Death Echo

“Him, too.

Mac smiled. “I’ll start the engines. You pick up all the lines that are loose.”

“Loose.”

“As in not under tension holding the boat against the dock.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. I’m still back with dickhead.”

“Come here a minute and put those sexy lips to work.”

She gave him a startled look, but did as he asked.

His mouth brushed over hers, lingered, then he breathed against her ear, “You did good, partner. Real good. Nice bathing suit. Now get that beautiful butt out on the dock.”

“I like your butt, too.”

Mac laughed out loud.

Smiling, Emma sauntered out the door and onto the dock. She heard various buzzers, bells, and engine noises while she picked up two of Blackbird’s four dock lines. By the time she got the loose lines coiled and tossed onto the deck, the engines had farted happily and settled in to a muscular purring.

She ignored the three men watching from the top of the gangway.

Mac signaled for her to pick up the forward spring line and toss it aboard. When she was finished, he stepped out on deck with a portable joystick controller.

“Leave a half-loop around the cleat on the aft springer and hand me the line,” Mac said.

Emma had already gone over this maneuver several times before on Autonomy. She understood that the loop was backup in case something went south with the joystick or the engines. She passed the line up to him and hopped aboard via the black swim step and stern gunwale gate.

He gave the joystick the lightest of nudges. Blackbird tugged against the line. He nudged the stick in the opposite direction, nodded to Emma, and handed her the line. She flipped it off the cleat and brought it safely aboard while Mac maneuvered the big boat away from the dock and into the fairway. With a wary eye to wind and current, he turned Blackbird in its own length and motored slowly out of the marina.

“Where to, besides north?” Emma asked.

“James Island. We’ll put down a lunch hook and give everything a going over.”

“Ah, sure thing.” She leaned close and murmured, “What’s a lunch hook?”

“Get a wind jacket and come up to the bow. With this toy,” he waved the joystick at her, “I can hang out up there and see everything on the water.”

And not be overheard by any salon bugs.

“Gotcha,” she said, grabbing her wind jacket.

When both of them were on the bow, Mac began talking to Emma without looking at her.

“A lunch hook is a small anchor with a short scope,” he said, pointing to the smaller of the two anchors resting on the bowsprit. “In other words, short work for a short stay.”

She fought against a smile. “Not asking what a short scope is. Guys get unhappy talking about duration or length or heft.”

Mac shook his head and laughed. He didn’t want to like Emma. He just wanted to get the job done. But she made being together easy.

Too easy.

“Did you see the look on Lovich’s face when you stripped?” Mac asked.

“I was too busy watching Amanar swallow his tongue.”

“You enjoyed that, didn’t you?”

“Hey, I was stationed way too long in cultures that spent so much time ignoring and suppressing sex that a man couldn’t breathe air within ten feet of a woman and not get hard.” Emma shrugged. “If they’re thinking about tits and ass, they’re not thinking about the job, are they?”

“What about me?”

“You have enough wattage to do two things at once.”

“Babe, I hope so,” he said, blowing out a breath. She had looked way too edible in a bikini. “What does a captain have to do for a cup of coffee?”

“Let me think about all the delicious possibilities.”

“Make coffee while you think.”

“You like yours with sugar or salt?” she asked.

He grabbed her, kissed her hard, and growled, “Sugar on the side.”

“Not touching that,” she said, retreating hastily.

“That’s what they all say.”

She muffled a laugh. “Should I toss the galley while I make coffee?”

“Only if you’re bored. We’ll have plenty of time at James Island.”

Mac didn’t look away from the water until he heard the salon door close. Then he let out another long breath and forced his mind back to the job at hand. It was hard.

Way too hard.

Faroe, are you nucking futz? She’s too much woman for this game.

Then Mac thought of Grace. That, too, was a lot of woman. And it didn’t get in the way of her brains one bit. Or Faroe’s.

Count backward by sevens.

Ninety-three, eighty-six, seventy-nine…

29

DAY FOUR

ROSARIO

5:35 A.M.

Grace Silva-Faroe leaned back on the uncomfortable motel couch. Annalise lay in her arms, drooling on her momma’s dark green blouse, blissed out and blowing bubbles.

Faroe scrambled eggs in the kitchenette, sent the toast on another round trip, and watched the computer he’d set up next to the tiny stove. Information scrolled by at a speed that would have made a lot of people dizzy. Faroe just read, absorbed, and made breakfast. When there was a break in the information stream, he looked over his shoulder.

“Nice work, amada,” he said, grinning at Grace and his relaxed daughter.

Grace just smiled and stroked Annalise’s silky, wild mop of hair.

“Will she sleep long?” he asked.

“Should be out for hours,” Grace said. “She spent most of yesterday and last night exploring for forbidden fruit.”

“I like her priorities. Want to snuggle her some more or should I put her in the playpen?”

“Did the long-distance shot you got of the dude yesterday morning-what’s his name-the guy with the cousins get any hits?”

Faroe fielded the change of subject without hesitation. “Temuri. Research ran it through St. Kilda’s magic computers. Because he’s playing nice, Steele sent a digital copy to Alara and the FBI as soon as we knew.”

Grace’s lazy stroking of Annalise’s relaxed body stopped. “The FBI? What did Alara think about that?”

“No backwash that I know of. Hell, she probably did the same herself. Think of it as a bit of polite ass-covering. The FBI is still doing push-ups over that rez execution. Since St. Kilda just happened to be here on a different matter, we felt duty bound to point out to the FBI a possible connection with the new killer in town.”

The judge that Grace had once been couldn’t help pointing out, “We don’t know he’s a killer.”

“I’ll take Mac’s word for it. That boy has the training to sort out the wannabes from the shooters.”

She sighed and didn’t disagree. “What did research find on Temuri, under all spelling variants?”