82 Desire

whole pack of cigarettes there. A carton, maybe.”
    “So?”
    “So, you know the kind of guys who have those things? Macho, gold chains. I bet we could talk one of them into a midnight search.”
    “Oh, come on.”
    “I mean it. Why go through the Yellow Pages when it’s the middle of the night and there’ll be paperwork and deposits and God knows what, in the event we actually find someone sitting by their phone? Why don’t we just go find some half-drunk dickhead with a penis boat and offer him a grand?”
    “I beg your pardon? Who the hell’s got a grand?”
    “Me. And if we save Russell’s ass, no doubt he’ll reimburse us.”
    “Oh, sure.”
    She was sitting on the bed, staring out at the ocean. He sat next to her and covered her hand with his. “Skip. Let’s do it.”
    She looked up into his face, so sincere, so boyishly excited. He was like any man trying to give a gift to the woman he loved—only she was a police officer and the thing she wanted was to do her job. It was a little weird, yet she couldn’t help being touched.
    She thought the chances of finding the On Y Va were practically nonexistent without the Coast Guard, but Steve was giving her a chance to look. Gallant, but there was a lot working against it—it might be dangerous to him, and to the owner of the boat, and to the boat itself.
    Reluctantly, she said,”I can’t.”
    “Look. Let’s just go for a boat ride, okay? If we find the On Y Va, then we’ll figure out what to do. What’s the harm in a boat ride?”
    “What do we do—go back to that bar and ask around?”
    He looked so happy she wanted to hug him. She hadn’t really meant the remark as a “yes,” but what he said made sense—until they found the boat, there was no need to worry. And there wasn’t a snowball’s chance they would.
    “Sure,” he said. “Let’s just go find us a captain.”
    In fact, it wasn’t hard at all. Most of the cigarette pack—if that wasn’t an exaggeration—had left by the time they got there, but there were three long, sleek, nasty-looking boats moored at the bar, and inquiries promptly turned up three owners.
    Steve got straight to business. “We need to charter a boat for—oh, about three hours, four at the most—” He was making it up as he went along. “We can pay a thousand dollars.”
    One of the owners said, “What do we do? Flip for it?”
    Another said, “Count me out. I gotta work tomorrow.”
    The third said, “Is this legal or what?”
    “Wait a minute. We need a really fast boat. Whose boat’s fastest?”
    The third guy, the cautious one, said, “Keith, baby, this one’s yours.”
    They had a boat. Now how to explain what they wanted?
    Finally, Skip said, “Look, I’m an off-duty cop. This isn’t official, but we’re looking for a sailboat.”
    Keith shrugged. He had dirty-brown hair and wore a T-shirt with khaki shorts. His face was ferrety—triangular, no jaw to speak of—but he looked quite a bit more intelligent than someone Skip expected to find in a Florida bar in the middle of the night.
    “I need to know why,” he said.
    “I think the owner’s in danger.”
    “From someone chasing him or someone on the boat?”
    “I sure hope it’s from someone chasing him.”
    “Well, I do know some pretty good hiding places—where you could drop anchor and stay for a while.”
    Steve said, “Look. Why don’t we just cruise around awhile?”
    “Sure.” Keith gave them a sly smile, and in a few minutes Skip saw why. She’d really had no idea how fast these boats could go.
    They’d been out no more than half an hour when they saw two boats close together, a dinghy between them. Keith pointed. “Some kind of deal going down. We’ll just pretend we never saw a thing.”
    They whizzed by at a safe distance, Skip unable to resist watching with Keith’s binoculars. Two men got out of the dinghy and boarded the farther of the two boats, and it took off. She trained her binoculars on the second. “ On Y Va ! That’s it.”
    There it was. Right there, not far from shore at all; out in the open, not hidden—as if Russell wanted to be found.
    But the two guys leaving wasn’t a good sign.
    Steve said, “What now? “
    “I hate to say it, but I’ve got to try the damn police again.”
    “Thought you were the police,” said Keith.
    She hoped he wasn’t going to go paranoid on her. “I’m not local. Have you got a phone?”
    He shrugged. “Sure.”
    This time the police listened,