Finding Kate Huntley

2008 Golden Heart Finalist

Prologue

September 1996
Haiti, off the Coast of Le Borgne

Kate awoke with a jolt. Moonlight filtered in through a porthole above her head. The boat lurched, dousing the small round window with seawater.

What was happening? Her father was an experienced sailor. He seldom set sail at nightfall. She climbed over fallen books and a new metallurgical microscope her father had given her two days ago in celebration of her fifteenth birthday. Pushing open the door, she ran through the narrow darkened hallway toward the stairs. “Dad?” she called. “Where are you?”

The hull creaked. Shivers coursed over her. The storm her father had mentioned was no longer brewing--it was here, in full force, angry and out of control. With a firm grip on the railing encircling the spiral staircase, she pulled herself up, one stair at a time until she reached the top. Her heart dropped to her stomach. What was once a sliding glass door was now a jagged gaping hole. Furniture and pictures had disappeared completely, leaving bare walls and splinters of wood scattered about the room.

Another swell hit the side of the boat. Water gushed inside. The boat rocked like a cradle gone mad, forcing her to her knees. Kate crawled across the floor, over broken glass and splinters of wood. She held tight to a built-in cabinet and stuck her head through the opening. Sails fluttered, snapping in the wind like dozens of cap guns being shot off at once. Spray and foam hit her face, temporarily blinding her.

And then she spotted a shadow...a man...her father.

Thank God. His clothes were soaked through, his expression severe as he appeared to battle with ropes and sails. But then another man stepped into view. The man was as tall as he was wide and a horrible sneer covered his face as he moved toward her father. Kate pushed herself to her feet and stepped out onto the slippery deck.
Fear held her gaze on the knife in the man’s hand. “Dad!” she shouted, prompting both men to look her way. Her father took advantage of the situation and lunged for the man, wrestling for possession of the knife.

Kate’s heart stilled. She couldn’t tell who was who...not until the big man scrambled to his feet and headed her way, leaving her father lying motionless.

Dark clouds rolled overhead and strong winds swept the hair from her face. She wanted to run, but terror held her gaze on the slithering serpent tattooed across the man’s shoulder, its tail ending somewhere inside his torn shirt. Rooted to the cold slippery decks, she stared at her father’s body, willing him to get up. Then she looked at the other man’s face. His murky gray eyes looked hollow, soulless.

A loud crack sounded, and she turned in time to see the mainsail break loose and sweep across the decks, hitting the man square across the chest and tossing him to sea. It was as if God himself had taken his hand and slapped him into oblivion.
“Dad!” she shouted when her father moved. She ran to him. Her feet slipped on the cold wet deck. Her chin hit the wooden planks. Ignoring the pain, she crawled to his side.

“We need to get to the life raft,” he said, his voice raspy and weak.
She helped him to his feet. Blood oozed from his side. She reached out a trembling hand. “You’re hurt.”

“There’s no time. The boat won’t stay afloat much longer.” The lines across his forehead deepened. “When you get to the island,” he said, “you must never tell anyone who you are. Trust no one.”

“But why?”

Frustration lined his face. “On your twelfth birthday,” he said, “I gave you--” Unable to finish, he winced in pain.

“What did you give me?”

“There’s no time.”

“We can go to the police,” she said, helping him stay on his feet. “They’ll help us.”

“No,” he said with more urgency than before. “Speak to no one. Trust no one. Do you understand?”

She didn’t, but his expression was so bleak and inflexible that she didn’t dare question him further. The spray was intense, hitting her face with amazing force. Splinters of rigging hung from the boat, flapping upward and banging against the side of the boat.

Her father reached high above her head and yanked loose the life raft.

“I can’t do this,” she said.

“My brave princess,” he said as he pushed wet strands of hair out of her face and looked into her eyes. “You’re mother was brave and strong, just like you. You can do this. I know you can.”

