The man was taken by surprise and flinched as the tampon hit him in the face.
“Get the gun,” Justine said.
Allie hesitated, and the man started to move. Justine slid around behind him and, once in his blind spot, held the burning tampon to his neck. He screamed in pain. She had hoped he would drop to the floor and submit, but he fought back, sweeping his arms wildly, causing her to drop the burning tampon.
“Allie. Now!”
Allie snapped out of her daze and lunged for the pistol. Justine had been on the fence about Kurt teaching his daughter to shoot, but now Justine appreciated it, as Allie came into a shooter’s stance, pointing the barrel at the man. He raised his hands, and the escapees bolted through the door. Leading Allie down the corridor, Justine looked around for the other man and decided on heading the opposite direction from which they had entered.
It was a typical hotel layout, the walkway to the left mirroring the one to the right with a stairway at each end. Deciding to go right, they reached the bottom of the stairs. She saw a potential problem when the two exit paths, after weaving around several landscaped areas, merged, before going through a breezeway to the lobby. It was a classic pinch point. She could see the chain-link fence with razor wire just outside the landscaped perimeter. In the land of many homeless, these types of security measures were common to keep the indigent population from setting up camp. Climbing the fence would both slow them down and prevent anyone from seeing them. Instead, she decided to go through the lobby. The sooner they were seen by anyone outside Bugarra and his men, the better.
Turning back to the walkway, she started to lead Allie toward the lobby when a figure emerged through the breezeway. Startled, she pulled Allie back behind a large sago palm and waited. Justine saw that the girl’s pupils were dilated and she was breathing quickly.
“Breath, girl. You’re doing great,” Justine said, squeezing Allie’s shoulder.
From Justine’s vantage point, the man’s gait looked familiar, but she couldn’t see any of his features. Thinking it was just the adrenaline racing through her system playing tricks on her, she was about to move back onto the path when she realized who it was.
The second thug was alone and looked angry. He was moving quickly, as if he knew something was wrong. But he was focused on getting upstairs, and not on what was in front of him. Justine and Allie froze, staying low and using the landscaping for cover. He walked right by them. Justine waited until he had climbed the first set of stairs; as soon as his back was facing them, she pulled Allie out of the bushes and ran toward the lobby.
Before they reached the double glass door and freedom, she heard a man call out from above. Recognizing the voice, she looked up and saw Kurt on the second-floor breezeway. Her fear turned to joy when she saw him, but the moment was short-lived as she stepped into the open to call out to him. Just before she opened her mouth, she saw Bugarra appear from a doorway behind Kurt.
Kurt had a pistol in his right hand, but Bugarra had a gun as well. His arm started to rise. Somehow, she had to let Kurt know not only that Bugarra was behind him, but that she and Allie had escaped. She felt Allie squeeze her arm when Bugarra raised his weapon.
Allie jumped out from the cover of the breezeway and raised the pistol. Kurt saw her and froze. Justine reacted without thinking. An instinct deep within her wanted to protect Allie, and she reached for her, but Allie resisted, fighting to keep the weapon pointed at Bugarra.
“No, there’s another way,” Justine said.
Just as she said it, she reached for the gun, and it fired.
Bugarra’s aim snapped back to them. Justine looked up at the breezeway and saw only one man standing. Allie saw, too.
“Dad, oh my God! Dad, are you okay?” Allie called, running out from the cover of a column, where Justine had pushed her.
Justine knew it didn’t matter if they were seen. She had to know as well. “Kurt?”
“I’m okay,” he called down.
He didn’t sound okay, and Justine and Allie both knew it. “Let me help him,” Justine called to Bugarra.
“Both of you, upstairs, now,” he replied. “Drop that gun and take it slow. Let me see your hands the whole time.”
