kiDNApped (A Tara Shores Thriller) by Rick Chesler

signaling that it was time to go.
    He tucked the box back into his vest. They made their way slowly up to the boat. Swam to the stern.
    Dave boarded first. Then Kristen handed her fins up to him before ascending the swim ladder and joining him on the rental boat’s deck. She was not surprised to see Lance asleep in front of the radio console. Tara was there to grab gear handed up by Dave, and then Dave helped Kristen to remove hers.
    “Any idea what that is?” Kristen said, pulling the mask off her head while pointing at Dave's vest pocket.
    Dave removed the box, turning it over in his hands.
    “Let’s dry it off,” he said, looking around for a towel. His was draped over Lance’s lap, covered in vomit. He grabbed his T-shirt and used that instead. Kristen and Tara gathered around Dave.
    Lance stirred on his seat and yawned loudly. He opened his good eye and turned his impaired gaze to the box.
    “What is that?” he croaked.
    “Quiet. We’re about to find out,” Kristen said. She was surprised at her abruptness, but her brother had tried what little patience she had left.
    Careful that his longish hair wouldn’t drip water into the box as he opened it, Dave unhinged the clasp and pulled back the lid.

 
     
     
     
… TTGC 16 GAAA...
    9:30 A.M.
     
    Lance managed to stumble down from his seat so that he could see what the box held. The four of them said nothing for a moment as they fixed their eyes on the open container. Kristen broke the silence, saying what they were all thinking.
    “It’s a flash drive,” she declared, still staring at the inch-and-a-half long rectangle of silver metal, a computer connection on one end. A lead dive weight also occupied the box underneath the drive, clearly intended to make the container sink.
    None of them paid any attention to the high-pitched whine of an outboard motor that was audible in the distance while Dave reached into the box and removed the data storage device.
    He dangled it from an attached lanyard. It gleamed once in the brilliant sunlight.
    “The cover’s missing,” Kristen observed. Usually the connector end of a flash-drive was protected by a plastic cap when not in use.
    “Could mean whoever put it in here had to move in a hurry,” Dave said. Tara said nothing, merely watching the event unfold, monitoring the situation. She had studied all three of their faces closely, but none of them had showed any signs of recognition upon seeing the flash drive, not that she expected them to.
    Kristen grabbed the weight and turned it over in her hands, looking for any identifying marks. There were none.
    “Just a standard dive weight,” Dave said, reading her mind. “Could have come from anywhere.”
    “My laptop’s in the cabin,” Kristen said, reaching out to take the flash drive from Dave. Tara knew that she had brought her computer along because it held an assortment of material she had collected with regard to her father’s search: GPS coordinates of his yacht’s known course, transcripts of his last radio communications, his most recent blogs, copies of various scientific permits he’d applied for prior to embarking, family photographs in case she needed to show his picture to anyone...
    Normally in an FBI investigation, any kind of data equipment would be turned over to computer forensics experts to examine, but since she was here officially on the William Archer missing person case, and not the Dave Turner boating murder case, Tara allowed Dave to hand Kristen the drive.
    “Yeah, let’s see what’s on this thing,” Dave said.
    Kristen was saying something about hoping there wasn't a virus on the drive when Tara announced, “We’ve got company.” She pointed off their port side, out to sea.
    The whine of the motor was fast becoming a roar. They all looked up in time to see a black Rigid-hull Inflatable Boat (RIB) coming at them under the full power of its twin 175-horsepower engines.
    The craft decelerated as it neared the rental boat. That