Chapter Eight

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Dragonmaster Kurai- Yay you loving Ian! He's so fun to write, especially when he gets angry or protective (sigh) Why can't there be more criminals like him?

Ali-Thanks for reviewing! I tried to get this chapter out as soon as possible! I hope you like it!

Elfgirloflorien- Where would any of us be without POTC? Thanks so much for reviewing, I love it when I get new reviewers!

A/N- I just wanted to thank all my reviewers! The two new people who reviewed for chapter seven let me know that there was more people reading my story, which made me happy(and powered me into chapter eight) and the reviewers who've been here a while are amazing. Snaps for you guys!

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Chapter Eight

Although her lack of grace, physical and social had gotten her into some pretty embarrassing situations before, Claire was almost positive that this would make her top ten most mortifying events in her life. Maybe even the top five.

Riley's eyes shot open in surprise and he flailed around for a few seconds, disoriented, before realizing that he wasn't being abducted by aliens: a normal human being had just landed on him.

Judging by the blonde hair and face twisted in a horrified expression, it was Claire Howe.

"Sorry!" she whispered loudly. "Crap, I'm really sorry. I was climbing up the ladder thing and jumped…………………."

She trailed off with a strange expression on her face.

Part of Claire Howe's brain was screaming at her to get off Riley and keep apologizing, but the other part was just kind of in a mesmerized trance. Maybe it was because he wore glasses all the time, or because she was two inches from his face, but she hadn't noticed until now how truly gorgeous Riley Poole's eyes were.

They were just so intensely blue, like the turquoise valuables that she once saw in a museum. Blackbeard was known to trade with Native Americans for turquoise amulets, which he would later sell to Europe for astounding prices.

He could probably sell Riley's eyes she thought dazedly. I'd buy them.

"Helooo?" Riley asked "Claire?"

She jerked out of her trance. Oh Crap. This was Riley Riley. Really annoying, mean Riley made fun of her and her brother. Why couldn't nice, sweet guys have knockout eyes like that? He probably only used them for evil purposes.

She scrambled of him as quickly as possible. "Um….." she stammered. "Sorry about that. Won't happen again."

Realizing that she had no tangible excuse as to why she had gone into some kind of Dracula-type thrall while on top of him, she bolted out of the room.

I knew hammocks were a bad idea

Riley blinked in confusion. What had that been about?

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TV was incredibly misleading. All those shows about FBI agents running around with guns and sleeping with their partners. All complete bull.

Then again, Katherine Dawes thought wistfully, if they showed that most of an agent's day was compiled of doing endless amounts of paperwork, their application pool would take a tremendous dive.

At the moment, Dawes was filling out yet another report about a breach in security at some museum. By the eighth page she had stopped caring. Unfortunately, she didn't have a newbie partner at the moment that she could throw all the paperwork on. She didn't have any partner at the moment-not because her partner got killed in a gunfight or was transferred to another unit so they could start dating. She just worked fine by herself.

Her telephone shrieked for attention, jarring her out of her comatose boredom.

"Agent Dawes."

"It's Ian. My guy did a background check on Robinson, and there was nothing. Not even a speeding ticket in his not-so-wild college years at Harvard."

"That's not surprising." Dawes replied, mentally cursing. That had been their one lead.

"However," Ian continued "We checked his email records and he's been sending emails to a certain address with increasing regularity. he started right around the time Claire found the documents."

"You got his email records? Howe, we can't even do that!"

"That was kind of the point. Anyway, the email address doesn't belong to a student, so it might be our guy." Ian answered smugly.

'What's the address? I'll run it."

"Um, Drew, underslash Deachat at jmail." Ian answered

Dawes grinned "That might be his name. I'll see if there are any Drew Deachat's living in the area."

She hung up and eagerly pushed her paperwork to the farthest corner of her desk. Today was beginning to look up.

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Riley vegged in his hammock, almost done with his book. This was most definitely the life. Being belowdecks warded off most of the heat but let in a small breeze from the deck. He had absolutely nothing he had to do, and he was on a treasure hunt that so far was proving to be un-mortally threatening. No one was there to annoy him……….

On that note, where had his roommate run off to? After she had ran out of the room, he hadn't seen her again, and it was almost mid-afternoon. There weren't exactly many places to hide on the sihp. Ben and Abby would have seen her if she went on the deck, and no human being could spend more than an hour in that smelly little bathroom they had. That left the study-hole, as he had dubbed it, given it's size. Since his book was at a semi-dull point, he rolled of his hammock and wandered over to the study-hole, wondering what Claire could be doing for the hours she must have been in there.

