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“And it was you who put the amyl nitrate in my lime?”
“It was not,” she replied firmly. “Who else was here?”
“Lance,” Stone said. “But why would he want to do that?”
“Beats me, but I saw him do it. Maybe he just wanted to confuse you.”
“Well, that worked,” Stone replied. “I thought I had had a stroke.”
“No,” Viv said. “The amyl nitrate covers all your symptoms—at least, one squirt would. Two squirts of lime juice, and you’d have just passed out for a while.”
“Where’s the plastique bomb?” Stone asked.
“I flushed it down the toilet at the bottom of the stairs.”
“That didn’t clog it?”
“Nope, it went straight down and out to wherever things go.”
“No,” Stone said. “We can’t flush into these waters. It went into the holding tank. Has anybody pooped since we got aboard?”
All heads were shaken.
Stone picked up a phone and asked Todd to inspect the tank and to bring in any unusual object he found there.
“Why do you want the thing?” Dino asked.
“Because I don’t want it to accidentally go off in the holding tank. I don’t know how I would explain it to my partners in the yacht. I don’t think our insurance covers that.”
“Better safe than sorry,” Vanessa said.
“You should have thought of that before you flushed,” Stone replied.
52
They ate lunchpretty much in silence. When they had finished, Dino said, “Why are you so quiet, Stone?”
“I’m figuring out who’s going to try to kill us next.”
“Valery Majorov,” Dino said. “Who’s left?”
“Okay, it’s Majorov. How’s he going to try to do it?”
“Well, the bomb is tucked away somewhere below,” Dino said. “In the maid’s closet in the hallway.”
“Means of attempt on us: sniper?”
“From where? We’ve got pretty much a 360-degree view from the yacht, and I can’t see a sniper’s perch from where I’m sitting.”
“You see my dilemma,” Stone said.
“How about an air attack?” Dino said.
“The only airplane hereabouts is the tourists’ seaplane from Key West, and I don’t think that’s equipped for strafing or bombing.”
As if on cue, there was a buzzing from the sky. Stone grabbed a handheld radio and raised Captain Todd. “You’ve got some rifles aboard, haven’t you?”
“Yep, two of them.”
