Gale Force

79

“I found him in the infirmary,” the skipper told Harrington as he helped her haul the unconscious stowaway up the cargo deck to the bulkhead. “Guess he moved out of that first nest once you found him, barricaded himself away where he thought we’d never look.”

Harrington grunted, feeling the exertion. The stowaway wasn’t big, but it was no easy task dragging him up to the listing deck, not with his ribs still taped up like he was a mummy. “Sure,” he said. “So who is this guy?”

“No idea. Guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

With his free hand, Harrington gripped a Nissan’s mirror and pulled himself forward. Whoever the guy was, Harrington was pretty damn grateful he wasn’t much of a shot. The sneaky bastard had spun and fired wild, missed him by ten feet, but he’d thrown himself to the deck anyway, nearly cracked his laptop. It was a damned painful maneuver, besides, and when he’d stood up again, both the skipper and the shooter were way down at the portside hull, continuing their grudge match.

“Why was he so hell-bent on killing you, anyway?” Harrington asked. “You say something to piss him off?”

The skipper looked at him sideways, smiled just a little. Kept climbing. “That’s what I can’t figure out,” she said. “I guess he was just mad that I found him.”

Harrington glanced over at her. They’d almost reached the bulkhead door, almost time to call the Coast Guard, and hand this joker off.

There was more to this story, he figured. Nobody just stowed away on a shipwreck for weeks without a damn good reason.

And Harrington was a curious guy.

So he helped the skipper lug the unconscious stowaway to the bulkhead door, stood guard over the guy as McKenna ventured topside to call in the Coast Guard. Waited as the Coast Guard took the man into custody, two big, burly rescue swimmer types. They braced the stowaway on each side, and carried him upstairs to the helicopter.

Harrington followed. Joined the crew on the weather deck and regaled them with his story, told them all how he’d had a question for the captain about the pumps, how he’d followed her inside the ship, heard her voice in the cargo stairway, and followed her down. Played himself off as dumb and clueless when it came to the attack, held up his laptop, the screen cracked, and told them they were all lucky the guy’s skull wasn’t thicker.

And then, when the Coast Guard flew away, and the crew dispersed back to their pumps, Harrington ventured inside the ship again, and down the central corridor to the infirmary. He found the cabinet with which the stowaway had blocked the door, the sick bed where he’d slept, the piles of garbage he’d accumulated. And then, hidden in a medicine cabinet beside the stowaway’s sick bed, he found the briefcase.

It was slim, stainless-steel, a few nicks and scratches on its sides. It looked like something from a spy movie, something totally out of place in the infirmary, hell, on this ship. It was undoubtedly what the stowaway had been guarding.

Harrington knew he should tell the skipper about what he’d found. She was the captain, after all, and whatever was inside the briefcase—it was locked, he discovered—was important enough to kill over.

This was the kind of thing the captain would want to know about.

But Harrington knew McKenna pretty well, and he knew she liked to play by the rules. He knew that if he gave her the briefcase, she would feel obliged to hand it over to the authorities. And he was curious. What would possess a man to hide out on a shipwreck for days—weeks—without telling anyone? What kind of secret could make someone so desperate? This was a mystery, and he wanted to solve it himself.

The Lion was a shipwreck, Harrington reasoned. By maritime law, everything aboard was the property of the Gale Force. It wouldn’t hurt to investigate the briefcase a little more.

So Harrington took the briefcase from the medicine locker, carried it out of the infirmary and back through the accommodations and out to the deck of the Lion. Stashed the briefcase with his sleeping bag and a couple of empty fuel canisters, and set off to find Captain Rhodes again.

This was probably a bad idea, but damn it, life was a gamble. And Harrington figured gambling was precisely why he was here.