Dead Reckoning. Sandra K. Moore

chair.

      Chris watched the green-and-white Galveston Bay police boat glide up to the dead runabout. One cop eased the boat near the red-striped runabout and the other rigged lines to lash the two boats together.

      The driver looked up then. Even at fifty yards’ distance, she saw how thin he was. How shaken up. His white face a mask frozen with that same grimace of fear. Dread oozed through her stomach and lifted bile into her throat.

      “You still want to go over and give that guy a piece of your mind?” Gus asked.

      The thought of listening to the man’s stammering apology sent a shiver down her spine. What good would it do to hear him say he was sorry? It wouldn’t erase what had happened. Chris shook her head. “I just want to go home.”

      She couldn’t, though. She had to give her statement to the police first, then watch a salvage crew pluck her destroyed boat from the inlet’s waters while she stood hugging herself against a delayed onset of the shakes. The runabout driver, the police told her, would be severely fined for operator neglect. Because neither competency tests nor licenses were required for powerboat use, as Chris well knew, the driver would be free to take his runabout onto the bay again whenever he wanted, after he took the U.S. Coast Guard’s Power Squadron course. Like defensive driving, but with a better chance of actually teaching the violator something he didn’t know.

      After finishing up with the authorities, she walked outside the racing club, where Dave sat on the porch step, waiting for his ride home. “Stick a fork in me,” she told him.

      He stood as she joined him. “Think he’ll pay for the Laser?”

      She shrugged. “If he doesn’t, his insurance better. I’m putting the cash directly into Obsession.” Chris jerked open her ancient Chevy pickup’s driver side door. “That dead sailboat will pay for a lot of yacht repairs.” She scooted onto the still-warm vinyl bench seat and shoved her gear bag onto the middle floorboard, away from the rusty patch under the accelerator where she could see the asphalt.

      “Helluva way for the last race to end,” Dave commented as he slid in.

      Chris turned the key with hands that still shook a little. She concentrated on how the big 454 rumbled, smooth as butter, and felt some of the residual fear drain away. She smiled at Dave. “I guess I don’t get my hundred bucks.”

      He winked. “You might get a break on your tub’s yard bill.”

      “I’ll take what I can get,” Chris said, thinking about the decrepit motor yacht she now lived aboard—the only material possession her wealthy grandfather had left her at his death nine months before. The big girl sat on boatyard jack stands for her very first maintenance while in Chris’s custody. Living aboard while the yacht was propped up on dry land wasn’t a particularly pleasant experience. The yacht’s AC system was water-cooled and with no water under the hull, no air-conditioning. Besides, the yacht’s soothing rock on the sometimes restive tidal bay was better than any lullaby.

      “How far’d you get today while I was in town?” Chris asked as she pulled into traffic.

      “Her bottom’s painted. Topside polish tomorrow, hull polish on Friday.”

      “She needs a hull painting, not a polish.”

      “Ain’t that the truth. But she’s pretty sharp for a hunk o’ junk.”

      “She’d clean up a lot nicer if I had some real money for repairs.”

      “You could say that about every gorgeous lady.”

      Chris cranked down the pickup’s window. Gorgeous might one day in the far, far future describe Obsession, but it certainly didn’t describe Chris, a scruffy dishwater blonde with too boyish a figure and a brain made for breaking down and rebuilding engines. Natalie was a different story, the spitting image of their long-dead grandmother—wide almond-shaped eyes, an exotic and sumptuous beauty and a flirtatious way with men and money.

      When Chris had pulled into the boatyard parking lot and stopped the pickup, Dave grasped her hand. “Are you gonna be okay tonight?” he asked.

      She let her fingers lie in his for a moment—he was a good friend and always there to help—before she pulled free. “Yeah. It scared me, but I’m okay.” When his brows registered doubt, she smiled. “Really. Stop worrying.”

      “Call me if you need me. I mean it. Any time.”

      “I will.” She kicked open the Chevy’s rusty door, then scowled as teenaged boys—two Hispanic, one white—sprinted across the yard in front of her. They ducked under a sailboat’s hull and disappeared. “What are those hooligans doing now?” she muttered. “Don’t you have a policy against letting kids run around a working boatyard?”

      “They’re harmless.” Dave cranked his door open. “They haven’t stolen anything.”

      “Yet.” Chris grabbed her gear bag from the floorboard. “When do you think Obsession will splash?”

      “Saturday at the soonest.”

      “Good. I’m ready to have her back in the water where she belongs.”

      He swung out of the truck. “You got any charters lined up yet?”

      “I’ve got to get her dressed up a little before I can start the day cruises, probably another month,” she called over the cab. “It’ll be next year before she’s ready for the pricey weekenders and vacation cruises.”

      “Sounds like a lot of cash.”

      “I’ll get there eventually.”

      “You could take out a loan to get her in shape right away,” he said as he rounded the Chevy’s blunt nose to stand next to her.

      “Using what as collateral? I don’t own anything. Besides, I don’t like being in debt.” Sure, she’d saved a lot of money living at her grandfather’s, which she’d done mostly to please Natalie, but she’d used much of those savings to overhaul the engines and get Obsession truly seaworthy. She was living off the rest until she was ready to launch her charter business.

      Dave nodded, then squinted at the sky glowing yellow, tingeing into orange. “Will you be okay living aboard in the yard another few days?”

      “Yeah. I’ve got box fans.”

      “If you get hot,” and he winked, “you know where I live.”

      She smiled as she shrugged her bag onto her shoulder. Dave waved and strode off to the shabby apartments adjacent to the marina. A moment later, only seagull cries and the occasional metallic clang of a loose sailboat halyard slapping its mast pierced the air. Early evening, the sun was just thinking about dropping behind the western shed housing the covered boat slips. Seagulls arced overhead, headed home.

      Chris walked past the line of small boats propped on jack stands in dry dock. At the yard’s end, Obsession loomed over them. The yacht’s deep-V hull gave her a beefy, broad-shouldered attitude. In the water, she was a large boat. Out of it, she was a behemoth.

      Dave had been right. The fresh coat of black bottom paint made her look good, at least from the bottom down, kind of like a nice pair of heels on a bag lady. But it was a start. Beneath the bent railings and chalky fiberglass, the cracked windows and dubious plumbing, a grande dame waited to emerge. Chris ran her hand along the yacht’s side as she walked toward the tall ladder that led up to the aft deck.

      Home.

      Chris knew in her bones the old man had intended the yacht to be an insult but he didn’t know Chris. And he certainly hadn’t known she’d love the boat at first sight. The yacht was fundamentally sound—solid hull, reliable engines, no severe water damage—despite being neglected for the better part of two decades. For Chris, abandoning her offshore rig mechanical engineering job to get her captain’s license had merely traded one hands-on skill for another.

      The old man had hoped to leave her