Bugarra ordered his henchman to retrieve the gun and escort them upstairs. Justine had to hold Allie back. She didn’t want her to race to her dad and risk Bugarra’s fury. With the thug’s gun at their backs, they started to climb to the second floor. Justine reached the landing first and saw Kurt on the ground clutching his leg. A pool of blood spread under his thigh, and her first instinct was to run toward him, but with Bugarra’s gun trained on her, she knew she’d better ask first.
“Let me take care of him.”
“Get a blanket and haul him in the room,” Bugarra ordered the other man, who had just emerged from the room they had been held in. He had a towel around his neck and scowled at Justine as he passed.
Justine and Allie both ran to Kurt. He was still conscious, but there was a faraway look in his eyes. Working forensics, Justine had seen a lot of dead bodies. Kurt, probably in shock, looked like he was close. Stopping the bleeding was the first priority. Once they were inside, she could have a better look at the wound. Removing her belt, she made a tourniquet around Kurt’s thigh and cinched it tight. The man appeared with the blanket, and Justine wasted no time laying it next to Kurt. Together, she and the man rolled Kurt onto it and, being as gentle as they could, pulled him into the room.
“In the bathroom. I don’t want them charging me for bloodstains,” Bugarra said, as he closed the door.
Mac decided to stay at the helm and run the boat himself, rather than let the autopilot do the work. He needed to think, and the routine tasks of checking course, fuel, and the gauges occupied his conscious mind, allowing his subconscious to work. He’d been around Ned and Wood long enough to know that there was something to the Van Doren story. Firsthand accounts were usually the best one could hope for, and the journal appeared to be just that. It rang true to Mac.
Ned’s history of the fort had only added to the layers of confusion Mac felt as he steered toward the Marquesas. Van Doren’s journal was dated 1822. The fort, built in the middle decades of the 1800s, could very easily have been built on top of the cache, or it could be on one of the other six keys in the archipelago. If Van Doren were on the run from Lafitte, as the journal said, the Tortugas were an unlikely spot to stop. Mac wasn’t sure when the original name, given by Ponce de Leon for the abundance of turtles in the area, was amended to include Dry, but it had been done for a reason.
As he veered away from the treacherous waters of the Quicksands, it suddenly came to him. If Van Doren were a shrewd captain—and from his writing, it appeared that he was to some extent educated—the Tortugas might have been the perfect spot. The reason the fort had been built there—despite the inhospitable conditions was its strategic importance. In those days, with the U.S. trying to eliminate piracy from its waters, Van Doren would have stayed north, hoping Lafitte would shy away from the Navy that had recently removed him from Galveston. Taking the northern route would have likely brought Van Doren within sight of the islands.
Mac was starting to believe there was something to the story, but the question remained—Where could the treasure be hidden? He had the feeling that Mel was on a wild goose chase, but at least he knew she was safe. His thoughts turned briefly to Kurt and his family, and Mac noticed he had eased off on the throttle and increased speed.
“How much further?” Pamela asked.
Mac looked down at the chartplotter. “We’re about halfway. Maybe an hour and a half.”
“We need to go faster. Something’s happened. I can feel it.”
He had known her long enough not to dispute her claim, and he instinctively reached into his pocket for his phone. He wondered about his knee-jerk reaction to something going wrong was to check his phone. Not too long ago, he never turned it on. Now it was attached to him. He tried to rationalize it as a necess
ary tool as he opened the main screen and saw there was no service. Not a surprise. He knew the signal from the cell towers only reached about six miles offshore. What surprised him was the uncomfortable feeling he had not been connected. In the past, he’d welcomed being off the grid, and he wondered where he had gone wrong.
Now was not the time to fix that, and he stashed the phone and checked their position. The Quicksands were behind them now, and Rebecca Shoal, where they had parbuckled the Yellowfin, lay ahead. As they passed the light, Mac wondered how much simpler this might be if they hadn’t tried to salvage the boat.
There was something magnetic about making landfall after a passage, and Pamela and Trufante both came up behind him as the fort came into view. Standing proudly above the horizon, the other islands were just dark marks on the water, and Mac wondered how the same scene looked to Van Doren before the fort existed.
