Lisa Foxton squinted through the salt-flecked window of the trawler’s cabin, but night had fallen, and despite the running lights mounted on the shrimp boat’s bow, all she could see was the inky blackness of a night at sea.
“I can’t see anything,” she wailed. “Don’t you people have a searchlight or something?”
“A searchlight!” Mick Coyle snorted. The wiry, sunburned captain of the Maggy Dee ran his hand over his bloodshot eyes to make sure they were still open. He still didn’t quite know how he’d gotten mixed up with this crazy crowd he’d met up with on Eutaw Island. Especially this chick. “We’re shrimpers, not the Coast Guard,” he reminded her. “Anyway, there’s nobody out on the water tonight. We’ve been all around Eutaw twice, talked to other boats out of Darien, nobody’s seen any sign of your sister. Diesel fuel ain’t cheap, you know.”
“She’s out here someplace,” Lisa said fiercely. She clutched at the sleeve of his grimy T-shirt. “She’s gotta be. We’ve looked everywhere else. You’ve gotta help me find her.” She turned those big brown eyes of hers on him and blinked back tears.
“Shit,” Mick muttered. It was the eyes that had gotten to him. He’d tied up at the ferry dock at Eutaw shortly after the storm started kicking up. His intention was to sell some shrimp to the woman who ran the lodge at Rebeccaville, maybe sit out the weather. He’d just popped a cold beer when the girl came running down to the dock, screaming that her sister was missing, caught out in the storm.
Pretty soon she’d been joined by two more men, a squirrelly-looking guy in his early twenties, dressed head-to-toe in black, and the older one, kind of a bodybuilder type dressed in what he probably thought was foul-weather gear—an expensive-looking raincoat, khaki slacks, and mud-spattered loafers.
The bodybuilder seemed to be the self-appointed sheriff of the search party.
“How much to charter the boat?” he’d demanded, pulling a fancy ostrich-skin billfold from his back pocket and flashing a platinum American Express card.
Coyle ignored the credit card and took another sip of his beer.
“Well?” the sheriff repeated. “What about it?”
“You wanna go shrimping? In this weather?”
“Zeke, Scott, make him listen,” the girl cried, stepping between them. “We think she’s out there—in a boat. You’ve got to help us. Please?”
“Lisa, please,” Scott had said, pulling the girl aside. “Just calm down. Let me handle this.”
Lisa crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.
“My girlfriend is missing,” he went on.
“Ex-girlfriend,” Lisa piped up. “Gina is so over you, Scott.”
Zeke, the one dressed in black, cleared his throat. “Gina is Lisa’s big sister,” he’d said apologetically. “We’re all staying here at the lodge, shooting a television show, and this afternoon, Gina—that’s the sister—just disappeared.”
“I’m her executive producer, Scott Zaleski,” the older man said. He pulled a business card from the wallet and handed it across to Coyle, who nodded, but didn’t take it. “Maybe you’ve seen our show—Fresh Start with Regina Foxton?”
“Nope,” Coyle said. He jerked his head at Zeke. “What makes you think she’s not still on the island?”
“We found her golf cart parked by a shell bank on the creek, but there’s no other sign of her,” Zeke said eagerly.
“She’s been gone for hours,” Lisa wailed. “I told Scott there was something wrong when she didn’t come back on time—”
“Gina’s very focused on winning this competition,” Scott said. “There was no reason to get alarmed, especially since Moody also missed the deadline.”
“That’s the other thing,” Zeke added. “We found Tate’s golf cart parked right beside Gina’s. Their fishing equipment is gone, and their coolers, so we’re thinking—”
“Tate?” Coyle said. “You mean Tate Moody?”
Zeke’s glasses slid down his nose. He pushed them back up. “Well, yeah. Tate’s missing too. Nobody’s seen either one of them since this morning, and one of the women who works at the lodge seems to think they might have found a boat and decided to go off together. Although I think that’s highly unlikely—”
Mick put his beer down and headed for the Maggy Dee. “Why didn’t you say it was Tate missing to begin with? We never miss Vittles. Man! My old lady would kick my ass if she knew I turned down a chance to meet the Tatester.”
