Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (181 page)

Just then, a loud shriek pierced the air nearly causing Nick to drop his phone and become visible. Since his time in London at the beginning of the last century he’d been experiencing some difficulty on the invisible-to-mortals front. A sudden shock or stress could make him slip.

The shriek had been replaced by unbridled laughter. A little boy about five or six years old hung by his feet in the air, his father swinging him around upside down.

“Faster, Daddy! Faster!”

And the man swinging his son over the concrete? It was none other than Nick’s subject: Jonathan Hartwell.

His wife Elaine made a shushing gesture with one hand while pressing a shiny white phone to her ear.

“Honestly, Lisa, I wouldn’t pay him another cent! If you keep giving them what they ask, by this time next year you’ll be paying a hundred dollars a week just to have them mow your lawn. It’s robbery, and you don’t want to—”

Another shriek.

Elaine spun around. “Jon, would you please put Matthew down? Stop this foolishness now before you break his neck!”

Hartwell complied. Matthew whined.

“Aw, Mom!”

Elaine put the phone back to her ear. “Sorry, sweetie. Call you back? Love you, bye!”

Hartwell and his son gave each other a furtive smile Elaine soon wiped off their faces.

“Did you ever think what people will say if the media gets footage of you making a fool of yourself in public?”

“Come on, hon,” Hartwell said. “I get one day off to spend with my son, and—”

“You happen to be a celebrity. So what you do in public reflects on me, too.” She grabbed Matthew’s hand and dragged him off, leaving Jonathan by himself at the aquarium’s exit.

It occurred to Nick that Elaine could easily do this job for him.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

IT WAS THE UTTER CALM THAT STARTLED YURI back to consciousness. Just how many hours he’d been out, he couldn’t tell—the face of his digital watch was smashed. The throbbing pain in the back of his head made him wonder if his skull had been too. He touched it, then looked at his fingers in the sunlight.

No blood.

And sunshine—The storm had passed.

He stood there for a long moment, feeling the knot that ran from the base of his head and into his left shoulder blade. A dagger of pain impaled his neck at the slightest turn of his head.

He let out a childish yelp. Hopefully Jonas hadn’t heard it, or Yuri would never hear the end of it until they arrived in Ensenada.

How long until then?

All around, the stench of dead fish engulfed him to the point of nausea. He couldn’t—

He saw the crate. Broken open and its contents missing.

The package.

Gone!

Despite the tense muscles that felt more like steel rods in his neck and spine, Yuri whirled around, his feet splashing in ankle-high water. Where was that suitcase? Could Jonas have broken into the crate and taken it? It made no sense for him to do that, but they were out at sea and he was the only other person on board.

The boat leaned slightly to starboard and creaked. He almost called out but instantly thought better of it. If Jonas had gotten greedy and decided to confiscate the package...

Yuri reached around his back for his gun.

It too was gone.

At least he still had a small knife strapped to his ankle, though he hoped not to use it. Knives were so much messier than guns.

He swore under his breath. Yuri’s contact in Osaka had assured him Jonas was reliable, minded his own business relaying passengers discreetly across international waters. With no way of getting to dry land without him, Yuri was for the time being literally at Jonas’s mercy. He’d have to be clever, gain a physical advantage, and compel Jonas to stick with the original terms of their arrangement. Then, when Yuri and the package safely arrived, he’d teach that slimy mercenary a lesson.

Pulling himself up, Yuri listened carefully for any sign above.

Nothing but the lapping of waves against the bow and the doleful lament of seagulls. Their dirge grew louder as he gripped the cold metal handrails and struggled to keep his footing on the steps that brought him up onto the deck.

It took a while for his eyes to adjust in the brightness, even though his back was turned to the warm sun. Careful not to make any sudden moves, he turned around and scanned the deck, slick with water.

“Jonas?”

No answer. No sign of the man needed to pilot the boat to shore. Yuri’s stomach clenched at the thought of being stranded at sea—or, worse, being murdered, fed to the sharks so Jonas could sell the package’s contents to the highest bidder.

He took a cautious step forward.

Something hard and round bumped against his toes. Glancing down, he noticed some uncoiled rope spread haphazardly across the deck. It seemed to thin out into a taut line right past where it bent around a leg of the chrome rail. Following it, Yuri saw that it went over the deck and down into the water.

He didn’t know the first thing about boats, but it almost looked like Jonas had tied an anchor to the rope and cast it overboard. Yuri approached the edge of the deck, following the rope.

Then he saw it.

At the end of the rope, Jonas’s pale corpse dangled, eyes wide with surprise, mouth agape, blue tongue hanging out. The rope was wrapped around his neck—which, judging by its perverse angle, was broken. During the storm, he’d somehow gotten tangled in the line and thrown overboard.

No longer concerned he might be heard, Yuri began to hyperventilate. He was not one to mourn the death of such a man as Jonas. But he had no idea how to pilot a boat. And in the vast ocean around it, not a trace of land could be seen.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THEY’D BEEN AT IT FOR HOURS, and Nick was sick of it.

