Billie Garcia’s boat was an old fishing rig refitted with a diving platform. It was a twenty-two-footer with a small tower and smaller cabin. There were slots, four on each side, to hold dive tanks.
Her name was Original Sin.
Logan headed off to find out if anyone had seen who had taken the boat out and brought it back in, and when.
Dallas stepped from the dock to the deck and took a look around. There were no tanks in the slots now. The boat had been hosed down. There wasn’t so much as a speck of dirt on the deck.
He headed up to the helm. There was no radio, no GPS, nothing that would allow them to trace the boat’s movements. He headed down into the small cabin. It held a table that converted into a bed, a small head—complete with a shower hose positioned right over the toilet—and a small galley. There were cabinets above the sink; opening them, he found some basic supplies: canned goods, mac ’n’ cheese, and cereal and other nonperishables.
He didn’t think the cabinets would yield anything useful, but he moved cereal boxes around anyway, looking behind everything.
He gasped when he moved the corn flakes and found the treasure he’d been seeking.
There was a knife. His heart quickened. Of course, it could be any knife.
But it wasn’t. It was a bowie knife.
It had a nine-inch blade, the handle was polished wood, and it was about fifteen inches total in length. It had been washed clean.
But...
That didn’t mean that it wouldn’t yield something. If Jose had cut his attacker deeply enough, blood could be soaked into the wood or lurking in the slot where the blade was attached. It wasn’t likely, but it was possible.
“You down there?”
He heard Logan shouting to him from the deck, and a moment later, Logan appeared on the steps that led down to the cabin. “Anything?” he asked.
Dallas produced the knife.
Logan whistled softly. “We need to get that to a lab quickly.”
Dallas nodded. “Agreed. What about you?”
“Big guy brought the boat in yesterday. Wearing, of course—”
“A hoodie,” Dallas finished for him.
“A dark hoodie. And he kept his head down. They noticed because they know the boat belongs to Billie Garcia.”
“And this knife,” Dallas said, “could—with any luck—be another piece of evidence tying Machete to this boat and Jose’s murder.”
* * *
Machete was still watching. And waiting.
And watching a house—even Hannah O’Brien’s house—was, frankly, boring.
At least he had different hiding places from which to watch. Buildings, the alley, sometimes under trees. And he was the one person who could get away with being where he was. He was perfect. Maybe the Wolf had known that from the beginning. But in the beginning it had been fun. It had been thwarting the police and riding the waves and finding treasure, tricking people, tricking governments.
Then it had been killing. But killing those who needed to be killed. It had been exhilarating. And it had been justified.
But then the Wolf had become obsessed. And Machete’s job had turned into watching. It strained the eyes, cramped the body....
Toyed with the mind.
Except for those rare times when something happened.
And now, finally, things were happening. This was it.
Valeriya Dimitri was in.
But even while he was pleased, he was also worried. He’d thought Valeriya was one of them, at least in a way. He’d thought that, now and then, he’d heard the voice of a woman speaking softly in the background when the Wolf spoke to him. And he’d thought that woman was Valeriya.
He’d heard her often enough, knew her voice. And she was in the house the Wolf considered the key to the treasure. It had made sense that she had a connection to the Wolf.
He’d even left her money once, because of that. He’d told the Wolf that he’d left money for the housekeeper, and the Wolf had been pleased with him.
Now he wondered.
A mistake. A major mistake. You couldn’t make mistakes in the Wolf’s world. Then again, the Wolf had been pleased when he left the money, so what did that mean?
There had been a time when it had been easy to slip into the house. He was a neighbor, liked and respected, and no one had been afraid. It was a bed-and-breakfast—people came and went.
He’d left her the money and the note, thinking she was part of the gang. Thank you for all you’ve done for us—and all that we know you will do when we ask.
Whether she was part of the Wolf’s team or not didn’t matter. Because she was doing what he’d told her to do, and that was what mattered.
She didn’t know she was looking for a treasure. But she would be looking for anything valuable, and that was good enough.
Just a little more waiting. And watching.
He knew what he had to do. And the time was coming.
Soon. Very soon. In fact, he suddenly decided, he’d had enough waiting and watching. The time was now.
Machete walked across the street, waving to the cop in the patrol car. He walked over to the window and leaned against it, as if he just had a friendly question to ask.
It was so easy....
* * *
Dallas couldn’t help but think about what Billie Garcia had said to him: that the police themselves might be involved. The thought worried him. No one knew who the Wolf was, and no one knew who else might work for him.
He didn’t want to believe the Wolf had law enforcement in his pocket, but he had to acknowledge the possibility.
While he and Logan were in the car, taking the safely bagged knife to the lab, Dallas’s phone rang. It was Dirk Mendini.
“You’re going to want to get up here,” the M.E. told Dallas.
“What’s going on?”
“I heard you were looking for a young Hispanic woman, the sister of your man Rodriguez. I have a woman here who fits the general description. She was fished out of the water off Grassy Key. No ID. She’s pretty bloated. I’m thinking she’s been in the water at least a week. She may have nothing to do with your case, but...you might want to take a look.”