The three of them had followed him down the dock to the boat, ready to board, until Coyle held up two fingers.
“Two of ya can come, but that’s all. This ain’t no cruise liner.”
“She’s my sister, and I’m going,” Lisa had said, and without further ado, she nimbly jumped from the dock onto the deck of the Maggy Dee.
Scott Zaleski looked down at the waves slapping up and over the deck of the shrimp boat, and seemed to have second thoughts about this mission. “Maybe it would be better if I stayed on the island, just in case she turns up,” he said. “I can coordinate things from here.”
“Wuss,” Lisa called. She held out a hand to the other man. “Come on, Zeke.”
The younger man took a deep breath and jumped. His foot slipped when he hit the wet deck, and he went sprawling on his ass at the girl’s feet.
“Christ,” Coyle said, stepping over the man in black. “Gonna be a long night.”
Lisa picked up a pair of binoculars from the Maggy Dee’s console. She stepped out onto the deck and swept them slowly to the right and to the left. Zeke drifted over and put an arm around her shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll find her. Barry had me put in a call to the Coast Guard earlier. They had a Liberian tanker grounded on a sandbar down near Jacksonville, but as soon as they get the crew transported to land, they’ll have a cutter on the way. And when it turns daylight, we’ll send out a spotter plane.”
“Daylight!” Lisa shrieked. “It’s nearly ten o’clock. We can’t wait till morning to find her. Anything could happen if she’s out here. Mama’s been calling nonstop since this morning.” She clutched Zeke’s collar in both hands. “Do you want to be the one to tell Birdelle Foxton that the Coast Guard was too busy rescuing some stinking old Liberians to find her daughter?”
“Nooo,” Zeke admitted. Lisa had replayed some of the messages Birdelle had left on her cell phone. She sounded formidable, to say the least.
“Go!” Lisa urged, pointing toward the Maggy Dee’s cabin. “Talk to the captain. You’re a man. He’ll listen to you. Make him understand that we have got to keep looking. Gina’s out here, somewhere, I just know it.”
Zeke hesitated. The only reason Mick Coyle had agreed to this particular search-and-rescue mission was that he was a huge fan of Tate’s. That and the five crisp hundred-dollar bills Zeke had folded into the man’s grubby fist before they’d left the dock. Coyle made him nervous. This shrimp boat made him nervous too. Not to mention seasick. He’d already logged serious time hanging over the side of the Maggy Dee, tossing his cookies. He was a rising star in the galaxy of culinary entertainment. What was he doing out here in the middle of nowhere, on this oil-belching garbage scow?
“Zeke.” Lisa wrapped her arms around his neck, stood on tiptoe, and pressed her body close to his. “Please, lover. Help me find my sister.”
Oh, yes. Now he remembered.
He sighed and went into the pilothouse to have a word with Captain Coyle.
The boat’s radio crackled with ghostly disembodied voices, men’s voices, checking in from boats like the Little Lady, the Craw Daddy, and Hellzapoppin.
“Maggy Dee, Maggy Dee,” a man’s voice called. “This is the BadDawg. You folks still lookin’ for that party missing out of Eutaw?”
Coyle flipped a button on the boat’s console and spoke into a microphone. “Roger that. You got something?”
“Could be,” the voice came back. “We’re headed back to port, but just went by the south end of Rattlesnake Key. I didn’t see it, but my mate swears he saw a light out there.”
“Light?” Coyle repeated. “On Rattlesnake?”
“Roger that,” the voice repeated. “He says maybe a fire, something like that. Could just be campers. Teenagers out of school for the summer. Or maybe it’s them folks you’re looking for.”
“Thanks, BadDawg,” Coyle said. He flipped the switch again, and put his own binoculars to his face.
“Rattlesnake Key,” Zeke said eagerly. “How far off is that?”
Coyle shrugged. “Not far. We’ve been by there twice tonight, but I didn’t see nothin’. We’ll check it out, though.” He swung the boat’s steering wheel hard right and shoved the throttle forward, sending the trawler surging through the waves.