Lydia Ross, he’d explained, had agreed to the State of Alabama’s latest offer to purchase the island as a wildlife preserve, so she needed Cooper Security’s help archiving and securing the general’s belongings for the move.
Jesse had tried to make it sound like the best field assignment available, but Shannon knew when someone was throwing her a bone. Clearly her brother was tired of her nagging him to let her out from behind her computer screen and this was his punishment.
“You didn’t like the accommodations?”
Stone’s voice, closer than expected, made her jump. She gripped the railing, fighting a sudden rush of vertigo as she lost her sense of equilibrium. It returned quickly, however, and the world righted beneath her feet.
Squinting against the bright sunlight, she spotted Gideon Stone at the back edge of the pilothouse, gazing down at her. He loomed there, enormous and imposing.
“No, everything’s fine.” She shielded her eyes with her hand. “Is the island in sight yet?”
He hesitated before answering. “Come up. The view’s better.”
He said no more, turning back to the wheel and sitting in the pilot’s chair. She scurried up the ladder before he changed his mind and took the seat beside him.
The view from the pilothouse was better, a 360-degree panorama of Gulf water ahead and shoreline disappearing behind them. In the distance, Shannon spotted a speck of dark green on the hazy turquoise horizon. “Is that Nightshade Island?”
Gideon didn’t answer, gazing at the instrument gauges with a frown on his face. This time she sensed his expression had nothing to do with her.
She followed his gaze to the gauges and didn’t see anything alarming, but now that she thought about it, their speed had slowed noticeably. “Is something wrong?”
“I don’t know.” He throttled back until they were just idling, then cut the engine.
She shot him a wary look, beginning to wonder if coming onto a boat with a strange man had been her smartest move. “What are you doing?”
“Fuel’s not getting to the engine. I need to find out why.”
“Are we stranded? Should we radio the Coast Guard?”
“Not yet. It may be something easily fixed.” He got up from the pilot’s chair and headed down the ladder.
“Do I need to go get my life jacket now?”
He paused, just his head and shoulders visible now. “We’re not sinking.” He kept climbing down.
“Yet,” she muttered.
She eased over to the pilot’s seat and found it still warm from Gideon’s body. An odd tingle of feminine awareness jittered through her, making her feel vulnerable and intrigued at the same time.
She liked big men. Tall men, men with broad shoulders and strong backs. Men with battle-hardened faces and feral intensity. She knew such men were good to have around when the world went crazy.
But she also knew such men could be very, very dangerous.
Which are you, Gideon Stone?
She looked around the pilothouse and spotted a small olive drab canvas bag sitting next to the console. It lay partially open.
Looking inside it would be wrong. She knew that. Gideon’s private possessions were just that—private. And maybe if she weren’t stranded at the moment on a boat with a man she’d met less than an hour earlier, she’d mind her own business and let it lie.
But her skin still prickled with wariness, and ignoring her healthy fear would be stupid.
She crouched next to the bag and carefully nudged it open until she could see the contents. Inside were a small first aid kit in a blue canvas pouch marked with a white cross, a couple of protein bars and, in the gloomy depths of the bag, the unmistakable outline of a Walther P99 pistol.
Shannon sat back on her heels, her heart pounding.
* * *
O NE LOOK AT the water trap of the engine’s water separator filter and Gideon’s heart sank. It was full.
Sitting back on his heels, he wiped sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. He’d fitted the system with a new water separator filter the evening before. He’d checked the bowl of the water trap, too, and it had been clean of all but a small amount of condensation.
No way had this much water collected overnight from mere condensation.
Think, Stone. Think.
He heard footsteps above, distant enough to reassure him that the woman was still up in the pilothouse, but also a reminder he was about to take a stranger to Nightshade Island, a stranger he wasn’t sure he should trust. She’d be sleeping under Mrs. Ross’s roof, where he couldn’t watch her every second.
He’d heard of Cooper Security, but only in passing from an old Marine Corps buddy who’d known the company’s CEO. Greg had assured him Jesse Cooper was a good man—a good marine. Under any other circumstances, his buddy’s word might have been enough for Gideon.
But bad things had been going down recently, starting with General Ross’s death.
The initial judgment was that the single-car crash just north of Terrebonne that had taken the general’s life had been an accident. But the Terrebonne Sheriff’s Department had recently assigned a detective to the accident investigation, which suggested that no matter what the official stance was at the moment, local law enforcement thought there might be more to it.
Gideon had thought so from the beginning. Edward Ross had been the most careful, conscientious driver he’d ever known. And at seventy years old, he’d still had the reflexes and physical stamina of a man twenty years his junior. The idea that the general had misjudged a curve in the middle of the afternoon was entirely unbelievable.
He drained the water from the trap into a bailing bucket. Then, on a hunch, he removed the hose from the electric fuel pump and let the contents of the fuel tank drain slowly into the bucket.
More water, he saw, anger battling dismay. Too much water.
Definitely not just condensation.
The bucket was over half full before the liquid flowing into it switched over from water to fuel. Since water was heavier than diesel, it had poured out first, which meant that most of what remained in the tank should be fuel. More than enough to get them back to the dock to refuel.
He returned the fuel pump hose to its proper position and covered the bucket with a plastic lid to keep the contaminated water from spilling. Still mulling over the implications of the excess water, he removed the saturated water replacement filter and went to the storage bin nearby to get the replacement filter he’d stored there a couple of months ago.
It wasn’t there.
He knew it had been in the bin last night when he checked the boat for this afternoon’s planned trip to the mainland. He hadn’t checked right before the trip because he’d been running hard all morning, helping Mrs. Ross prepare her house for Shannon Cooper’s arrival.
He left the engine well and climbed the steps to the main cabin, suffering a brief moment of suspense before he found a box of supplies—a few brand-new filters included—where he’d left them a couple of days ago when he’d gone out on a supply run.
As he refitted the engine with a replacement filter, he retraced his steps from the night before. System checks. Checked for life jackets in the benches. Checked oil levels, fuel levels. He’d checked the water trap for condensation, finding damn little even after almost three days of disuse.
He’d checked the supply cabinet to make sure the spare filter was there, damn it. He always