She chewed on her lower lip but didn’t answer.
“You don’t have a better plan?”
“No. I mean, this is a good plan. I know you’re trying to help. It’s just…”
“Just what?” He throttled down the engine to a rough idle. The waves pitched them from side to side, a familiar motion for him, because they often had to work at an idle while fishing.
But cruise ships didn’t rock like this, because she lost her balance and stumbled forward. He caught her in his arms, a sleep-warmed bundle of long limbs and soft windblown hair.
“What’s going on, Lulu?” He tilted her face up to his. “We’re in this together, okay? You can tell me.”
She shook her head, but at the same time leaned against him, as if wanting the strength he was offering, but unable to accept it. “I wish I could.”
So there was something she was keeping from him. Disappointment ripped through him. He’d asked her straight up if she’d told him the truth, and she’d said yes. That wasn’t just a lie, it was a lie about a lie. At least she wasn’t lying about lying about lying. Or was she?
“Can you just trust me?” she whispered. “There’s something I can’t tell you, but it’s only because I promised someone.”
“Trust you?” He let out a sharp bark of laughter. “You looked me in the eye and said you told me the whole truth.”
“I said it was the gist. Tristan, please.” She reached up a hand to stroke his cheek. Her eyes shone with tears in the greenish light from his dashboard. Was she trying to play him? Was that why her touch felt so gentle and her body was trembling? “I wouldn’t be saying any of this if it wasn’t important. I’d still be sleeping on that bunk, ready for my getaway to Lost Souls Wilderness. Will you just…believe me?”
He closed his eyes for a long moment. Trust wasn’t his strong suit. His trustfulness had taken its first hit when Chrissie, his high school girlfriend, had left Lost Harbor without even telling him. His divorce from Julie had given it another cutting blow. He wasn’t even sure that he trusted himself anymore. Wasn’t that why he’d dropped out of the mayor’s race? Wasn’t that why he’d taken forever to get back on the water after his surgery?
And now this virtual stranger was asking him to trust her after misleading him several times already?
“It’s all right,” came another voice, a young, scared one.
His eyes flew open. A kid stood on the deck, at the bottom of the wheelhouse steps. He was about ten or eleven, and wore a dirty pair of sweatpants and a soccer jersey.
“You can tell him, Lulu.”
He spoke with a light accent, a mixture of Spanish and proper British. The boy had curly dark hair and pale skin. South American perhaps?
“Where did you come from?” Tristan asked, utterly astonished.
“I was hiding,” he said proudly. “There was something metal and many ropes.”
“Why. The hell,” Tristan heard the menace in his own voice, the flat-out shock that his boat had been invaded like this, “were you hiding in my anchor bay? Who are you?”
Lulu steeled her shoulders and slowly faced him. “Tristan, this is Raul. Raul, meet Tristan. Raul was on the cruise ship. He came to all my kiddie events—clown shows and puppet shows and so forth—and we became friends. He’s…well, I’m helping him run away.” She cleared her throat. “From a kidnapper. From Antonov.”
Fifteen
“Oh, hell.”
That was definitely not the reaction Lulu had been hoping for. This was exactly why she’d begged Raul to stay out of sight until she could scope out the situation more thoroughly. She’d wanted to trust Tristan—she did trust him already to some degree—but she’d wanted to be a hundred percent sure.
“Tristan, listen to me. Be mad at me all you want, but we have to protect Raul. All of this is because of him.”
He threw up a hand. “Stop talking, Lulu. Just stop.”
She snapped her mouth shut. He hadn’t changed course yet. They were still chugging toward Lost Souls, which perhaps was for the best, after all. While Tristan had been examining the Desperado’s hull, she’d huddled with Raul and they’d decided to go directly back to the police station and tell everything to Maya Badger. Their plan was to wait until Tristan was back onboard, then explain it to him, then go to Maya. But she’d fallen asleep while Tristan was still in the water, then panicked when she realized they were already at sea.
But now that Raul had revealed himself to Tristan, she was glad they were heading toward the wilderness. She wished Tristan would turn on the turbojets or whatever would get them there faster. Once the FBI had arrived and it was safe, they’d go to Maya.
Tristan turned to Raul. “Explain.”
Raul seemed to like the big fisherman’s direct approach. “That man pretended to be my father on the ship, but he’s not my father and I don’t wish to stay with him. My mother was…together with him.”
“He’s your stepfather?”
“No, no. I don’t know. My grandmother is more my mother than my mother is. I only saw my mother a few times. I was with her for a weekend but she went away and he took me with him. All I want is to go back to my grandparents in Colombia. I don’t want to be here. Sorry. Your boat is nice,” he added politely.
Tristan appeared to be suppressing a smile. That was a good sign, right? “Thanks. Lots of good hiding places, is that it?”
Uh oh. That sounded less promising.
“I told him to hide,” Lulu said quickly. “I was going to tell you everything once I was sure it was safe.”
Without looking her way, he gave her that same shushing gesture. She found it rude, but decided he held the cards in this situation.
“Have you been on my boat this whole time?”
“Si, Capitán.”
“I’m not your captain. You’re not a member of my crew.” He shot an annoyed glance at Lulu, who’d snorted softly at the sound of the dreaded word “captain,” now in Spanish.
At that point, Tristan reeled off something in Spanish that Lulu didn’t understand. She’d learned some French at school, but it hadn’t stuck. She only recognized a few words here and there—the word “loco,” for instance, and “muchacha.”
Apparently they were talking about her, the crazy lady.
Raul looked delighted at the chance to explain himself in his own language, and they rattled on until Tristan finally nodded, apparently satisfied.
“Raul, why don’t you go down and get yourself a snack from the refrigerator,” he told the boy. “I need to talk to Lulu.”
Raul looked at her for confirmation, and she gave him the go-ahead with a nod. “It’s okay. Tristan won’t toss me overboard.”
Her nervous joke made Tristan narrow his eyes. “Jury’s out,” he muttered.
Raul looked from one to the other of them, clearly trying to assess the tension. Whatever he saw seemed to satisfy him, and he skipped away belowdecks.
When they were alone in the wheelhouse, the tension between them amped up to a nearly unbearable degree. Tristan’s face was unreadable. All those laugh lines looked more like fury etched across his face.