Thomas staggered slightly, then caught himself. "I used to know how to walk."

They sought shelter in an even darker corner, a nook formed by the seawall and some sort of storage locker. He offered her the skirt.

"Just a second," she said, and pulled off the tank top.

Thomas stared, his eyes wide. He'd seen her on the beach, he'd touched her, but the light was much better here.

She smiled at his expression but didn't stop moving, folding the tank top tightly, then wringing a double handful of water out of it onto the dock. She shook it out, then put it on again. She accepted the skirt and pulled it on, frowning as the waist proved large enough to fall past her hips. She gathered excess waistline together, folded and tucked it, then slid the lump around to the back.Meanwhile, Thomas pulled on the shirt and the drawstring pants. The pants, too, proved of substantial girth, but the drawstring drew it tight and the shirttail, worn out, hid the resulting folds.

"Bend over," Patricia said. She toweled his head dry with the hem of the skirt, and then combed his short hair with her fingers. She did the same thing to her own head. "There." She pulled him out into the light. "Interesting. How do you do that?"

He blinked. "Do what?"

"Make everything you wear look like a uniform. I guess it's not the clothes-it must be the way you stand. The way you move. You should slump a little, perhaps, tonight."

He pretended outrage. "Hey! I can be as casual as the next person." He let his shoulders drop and his head bend forward, until he was staring at the dock planks.

"I'm glad we found these clothes-it's much better than my first plan." He took her hand and tucked it into the crook of his arm, then began walking toward the party.

Patricia leaned against him. "What was that?"

"I was going to approach an occupied boat and say we'd had to jump off ours because we were interrupted by your husband returning, and would they sell us some clothing."

She punched his arm with her free arm.

"Ow! I said this was better."

She muttered under her breath, "Interrupted, yes. Husband, no." She rubbed his arm at the point of impact. "What now?"

They reached an empty bench halfway up the pier toward the pavilion and they sat. Thomas groaned. "This may have been a mistake. I'm not sure I'll be able to get up again." He put his arm around her shoulders and she leaned into him. "I need to get a look at these guys, preferably without them knowing it."

"Well, I'm calling 911," Patricia said. "They tried to kill me." She started to stand, but Thomas pulled her back down.

"Wait a minute." He thought furiously, torn between his fear for her safety and his need to identify their attackers.

"You want to leave those assholes at large?"

"No. But I want to catch their bosses, too. But this might work. Yeah. Let's call the NGPD."

There was a bank of pay phones near the marina office. Thomas started to dial 911, but Patricia stopped him. "Here, use this number instead." She punched in a different series and took the handset. "Major Paine? This is Patricia Beenan. Right.

No, I'm not all right. About twenty-five minutes ago four men tried to kill me. Yes,I'm serious. Deadly serious. I'm putting Commander Becket of INS Criminal Investigation Division on the line now."

Thomas accepted the handset. "Hey, Barney," he said, and had to smile as Patricia's eyes-widened.

Major Paine's voice was a pleasant tenor, carefully controlled. "What's going on, Thomas? Does this have to do with that mess Assemblywoman Beenan found near Houston?"

Thomas answered, "Almost certainly. I'll explain in detail later, but twenty-five minutes ago there were four men on the seawall between Matagorda Subdivision and Playa del Mar. They're armed with automatic weapons and I'm very much afraid they're rogue INS. We last saw them on the outer edge closer to the resort than Matagorda, but Assemblywoman Beenan took us under the seawall to get away from them when they fired upon us. We also heard them radio a boat, apparently on station inside the lagoon. They may have split, but there's also the chance they're still hunting us. Can you do something about that?"

"Descriptions?"

"Sorry. We heard voices only. One of them is named Randy, and another one is named Pete. One of them sounds like he gargles with gravel and he smokes, but you'll have to look for weapons."

"Okay. Don't hang up."

"Aye, aye."

He nodded to Patricia. "That was a good thought. I didn't know Barney's mobile line."

"How do you know Major Paine?"

"He was my instructor in interrogation at Quantico. When I joined CID, they sent me to the FBI academy for several special seminars. I've had dealings with him here, too, in the line of business." He touched his face, the scarred side. "We were working together on this, too, since the drugs were also being sold locally outside the Abattoir."

"Oh." She licked her lips. "I've been meaning to ask you why you haven't done anything about the scar tissue. I could have sworn that medical technology was up to it."

Thomas felt his chest get tight. "I did. You should've seen me before."

She glared at him.

"All right. It's not something I want to talk about right n-"

"Thomas?" It was Major Paine's voice again, on the phone."Yes, Barney."

"I've got a chopper and two boats headed that way, and we've alerted our beat officers in Playa del Mar and Matagorda. Where are you right now?"

"Uh, Marina del Paraiso?" He looked at Patricia who nodded.

"Ah, the perpetual party. That explains the music in the background. Why don't you go hang out at the dance hall, where all those lovely deterring witnesses are, and I'll have a patrol boat meet you at the taxi landing. It may be a while," he warned, "since our first priority is your friends with the guns. Can I count on you to stay with the assemblywoman? I'd hate to lose her-she's one of the few city officials I can stand."

Thomas grinned to himself. "I think I can manage that."

"Appreciate it. I'll be down at central when they bring you in."

10.

Beenan: Tumulto

Patricia watched Thomas hang up the phone. She tried to push off the wall she was leaning against but had to try twice before she was upright again. "What's next?"