Opening the door a crack, he saw that she was, like he had been, deeply engrossed in a book. There was a shadow of black-inked scribble across one cheekbone, which indicated that she probably fell asleep at the desk. Riley felt a tiny twinge of guilt. After all, he could have gone to find her earlier and………let her apologize again? Something, so she wouldn't be holed up in a small hot cabin.

He opened the door a little more and stuck his head in. "Hello?"

Up to that point, Claire had been tipping her chair back on two legs to amuse herself, but at his greeting she jumped about five feet in surprise and her chair tipped over backwards, sending her sprawling across the floor.

Oops Riley thought sheepishly

"Sorry I………startled you" he stated semi-sarcastically.

Claire blushed and scrambled up of the floor, righting her chair. "Hi." she said uncertainly.

"I, um, came to tell you that, um…" Riley struggled for something to say. "Um, you can come back to the room now."

Claire's eyes flashed "Thank you for your permission."

"Hey!" Riley said, affronted. "You were the one who used me as a landing board."

A rather awkward silence filled the room.

Claire tried very hard to keep a straight face. She was not going to think about the possible double meanings that Riley's statement had .

Do not laugh. Don'tlaughdon'tlaughdon'tlaugh. Think of sad and depressing things. Ummm, dead puppies…starving children..Gah, it's not working! Claire thought desperately

As soon as he said it, Riley wished he took take the accusation back, and it's rather obvious innuendo.

"What are you reading?" he forced out

"Treasure Island." she replied quickly, glad for the change of subject. She held up the well worn paperback. "Re-reading actually. For about the millionth time. It was my childhood favorite. It probably spurred my passion about pirates. Well, that and too many trips to the beach. And an overactive imagination."

Dear Lord, Claire stop talking. she thought

Riley noticed the mountain of small orange crackers atop the desk for the first time. "What are those?"

"Goldfish" she answered. "I eat goldfish while I'm taking notes, it helps me concentrate."

"That's……kind of weird."

Claire shrugged. "Everyone has a vice. Some people drink, some people do drugs or gamble. I eat goldfish."

"You should put that on a tee-shirt."

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Later in the evening, everyone was stretched out on the deck, even Claire. The cool breeze had lured her away from her study-hole and she was now back in her coveted position at the very front of the ship, coincidentally as far away as she could possibly be from Riley, who was relaxing at the back of the ship with Abbie.

"So Riley," Abbie began nonchalantly. "How have you and Claire been getting along?"

Riley snorted. "Do you want to hear about when she fell on me or when we discussed her addiction to goldfish?"

Unfortunately, a very interested Abbie was never able to choose between either of those stories because a loud peal of thunder rocked the air and caused everyone to start in surprise. At the helm, Claire began to feel small wet droplets on her head. The sky darkened as a large thundercloud seemed to form out of nowhere. Another thunderclap sounded, this time accompanied by a flash of lightning that in the new dimness lit up the crew's faces eerily.

"Riley, what the hell is going on?" Ben shouted from the steering cabin.

Riley ran over to his weather-tracking system. "It says were in a calm spot Ben!" he yelled back over the spraying winds, which were starting to pick up at an alarming rate. "This storm isn't on here! This isn't supposed to be happening!"

The rain began to fall harder until it was pelting everyone with wet bullets. Claire ran from the head of the ship down to the other three.

"What's going on?" she yelled.

"Nothing!" Riley yelled in frustration. "According to my computer, nothing is going on! Why isn't this storm registering?"

The water was becoming choppy, and waves sprouted, lapping at the sides of the ship.

Claire bit her lip. She had a feeling things were about to get ugly

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"No, I'm not going to wait at my apartment between ten and two for you to come!" Ian shouted. He really, really hated cable guys. Unfortunately, part of coming back from a four-year prison term meant that your cable was pretty much terminated.

"I have a life too you know! You can't assume………"

A dial tone droned in his ear. Ian slammed it down on the hook, only for it to ring again. He groaned and snatched it up.

"What?" he asked agitatedly.

"Howe? It's Agent Dawes." Ian frowned. Dawes seemed kind of shook up.

"Sorry. What did you find?"

"I sent an agent over to Robinson's house to pick him up from some preliminary questioning. The door was open and he found…….."

There was a long silence.

"Ian, Robinson's dead."

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