Before she could ask him how they were going to get into the boat, he threw the life raft into the water and jumped over the edge after it, bringing her with him. The water was freezing, but it was fear that numbed her senses. She wasn’t even sure if her legs were kicking or if her arms were moving, but she knew she was underwater.

And she knew she was going to die.

Instinct and an intense desire to live made her move her arms, working hard to pull herself upward through the ocean’s cold brutal waters. But the attempt felt as useless as trying to breathe under water. Panic was replaced by an eerie calmness as her body and mind began to succumb to the ocean’s strength. Strange, she thought, how dying didn’t feel like dying. It was much more peaceful than she would have imagined.

Swoosh, strong arms encircled her waist, pushing her upward. Her head popped above the surface. She drew in a shuddering breath of seawater and air, then sputtered and coughed. “Father,” she called just before another wave covered her head, forcing her under once more.

His hands grasped her waist again, strong and determined, thrusting her up and over the raft’s edge. Her face smacked against the life boat’s slick rubbery bottom. Her lungs burned with each frantic breath. The raft rolled with the waves, threatening to toss her back in. Her father flung an arm over the edge, his hand grasped for something to hang onto. She clasped her small fingers around his strong capable ones and pulled with every bit of strength she could summon. But he was weak from loss of blood, and he was heavy.

Wind whipped the waters this way and that, loosening her hold. The harder she pulled the further he slipped into the black punishing swells until she lost sight of him completely.

She looked down at her hands and silently cursed her frailness. Gazing out into the dark waters, she prayed her father would reappear.

But he never did.

Her father was wrong. She wasn’t brave and strong at all. She was a weakling.

Chapter One

Ten years later
Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Foam and spray cascaded off the mainsail and onto Kate’s face as she shifted the vessel from one tack to the other, nearing the docks of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital. The landscape before her had been almost completely stripped of trees, but the city was sprawled between mountains and water, giving it a beauty all its own. Despite the rowdy street life of Port-au-Prince, she was glad to be home, especially after spending the last three days and two nights babysitting a vacationing family of four. How many times had she told her boss’s daughter, Fiona, that she didn’t do overnighters? She didn’t mind taking divers to secluded areas for the day, since they left her alone for the most part and they usually called it quits before dusk. But spending three days with two overly coddled kids and their snooty parents was too much to ask.

She tied the boat to the docks next to Paradise, a sleek cabin cruiser she vowed would be hers someday, then headed up the dock and through the water side slums of the bay where children were being washed in ditches and a desperate beggar held out his dark bony fingers. She pulled a piece of dried beef from her pocket and handed it to the man before crossing the main boulevard, dodging more than one multi-colored bus called taptaps as she went. Despite the oppressing poverty, maybe even in spite of it, she loved Haiti. Haiti was heavily populated by resilient and determined people...people like her.

“Casita de cita, Cuero?”

She turned and looked from the big hand covering her buttocks to the dark eyes of an unfamiliar face. His thin lips curved upward into a lusty sneer, “Mamacita.”

She grabbed hold of his arm and twisted it behind his back.

He snarled in pain. “You’re going to break my arm, bitch! Let go.”

“Don’t ever touch a woman unless she asks you to, got it?”

She tightened her grip when he failed to answer fast enough.

“Si.”

“What? I can’t hear you?”

“Si, Senorita. I got it,” he ground out when she gave his arm another hard twist.

With a heavy sigh, she shoved him aside and made her way through the front door of Prince Charters, the chartering company owned by Esri Dalton and her daughter, Fiona.

“You can’t go around breaking the arm of every man you meet,” Fiona said the moment Kate entered the shop.

Kate shrugged. “He touched me.”

“If I broke a limb every time a guy touched me,” Fiona told her, “I would have taken out half of Haiti’s population by now.”

Kate inwardly sighed. They all knew what Fiona did at night, exactly why deadbeats like the one Kate just ran into hung around the place all day long.

Kate held out a hand. “You owe me forty dollars.”

Fiona’s mouth opened in protest.

