Just as Lucy reached the small dive platform to the side of the large outboard engine, the engine gave a cough and sputter. Fearful of the propeller, Lucy quickly hauled herself up onto the platform, landing not with the tactical posture she’d hoped for but more like a muddy whale beaching itself. From inside the cabin, Shelly shouted a curse and the engine roared to life in response.
The boat lurched forward then jerked to a stop again, the engine whining then quieting to a fretful gasping noise. Shelly had forgotten about the anchors. Lucy grabbed hold of the railing and climbed to her feet, one hand holding her gun. She edged forward onto the main deck toward the open cabin door.
Shelly was at the wheel, fighting the throttle, her hair in a tangled frenzy as she cried in frustration.
“It’s over,” Lucy said. No sign of Shelly’s gun, but she wasn’t taking any chances. She planted her feet and aimed. “Hands in the air where I can see them.”
Shelly spun around. Her hands were empty, which was the only thing that saved Lucy from shooting her.
“It’s not my fault,” she whimpered. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”
“Turn the engine off,” Lucy ordered.
Shelly nodded, tears and mascara streaming down her face, and shut the engine off. Lucy moved forward, but she knew she’d won. Shelly didn’t resist as Lucy put her face down on the deck and restrained her with a set of zipcuffs.
A banging coming from a cabinet inside the cabin door grabbed her attention. Holding her pistol at the ready, she opened it. Mateo rolled out, his hands cuffed behind him.
“Pastor Fleming,” he gasped. “You have to help him. He’s dying.”
Lucy opened the door to the bathroom. Fleming was on the floor, curled around the toilet, his color ashen and his breathing coming hard and fast, smelling sweet.
The boat rocked abruptly. Lucy whirled to face the new threat, but it was Gant at the diver’s platform. “A little help here?”
He hauled Hayden’s still form with him through the mud. As Lucy rushed to help them both on board, the sound of new, louder, powerful engines thundered through the night. Blinding spotlights pierced the darkness.
“Sheriff’s department!” a man’s voice sounded, amplified by a bullhorn.
Lucy couldn’t stop her laughter, mud streaming down her clothing, inside and out, sliding from her hair into her face. Better late than never.
Chapter 24
The sheriff’s department had a tactical medic with them who quickly got Fleming stabilized, staunched the bleeding from the gash in Hayden’s head where she’d hit it going overboard, and dispatched them along with Mateo to the hospital on the mainland while his colleagues ferried Shelly, Lucy, and Gant ashore. Gant had been hit in his vest, which was why he’d lost control of his boat, but refused to leave for the hospital until the others were taken care of.
Lucy and Gant were relegated to the back of a deputy’s cruiser, which would need a serious hosing down to get the dead-fish pluff mud stink out of it. The mud had slipped and slid into every crevice of Lucy’s clothing, making a squishing noise each time she shifted her weight.
“I can’t believe—the chief,” Gant said. “We’ve worked together for almost a decade.”
“When did her sister move here?”
“Three years ago. Should’ve seen through his Ponzi scheme, but they were always so good about paying folks back. We all thought we were doing something good—helping others. So we kept on reinvesting.”
“He paid the first ones in with the new money and that whet your appetite, until—”
“Until it all fell apart.” He made a small noise. “Do you think the chief was she in on it the whole time?”
As if being a FBI agent gave Lucy special psychic powers. She thought of the way Shelly ordered Hayden around on the boat and how Hayden hesitated, balked each step of the way. “No. If she’d have known earlier, she would have paid off her debts after her husband died. I think she was just as surprised as anyone when she saw the blood at her sister’s house. But after, when things went wrong, I think that’s when Shelly realized she couldn’t finish it alone. She convinced Hayden to help.”
“Family.” The word emerged with a sigh. “Hard to resist.”
They sat in silence for a while. It was strange being in the back of a patrol car—the seat was hard plastic, not comfortable at all. And she didn’t like the claustrophobic feeling of being confined. Of course, that was the entire point of the design.
“So your daughter, she’s how old again?” Gant finally said.
“Fourteen. Why?”
“Pretty smart for a teenager, putting this all together.” He glanced over at her, weighing his words. “She insisted I listen, was a bit of a—”
“Stubborn?” Lucy supplied when he stopped short of using a term men had used to label her through her entire professional career.
He jerked his chin in a nod. “Yeah. Definitely stubborn. Ferocious even.”
Lucy smiled. Another adjective often applied to her by other law enforcement officers—not always as a compliment. “She gets that from her mother.”