The Sooner the Better

This was what he’d been waiting for from the first. Jack abruptly set the woman aside and vaulted to his feet. “You’re damn right you shouldn’t have. I asked a small thing of you. One small thing.”

“It was so hot down there—and you took much longer than you said.”

“It’s too much to expect you to follow directions?”

“I thought…I hoped…”

They scowled at each other. Jack’s expression was as angry as he could make it. His voice was raised, and while he didn’t want to attract a lot of unnecessary attention, he hoped to extract her from this predicament and save his own hide in the process. From the cutthroat looks Carlos gave him, it wasn’t going to be easy.

“Don’t shout at me,” Lorraine said, giving a fine impression of royalty.

“I’ll shout at you if I please, and right now it pleases me a great deal.”

“This wouldn’t have happened if you’d had the decency—”

“Enough!” Carlos boomed, and banged his fist on the bar. The sound echoed through the room like a gunshot.

Lorraine gasped and pressed her hand over her heart. For several frightening seconds the entire cantina went silent. Then, before he could react, she whirled around and faced Carlos. “Can’t you see we’re having an important discussion here? When I’m finished with Jack Keller, I’ll take you on. Until then, wait your turn.”

Carlos’s mouth fell open, and he wore a look of complete and utter confusion.

“Decency?” Jack shouted, doing his best to distract Carlos from Lorraine. “If you want to talk about decency, I’ve got plenty to say. Let’s have this out right here and now.”

Lorraine stared at him as if he’d gone mad. She wasn’t far off, since his little performance was a good imitation of a lunatic’s ravings. Waving his arms, still shouting, he edged her toward the door. With the two of them trading insults he’d be able to confuse Carlos long enough—he hoped—to place himself between them. And give her a way out.

Once she was close to the door, he yelled a few more insulting remarks, using the same tone of voice, hoping she was smart enough to understand what he was doing. “Run,” he ordered when she stood in the doorway.

“Run?”

“Get the hell out of here!”

She hesitated, then turned on her heel. Okay, so it wasn’t a brilliant plan, but it was the best he could do on short notice.

“What about you?” Jack thought he heard her ask. Answering wasn’t a concern just then. Carlos was.

The other man dashed after Lorraine, and seeing there wasn’t anything he could do but stop him, Jack stepped into his path. It was a long while since he’d been involved in hand-to-hand combat. This time, however, the odds left much to be desired.

Carlos had a knife and he didn’t.

Lorraine was panting and her thigh muscles were quivering from the run to the waterfront. She raced to the boat, the dock rocking precariously with the sudden movement. Not sure what to do next, she hurried belowdecks and collapsed on the U-shaped bench that constituted the eating area. She could hear her pulse pounding in her ears.

This episode had been a disaster entirely of her own making. She was to blame for everything—the danger to herself and to Jack, as well. When he got back, she’d bet her last dollar he wouldn’t be gracious about it, either. Not that she didn’t deserve every comment he could possibly make. She’d done something incredibly stupid, and she didn’t have a single excuse. What could she say—it was too hot and she’d grown tired of waiting? At the moment, that sounded pretty lame.

Her pulse still hadn’t returned to normal when she decided she couldn’t remain down here. Not without knowing what had happened to Jack. She had to find a way to help him; after all, he’d put himself at risk trying to help her. It’d taken her far longer than it should have to figure out what he intended, back at the cantina, what he wanted her to do. All she hoped was that he knew how to protect himself.

He did, she thought, reassured, as she went up to the deck. The evidence was all over the boat. Everything he read was about warfare, self-defense and fighting.

But her confidence in Jack’s abilities waned as time passed. She’d assumed he’d be close behind her. Two, three minutes. Not so. A good ten minutes had already gone by.

Her relief at seeing him approach was enormous. He wasn’t running, but he didn’t seem to be taking a leisurely stroll, either. Even from the deck she could see that blood soaked his sleeve and ran in rivulets down his arm and onto his hand. One side of his face was swollen, too.

“Jack…Jack.” Lorraine felt sick with regret, knowing he’d received these injuries because of her.

As soon as he’d arrived at the dock, Jack broke into a trot, making it pitch precariously. When he reached Scotch on Water, he untied the rope and jumped onto the deck. Moments later the engines revved to life, churning up the water.

A flurry of Spanish came at them as Carlos and three other men appeared on the waterfront.

Jack didn’t bother to translate. Even with her limited knowledge of Spanish, Lorraine caught their drift, and it wasn’t anything she cared to repeat.

Jack put the boat in gear, and they roared off with enough force to sink smaller boats in their wake.

They hadn’t cleared the marina when Lorraine heard an odd cracking sound, as if one of the engines had backfired. She glanced over her shoulder, but before anything could register, Jack shoved her to the deck and fell heavily on top of her. The shock of his actions left her stunned.

“What’s going on?” she asked when she’d recovered her breath.

