The Ocean Dark

24

Rachael Voss had been against her partner going undercover on a Viscaya ship from the outset. The case had been simmering for a long time and it killed her to think Turcotte would move in with his Counter-Terrorism group and snatch the thing out of her squad’s hands, but she’d warned Josh again and again that it was too dangerous.

In private. They’d whispered a lot before and after meetings and spent a lot of time alone together — so much that Chauncey had gotten up the guts to ask if they were sleeping together. Against the rules and all that. Voss shouldn’t have been surprised. She was single and Josh’s marriage had fallen apart the way so many agents’ relationships did. If they had ended up in bed together, no one would have blamed them. No one but Chauncey, who was such a stickler for the rules.

But as close as Voss had gotten to Josh Hart in the time they’d been partners, and as much as they sometimes bickered, their intimacy had never extended to the bedroom. Still, Josh meant more to her than any of her boyfriends ever had.

The drug lord’s impounded yacht couldn’t go fast enough to suit her.

Voss couldn’t stay below, but she didn’t want to be in the wheelhouse, either. She’d been out on the foredeck for a while, but even with her sweatshirt on, the wind had snaked chill fingers down her spine, and she’d grown frustrated with staring out across the dark water in search of some sign of the Antoinette. The weight of expectation she felt was irrational; they were still a long way from the point of origin of Josh’s satellite phone call, and even when they reached those coordinates, the Antoinette wouldn’t be there, unless it was just sitting around in the water waiting for them to arrive.

No. They were waiting for the beacon.

And Voss hated to wait.

Now she sat on the aft deck in a white simulated-leather bucket chair that was one of a quartet attached directly to the deck. They were meant for fishing, complete with belts to strap herself down in case she got a bite from a swordfish or whatever. Voss didn’t fish, and she doubted Rojas, the drug lord who’d owned this boat before the FBI took it away from him, had done much fishing, either. The chairs were glorified bar stools. Voss obliged by drinking a piña colada that Pavarotti had whipped up in the tiny galley, albeit without the rum. She felt fourteen again, but deprived of sleep and wired with adrenaline. Neither alcohol nor coffee would help her do her job tonight.

The cold drink made her shiver even more than the wind off the sea, but the flavors of pineapple and coconut were wonderful, and kept her body distracted. Though too tense to eat, she could manage the piña colada just fine.

“You should get some sleep.”

Voss jumped a little, then turned to see Pavarotti standing beside her. With the wind blowing, she hadn’t heard him approach, and now she was embarrassed. She forced herself not to let it show.

“You’re stealthy for such a big bastard.”

Pavarotti smiled to let her know he didn’t mind the teasing. Voss made sure her expression told him she didn’t care if he minded or not.

“Seriously. I know you’re worried about Josh—”

“Special Agent Hart,” she corrected.

Pavarotti actually laughed. “He’d choke on his coffee if I called him that, and you know it. I get it, you hate being called Rachael. This is your squad, Agent Voss, and that’s fine by me. But Josh isn’t going to drink with anyone who calls him Special Agent Hart.”

Voss wanted to argue, but she forced herself to exhale. Uncoil.

“You’re right. I’m a little tightly wound right now.”

“I don’t blame you. But none of us is going to be any good when this goes down if we don’t get at least a little sleep, and that includes you. The doctor prescribes rest.”

“How am I supposed to rest down there with all of you guys playing cards and watching movies?” Voss asked.

Pavarotti put a hand on the back of her chair. “Nadeau and Mac are in the wheelhouse, keeping us on course and waiting for the signal, dealing with incoming communications. I’m on watch. Everyone else is asleep. It’s nearly three a.m.”

Shit, Voss thought. She hadn’t realized she had been out here so long.

“Incoming communications?” she asked.

The agent glanced toward the wheelhouse. “Nothing except what we expect. Immigration and Customs has a couple of boats in the water, and we’ve got three Coast Guard ships on course to rendezvous with us at those same coordinates. We’ll be there just after sunrise, but they’re a few hours behind us. And then we wait.”

“I’m so sick of waiting.”

“Me, too,” Pavarotti said. “We’re sure this beacon is gonna work, right? We can track it wherever they go?”

Voss had been over that very subject dozens of times with Chauncey and with Josh. The satellite phone would only be good if Josh could call them on it, and keep up the call. They had needed something that could act as a continuous tracking signal. The FBI’s own tech guys had shrugged off the query, claiming they didn’t have anything that could be easily hidden on the Antoinette, somewhere Josh would be able to get to it. What they offered was a tracking device the size of a land mine.

Then Voss had talked to a friend who worked as an outfitter in Alaska and spent most of his time in isolated, inhospitable areas with no cell phone signal, and he’d told her about the personal locator beacon, which operated like a reverse-GPS, sending an emergency signal that could be picked up and followed, whether in the outback or on the ocean. The idea that the FBI’s techs would be ignorant about the existence of PLBs made her nuts. The things were available to the general public, but the FBI didn’t know about them? It made her wonder what else they didn’t know about that might save her life someday.

“It’ll work,” she told Pavarotti.

She didn’t see any reason to go into the one thing that really scared her about the PLB. Once Josh turned it on, there was the distinct possibility that the signal would interfere with the Antoinette’s instruments, which could lead them to seek out the competing signal on board.

Once the beacon went off, they’d be in a race to reach the container ship before the Rio brothers figured out they had an agent on board. If Josh’s cover was blown, then even when the ICE and Coast Guard and FBI moved in, things were likely to get very ugly. Josh could end up a hostage, or dead.

Voss took a sip of her piña colada. “You go ahead,” she said. “I’ll take watch.”

Pavarotti stood his ground. “Not going to happen. I’ve already had a few hours’ rack time anyway. It’s your turn. I’ll wake you at dawn. You’re not doing Josh any favors if you’re—”

“All right,” she said. “I get it. Will it shut you up if I go down and pretend to sleep?”

“For now.”

Voss rolled her eyes. “Fine. It’ll be worth it.” She took her piña colada with her as she left.

Pavarotti smiled. “Night, Rachael.”

She bristled. Chauncey had wanted to know if Voss and Josh Hart were sleeping together, and she’d taken some satisfaction in being able to say no. But he’d never asked her if she was screwing Pavarotti, and for that she was glad. She didn’t like to lie.

For his part, Pavarotti apparently thought a single sex-filled, post-case victory celebration made him her lover, made it okay for him to use her given name. And it was okay … in bed. But on the job, things were different. Soon she would have to make absolutely certain she had disabused him of that notion. Six years earlier, her younger brother Ethan had developed cancer that spread rapidly through his body and killed him forty-seven days after its discovery. Since then, there was only one man in the world she cared for, and right now he was out in the middle of the Caribbean with people who might well kill him if they learned his identity.

Belowdecks, she lay down on a rack and closed her eyes, knowing she would never be able to sleep.

And yet, somehow, she did.