geographically speaking?”
“ Fuck!” Cruz jerked the handcuff so hard the rail shuddered. “We’re going to Havana!”
“ Bingo.”
“ You’re taking me straight to hell!”
“ Precisely. We’re repatriating you.”
“ You crazy? Cuban patrol boats will sink us. You remember that tugboat. Trece de Marzo. Forty people dead. ”
“ The Marzo was trying to leave the island. We’re coming in, and we’re bringing a fugitive to justice. They should give us a reward, or at least a bottle of Club Havana rum.”
“ They’ll kill me.”
“ Not without a trial. A speedy trial. Of course, if you tell us where you’ve stashed Teresa’s money, we’ll turn this tub around.”
“ Dammit, Steve,” Victoria said. “We have to talk.”
Steve put the boat on auto — two hundred two degrees — and took Victoria down to the salon.
“ You could get us killed,” she said. “Or jailed. Right now, the best case scenario would be disbarment.”
“ That’s why I didn’t want you along.”
Steve walked to the galley sink and turned on the faucet, intending to rinse the dried blood from a scraped elbow. The plumbing rattled and thumped, but nothing came out. He opened the ice maker. Empty, too.
“ Cruz is a lousy host,” Steve said.
“ Are you listening to me? Let’s go back to Miami. I’ll see if we can talk Cruz out of filing charges.”
They both heard the sound, but it took a second to identify it. A scream from the bridge. “Sol-o-mon!”
Followed a second later by machine gun fire.
Steve and Victoria ran back up the ladder to the bridge. Cruz was tugging against the rail, his wrist bleeding where the handcuff sawed into his skin. Three hundred yards off their starboard, a Cuban patrol boat fired a short burst from a machine gun mounted on its bow. Dead ahead, the silhouette of the Cuban island rose from the sea, misty in the late afternoon light.
“ Warning shots,” Steve said. “Everybody relax.”
Steve eased back on the throttles, tooted the horn, and waved both arms at the approaching boat. “C’mon Cruz. It’s now or never. When they pull alongside, I’m handing you over.”
“ Do what you got to do, asshole.”
“ Steve, turn the boat around,” Victoria ordered. “Now!”
The patrol boat slowed. Two men in uniform at the machine gun, a third man holding a bullhorn.
“ I’m not fucking with you, Cruz,” Steve said. “You’ve got thirty seconds. Where’s Teresa’s money?”
“ Chingate!” Cruz snarled.
“ Senores del barco de pesca!” The tinny sound of the bullhorn carried across the water.
“ Last chance,” Steve said.
“ Se han adentrado en las aguas territoriales de la Republica de Cuba.”
“ Steve, we’re in Cuban waters,” Victoria said.
“ I know. I passed Spanish 101.”
“ Den la vuelta y salgan inmediatamente de aqui, o los vamos a abordar.”
“ They’re going to board us if we don’t turn around,” she said.
“ I kind of figured that out, too.” Steve turned to Cruz. “Absolutely, positively last chance, pal. I’m handing you over.”
“ I’m betting you don’t,” Cruz said.
The patrol boat was fifty yards away. One of the men in uniform pointed an AK-47 their way.
“ Steve…?” Victoria’s voice was a plea.
This wasn’t the way he’d planned it. By this time, Cruz should have been spouting numbers and accounts from banks in the Caymans or Switzerland or the Isle of Man. But the bastard was toughing it out. Calling Steve’s bluff.
Is that what it is? An empty threat.
Steve wanted to hand Cruz over, wanted him to rot in a Cuban prison.
But dammit, I’m a lawyer, not a vigilante.
He wished he could turn his conscience on and off with the flick of a switch. He wished he could end a man’s life with cold calculations and no remorse. But the rats that would gnaw at Cruz at Isla de Pinos would visit the house on Kumquat Avenue in Steve’s nightmares.
“ Take the wheel, Vic.” Filled with self-loathing, wishing he could be someone he was not. “Twenty-two degrees. Key West.”
“ Say ‘please,’” Cruz laughed, mocking him.
Just before midnight, the lights of Key West off the port, the Wet Dream cruised north through Hawk Channel, headed toward Miami. The sky was clear and sparkled with stars. The wind whipped across the bridge, bringing a night chill. Victoria slipped into her glen-plaid jacket. Hair messed, clothes rumpled, emotionally drained, she was trying to figure out how to salvage the situation.
I came aboard to save Steve from himself and I’m doing a lousy job.
Steve stood at the wheel, draining a La Tropical beer, maybe listening, maybe not, as Cruz berated him.
“ You fucking loser,” Cruz said. “Every minute I’m tied up is gonna cost you.” Cruz rubbed his arm where the cuff was biting into his wrist. “I got nerve damage. Gonna add that to my lawsuit. When this is over, you’ll wish the Cubans had taken you prisoner.”
“ Steve, I need a moment with you,” Victoria said.
Steve put the boat on auto — Cruz complaining that it was a damn reckless way to cruise at night — then headed down the ladder, joining Victoria in the salon.
“ You can’t keep him locked up,” she said.
“ I need more time.”
“ For what?”
“ To think.” He walked to the galley sink and turned the faucet, intending to toss cold water on his face. Same rattle, same thump. “Damn, I forgot. Cruz put all that money into his boat and still can’t get the water to work.”
“ What?”
“ A fancy boat like this and you can’t wash your hands.”
“ No. What you said before. ‘Cruz put all that money into his boat.’”
“ It’s just a figure of speech.”
“ Think about it, Steve. He doesn’t own a house. He leases a car. No brokerage accounts, no bank accounts. Everything he has, he puts into his boat. If he ever has to leave town quickly…”
“ Like he left Cuba,” Steve said, picking up the beat. “With nothing but the clothes on his back.”
“ This time it would be different because…”
“ The money’s here! On the boat.”
In sync now, she thought.
A man and a woman running stride for stride.
“ Vic, why don’t you go back up to the bridge and make sure we don’t crash into any cruise ships?”
“ And what are you doing?”
“ I’m gonna fix the plumbing.”
Steve opened the hatch in the salon floor and climbed down a ladder to the engine compartment, wincing at the noise from the twin diesels. He found the black water tank first, tucked up under the bow. Sewage and waste water. Nothing unusual about it, and Cruz wouldn’t want to dirty his hands with that, anyway. Then Steve found