“Don’t even try to bargain with me this time,” Kate firmly stated. “I’m not in the mood. In fact, you’re lucky I’m not charging you twice that amount for putting up with those American brats.”

Fiona’s eyes flashed. “They were beautiful children with their golden hair and green eyes. If you didn’t dye your hair so bloody red, they could pass as your American cousins.”

“Flattery will get you no where. Pay up.”

Fiona made a hissing noise and snatched her money bag from the dusty counter behind her. “Here’s a twenty. I’ll pay you the rest later.”

Kate grabbed the bag out of her hand. She pulled out another twenty and tucked it into her front pocket. “I’ll take it all now, thanks.” She headed for the door. “Tell Esri I’ll be back in the morning.”

“Oh, one more thing,” Fiona said.

“What?”

“Someone’s looking for you…a man. He said he’d be back in a few minutes.”

Kate frowned. “Did he say what he wanted?”

“Who cares? He was handsome…Mel Gibson good looking. He had on a fine suit with a silk tie. And his ass…!Que chulo!

Kate’s heart raced. Not because the guy had a nice ass, but because a strange man in a suit was looking for her. “Where is he now?”

“I told him you’d be back soon.”

Heat rose from the dusty ground the moment Kate stepped outside. The air felt thick and suffocating. Instinct told her to run, but logic told her it would only make her stand out if someone was watching. Keeping a steady pace, she tried to blend in with the crowd. A few blocks up the boulevard she slipped into a narrow alleyway. She passed rows of rundown huts with sheet metal for roofs. Like most homes in the area, the huts were without electricity or piped water.

She stopped at the place she’d called home for the past ten years and threw back the dusty flap of cloth that served as a door. The hut was one room with the bed separated from the rest of the room by a half sheet that hung from the ceiling. She hit the punching bag she’d made from a burlap bag stuffed with rags that hung from the middle of the room. The bag swung back and forth, making the tin roof creak. It only took her a minute to shove her belongings into a canvas bag. She drew the string tight and left the hut.

As always the sidewalks were jam packed with would-be guides, street kids, and vendors. The sun’s scorching rays beat down on the dirt roads, causing the stench to hang in the air. She crossed the main boulevard, maneuvered around an uncovered manhole, then rammed squarely into a man’s chest. The smell of his cologne and the feel of his hard body against hers caught her off guard. Beneath a dark jacket he wore a white button down shirt tucked into a pair of dark slacks…and tucked within his waistband was a pistol.

She didn’t look up at his face. She just bolted, knocking over a pedestrian in her haste to get away. Damn! Why hadn’t she been paying attention? She’d gotten lackadaisical over the last few years. She dashed across the boulevard, cut a sharp left into a narrow alleyway, following a maze of twists and turns until she finally came out near the docks.

The sun’s punishing rays pounded against her back. She looked from left to right. The coast was clear. The beat of her heart drummed a little easier as she jogged down the center of the dock and hopped onto the deck of Esri’s sailboat. Reaching for the mainsail, she heard the click of the handcuffs around her wrist before she saw his face.

“Going somewhere?” a cocky male voice asked, his breathing labored.

“Yeah, as a matter-of-fact, I am.” She turned and jammed her knee into his groin.

He cursed and fell to his knees, bringing her halfway to the ground with him. As he groaned in pain, she shoved her free hand into his jacket pockets in search of the keys to the cuffs. Nothing. Next, she tried his pant pockets, but found something else entirely.

“Don’t stop now,” he said.

She wasn’t amused. “Where are the keys?”

He shrugged.

She pulled a leather wallet from a pocket inside his jacket and flipped it open with her free hand. “Ahhh...Jack Coffey, big bad FBI man, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“In case you didn’t know, this isn’t the U.S. I don’t believe you’re in your ‘sphere of influence.’”

He looked surprised, but he didn’t respond.

“Where’s your gun?” she asked next.

“I don’t carry a gun.”

“Liar.”

