God, he needed it.
After this, he’d head to the galley and fix himself an iced coffee. Josh didn’t like anyone messing up his work space, but fuck him. Dude was FBI. Nobody cared what he liked and didn’t like. Josh ought to count himself lucky just to be alive.
Tupper sighed, took a long drag on the joint, held the sweet smoke in his lungs for a few seconds, then blew it out slow. He closed his eyes and rested the back of his head against the starboard hull.
FBI on board, rendezvous ship full of dead guys, guns missing, a third of the damn crew gone ashore to find them. Tupper considered himself a simple enough guy — beer and grass, pussy, sunshine, decent music, and cheeseburgers were all he required. Simple guy, simple life. But his life had just turned into a colossal clusterfuck.
“Shiiiiiit,” he whispered.
Sweat trickled down his forehead and he let it run. With the boilers chugging, it was like a steam room full of clanking pipes. Hot as hell. But he liked being belowdecks, down deep enough that he was cradled by the ocean. The back of his head felt cool, in spite of the boiler room’s heat.
Tupper took another long drag, relishing the smoke. At last the tension in his shoulders had started to subside.
At first, the knocking sounded far away, just one more clank and thump from the pipes and the chugging boilers. Slowly, though, a crease formed in his forehead. What was that noise? He knew the workings of the Antoinette’s innards better than anyone except the chief, but he didn’t recognize this sound.
His eyes opened. Something going wrong with the boilers, maybe? He was duty engineer, which made it his responsibility.
Tupper listened hard, the burning ember dimming at the end of the joint. His senses were pleasantly dulled and he felt sleepy, but he shook it off as best he could. The knocking came again, and he turned to look along the wall to his left. A pipe down there, maybe? He squinted in the gloom, slowly accepting that he would have to get up and check it out. Now was definitely not the time to piss off Captain Rio.
With a sigh, he put a hand against the hull and started to rise.
Something thumped the hull from the outside.
Tupper yanked his hand back as though burned. He stared at the hull, and jumped when the sound came again — a knock against the metal that resounded in the boiler room. It quickened — half a dozen blows striking the hull in as many seconds. Then it stopped, leaving only low echoes in the midst of the clanking and the heat. Tupper cocked his head, staring, waiting for it to come again, wondering what the hell had been hammering on the hull out there, underwater. Sharks or dolphins, maybe? Fucking blind or stupid sharks, if they were, trying to attack the hull of a freighter.
He pinched the end of the joint, licked his thumb and forefinger, and did it again to make sure it was out. Then he slipped the roach into his pocket and started slowly out of the boiler room.
Two more quick thumps rang against the hull and he quickened his pace, their echoes following him out.
37
A little after two o’clock, Angie finally made her way up the metal stairs to the wheelhouse. She’d been up these stairs dozens of times, and often thought about how much the tower of living spaces that sat on the back of the Antoinette reminded her of whitewashed Miami apartment buildings. The stairs only added to the illusion.
She climbed the last few steps carrying two cups of coffee, careful to keep her balance. On the metal landing she paused to take a deep breath and rebuild the smile she’d manufactured on her way up. No matter how many times she plastered it on, that smile kept cracking and falling away. Right now, she needed it more than ever.
Forcing herself not to falter — in expression or in balance — she reached out with the tip of her shoe and kicked at the base of the wheelhouse door. This ought to have been the most mundane of tasks, going to visit Dwyer in the wheelhouse, bringing her boyfriend — or whatever they were supposed to be to each other — a cup of coffee. But her skin prickled with the anxiety of deception.
Suck it up, Ange, she thought. This is how you stay out of jail.
The Caribbean sun had been beating down on the Antoinette all day and there’d been little wind, and almost no chop on the water. Now an oddly cool breeze gusted past her, chilling the beads of sweat on the back of her neck, and she shivered.
Through the windows, she watched Dwyer stride toward her. He turned to say something to Suarez, who stood by the wheel and the instruments, watching the radar like a hawk. Angie could only remember a couple of times when she had visited the bridge and not seen Suarez there, but today his normally laid-back demeanor had been replaced by a tightly coiled tension that unsettled her.
Watching for other boats, she thought. Waiting for the FBI.
Despite her deal with Josh, she couldn’t help silently urging Gabe and Tori and the others to hurry. How hard could it be to get the guns and get the hell back to the ship?
Dwyer pulled the door open, grinning, and stepped aside to let her in. “If those are iced coffees, you’ve just fulfilled my two greatest wishes at the same time.”
For a precious few seconds, Angie didn’t have to fake her smile. She handed him the iced coffee, loaded with sugar the way he liked it, and slid her hand behind his neck, pulling him down to kiss her. But as soon as the kiss broke off, she remembered his earlier condescension, and why she’d come, and her smile turned false again.
“What took you so long?” he asked, glancing at the clock.
“Fucking Anton didn’t show up to relieve me until about twenty minutes ago. He ‘overslept,’” she said. “I almost chucked his ass overboard. My eyes are burning and I’m dead on my feet, but he overslept? Fucker.”
Dwyer laughed, kissed her again, and took a sip of his coffee. Even Suarez glanced up from his vigil over the instruments to smile at her frustration.
“I’m funny to you guys now?” Angie said, nostrils flaring. “You’re goin’ over the railing right after Anton.”
That made Suarez break out in an actual grin. He must have been tired to let his guard down like that. Dwyer knew better than to push her buttons any further, though. He only took another sip of coffee, ice clinking in his cup.
“I’m glad you came up to see me, love,” Dwyer said, “but maybe you ought to try to get a little sleep while Anton’s on guard duty.”
Angie almost pouted. If she wanted to manipulate Dwyer, that would be the way to go. But he knew her well enough to know the pout wasn’t really part of her repertoire, and she didn’t want him to start wondering what she really wanted.
“In a little bit,” she said, raising her cup. “After our coffee. What about you? How long until someone spells you guys?”
Dwyer glanced at Suarez, but the white-haired old Cuban didn’t even glance up from the radar this time.
“Miguel’s taking three hours, then me, then Suarez,” Dwyer said.
Angie frowned. “You don’t think they’ll be back by then? What the hell is taking so long?”
“They found ’em,” Dwyer said. “Now it’s a matter of getting ’em back to—”
Suarez cut him off. “It takes as long as it takes, Angela. We stick until Captain Rio says otherwise.”
The old man had an edge in his voice and a hard glint in his eyes that Angie had never seen there before, and for a second she feared that Suarez had somehow sensed she was hiding something. But then he went back to staring at the radar screen, jaw set, leaning forward in his seat, and she understood. Suarez had stoic down to a science, but their current dilemma had him rattled.