It’s important to know who you’re dealing with. The rabbi’s words echoed in his head. It was a reminder of something he already knew: In order to find something, the thought process of the person who hid the thing was often more important than the clues. Using this premise, Mac turned to the west. He wanted to come up on the Tortugas the same way Van Doren had.
He felt Pamela grab his shoulder for support as he made the turn. Trufante was steadier on a boat than on land, and his sea legs easily adjusted to the course change.
“Where are we going?” Pamela asked.
“I want to see this the way Van Doren did. We’ll head to the west, turn, and come back.” Mac studied the chartplotter, trying to find the route that a nineteenth-century sloop would have used. Zooming in on the area around the fort, he saw just how complicated the passage was, even with his electronics. Almost two hundred years ago, unless you knew how to find the channel, it would be deadly.
Thirty-Four
Justine had stopped the bleeding. For the time being, Kurt was not critical, but he badly needed a doctor. There was no exit wound; the bullet was embedded in his thigh. Fortunately, the bullet seemed to have missed the femoral artery. Using torn pieces of the hotel towels, she continued to work on the wound; she had cleaned it with the remaining rubbing alcohol, used the rest of the tampons to absorb the blood, and bound it with a towel. Though Allie had been brave during the escape attempt, now, with the shot having coming from a gun in her hand, tears streaked down her face as she sat against the tub with Kurt’s head in her lap.
“You didn’t do it. It was my fault,” Justine said.
“That doesn’t make it any better,” Allie said.
Justine knew there was nothing she could do now except continue to search for an opportunity to escape and provide whatever medical help she could to Kurt. She did curse the bad timing that had brought Kurt to their rescue at exactly the same moment she and Allie had tried to escape. Justine both loved him more for coming to rescue them, and was mad that now they were all Bugarra’s captives.
“He’s going to be okay,” Justine said to Allie. She saw the muscles in Kurt’s arm flex as he squeezed Allie’s hand.
“What are we going to do?” Allie took a section of towel and started to clean her face.
Justine knew how resilient she was. “Remember that place in your head you were when we walked out that door?”
Allie nodded.
“You need to go back there. This isn’t the time to wallow in self-pity.”
“I know that, but who else is going to find us?”
“Mac Travis is out there.”
“I thought Dad said that he had gone after the treasure?”
Kurt had quietly given Justine an update while she cleaned and bandaged his wound.
“What time is it?” he asked.
Justine turned the watch on his left hand over. It was almost five.
“Mac is supposed to update Bugarra at six.”
She looked through the partially opened door at Bugarra, who sat on the edge of the bed, typing on his phone. He had turned out to be as careful as he was flamboyant, which led her to believe that his public persona was fabricated; inside was a different, darker man. She guessed it had taken the pressure of a hurricane bearing down on them for Bugarra to drop the facade. Now that his true nature was exposed, he was even more dangerous.
Working for Miami-Dade was like continuing education for Justine. Every day she was faced with new problems, from the evidence and the people. She had heard the detectives talking about how people snapped, then became remorseful. She hoped that was what Bugarra was going through. If he was, she intended to turn it to her advantage. They had almost escaped, but she knew it wasn’t likely to happen again with Kurt injured. She needed to think of another way out.
“We’re going to need supplies,” she called out, slowly releasing the tourniquet. Kurt started bleeding again, and she placed another large towel under his leg. He looked up at her, and, seeing the pained look on his face, almost had to look away. Once the towel was saturated with blood, she retightened the tourniquet, stood, and held up the towel.
“We’ve got to get him some help or he’s going to bleed out. He might even be paralyzed.” The last was an overstatement. One of the first things she had done after basic first aid had been to check for feeling in his toes. Drops of blood fell from the towel onto the tile floor as Justine watched Bugarra process the information. He was in deep, probably much deeper than he had wanted to be, but desperate people were hard to predict.