The corner of his lips curved into a half smile, at least until she shoved her knee into his side.

He grunted.

He was lean, not bulky. Didn’t live in a gym, but he definitely worked out on a regular basis. His coloring was on the pale side except for his neck and face, which told her he’d been around these parts for a few days now. “What do you want from me?” she asked him.

“We need your help--”

She jabbed her knee further into his side. “Yeah, I bet you do. Where are the keys, Jack?”

“Jesus. Could you let up a little?”

“Not until you unlock these.” She yanked up on the wrist connected to his, making his teeth clench a little tighter.

“I left the keys back at my hotel.”

She let out a huff. “You’ve got two seconds to tell me why you’re here.”

“Your father was a scientist--” he said through gritted teeth “--on the verge of creating a vaccination that had the potential to save thousands of lives.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore. He’s dead. He can’t help anyone. Now unlock me.”

“I don’t have the--”

She whipped a small knife from around her ankle and put it snug against his throat.

“I’m just doing my job,” he told her.

“What did they do, send a rookie after me?” She pushed the tip of the blade into his skin. “What does the agency want with me?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

She cocked her head. “I guess I’m not as smart as I look. Talk.”

“You’re the only one who might know what happened to one of the most important scientists of our century.” A small groan escaped him. The veins in his neck stood out when he grimaced.

She let up on the knife, but only slightly.

“Ten years ago,” he went on, “the world was on the brink of finding a cure to aids.” He drew in a breath. “Then you and your father traveled to the Caribbean and never returned. Your boat was found days later...destroyed in one of the worst storms in the Caribbean’s history.”

He tried to sit up, but she held firm. “And before long,” he said, “your father’s body washed ashore. That’s when the agency knew it wasn’t the storm that had killed your father. Deep Sea Divers were sent out to look for your body, but obviously,” he said as his eyes roamed over her, “nothing turned up.”

“They never found another body?” Kate asked.

“No. Why?” His eyes narrowed. “Should they have?”

She opted to ignore his question. Her instincts told her he had no intention of doing her harm, so she eased her knife back into the sheath around her ankle. In case he got any stupid ideas though, she wedged her knee back into his side and said, “Listen, I don’t know you, I don’t like you, and I don’t want anything to do with you. Once I get these cuffs off, I’m going to let you go and you’re going to pretend you never laid eyes on me.”

“Can’t do. I need you to come back to the states with me.”

“In your dreams, FBI man.” She laughed as she leaned over him, frisking him from his knees to his ankles. “How did you know it was me?” she asked. “I don’t look anything like the little stringy-haired teenager I once was.”

“Can I sit up?”

She thought about it for a moment before she finally pulled her knee from his side. He sat, she squatted, his right wrist connected to her left wrist.

“I used to work in the Missing Persons Department,” he told her. “I have what they call Eidetic memory--clinical term for photographic memory. I’d recognize any face on that list.”

“But that doesn’t explain why you’ve come. Why now?”

“We’ve been looking for a man...a drug lord. We picked up his picture via Satellite during a funeral. You happened to be standing in the background when the pictures were snapped. I recognized your face immediately. If you asked me I’d say you’re hanging out with the wrong crowd.”

“I didn’t ask you. Was my picture made public?”

“No.”

There was a moment’s pause. Her gaze focused on a small bulge near his left bicep.

He shot her a worried look. “What?”

She pulled off his tie and yanked his jacket halfway off of his left shoulder, took a firm hold of the top of his white button-down shirt and tore it wide open. Buttons popped. Before he could protest, she slid her hand down the sleeve. The keys were duct taped to his arm.

“Clever.”

He gave her a wry smile.

She ripped the tape off of his arm.

“Ouch! Have some mercy, would you?”

“Get to your feet,” she said. “Then I’ll unlock the cuffs. After I free myself,” she warned, “I won’t be able to stick around. I have no idea who murdered my father. I can’t help you. Go back to your people and tell them to stop wasting their time...and mine.”

