Hot Sauce (Suncoast Society #26)(59)

In her mind, she heard her brother’s voice.

“You got this. Plug in the return trip on the GPS like he showed you. When you get in the channel, go slow and careful. Don’t rush. Remember, it’s not a car. You got this.”

She turned to the dash and hit the button on the GPS to pull up the marina’s saved location. While the unit recalculated, she chewed on her lower lip, hoping she was doing it right.

Sure enough, the saved track appeared on the screen and the machine beeped at her that it was ready.

Now she had to remember the rest of it. She knew she had to make sure the engines were in neutral before she started it. It took her a moment to do that, then she started them, slipping the dead-man lanyard over her wrist.

It was common for Reed not to use it, but she wouldn’t take any chances with the three chipdrunks on board. She wouldn’t trust them enough to not run over her in the process of coming to get her if she fell overboard.

She pointed to the most-sober guy. “Can you get the anchor for me?”

“Yeah. He always nudges the boat forward to make it easier.

“Okay.”

He stumbled his way up to the bow and got ready.

She eased the throttles forward a little, hearing the engines rev but they weren’t making any progress.

“You have to put it in gear.” One of guys pointed. “See? You have to pull it back down to neutral and squeeze that lever.

“Oh.” She did, feeling stupid and remembering it now. She eased the engines forward, steering the direction the guy pulling the anchor indicated while he hauled line in, hand-over-hand, and finally got it and the anchor stowed in the front locker.

“Okay. Everyone sit down and hang on,” she said. “This is going to be a rough ride.”





It probably wasn’t the prettiest return to the marina the boat had ever seen. It took her several minutes to get comfortable opening the throttle up and pushing them up onto plane.

Then, it finally hit her what the Coast Guard swimmer had meant by holding a compass course. The GPS readings usually agreed—or were close enough—to what the compass on the dash showed. Once she realized that, she focused on the compass instead of making her actual track line on the GPS match the return course plot.

Her track grew a lot straighter as a result.

She nearly cried with relief when she started recognizing landmarks and then spotted the head marker. Once they were there, she didn’t need the GPS anymore, because she knew how to get back to the marina. She remembered how and where to slow down and instead of docking at the fuel dock like Reed usually would to let off passengers, she bypassed that and went right to his slip, pulling in bow-first instead of backing it in like he usually did.

At least the passengers had sobered up enough to help tie the boat up and unload it. She normally would have just left everything on the boat but knew the five minutes it would take to get the rods, coolers, and electronics off the boat and into the back of Reed’s truck wouldn’t hurt anything.

The three guys helped her with that, too. Fortunately, Reed had left his truck keys in the dash, with his phone. She’d had a second of panic when she didn’t see his keys, but then found them where they’d slid into a back corner of the compartment.

Five minutes later, after the passengers promised to sit and wait another hour before driving home, she was in the truck and heading north on 301 to get to the Interstate.

Pulling her phone from her purse, she called Lyle and got his voice mail, which she’d been afraid of. He was supposed to be in seminars until after six that night, and would have his phone turned off.

“Lyle, call me as soon as you get this. There was…there’s a problem and I need to talk to you. Please, call me. Love you.”

She couldn’t break the news in a voice mail.

Praying Reed would come through this okay, and once again kicking herself that she didn’t push harder for him to get checked out sooner, she threaded her way north through traffic.

She hadn’t been to Bayfront before, but she knew where it was, one of the taller buildings in downtown St. Pete and part of a large, sprawling medical campus complex that also housed All Children’s Hospital and other medical buildings.

As she raced into the ER entrance, she knew she must look like hell, dressed in shorts and flip flops and a T-shirt and half-crazed. She slid to a stop at the desk.

“My…boyfriend. He was picked up from a boat in the Gulf by a Coast Guard helicopter a couple of hours ago. They said they’d be bringing him here. Is he okay? Reed Laurence Hibbard. Please, tell me he’s okay!”

The receptionist tapped into a computer and wrote something down on a sticky note. “You said you’re his girlfriend?”

“Yes, please.”

“Hold on.” She picked up a phone, glancing at Vanessa before dialing and speaking to someone briefly. Then she focused on Vanessa again. “What was your name, ma’am?”

“Vanessa Riddick.”

The nurse repeated it to whoever she was talking to, listened, then nodded and hung up. She handed Vanessa the sticky note. “That’s his room number. You can go down that hall over there, take the elevators up to the fourth floor, and turn right, follow the signs.

“Is he okay?”

“You can speak to his nurse up there.”

“Is it the ICU?”