Read Online Dead in the Water by Robin Stevenson - Free Book Online Page A

“Lots of people buy it.”
    â€œHow could you?” she said, raising her voice. “How could you do that?”
    â€œAbalone sells,” he said. “People don’t ask where it comes from. And believe me, it’s a whole lot cheaper to buy from Keith and Victor than to buy imported.”
    Above us on
Salty Mist
a light turned on, and the cabin door opened. A beam of light swept across the cockpit and landed on our dinghy. “I see you found your little runaways,” a man’s voice said. Then he laughed. “Did you swim over, Patrick? You’d better come aboard. I’ll give you some dry clothes.”
    Patrick shook his head. “Thanks, Keith, but we’ll just go. Sorry we disturbed you. Come on, Olivia.”
    Keith reached out and grabbed Olivia’s arm. “I think you’d better all come aboard. I’d like to have a little talk with these two.”
    Olivia tried to pull her arm free, but the man held her tightly. “You’re not going anywhere,” he told her.
    My heart was pounding. Patrick gave a resigned shrug, turning his hands up at his sides like there was nothing he could do now. He climbed up into
Salty Mist
’s cockpit and reached out a hand to me. I held back for a moment. I didn’t want to go back onto that boat. Patrick and Olivia stood there, waiting for me. What else could I do? Jump overboard? Besides, I couldn’t just abandon Olivia. I shrugged, and against all my instincts, I stepped aboard
Salty Mist
.

chapter fourteen
    Olivia and I sat in the cockpit, side by side. My heart was racing and I felt shaky—anger, or nervousness, or both. Keith sat across from us, tugging on his short blond beard and not saying anything. He lit a cigarette and smoked, watching us.
    â€œGo on in, Patrick,” he said. “I’ll keep an eye on your runaways.” He raised his voice. “Victor! Get Patrick some dry clothes.”
    Patrick nodded and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. The lights in the cabinwere dim compared with the deck light outside, and I couldn’t see a thing through the dark Plexiglas doors. Keith stared at me, unsmiling. Beside me, Olivia’s eyes were fixed on her running shoes. I hoped she wouldn’t say anything that would make matters worse.
    Inside the cabin, I could hear muffled voices, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I wiped my sweaty palms against my pants. They were taking too long in there. And the longer they took, the more nervous I got. I’d figured that Patrick would get dressed, Olivia and I would get a lecture on minding our own business, and then we’d go back to
Jeopardy
. But now I was starting to think that maybe that wasn’t what was going to happen at all. I looked at Olivia and wished we could talk for a minute, privately.
    I started to do some math, which was something I usually avoided. It didn’t make me feel any better. If Victor and Keith were really selling the abalone at forty or fifty dollars a pound, we were talking about some serious money. They were not going to be happy if Patrick told them what we haddiscovered. I looked at Keith, sitting silently across the cockpit in a white T-shirt and track pants, and I couldn’t help noticing the thick muscles bunching in his shoulders and neck. I swallowed nervously. He didn’t look like the kind of guy you wanted mad at you.
    Finally the door opened, and Patrick came out with Victor right behind him.
    Victor was tall and skinny, middle-aged, with fair hair buzzed short behind a receding hairline. He wasn’t as obviously muscular as Keith, but there was something about his face—a hardness around his thin mouth, a deadness in his small deep-set eyes—that made me shiver. “Well, it looks like we’ve got a bit of a problem here,” he said softly. He shook his head and looked from me to Olivia and then back to me again.
    â€œLook, it’s no