“Yeah. I didn’t know Jose’s sister, but...yeah, I’ve seen her face in the file photo. We’ll be there,” he told Dirk.
When he hung up, he started to recap the call, but Logan had overheard.
“She might not be Alicia,” Logan said. “Odds are against it. Alicia disappeared months ago.”
“I know, but hell, we’re heading north anyway,” Dallas said. “And,” he added, “whoever she is, she was someone’s daughter, lover, friend.”
* * *
“You know how people tip me sometimes for cleaning the rooms?” Valeriya said to Hannah. “You told me that the tips were mine to keep, that I didn’t need to share,”
“I’m not worried about people leaving you tips,” Hannah told her. “I’m trying to figure out how a guest leaving you a tip meant that you were somehow being threatened.”
Valeriya let out a breath and looked at them, realizing how stupid she’d been in her eagerness to accept the money.
“It was a really big tip,” she said. “Two hundred dollars.”
Hannah’s brows shot up with her surprise. She held still a minute, willing her temper to cool before she spoke. She needed to keep Valeriya as calm as possible. She glanced at Kelsey, but her cousin was waiting for her to speak.
“Someone left a two-hundred-dollar tip and you didn’t think to at least mention it to me?” Hannah asked quietly.
Valeriya lowered her head. “I needed it. And there was a note with it.”
“What did the note say?” Kelsey asked.
“‘Thank you for your service, now and in
the future,’” Valeriya said as if by rote.
“Do you still have the note?” Hannah asked her hopefully.
Valeriya winced and shook her head.
“Okay,” Hannah said slowly. “You got a two-hundred-dollar tip but you didn’t keep the note that came with it.”
“I threw it away as soon as I got it. I mean, it might not mean anything, but it...it scared me.”
“Valeriya,” Kelsey said, her voice low and controlled. “When was this? It’s important that you remember when it was.”
Valeriya shook her head. Her fingers were clenching her teacup so hard that her knuckles were almost a solid white. “I’m not sure. Maybe a month ago? Yes, before the first. I used it to help pay for my rent.” She looked at the two of them. “It’s bad that I kept it, isn’t it? I do get nice tips, though. Guests who only stay a night leave me twenty dollars sometimes. I thought maybe he had miscounted. Or he was really rich and the money didn’t matter to him. Or...”
Her voice trailed away, and she let go of her cup and looked at her hands. They were just shaking.
“What is it that he wants so badly?” she asked.
“A treasure chest,” Kelsey said.
“A treasure chest?” Valeriya echoed. She frowned and looked at Hannah. “But a treasure chest is big. If there was a treasure chest here, we would have seen it.”
Hannah didn’t intend to tell her that while they hadn’t found a treasure chest—and she agreed that it would have been found if it had been in the house—they had found a key. “What should we do?” she asked Kelsey.
“First, we have to act as if everything is normal. Then we need to get someone over to Valeriya’s to keep an eye on her mother and her baby.”
“He’ll see. He sees everything!” Valeriya said.
Kelsey stood. “You’re right. So, we’ll make it look as if you’re doing exactly what he told you to. Let’s go up to my room. I actually think I’ve seen him standing by the banyan out front, looking up and watching the house.”
The three of them went upstairs.
“I’m going to slip into the captain’s room and watch from that window. I won’t let myself be seen,” Kelsey said.
Hannah nodded, then led the way into her room.
“You already made the bed,” Valeriya said.
“Yes, but...pretend to straighten it or something.”
“I will get the vacuum,” Valeriya said.
“Valeriya, we don’t really need—”
“I need to do something! I must.” She hurried downstairs to get the vacuum from the downstairs utility closet.
While Valeriya was gone, Hannah realized that she needed to call Dallas. They needed to make sure that someone was watching Valeriya’s house, so as soon as her mother left with the baby they could intercept her and get them somewhere safe.
She had just pulled her phone from her pocket and punched in Dallas’s number when she was startled by the sound of the doorbell.
She paused, frowning. The cop in the patrol car out front usually called to warn her before someone came to the door.
“Wait!” she called, aborting the call and shoving her phone back into her pocket.
But it was too late.
“Hello, how are you?” she heard Valeriya say, her tone surprised but friendly.
Hannah waited. Waited for someone else to speak.
Nothing.
Holding her breath, she walked to the landing, but she couldn’t see anything.
Kelsey silently joined her on the landing, frowning. She drew her Glock and motioned to Hannah to get behind her. Hannah obeyed, reaching into her pocket and feeling for the button that put the phone in silent mode. All she needed was Dallas calling her back and alerting whoever was at the door.
They went down the stairs slowly, cautiously.
“It’s just me, Hannah.”
She knew the voice instantly.
“It’s okay,” she told Kelsey, pushing past her as Kelsey slid her Glock back into her waistband.
But then they reached the foot of the stairs and saw Valeriya—saw why she hadn’t answered them.
Saw the massive knife that was pressing so tightly against her throat that a thin trickle of blood was already oozing slowly down her neck.