“That, Your Highness, was your buddy taking potshots at us.”

“Shots? You mean with a gun?”

“That’s the weapon of choice for your average thug these days.” Jack climbed off her, then helped her to her feet.

Once they were safely in open water, Jack cut the engines to a more comfortable speed. He stood with his hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead.

Lorraine knew the time had come to apologize, abjectly and in full. Unfortunately her tongue refused to cooperate. It shouldn’t be this difficult. But Jack had the infuriating self-satisfied look of a man who knew he was right and was waiting for her to admit it.

“You’re hurt,” she said, instead.

He pressed the back of his hand to the corner of his mouth, then glanced at the slash on his upper arm. He arched his eyebrows as if surprised at how deep the injury was. Gingerly he tested the area and winced as his fingers probed it.

“Let me take care of that,” Lorraine volunteered. She was about to head belowdecks for the first-aid kit she’d noticed earlier.

“Leave it,” Jack snarled.

“No! It needs attention. I’m a nurse and I should know.”

“Look, I don’t want—”

Tempting though it was, she had no intention of wasting time arguing with him. Without waiting for his approval, she went belowdecks and grabbed the kit.

He stayed at the helm and grudgingly let her tend to the wound. Lorraine thought it probably should’ve had stitches, but fortunately the first-aid kit contained a number of butterfly bandages, which served almost as well. Other than a grunt now and again, Jack didn’t speak while she bandaged the cut.

“What about your face?” she asked when she’d finished with his arm.

“It’s fine,” he growled.

An ugly bruise had started to form on his chin. Examining it, Lorraine swallowed her pride. “I’m sorry, Jack.”

He didn’t respond right away, then looked at her briefly. “I see you have your watch back.”

So he knew.

She’d retrieved her wristwatch when she’d gone below to get the first-aid kit.

“Did you put the money back, too?” he asked.

“Yes.” She wasn’t proud of what she’d done. Her face burned with embarrassment.

It had been a stupid idea—another stupid idea—and she sincerely regretted it.

“Don’t try anything like that again. Understand?”

She nodded. She didn’t know if he was referring to her taking the money or leaving the boat. Probably both.

“You know, you’re getting to be a little too expensive.”

“I put the money back,” she insisted with ill grace.

“I’m not talking about the money you borrowed,” Jack muttered. “The supplies. This is the second time this has happened.”

“What?” She’d seen the case of beer on the table belowdecks and assumed everything else had already been loaded onto the boat.

“They got left behind on the dock.”

She closed her eyes and groaned, vaguely remembering the boxes stacked alongside the boat. “But the beer…there’s a case down below. You mean to say the only thing that got on board was the beer?”

Late that afternoon, Jack docked in a freshwater inlet for the night. Rio Usumacinta emptied into this cove, which was a small, sheltered one. Although he was fairly confident Carlos hadn’t tried to follow them, he wasn’t taking any chances.

As the sun sank in the west, Jack sat with his feet propped up, sipping from a bottle of his favorite cerveza. A smile touched his lips at the memory of Lorraine’s reaction when she realized that the only thing he’d managed to bring on board was the beer. The look on her face had been priceless. That expression of frustrated outrage had almost been worth the problems she’d caused. Almost.

He closed his eyes, enjoying the sense of calm at the end of a day that had taken one unexpected turn after another. As far as his passenger went, he didn’t like her, couldn’t trust her and considered her a royal pain in the ass. Nevertheless he had to hand it to her; the woman had pluck. It wasn’t everyone who could stand up to a powerful drug lord like Carlos Caracol.

Jack hadn’t immediately figured out who Carlos was, but once he did, he realized what a lucky escape they’d had. The name was one he knew well. It astonished Jack that Carlos hadn’t landed behind bars before now—or with a bullet in his back. He had a small band of followers and connections to a much bigger drug pipeline bringing in cocaine from other parts of Mexico and Central America. A few months ago Jack had talked to two government agents working in cooperation with the United States. Carlos’s name had come up then. He was believed to be responsible for the death of a Mexican official, but nothing could be proved. The man was a known killer, but smart enough—and corrupt enough—to stay out of prison. He certainly wasn’t the kind of enemy Jack wanted. What Carlos Caracol had been doing in a cantina in La Ruta Maya Jack couldn’t begin to guess.

Remembering how Lorraine had whirled on the man and primly informed him he’d have to wait his turn had been one of life’s more amusing moments. Jack couldn’t suppress a chuckle. He would never have left her to deal with Carlos on her own, however appealing the prospect. But it’d given him a few minutes of pleasure letting her think he just might.

He’d spent several years in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico now, lived a life that was the envy of his friends. Plenty of money at his disposal and not a care in the world. Yet he’d felt more aware of life these past two days with Lorraine than at any time since he’d inherited Scotch on Water. This annoying, priggish, straitlaced woman. Who would’ve guessed?