over. She knew that he wasn’t going to go quietly.

  The boat breasted a big wave and dropped into the trough. Marta swayed on the narrow top step of the hatchway. Just then Mike drove one elbow back into her stomach as hard as he could and launched himself across the cockpit at Irons. He hit the FBI man in a flying tackle as Irons fired. The shot went wild. Then Mike and Irons were rolling on the deck of the cockpit, grappling for control of the gun in Irons’s hand.

  Marta lurched into the cockpit and raised her gun toward the melee on the deck, but she couldn’t get a clear shot at either Mike or Irons. Julien had left the wheel and thrown himself into the struggle, trying to pull Mike off Irons.

  “Get out of the way!” Marta screamed. She looked like a wild thing, desperate with rage. In a second, Nina knew, she’d start firing and not care who got hit.

  Scrabbling under the seat with her shackled hands, Nina seized the attaché case and opened it. She grabbed the strongbox and stood.

  “Stop!” she cried. She jumped up onto the seat and knelt awkwardly on the gunwale, holding the box out over the deck rail. She was just inches away from the dark water swirling and hissing past the boat’s hull.

  “Stop it!” she screamed again. “Or I drop the box!”

  Julien rose. “Give it to me,” he begged. “I’ll let you go—”

  Mike wrenched the gun from Irons, knelt on the man’s chest and clouted him in the head, knocking him out. At the same instant, Marta took aim on Mike from behind.

  Nina hurled the strongbox at Marta with all her strength. As Marta fired, the box struck her heavily in the shoulder, and she staggered and fell back across the gunwale, hanging half out of the boat.

  The Diamantina lurched and wallowed as a heavy wave caught her broadside. Marta flailed for the deck rail but couldn’t reach it in time. She was thrown overboard. Julien made a grab for the strongbox, which was lying on the slippery gunwale. The box slid smoothly under the deck rail and into the sea. With a single shrill cry, Julien dived over the rail. Nina was never sure afterward whether he was going for his sister or the stones.

  Mike was lying on the floor of the cockpit in a pool of blood and water. But he was alive; his eyes were open and he was clutching his left shoulder. Nina knelt at his side. He grinned weakly and said, “My heroine.”

  “Oh, Mike, I’ve been so scared. I thought I’d never see you again.” She looked fearfully at his shoulder. “How—how bad is it?”

  “I’ll live. In fact, you saved my life. Marta was gonna blow my head off, but you spoiled her aim and I got away with a nice clean little shoulder wound. Cheer up,” he said, hoping to ease the anxiety he saw on her face, “I’m going to be around for a while.”

  She managed a tremulous smile.

  “That’s better,” he told her. “Now we’ve got to do some things.” He looked at Irons, who was still unconscious. “First we’d better deal with him.”

  At Mike’s direction, Nina went through Irons’s pockets, looking for the key to her handcuffs. She was shaking with revulsion as she pawed through his wet clothes, afraid that at any second his eyes would snap open and he would seize her hands. But he didn’t move, and after heaving him onto his side she managed to extract the key from his hip pocket. She handed it to Mike, who unlocked the cuffs, wincing and trying not to gasp with pain as he moved. Nina was desperately worried about him. Despite his bravado—kept up largely for her sake, she was sure—he had lost a lot of blood.

  “Now we’ll use the cuffs on Irons.” Mike told her what to do. Puffing a little, she wrestled Irons’s limp body over to the nearest deck cleat and fastened one cuff to the cleat, the other to his wrist. As Irons had taught her, she made sure that the cuffs were good and tight.

  The rain was now increasing and the sky was completely overcast, a uniform dark gray. Mike couldn’t be sure which direction was east and which west. As they didn’t know their position relative to the coast, it was dangerous to remain under way. Their best chance for rescue was to stop moving. He told Nina to cut the engine. Only then would he let her help him down into the cabin, where it was dry, if not warm.

  Mike collapsed onto one of the leather benches. His strength was fading fast. “The radio,” he said. “This boat must have ship-to-shore. We’ll call for help.”

  Nina looked around feverishly; after a moment she located the radio on the bulkhead near the chart table.

  “Know how to use it?” Mike asked. She shook her head.

  He talked her through it. She opened a channel and spoke into the microphone: “Mayday, mayday. This is the sailboat Diamantina, out of Shore Haven Marina, Long Beach Island. We have an emergency. Repeat, emergency. Two people overboard and a gunshot wound in need of medical treatment. We are approximately three miles offshore and drifting under sail. Please send aid.”

  Nina repeated the message three times and activated the radio’s distress beacon. Then she went looking for a first-aid kit.

  She stripped Mike to the waist and wiped away the blood from around the singed black hole where the bullet had entered his flesh. She nearly wept at the sight. He was so strong—but even strength and honor, Nina reminded herself, were vulnerable. She ached to take away his pain, to protect him and keep him safe so that nothing could ever hurt him again. But that, she knew, was impossible. The best she could do was to love him.

  She placed an antiseptic dressing on the wound and bandaged it, then brought two blankets from one of the staterooms and covered him well.

  “Sit down with me,” he said. “Put my head in your lap.”

  She raised his head, as gently as she could, and did as he had asked. He sank back into her with a sigh as if he’d won a long battle.

  And then he began to talk.

  “There’s something I’ve got to tell you, Nina.” She held her breath, hoping that he was going to tell her that he loved her.

  “Something about me. I want you to know the truth about me.”

  “I already know about you,” she told him lovingly, placing her palm on his cheek.

  “No. Not this. You gotta know....” His voice faded and his eyes drifted shut. Then, visibly gathering his strength, he continued. “I told you about Jack. My partner who died?”

  She nodded.

  “What I didn’t tell you was that I kille
d him.”

  He watched her through the haze of pain, waiting for her face to change, waiting for her to take that warm, soft hand away. But she said softly, “I know you better than that. Tell me.”

  “I didn’t shoot him. But I made it happen. The raid we went on that night—it was a setup. And it was my fault.” Despite the pain and shock of his wound, Mike felt clearheaded, as clearheaded as he’d been in years. He was confronting a much deeper and older pain, and he thought that this time he had a chance to emerge victorious. Strength flowed into him from Nina’s hands, from her voice and smile, from her spirit. Would she take that strength away when she had heard it all?

  “There was a woman. Her name was Karen. I met her when I was setting up the bust. She was the sister of one of the dealers. She hung out with them all.” Mike paused to catch his breath. Nina gazed down at him, full of compassion. She knew what was coming next, but she let him speak. He was giving her the greatest gift of all, entrusting her with the darkest part of his soul.

  “I thought I was in love with her,” he said, voice cracking—with fatigue or emotion, Nina didn’t know which. “It wasn’t really love, I know that now, but I was crazy about her. Karen was smart. I should have stayed away from her, but I spent way too much time around her. It didn’t take her long to make me for a cop.”

  Again Mike labored for breath. His voice had grown faint. He could barely keep his eyes open. But he forced himself to go on. If he didn’t finish this now, maybe he never would.