the hatch. He wore an orange life jacket over his dark blue sportshirt. His pants were white and neatly creased, and a jaunty white cap hid most of his gray hair. A picture of the gentleman yachtsman, offset only by the fact that he was pointing the barrel of a large gun at me. “Move to the bottom of the ladder, where I can see you better,” he commanded.
I made a show of clumsily getting up and moving toward the ladder.
“Where is it?” he asked.
“Where is what?”
“Don’t play games with me, Miss Kelly. I know exactly what you are up to. You plan to make that boyfriend of yours look like a hero in the police department. Oh, I understand that he needs all the help he can get — he’s something of a burnout case, isn’t he? An officer-involved shooting, assaulting another detective. Lord knows why they let him come back to work.”
“Maybe because he knows how to track down people like you.”
He laughed. “As I said, that’s exactly the plan, isn’t it? You hold on to the damning evidence — supposedly damning evidence — -while Detective Harriman raises suspicions against me. Then, at the properly dramatic moment, you hand him Paul’s confession and the knife. Detective Harriman is back to being the star of the Las Piernas Police Department.”
I couldn’t hide my reaction to the news that Paul had left more than the knife, but fortunately, Gannet mistook it.
“So I’m right. Save us all a great deal of trouble and tell me where it is.”
“What makes you think I have it? Paul hated me.”
“Don’t waste my time! Paul made it quite clear to me that he desired you, to such an extreme that he saved you for himself. Wouldn’t let Devon or Raney have a go at you. The mere mention of your name brought a knowing smile to his lips. And he wore that same smile when I asked him who had the knife and the confession. ‘The woman who caused all the trouble in the first place,’ he said. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that he was talking about you. Now, where is it?”
The woman who caused all the trouble. Pandora. The only thing we had in common was that our curiosity had been ill-rewarded. Gannet apparently hadn’t made the connection to the boat’s namesake. He was watching me with growing impatience.
“Don’t you think Frank is going to wonder what has happened to us?” I said, trying to stall. “He has a tail on you, Gannet. You’re the first person he’ll suspect if anything happens to me.”
Gannet laughed. “Thanks to a little electronic eavesdropping, I’ve known exactly what the two of you are up to. That’s how we knew to prepare the
“Did you get rid of that bloodstained blanket the same way?”
“Ah, Miss Kelly, you’ll never know, will you?”
“We’re not that far offshore. Don’t you worry that some passing traffic from Catalina will see us? Or the Coast Guard?”
Gannet sighed. “You continue to waste my time. I can see you won’t allow us to do this the easy way, Miss Kelly.” He stepped partway down the ladder, so that his head was just below the hatch.
“Don’t touch her!” Jack said angrily.
Gannet laughed. “You’re hardly in any position to be giving orders, skipper. Besides, I don’t plan to rush things. I’ll give you a little something to think about, Miss Kelly, before I spell out any of my plans for you and Mr. Fremont.” He reached into his pocket, never taking his eyes — or the gun — off me. His fist was closed over something. He stood watching me for a moment, and I didn’t like the look of anticipation in his eyes. He moved farther down the ladder, held his fist forward, then shook it. I heard a familiar rattling sound.
Dice.
I felt the sound in my thumb, in my shoulder, in five places on my back. It sounded exactly like fear.
He stepped off the ladder and moved toward me menacingly. My knees weakened and I stepped away from him. He took another step toward me, and sheer panic seized me. Trying to step away, I stumbled and fell backward with a bone-jarring thud. It hurt, but for an awful moment, I was too afraid he would shoot me to worry about anything else.
“You son of a bitch!” Jack was shouting.
Gannet turned away from me, glancing up through the hatch, and yelled, “No, Stevens! Not yet. We need him for the moment.”
From where I lay, I could see my cane, wedged on the side of one of the bunks. I looked back at Gannet, wondering if I could manage, left-handed, to free it and crack him over the head with it. A ridiculous notion, given the fact that I was flat on my back and he was armed and well out of striking range.
“Hold perfectly still,” he said coldly, apparently reading my intent if not my exact plans. He took some rope, and standing over me, laughed again. “I see your previous injuries are going to make this easier.” Gun still in hand, he clumsily tied my good foot to my cast, then set the gun well out of my reach, laying it aside to put his hands beneath my arms. He pulled me to a sitting position. I couldn’t help but yelp at the bolt of pain that sent through my right shoulder.
“Irene!” I heard Jack call, frantic.
“I’m okay, Jack,” I called back shakily.
With an iron grip, Gannet stretched my left hand in back of me. He tied my left wrist to the support for the table, so that I was sitting halfway beneath the table itself.
