Free On Borrowed Time by Jenn McKinlay Page A

disappeared from view, she hoped there was enough of the boat left to give them something, anything, that might lead them to Jack.
    *   *   *
    I t was a wet, exhausting and complicated process to catch the remnants of the flaming boat. But after dousing it with an extinguisher Sully had on board and using a long lead of rope with a grappling hook, they managed to haul the boat’s sorry carcass into shore.
    Lindsey jumped out of the boat and tied it up while Sully shut it down. He then stood on the end of the dock and hauled what was left of the speedboat in. While the bottom was intact enough to float, the top of it was a charred mess and the instrument panel had been blown to bits, making Lindsey think that was where the bomb had been located.
    â€œLindsey!” a voice cried from the pier above. “Lindsey! Where have you been?”
    Beth came running down the stairs to the smaller dock below. She was still wearing her bomber jacket and scarf but had lost the pilot cap and goggles.
    â€œOh, hey, Beth,” she said. She glanced at Sully. How was she supposed to explain this? “Something happened.”
    â€œSo I gathered when you left two hours ago and never came back for your purse.” Beth held up Lindsey’s bag as if she were showing her evidence. She then turned to Sully and the rope he still held in his hands. “What is that?”
    He tied up their catch as if they had just gone on a fishing trip and caught a whale.
    â€œLong story,” Lindsey said.
    â€œMy favorite kind,” Beth said. She looped her arm through Lindsey’s and led her to the stairs. “Come on, you look like someone drowned the steampunk right out of you.”
    â€œThey did,” Lindsey said. She dragged her feet until Sully fell into step behind them.
    At the top of the steps, Lindsey was surprised to find the lights on, the office open and Sully’s office clerk, Ronnie Maynard, sitting at her desk. At a tick of the clock past eighty years old, she was as spry as a woman half her age. She wore her cranberry red hair in a puff on top of her head and accessorized her look with big, plastic rings and bangles that reminded Lindsey of polyester and macramé.
    Mercifully, Ronnie had let the rest of the seventies go and dressed in stylish corduroy gray slacks and a black turtleneck with matching Uggs. Lindsey’s frozen toes had serious Ugg envy.
    â€œRonnie, my darling, what are you doing here this late at night?” Sully asked.
    â€œDrama queen here”—she paused to gesture at Beth— “saw me at the Anchor and asked me to open up the office to see if you were inside,” Ronnie said. She was pouring hot cups of coffee from a stand in the corner as if she had fully expected Lindsey and Sully to be stone cold when they arrived.
    â€œWell, they just vanished,” Beth said. “One minute they’re all owning the dance floor”—she paused to give Lindsey a significant we’ll-talk-later look, and then said—“and then they were gone, and when I saw that the boat was gone . . .”
    â€œYou panicked,” Ronnie said.
    â€œYeah, that’s true,” Beth admitted. Then she looked at Lindsey. “I thought Jack would be with you. Did he go somewhere with
her
?”
    Lindsey looked at her friend. Subtle, she was not. Beth was fishing to see if Jack had taken off with the woman, and he had. Although not in the way Beth thought, which put Lindsey in the tricky position of trying to figure out how much to say. She didn’t want to encourage Beth’s crush on Jack, but she didn’t want to send her into a panic about him either.
    â€œWell, now that you’re all accounted for and seemingly just fine, I’m going to get back to my date,” Ronnie said. She was just shrugging on her coat when the phone on her desk rang.
    â€œWho is calling the main line this late?” Sully asked. “I