Talking, muttering, whining, Elaine’s voice rising in pitch, volume, and intensity, then Jon’s voice catching up, eventually booming over hers. If they only understood just how short mortal life was, how little time they really had to get it right, they might think twice about arguing over money, control, sex, and other such minutiae.

The door to their bedroom slammed shut, but the shouting seemed every bit as loud as when it had been open. When Matthew scooped up Riley, their golden retriever puppy, and ran down to the foot of the white-carpeted stairs, Nick wondered why it had taken him so long.

He went over and sat next to Matthew, who sighed like an old man as he stroked the dog’s ears.

No child should have a sigh like that.

Nick wanted to step in and chide Matthew’s parents—
An innocent child’s future is being irrevocably cast in a mold of your wrath and self-centredness!

Stupid mortals.

But what could he do? He couldn’t reveal himself—the interaction might complicate his assignment. The yelling continued. Now they were accusing each other of just about everything under the sun.

He looked upstairs and glowered at the shut door that did nothing to shield Matthew from the hatred spewing forth and bleeding into his spirit. He had to get him outside for some fresh toxin-free air.

Nick leaned over and whispered to Riley, “Want to go for a walk?”

Riley looked right at him, opened her mouth for a big puppy smile, and leapt down from Matthew’s lap. Her tail swiped left-right, left-right, left-right. She looked up at both of them and barked.

“What is it, girl?” Matthew said.

Riley ran to the front door. Barked twice, then ran back and barked once.

Matthew pointed to the door. “You want to go out?”

The ongoing combat in his parents’ room paused for a moment, and Matthew looked up.

Nick called out to Riley. “Out? Out?”

Riley started yapping incessantly. The yelling upstairs resumed. Matthew barely had the door open before Riley dashed out.

“Hey, wait up!” Matthew started out the door.

Just then, the door at the top of the stairs swung open.

“AND WHAT ABOUT MATTHEW!” Elaine screamed. “DO YOU THINK
HE
CAN RESPECT A MAN LIKE YOU?”

Matthew froze.

“Oh, for pity’s sake,” Nick muttered.

If only he could cover Matthew’s ears. His blue eyes were about to fill up, and the doorknob rattled in his hand.

But Riley’s barking outside alerted Matthew. He turned around to look.

“Riley, no!”

He bolted out the door, which shut before Nick could see what was happening.

Something felt wrong.

Nick rushed out and saw it all.

Barking excitedly at a white toy poodle across the two-way street, Riley ran between the parked cars and out into the oncoming traffic. Matthew ran after her.

“Stop, Riley! Come back!”

Knowing what was about to happen, Nick flew out after him.

Two cars coming from both directions came down the street. Matthew, focused on his puppy, didn’t see them.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

JUST AS NICK REACHED HIM, Matthew saw the car coming from the left and blasting its horn at him. With a terrified shriek he dove forward and out of the way.

He landed face down on the pavement in the opposite lane.

When she heard Matthew scream, Riley stopped barking and ran over to him.

But the car from the right was coming. Both the boy and dog were in the middle of the street. With the first car in the left lane and the curb blocked by parked cars, it had nowhere to swerve.

Ignoring all angel dictates and canon, Nick grabbed Matthew by the waist of his pants and yanked him over to the narrow yellow painted space between the two lanes.

The second car sped by, blaring its horn. To Nick’s disgust, it didn’t stop.

He set Matthew down.

He looked up at Nick—scared to death, and not just by the near accident. Matthew could see him!

Nick looked over to the first car, but the driver who’d seen Nick appear—out of thin air from her point of view—rolled up her window and sped off, not bothering to see if the little boy she’d almost killed was all right.
That’s humans for you.

Nick knelt down and touched Matthew’s shoulder.

“You all right, little man?”

“I...I...” Then he turned around and looked into the lane Nick had just pulled him from. His face crumpled. “Riley!”

There she was, lying still about fifteen feet down the street. As if he’d forgotten everything that just happened, Matthew rushed to his puppy, calling her name. Nick went with him, watching for more oncoming traffic.

Matthew fell to his knees, crying. Riley had been hit and was gasping her final breaths—something Nick was all too familiar with. Matthew looked at his puppy, his face all tears and dirt and heart-wrenching despair.

“I’m sorry, Riley! This is all my fault!”

“It’s not, Matthew. Not your—”

“I let her out without me. Oh, Riley...Riley, please don’t die!” He turned back to Nick. “I messed up—I always mess up! That’s why Mommy and Daddy don’t want me.”

“That’s not true!” Nick made up his mind. The laws about unassigned healings couldn’t be so inane as to apply to animals. And if they did, he didn’t care.

He knelt down and placed his hands around Riley’s head. His entire body tingled with a pulsating light that started from his heart and radiated to his fingertips, which glowed as he pressed them gently against the puppy’s furry brow.