Something bumped against her. The boat? A shark? She shivered even though she'd long gone beyond numb.
Light pierced her cocoon. Death? No. The sail parted, sliced open, Carson's form looming as he split the water with sluicing sweeps of his arms, a knife in his hand.
He was alive. Relief threatened to steal precious seconds. She had to help or he would die trying to save her.
Kicking, he plunged down, unwinding the line encircling her ankle while she loosened the snaking vise around her arm. Freedom.
He clamped her to his side, surging up. She blinked back unconsciousness, but couldn't escape the stab of guilt over even thinking he could have lied about the night Gary died. Carson may have kept the alcoholism a secret, but this man would never have let her hang for his crimes. That much, she knew with a certainty as strong as the muscled arm banded around her.
The world righted as her equilibrium returned, up, up, blasting through the surface by the wounded boat. The massive keel along the bottom had righted the craft, even if the mast stretched a good thirty feet or more along the water, lines and sails such a tangled mess she wondered how he'd found her, much less freed her.
His feet trod water, brushing her with vital reassurance. Still he held her. "Are you all right? The mast didn't hit you?"
"I'm fine." She gasped, lungs aching, her feet pumping now as well since she didn't have to worry about dragging him down. "Thank you. Ohmigod thank you. And are you okay?"
"Fine." He didn't look fine. In fact he looked really pissed, his eyes stormy below a purpling bruise on his head.
Well, she was petrified to her toes. Only an idiot wouldn't be. They were in near-freezing waters, and while there were boats in the distance, they needed to book-it over before somebody lost a foot—or worse—to exposure.
"Somebody's head's gonna roll for this." Anger simmering, Carson paced in a back office at Beachcombers, while Special Agent Reis jotted notes. "I'm thinking it's going to start with you soon, Reis, if you don't figure out who the hell's trying to kill Nikki before she remembers what happened."
The horror threatened to crash over him again as heavy as that boom. The mast giving way, tipping the boat, launching both of them into the water. Then watching Nikki sink in a tangle of shrouds and sail.
His boots pounded hardwood floors in the antebellum building, intense, louder.
"Major, I understand you're frustrated." The agent sat on the corner of a desk, working a piece of gum while he typed notes in his PDA. "A freezing dip in the ocean will ruin a good mood."
"No." He stopped short, the window behind Reis providing too clear a nighttime view of the dock where someone intent on harming them had lurked in the past couple of days. "A deliberately broken mast will do that to a person."
"We can't know that for certain until your boat has been recovered and examined."
Carson wrenched his attention off the dock, back to the present and getting answers this man had the power to provide. "And I'm telling you, I keep that craft in tip-top shape."
"You weren't at all distracted today?" The agent tucked his PDA into an inside jacket pocket. "Couldn't you have screwed up locking the mast in place?"
For a second Carson wondered if maybe...then as quickly shoved aside the doubts. "I've been sailing by myself since I was ten." Which now that he thought about it didn't sound all that safe, but he'd been an expert in ditching his parents and nanny in those days. "And on the job, my life and the lives of others depend on following checklists. I do not 'screw up' in the air or on the water. Inspect those lines. I bet you'll find someone filed through the metal just enough to weaken one or two of the shrouds. Even a couple of small cuts would be imperceptible to the eye, while posing an insidious danger. Once the sails filled and pulled the lines taut, it would continue to fray until it snapped."
"An angle to investigate. I'll look into that once your boat has been impounded. I'll also ask around about activity at the dock."
Tension downgraded to half power. The guy was doing everything he asked, keeping him posted with all the facts.
Or was he? Had they all been wrong to assume Reis was top-notch at his job?
The door swung open, Nikki stepping through in a borrowed jean jumper from the proprietor, Claire McDermott, the dress a couple of inches short on Nikki, but dry.
And tempting with that extra stretch of exposed leg.
Reis straightened from the desk, his interrogator-perceptive eyes ping-ponging between the two of them. "Ms. Price, I assume you're all right."
She pulled up alongside Carson, fidgety, but understandable given their ordeal. "I'm running out of those nine lives, but otherwise okay." Her gaze skipped around the room full of spice plants. "And, uh, I think I remembered something on the boat right before all of this happened."
What? Carson's attention snapped as taut as the lines right before they'd popped.
"It wasn't a full-out memory like the other times, more of a mishmash dream. But I'm certain of one thing." Her restlessness settled into steely resignation. "There was another person in the room with Gary and me that night. A man. A blond man."
The implication sucker punched him. No wonder she'd gone tense after their nap and then asked him about blackouts. She thought he'd gotten drunk, gone after Owens and then forgotten.
His alibi only lasted until two in the morning with the emergency on the flight line that had called him away from his meeting. So he had no way of accounting for the in-between hours—except for a freaking zoo of origami animals he'd folded through the night to distract himself from thinking about seeing Nikki at Beachcombers, knowing she was dating another guy.