“What about Dr. Forstin?” he asked.

She concentrated on getting to her feet, determined not to look him in the eye. “Never heard of him.”

“Liar.”

They managed to get to their feet at the same time. As far as she was concerned, Jack Coffey didn’t need to know that Dr. Forstin was her only contact with the states.

The handcuffs forced them to stand close, face to face. Uncomfortably close. As she fidgeted with the lock, her fingers trembled slightly, frustrating her all the more. The fact that she could smell the starch of his shirt and the light earthy scent of his soap wasn’t helping matters. The men she usually hung out with worked outside for a living. Their hands were callused, their hair long and tied back. She’d never been this close to a guy in a suit, a guy who took showers on a regular basis. It was hard to tell how old he was, but with his shirt torn open she couldn’t help but notice that he was well-built, hard in all of the right places.

He raised a curious brow.

“I’m trying to guess how old my captor is.”

“Thirty-two,” he said. “And I’m not your captor.”

She held up the arm still hooked to his. “I beg to differ. If you weren’t my captor, I wouldn’t be handcuffed to you.” Unease crept into his mesmerizing blue eyes, as if her close proximity made him nervous. Enjoying having the upper hand, she leaned into him, brushing her chest against the thin soft fabric of his shirt. “Or would I?”

#

Jack felt sorry for her. She looked exhausted, as if she’d been running from ghosts every hour of every day for the past ten years. The emptiness in her eyes and the hollow sound to her voice only served to make him more determined to bring her back safely. The agency had lots of questions. They needed her, and whether she knew it or not, she needed them. For ten years she’d managed to hide from the world. He wasn’t going to lose her now. “If you hadn’t run,” Jack said, “I never would have used the cuffs in the first place.”

Her attention was elsewhere.

Her eyes grew round and sharp like that of a trapped fox. “Are you alone?” she asked.

He rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand and nodded. Looking over his shoulder, he followed her gaze, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. “Is something wrong?”

She fumbled with the key again. There were two holes in the metal cuffs, but she kept sticking the key in the wrong one. Since he wanted to keep her talking, he didn’t tell her what she was doing wrong.

“My father never would have told me to hide from the world if it wasn’t necessary,” she told him. “Damn cuffs. For ten years I’ve survived by listening to my instincts. And right now my instincts are telling me something’s not right.”

“I never would have come looking for you if I thought I was putting you in danger.”

“Oh, that’s charming.” A shaky laugh escaped her. “What are you, FBI Man in shining armor?”

Ignoring her sarcasm, he noticed that she kept looking behind him, out of the corner of her eye. Once again he looked over his shoulder.

“What are you looking--”

A large bearded man dressed in khaki shorts and a print short-sleeved shirt stepped onto the deck, gun drawn and aimed in the vicinity of their heads.

Jack tensed. “Shit!”

Kate moved fast, slapping the keys into his hand before she reached behind him and whipped out the gun he didn’t think she knew about. She jerked back the safety latch with her thumb, and with a shoot now, ask-questions-later mentality, she shot the man, hitting his right shoulder.

The man’s gun skittered across the deck out of his reach.

“Jesus!” Jack said. “What the hell are you doing?”

She was ignoring him again. That much was clear. She was also stronger than she looked. Dragging him along with her, she stepped over the injured man and kicked his gun off the boat and into the water.

Suddenly a second man stepped out from behind the cabin. Kate jabbed her elbow into the newest arrival’s gut. Then she came up hard and fast with the hand that was connected to Jack’s and knocked the thug flat on his back.

“Jump,” she said right before she leapt off the boat and onto the dock. If not for his keen ability to follow orders, Jack might have found himself flat on the deck. Instead, their shoes thumped against the dock as they ran toward the crowded streets.

When they reached the boulevard, Kate shouted, “Run!”

“What do you think I’m doing?”

Psssss

A bullet whizzed by Jack’s head, leaving an eerie ringing in his left ear.

