A Dangerous Harbor (18 page)

He stood up, his chair crashing into the wall behind him as he rounded his desk to check her for injuries. "Were you hurt? What happened? Why didn't you call me?"

Her mouth dropped open. Then she tilted her face up to his, her unanswered question reflected in his eyes. "It was a kid, sent to do some damage, maybe warn me off. I gave him more than he bargained for and he ran."

He heaved a shaky sigh and let his hands drop to his sides. For a minute, he was tempted to embrace her, but caught himself before he blundered into a disastrous act that would probably get him a well-deserved slap on the face

"You have a bruise on your right cheek. Did he strike you?"

"No. I got that when I stepped between the catfight between Astrid and
Myne
. I'm okay."

He stepped back, breaking the intimacy of the moment, and went to his desk to rummage around in it for pad and pen while his heart slowed in his chest.

"Have you listened to this tape? Do you have it with you?"

"No," she said, looking at her hands in her lap. "But I can get it."

"You didn't bring it with you, Miss Hunter?" he asked softly. "Is it because you still have doubts about me?"

"No, it's… just…."

He sat drumming his fingers on the desk, then making a decision, stood up, his jaw tight. "We're going for a ride," he said, taking the steps around his desk to grab her by the elbow and propel her out the door and down the hall before she could think to question his right to take her anywhere.

With one hand still firmly holding her elbow, he pushed through a back door and pulling car keys out of his pocket, beeped the key fob to unlock the doors, then opened the passenger side of his big Mercedes and motioned for her to get in.

A nasty thought crept forward to cut a chunk out of her confidence. If Gabe was right about the inspector, perhaps he was taking her for her last ride. First her, then Gabe.
Oh, God, her imagination was running amok again
. The question she should be asking was, would David come storming down here to look for her should she go missing?

The answer to that was probably the reason why, without a peep, she got in, buckled up and waited. Because with everything she'd seen of Raul
Vignaroli
, something told her that if she went missing, here was the kind of man David Bennett was not. This man would come looking for her and he'd find her, no matter what it took or who he had to kill.

Raul wheeled out of the parking lot, and taking a frontage road, crossed over a bridge, bumped through a back alley until he stopped in front of a large metal building.

"Miss Hunter, Katy. Look at the sign on this building. What does it say?"

She read the sign. "It says
Vignaroli
Canning Company." The building took all of a city block. "Yours?"

"My family. We own a good portion of the fishing fleets and canning plants from here to the southern border. I am a shareholder in the company. It allows me to continue the lifestyle I was born to, but I am also part of a federal task force dedicated to fight the cartels. My family approves of this, they know that the work I do is important. I hope you understand now."

She blushed and looked at her hands. "You didn't have to do this, you know." Then she looked up at him again. "Why do you care what I think of you?"

"Is it such a terrible thing—to want your approval? Has no man ever done anything to show you that your opinion of him mattered?"

 
"I'm… I'm not sure what it is you're saying."

His eyes took on a bemused expression. "Perhaps I'm not making myself clear. I am asking for you to trust me," he said, giving a quick nod towards her shoulder bag.

"Oh, yes. I see what you mean." She rooted around the inside of her bag and pulled out the small black tape recording. Holding it up she made a point of demonstrating that the tape wasn't going to fit into his CD slot.

He reached out and covered her smaller hand with his. "Will you
trust
me with it?"

Her hand opened and she offered up the little black cassette to him.

His smile of gratitude was tinged with only the slightest wave of regret as he pocketed the tape and turned his car around.

Katy insisted he not take her back to the hotel, but drop her off at a local grocery store, where she loaded up on basics for her boat. Then with her purchases, she took a taxi back to the hotel and pushed her loaded dock cart down the ramp towards her dock.

A long bank of fog now blanketed the horizon as it did every evening about this time. Overhead, stars pushed through the inky sky, and though the moon had yet to come up, the day was definitely gone.

She walked past boats with lights on, people talking over music, laughter as easy as the warm evening breeze on her face. Dragging her plastic bags into the cockpit behind her, she ducked under her boat
bimini
thinking how nice it would be to have someone to help. Not that her fastidious ex-fiancé would ever consider sailing to Mexico a vacation. David's idea of roughing it meant having to do without room service. Of course, now her opinions were tinged by what she knew of Raul. What he said to her today—
has no man ever done anything to show you that your opinion of him mattered?
—and the way he'd said it wound ropes of longing around her heart.

Too tired to switch on the light, she laid the groceries on the galley floor, then reached into her icebox expecting to snag a long-neck
Pacifico
. Confused, she batted the empty space.

Behind her, someone burped softly. She stiffened and switched on the overhead light.

"Sorry," Gabe said. "Kept the lights off in case it wasn't you."

Her last two
Pacificos
were now empties on the table and ready for the recycling bin.

He stood up and offered to help with her groceries.