“There’s a line between kidnapping and murder.” She had nothing to lose. It was all she could do to hold her tongue while he processed everything Though Bugarra was a big guy, she suspected he was the bully type who avoided physical confrontations. She’d assessed the situation and decided that while she might be quicker, he was a big man, and the pistol still lay within his easy reach. There was little chance she could reach him before he grabbed it.
“Do you want him to bleed out on the floor?” Justine said.
That, at least, got a reaction. Bugarra walked into the bathroom. Justine backed away just enough for him to see the blood-soaked towels.
He turned away. “Get him ready to move.”
Knowing they would be leaving gave Justine hope, and she smiled at Allie, trying to reassure the girl that she was happy with the development. Once they were out of the hotel room, there would be a much better chance for Justine to engineer an escape.
They had made it to Fort Jefferson. Now Mac faced the challenge of swaying the park service director to his side in case help was needed in the search. Mac also hoped that Farnsworth knew that Bugarra had kidnapped Justine and Allie and was seventy miles away. Mac had sensed disdain, or even dislike, when he had been interviewed earlier, and was sure that Farnsworth had been bribed by Bugarra. He could only hope the distance and urgency of the situation would affect the director. Mac wondered if he was the right person to approach the career bureaucrat. If Mel was here, she would have been the natural choice. Trufante and Pamela were out, so Mac turned to Ned. “Think you can talk to the director? I didn’t exactly hit it off with him.”
“One of these days, you’ll learn a little finesse,” Ned replied. “It’s an improvement, though—ten years ago, you would have stormed the fort with a flare gun.”
Mac held his tongue, knowing Ned was right. It had taken a few decades for Mac to think before he acted. “His name’s Farnsworth.”
“Well, are you going to take me over to the dock, or make me swim?”
Mac idled the boat to an empty slip at the park service dock. “Maybe I should go with you.”
“Maybe you should trust an old man. Stand by on channel seventy-two,” Ned said, climbing over the gunwale, and stepping gingerly onto the wooden dock.
Ned’s pride was evident as he struggled to get his land legs. He wavered slightly, and Mac almost went after him, but held back. It took until Ned reached the edge of the dock before Mac thought the old man could pass a sobriety test, but once he hit dry land, he walked straight and proud. As Ned walked away, M
ac went into the cabin to get a bottle of water and saw the folder containing the copies of Van Doren’s journal. When he brought it out onto the deck, Pamela and Trufante began eyeing the papers. If he was going to find the treasure, he needed to get into Van Doren’s head, and to do that, he needed to be alone. Turning his gaze to the fort, Mac wondered if there was any trouble Trufante could get in on an island in the middle of nowhere. The fact that there was no alcohol for sale persuaded him to cut the Cajun some slack. “Go ashore if you like. Just stay close.”
Trufante wasted no time in hopping onto the dock, and looking back at Pamela. She didn’t seem quite as excited as he did, but followed. Mac watched them walk away, and as they approached the moat, Ned entered the sally port. Taking one last look around, Mac checked the VHF, then sat in the captain’s chair with his feet resting on the wheel.
Van Doren’s writing was archaic, but he appeared to have been a literate man. Mac had seen plenty of old documents that were almost impossible to read. At least Van Doren’s was legible. Mac thumbed through the pages, then started at the beginning, soon becoming fascinated with the story:
I knew Lafitte was too shrewd to give us a fast boat. The worm-eaten hull of the ship he had offered was a guarantee that we would not or could not flee. What he had underestimated was the determination of myself and our crew. Rhames and the others left from Gasparilla’s men despised Lafitte, partly for the heritage that bound he and I together, and now he had attempted to double-cross me, someone he had once called brother.
It seemed, at least for the present time, that even the weather was in our favor, and the ship ran in front of the wind. What she lacked in maintenance, she had in sail, and with every scrap we could find pushing us forward, we were making good time. What we didn’t have were guns. Promising the protection of the two schooners that now trailed behind us, Lafitte had stripped the ship of anything we could use that didn’t interfere with the recovery of the treasure in our holds.
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