“Maybe only one of us should go, to minimize risks,” Nate said.
“Sure,” Laura shouted in his ear, patting his shoulder. “You wait here.”
“No,” Nate said, about to tell her that he’d meant the other way around, but it was too late. The boats were lined up, only a tiny amount of space left to close between them. And Laura was climbing up on the railing.
Nate muttered a curse that was lost to the spray as he scrambled to follow her, wondering why he, a naturally large and certainly adult male who spent most of his free time in the gym, was less confident about this athletic feat than Laura, a recovering alcoholic with a willowy figure.
And then he stopped thinking, because the ships had, despite the captain’s words, physically bumped together—and the bump together with the closeness was enough to nudge both him and Laura into their flying leaps toward the deck of theSaint Marie.
Nate hit the deck and rolled, letting the momentum carry him instead of fighting it. The deck of the boat was surrounded by railings, so he had no fear of going overboard, not with the relatively gentle drop that they’d had. After a moment he was on his feet again, grabbing to hold onto the nearest thing he could in order to prevent himself from falling over with the rolling motion of the sea.
He glanced and saw that Laura was safe, too, already walking in the direction of the nearest crew member. Apparently, she’d had no problem finding her sea legs.
“Cody Schafer,” he heard her shout, as the other ship began to move away again. Nate recognized with some worry that this meant they no longer had their allies close by—not that it totally mattered. He wasn’t confident that they could have got back onto the other ship if they needed to, not without an easy option like jumping, given the higher deck from this side.
Someone pointed toward a cabin-like structure toward the front of the boat, and Nate recognized a large wooden wheel—the kind that was always in pirate movies, used for steering the ship. There were a couple of figures over there, one of them hanging onto the wheel and turning it. Cody Schafer was the captain of this ship. He would be there.
Nate began striding toward it—with the occasional wobble—just as Laura did. He had the advantage of being closer, but with her easier gait, they reached it at the same time. He grabbed the arm of one of the men and turned him, wanting to have his hands on him already in case he tried to resist.
“Cody Schafer?” he asked this time.
“Get your hands off me!” the man snapped, and by the slight Germanic tinge to his accent, Nate knew that he was talking to the right man.
“You need to turn this ship around and head back to shore,” Nate ordered him, managing to pull out his FBI badge with the other hand. “We want to question you in regard to a murder.”
“Not a chance,” Schafer said, pushing him off. Without the balance of the solid earth under his feet, Nate actually stumbled. “You have no authority out here! You can’t tell me what to do!”
“Yes, we can,” Laura said. She managed to step smartly behind him and snap a handcuff on one of his wrists. Coming back from his stumble, Nate grabbed the other hand and forced it behind his back so that Laura could snap the cuff on that side as well. “And we can also charge you with subverting the course of justice when we get back to land. Turn the ship around.”
“How am I supposed to do that without my hands?” Schafer asked, wiggling his shoulders toward the wheel as if to demonstrate that he was no longer capable of steering.
Nate rolled his eyes. “Order your crew,” he said.
There was a moment when it felt like Schafer was going to resist. He didn’t move. His eyes were searching Nate’s face. Nate could feel him thinking, measuring things up in his head. Nate was clearly stronger than him—Schafer was well-built, but small and wiry, and Nate had a height and weight advantage. But on the other hand, Nate was unsteady on his feet. There was Laura to add to the scales, but also his crew—how many of them would help when it was a case of defending him against the FBI?
The sums came up in his head, and his shoulders slumped slightly.
“Turn back to shore, lads,” he shouted at the top of his voice.
The nearest crew members began to move. Nate focused on keeping hold of Schafer, watching as Laura turned to look at the rest of the ship.
“You heard him,” she yelled, using her hands as a funnel to amplify the noise. “Back to shore!”
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Laura nudged Nate in the side. “Are you alright?” she asked.
Nate looked up as if he was surprised, then nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”
Laura grinned at him. “You were looking pretty green on the boat.”
“It was a ship,” Nate corrected her. “Much bigger than a boat. And I’m a land agent, not a sea agent. It’s not my fault I’m not used to all of this.”
“Sure, sure,” Laura chuckled. She nodded toward Schafer through the one-way mirror. “He hasn’t moved much. Just keeps staring right ahead with that angry look on his face.”
“Good,” Nate said. “I’m still annoyed at him for making us commandeer a boat and then board his like pirates too. I’ve got the ball rolling on searching the boat and his home. They’ll let us know if they find any significant proof. Are you ready to go in?”
“If you are,” Laura nodded. She allowed Nate to lead the way out of their small viewing room and around to the investigation room proper, taking just one breath to steady herself and put on her professional face before they entered.