She stopped him. "Wait a minute—wasn't the boat locked?"

He grinned. "You need to give the tumbler a twirl if you want to keep reprobates like me out. You take that cassette to Inspector Vinegar?"

"I told you not to call him that. He has absolutely no idea who Booth might have been trying to blackmail and I believe him." Okay, not his exact words, but she wasn't going to allow Gabe another ounce of doubt about Raul to grow in her mind.

"Why? What'd he do for that?"

"He didn't promise me the moon if I
married
him."

"Ouch. Okay, I deserved that. I wish you'd give me a little slack here, Katy, I'm just trying to help."

"Where did you go last night?" she asked.

"What do you mean? I had a job to do, remember? Did you come back? Why? Did you change your mind about us?"

"No, Gabe. I left to go back down the path to the marina and someone tried to attack me."

"No! My God, Katy," he said grabbing her by the arms, giving her a once-over. "Are you hurt?"

She brushed his hands away. "I used that flashlight you gave me to beat him off or I would've ended up at the bottom of the cliff."

Gabe sank back down onto the settee. "I left right after you did. Went to check out Astrid Del Mar like I said I would. Did you tell the inspector I'm helping you?"

"You and I don't communicate anymore, remember?"

He seemed pleased with her answer. "Got what you wanted."
 
He held up a small spiral notebook and flipped a page. "California driver's license number, address in LA and her real name is Astrid Woods, age twenty-six." He peeled off the lined page and handed it to her.

"That's great, Gabe," she said, praising him for the task but also guessing the ID was a fake, since that's the age she always put her on own fake IDs. "I'll give this to my contact in California and see what he can come up with."

 
"I brought you something else," he said, reaching down to pick up a cardboard box. Opening the flaps, he pulled out a small orange-stripped kitten, its big ears chewed from fighting with its littermates and it looked to have some kind of skin disease.

Katy shook her head at the kitten. "No. Sorry. My apartment building in San Francisco won't allow pets."

"Ah, come on. Every boat needs a cat on it. We got cockroaches down here the size of footballs and she's already cleaned my place of all the bugs."

Katy warily eyed the sleepy kitten. "Her feet are huge."

Seeing Katy was close to relenting, Gabe pushed. "This is a Baja fish cat. When she's a little bigger, she'll fish for her own dinner."

"She'll what?"

"It's some kind of a genetic mutation. See?" he said, spreading out the kitten's paws to show the deeply webbed skin between each toe. "They use their webbed feet to reach into the water and catch fish."

"Gabe, I just don't think it's a good time for me to have a pet."

"Tell you what," he said, putting the box on the table and edging for the ladder. "If you still don't want her by tomorrow, I'll pick her up and take her off your hands."

She looked at Gabe and then at the kitten in the box curled up on the rag and asleep.

"Well…." she said, turning to watch him take her ladder and exit her boat.

She pulled a beer out of the six-pack she'd brought home, tipped off the cap and up-ended the bottle till it was empty, then found a plastic tub suitable for a kitty box and hiked out the gate and scooped up enough dirt to use in the box.

Back in the boat she made a bed for the kitten out of a shallow pan and an old towel and let the kitten try out its new digs.

Tomorrow, she'd ask someone about a vet. The poor thing had some kind of skin problem. And it would need its shots and maybe neutering, if it wasn't too soon.

Gabe left her a present so he could keep a thread of communication open. Or he could have done it so that he'd know when she discovered he was the one who murdered Booth.

If she accepted Raul's explanation about his income and his work with the federal police against the cartel, then why did she tell him about being attacked but not that it was when she was coming back from Gabe's, or that Gabe was helping her with the investigation? Probably because she needed to hang onto the last vestiges of her distrust—something, anything that would keep her from making a fool out of herself and falling in love with a married man.

Just before she drifted off to sleep, she muttered, "Note to self: Do not even
think
about taking this kitten back to San Francisco."

Chapter Fourteen:

Saturday morning and Katy awoke to the sound of Mexican mariachi music. Dressed, she went topside with her tea and watched the tents for a wedding reception go up on the hotel grounds. Soon caterers were bringing out tables, chairs and swags of flowers.

Taking her shower bag, Katy intended to use the hotel phones call to her partner at the SFPD and find a vet for the kitten.

She passed the wedding party, noting mothers in too-snug mauve dresses nervously measuring servings against the list of guests while dads slapped backs and schmoozed with business associates.

Weddings—they were the same everywhere. Tomorrow the fathers would groan under the weight of heavy heads and lighter wallets and mothers would cry over the empty nest.
At least the newlyweds looked happy as they ducked their heads shyly together, held hands and whispered to each other amid boisterous toasts to their fertility. From the look of the bride's waistline, Katy figured they already had a good start in that direction.

When Bruce answered he immediately put her on hold. She got to listen to most of John Denver warbling about the Rockies before he came back on the line.