16
“Stop!” Dallas told Logan.
“In the middle of the road?” Logan asked.
“No, but turn around,” Dallas said, staring at his phone. He looked over at Logan. “Hannah called me, but the call cut out before I could answer. And now, when I try her back, I’m not getting an answer.”
Logan pulled off on the side of the road. Luckily they had only gotten as far as Stock Island. It wouldn’t take them more than twenty minutes—maybe less—to get back to town. He used his Bluetooth device to call Kelsey, and Dallas saw the worry on the other man’s face when she didn’t pick up.
“I’ll call Liam,” Dallas said.
In a minute, he had the detective on the phone.
“Hannah and Kelsey aren’t answering their phones,” he said without preamble.
“I drove by not ten minutes ago,” Liam said. “Officer Bickford was sitting in his car, right where he was supposed to be. Hang on. I’ll get him on his radio.”
Long seconds went by. Logan was already turning the car around.
Liam came back on. “I can’t rouse my officer. I’ll get a couple of patrol cars over there right away.”
“No, don’t,” Dallas said. “If someone is in there, he thinks he got in clean and now he’s in control. Tell your men to park around the corner and approach the house on foot, but tell them to make sure they’re not seen and not to go in. See if you can find a way to reach the patrol car without being noticed, though frankly, I’m afraid you’re going to find your officer dead or dying. Get help for him quickly, but do it without being noticed.”
“I’ll get it done carefully,” Liam promised. “Unless someone’s watching from a distance, I’ll get my man without being seen. But as for the house...”
“Liam, please, play this my way. Unless you hear screams or shots fired, don’t go in. That’s the best chance they have of staying alive. I’m begging you. Hannah and Kelsey have to play along, make him think they can and will help him. They have to pretend to give this guy what he wants.”
“Do they even have what he wants? Did you find something?”
“No, but he doesn’t know that. And—” He broke off, looking at Logan. “They’re smart. They’ll keep him talking. They’ll play the game.”
“Sweet Lord, I pray you’re right,” Liam said.
“Hannah tried to call me,” Dallas said. “She’ll know I saw and we’re on the way. Hold off, please.”
“I’ll call you back the second we’re around the corner, getting ready to approach the house.”
“If you burst in—”
“We won’t. Your case, your call,” Liam promised quietly.
“Thank you. I’ll go in myself and—”
“How the hell are you going to get in?” Liam asked.
“Well, I could just use my guest key. It’s a bed-and-breakfast, remember? I’m a guest,” Dallas said. “But I’ll play it by ear.”
“I’ll have my men placed discreetly as near the house as is safe. They won’t go in, but they’ll be ready.”
Dallas thanked him and hung up.
Logan drove fast, but with a dead-steady hand. “I’m going to park one street over. We’ll go through the alley.”
Dallas nodded. They were back on Roosevelt already. Logan had a true talent for dodging through traffic.
“You’re taking the back door?” Logan asked.
Dallas shook his head. “There’s a big avocado tree in the back. I’m going to
climb it to the widow’s walk and go in through the attic, then play it by ear from there.”
Logan didn’t argue with him, and Dallas felt a solid sense of gratitude. Logan Raintree was a hell of a guy and the kind of leader a man could respect. He meant what he said when he handed over the reins, and he didn’t micromanage.
Dallas smiled grimly. They were going to pull this off. “I don’t think he wants to kill anyone, at least not until he has what he’s looking for—though why he thinks we have it, I don’t know. I need you to distract him while I come. He’s got some kind of a hostage thing going on. I’m sure of it.”
“So am I,” Logan said. He looked over at Dallas quickly. “If not, Kelsey would have shot him by now.”
Logan parked a street away, as planned. They made their way to the alley, then split up.
Logan headed to the rear door, moving silently through the foliage.
Dallas slipped around to the avocado tree and hoped the tree would hold him and get him where he needed to go.
* * *
“Bentley Holloway, what the hell are you doing?” Hannah asked.
It was so damned obvious, but at the same time it was ridiculously impossible to believe that the next-door neighbor she’d known since she was a kid was a killer.
A big guy with blue eyes. Hell. They’d never even suspected....
He ignored Hannah and looked at Kelsey. “Put your weapon on the ground. Now. Slowly, calmly and easily. I’m pretty much past caring whether I live or die, but this woman is a mother. She wants to live. Don’t you, Valeriya?”
Valeriya didn’t make a sound. She seemed barely able to breathe. Her terror was almost palpable.
Kelsey turned, then carefully lifted the Glock from her waistband for him to see.
“Down. Right there...yes.”
Kelsey set the weapon on the floor.
Hannah prayed that her cousin had something else in her arsenal.
“Step back,” Bentley said.
Kelsey obeyed.
“You always were a smart girl, Kelsey. I remember you both as kids. Hannah, you were like a light in the darkness. Even then, you knew every story about Key West. You knew all about the soldiers, the pirates, the spongers and the salvagers. You were like a sponge yourself, soaking up every piece of information that came your way.”
The Cursed Page 25