Thomas took her hand, naturally, and she felt an intense pleasure from the simple contact. He said, "Barney would like us to wait at the party. He'll send a boat to pick us up."

She looked over at the noisy bandstand. "Not very private."

He shrugged. "No. That's his point, though. He wants us public so our friends with the guns won't be tempted should they locate us."

She wanted to take him into one of the shadowy nooks by the storage lockers. I haven't felt like this since I was a teenager, awash in hormones. Not even with Geoffrey, she realized. Not even at the beginning.

"At least there'll be food," she conceded.

Thomas grinned at the thought. "Food is good."

They bought fish tacos from a stand at the edge of the pavilion, whitefish covered in onions, tomatoes, peppers, and lime, then sat on a bench while they ate.

There was a bar, but they exchanged one look and both shook their heads. Patricia looked around and took off, pulling Thomas off balance."What!"

She halted three booths down.

"Oh."

If I can't have sex, I can at least have coffee. "Two lattes, triple shot, please."

Thomas looked at her and laughed. "Is one of those for me?"

She frowned. "Ummm... I guess."

He got out his wallet and began pressing wet bills between paper napkins.

"Wasn't sure. Didn't want to come between you and your religion."

"You are wise." She found herself tapping her foot to the music, but her muscles rebelled. Another time. "Do you dance?"

He smiled. "Not without a lifeguard."

They took the coffees around to a table where they could watch the taxi landing.

Thomas tapped her shoulder and pointed toward Playa del Mar. In the distance a helicopter, searchlight glaring, was moving up the seawall from the south. The beat of its rotors was barely audible over the band.

She saw his face change, a matter of intensity, and realized, He wants to be out there. He's just here for me. For a moment she considered telling him to go on, she'd be all right. And let him get shot? I'm going to be more selfish than that.

She eyed a taxi queued up at the pier. "Maybe we should just disappear. For all they know, they killed us in the surf and the only thing that will spoil that impression is if we show up again."

He tilted his head as he looked at her.

She went on, desperately. "They know your hotel and they know my building, but I know a nice hotel where guests don't necessarily show up on the registry. The rooms are small but the beds aren't, and room service brings food in from all the local restaurants." She let her hand drop onto his leg.

He groaned. "Get thee behind me, Satan." He dropped his hand to her thigh and squeezed gently. "As someone else once said, you want to leave these assholes at large?"

"You're not the only cop in the world, you know."

He blinked and his smile was touched with pain. "Is this how it's going to be?"

She winced. "What do you mean?" You know exactly what he means.

Thomas changed his voice, pitched it higher. "Do you have to go down in that dangerous submarine? You're not the only diver in the world."She turned her face away from him, stung by the justice of his words. "When I dive, people aren't trying to kill me."

He cleared his throat and she remembered the helicopter firing at SubLorraine.

"Well, not usually."

He turned her face back toward him. "I'll give you that, but we're talking about risk here. Not just risk from human hostility. And we're talking about doing one's job."

She sighed. "And getting it right."

He breathed out and some of the pain left his face. "Yes. You change me, just by being who you are, but do you want to change me that much? You might not like the result."

She buried her face in his chest. It's hard to give your heart without guarantees.

Her voice was muffled. "It's just a little chain. You'll hardly notice it. Except when you try to move. Or breathe."

He laughed and lifted her face, kissing salt water away from her eyes. "Think'st thou there is no tyranny but that of blood and chains?" He grimaced. "I, too, 'damn near married' her. She loved the man I was, but wanted to marry someone safer. When I wouldn't change into that safer one, she found someone who was safe. Divorced him, though, after two years."

Curiosity drove her question. "Did she come back to you?"

He frowned. "Well, she tried." He lifted his hand to the scarred side of his face.

"I wasn't the same person she'd hoped to find." He shrugged. "It wasn't all her doing. I wasn't really back to life yet and living through a thick layer of cotton wadding-well, she moved on."

"She," Patricia said vehemently, "was an idiot."

"Ah." His eyes were warm coals, warming her more than her coffee. "That's our answer, you know. You offer me so much to live for that you make me want to be careful. I hope to do the same for you."

"Oh, shut up and kiss me."

He did, and she was content with that. When he broke off for air, he said, "Oops. Looks like our ride."

A thirty-foot NGPD patrol boat rounded the corner of Matagorda and flashed its blue strobes briefly. Thomas and Patricia were waiting on the dock when it pulled up to the landing.

Major Paine was waiting for them in dispatch, a slightly built man wearing a sportshirt, khaki slacks, and loafers. He was polishing his glasses with a handkerchief while he listened to dispatch traffic with a headset. Patricia knew that he'd come to the job from the FBI, but now that she knew he'd also taught at the academy, it fit, somehow. He'd always reminded her of her dad, an ex-academic himself.

Paine pulled the headset off when he saw them. "Let's go to my office." He led them through a door, past a large briefing room, through a reception area, and finally into an office with a view of the lighted city.

"Looks like they bugged out shortly after you started under the wall. A rim resident saw a boat pick up four men on the lagoon side about fifteen minutes before you called me. They were long gone by the time my guys got there."

"Did he get a look at them, or the boat ID?"

"He said it was an ElectraJet but didn't see what year. They had their running lights off. Between the rental agencies and privately owned boats, that narrows it down to one of about eight thousand."

Thomas groaned. "Very helpful."