People shouted and ran in every direction.

Jack stepped up his pace and nearly got them both run over by a taptap when he charged ahead of her. He quickly fell a step behind.

She yanked him hard to the right, leading him into the same alleyway she’d used earlier. A bullet hit the mural in front of them.

A woman screamed and pushed her small child to the ground.

Kate took another sharp turn, this time to the left. She didn’t bother glancing back to see how close the man chasing them was, and since Jack didn’t want to lose his arm, he concentrated on keeping up with her. She was fast, and she was hardly out of breath. Jack, on the other hand, felt as if he were sucking in dust instead of air.

The bullets stopped coming after a moment. Kate stopped and shook her wrist at him. “Unlock us. Quick!”

He had the cuffs off in less than ten seconds and they fell to the dirt.

She scooped the cuffs up and shoved them into her pocket.

Jack took a moment to catch his breath. His breathing was labored, his shirt drenched in sweat.

Kate handed him his gun and said, “Good luck.” Then she took off down another alleyway.

Grimacing, he took off after her. Within seconds, he was on her heels.

“I told you I can’t help you,” she shouted over her shoulder, slowing to a fast-paced jog. “And in another minute,” she added, “you won’t be able to help yourself either because that goon will come around the corner so fast you won’t know what hit you.”

“I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

She stopped short, took a couple of deep breaths. “I’m not going to get myself killed over some misguided rookie agent who doesn’t know when to lay off--”

Bullets ricocheted off the metal roof behind him. They both threw themselves to the ground and crawled inside the nearest hut. The hut was empty. It smelled like dead rodents.

On all fours, Jack followed her across the dirt floor. He’d been hit, but he wasn’t about to tell her. He squeezed his body through the small opening that served as a window and crawled into another hut on the other side of the path.

As if she’d sensed him falling behind, Kate turned around and noticed the blood. “Damn it, rookie boy.” She pulled him into the shadows of the hut. Shoving him to the ground, she snatched the gun from him again. “Don’t make a sound.”

He was in too much pain to argue with her. Rookie Boy? Clutching his side, he stayed quiet.

A dog’s bark ended with a sharp squeal. Heavy footsteps and heavier panting replaced all other sounds.

Kate motioned for him to stay put, crouching low behind the hut’s entrance. At first glimpse of the goon’s shadow, she sprang forth and punched him in the jaw. Kate winced but didn’t waste any time jabbing a hard elbow to the back of the man’s neck. His over-sized belly hit the ground with a thud, sending up a cloud of dust.

She gave her hand another shake and dug the toe of her boot into his side to make sure he was unconscious. “That’s what was supposed to happen on the boat,” she said with a huff.

She reached into her front pocket and threw Jack the cuffs. “Put those on him, will you?”

Ignoring the pain from his wound, Jack crawled to the man’s side. He managed to get the cuffs around the guy’s wrists while Kate searched the man’s pockets and shoved a few items into a small bag strapped around her shoulder. She tossed Jack the man’s I.D. “Like I said, you can’t trust anyone.”

Jack looked at the plastic card. “Ben Sheldon. FBI.” He pressed the man’s thumb onto the I.D. Afterwards he wrapped the card carefully in a handkerchief and tucked it into his pant’s pocket.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“It could be a fake I.D. If the name Ben Sheldon doesn’t show up on the agency’s list of criminals, the prints will. I want to know who the hell is trying to kill me.”

“First you might want to work at staying alive. She went back into the hut. Here,” she said, throwing him a rag. “Hold this over the hole in your side.”

“I was hardly nicked.”

“Just do it. I don’t need you leaving a trail of blood for his friend to follow.”

“So, I guess this means you’re going to cooperate?”

She laughed. Her eyes sparkled. “I’m going to save your sorry ass, if that’s what you mean.”

Jack smiled. “Ahh, you do have a soft spot after all.”

“Let’s get one thing straight, FBI man. There’s nothing soft about me.”