As I stared at the picture, my heart sank. If he decided to take off, all I could do was watch. To add insult to injury, the name painted across the back was Daemon.
Summer followed the pic with his name. Michael Detangelo. I doubted it was real but forwarded the name and the pic to Bones, who would run a check on both. Bones, my eyes in the sky, had been and was tracking Summer’s cell phone, but he’d only be able to keep it up as long as she had cell coverage. Still, even a short amount of time should allow him to identify the heat signature of the boat and follow it with satellite. Which allowed us to track him anywhere he went as long as the engines remained hot.
A few seconds later, Bones replied, “Locked on.”
On the beach, under the glow of the moon, a peacock marched. I was conflicted. Summer or Sisters of Mercy. I wanted to help Ellie, but my mind would not let go of Summer, alone in a boat with a bad man. I swore.
Sister June turned and found me staring at my phone. I gently beached Gone Fiction in a foot of water. Enough to hold her against the tide while not enough to hold her against the Mercury in the event I needed to leave quickly. As we hopped down, I turned to Gunner. “Stay.” He didn’t like it, but he lay on his stomach, hung his front paws over the edge of the bow, and rested his head on his front legs. Whining. His ears trained toward me. I spoke softly. “I’ll be back.”
Sister June, rather nimble at eighty-plus years, led us up the beach beneath the canopy of trees and turned north, walking in the soft sand. Scattered above and around us, leeching to the tree limbs, were more orchids than I could count. Dozens. Maybe a hundred. Orchids are opportunistic so they grab on where they can, whether placed by the hand of God or the hand of man. Such a dense collection meant that somebody here had to love orchids. The water lapped on our right; the cottages stood stoically on our left. Toy soldiers. Under the shadows of the orchids, we paraded up the beach. Sister June, Ellie, and me.
At the last cottage, Sister June turned and began winding her way toward the back porch. This cottage had been better maintained than the others. Fresh paint, roof not caved in, and from the sound of the A/C unit, the air was conditioned.
Sister June climbed the few steps, stood on the back porch, and knocked the sand off her feet. She knocked quietly, opened the door, and said, “Just me.” Swinging wide the door, she ushered us in and closed it quietly behind us. The room smelled of lavender, and a single lamp lit the far end where someone with a very small frame lay in a bed. The sheets were ironed, folded back neatly, and tucked, making a cocoon of sorts. Next to the bed sat a single bookshelf. The person was sitting upright in the bed, and a green, cylindrical oxygen tank stood next to it. A clear plastic tube led from the tank. The sound of rhythmic breathing filled the room.
A bedside lamp shone on the bed and cast a shadow across the person’s face. Sister June shooed us into the room, then unfolded a blanket at the end of the bed and spread it across the person’s bottom half. Having straightened it, she patted the person’s foot and said, “I’ll check on you in a bit.” As she left, she touched my arm and whispered, “Be gentle.” Sister June closed the door behind us and left us alone. Ellie looked down at the woman shrouded in shadow, up at me, and then in the general direction of Sister June. She looked confused.
The woman in bed slowly extended her right hand across the space between us. Her arm was thin, almost emaciated, and spiderwebbed with veins. A silent pause sounded between the time her arm came to rest and her speaking. In between, she inhaled and exhaled purposefully and with some labor, drawing a thin life from the line that draped over her ears and the two small prongs that protruded into her nose.
She whispered, “You must be Ellie.”
When I heard the whisper, I hit my knees.
Chapter 43
The lamp had thrown a shadow across her face. I rotated the base of the reading lamp, and the light climbed up her chest, neck, and face. She was skin stretched across fragile bones. A tattered canvas sail. Nostrils flaring, she struggled to breathe. I inched forward, leaning in. Her face was nearly unrecognizable. Her eyes were not.
I tried to speak, but no voice came. She tilted her head and her palm brushed my cheek. I whispered, “Marie?”
She pulled me to her. Smiling. And trembling lips reached across time and space and heaven and hell and kissed me, drawing my heart up and out of a watery grave fourteen years in the making.
Moments passed. Years. I struggled to breathe. How? What? When? The pain in my chest exploded, and I cried. I held her, strained to see her, shook my head and tried to speak, but words, like time, had retreated with the tide. Pulled out to sea by a lover’s moon.
Ellie stood, a wrinkle between her eyes. Marie reached a second time. Ellie held her hand and sat in the chair next to the bed. Marie sat and cried and focused on her breathing. Finally, she spoke. “I need to tell you a story.” A purposeful breath. “I need to tell you about you.”
Only the pulsating ding from my pocket brought me back from the other side of the Milky Way. Marie smiled and her head tilted. “You working?”
She remembered. How could she forget? I nodded and stared at the phone. The text was a five-second video. Taken from the helm. It showed the steering wheel and a corner of the Garmin electronic chart. The chart showed their speed. Currently, sixty-two miles an hour. When the camera focused, the speed rose rapidly to eighty-seven. Then ninety-four. Having established the speed of the boat, the video turned 180 degrees and showed a body lying across the three rear seats. Limp limbs bouncing with the rhythmic rocking of the boat.
Summer.
The video closed in on her face. The expression and the drool exiting her mouth suggested she’d been drugged. The video moved in closer to her waist and hips, where the hand not holding the phone moved gently up and down her leg.
Just before the video ended, he laughed.
I wanted to throw up. I stood. My phone was ringing. It was Bones.
Marie held my hand. Inside, my anger was bubbling. She read the uncertainty on my face. I shook my head. “I—”
She pulled me to her, placed her hand flat across my heart, and kissed me. Holding it several seconds. Then again. “Nobody is better at finding the one . . . than you.” She looked at Ellie and patted the bed next to her. The image of Summer tugged at me. Marie sensed it. “We’ll be here. We have a lot to talk about.”
I shook my head. “I—”
She glanced at her bookshelf. My books stood stacked in order. Yellowed. Dog-eared pages. Taped covers. She laid her head against her pillow and smiled a satisfied smile. “I’ve heard every word.”
“How?”
She held Ellie’s hand with both of hers. She spoke to Ellie while looking at me. “I want to tell you about your father—and how he saved me.”
Ellie looked at me. Eyes wide.
I crumbled. Shaking my head. My phone rang incessantly in my pocket. Marie said, “Go. Just—” A smile. “Come back to us. There is so much we left unsaid.”
I could only muster one word. “Father?”
She smiled and held my face in both of her hands. “We did one thing right. And she’s standing right here.”
I looked at Ellie. I looked at my daughter. My phone rang again. And again.
I stood, kissed Marie’s forehead, then her lips, then bolted out the door, running through the soft sand. I hit Gone Fiction in stride, slammed the throttle in reverse, and dialed Bones. The slideshow in my mind played two competing images. Marie. Melting into the bed. Death staring down over her shoulder. How long had she been there? How long had she held on? What pain had she known? How did she get there? What about the video and the concrete bucket? Where did she . . . My mind fired ten thousand questions a second. The image flipped and Summer appeared. Drugged and unconscious. Limp body rocking in rhythm with the boat. A hand sliding up her thigh. The sound of evil laughter.
Bones texted me their current latitude and longitude. He was heading due west toward the Tortugas. I slammed the
throttle forward. Gone Fiction shot out of the water. I lifted the engine slightly on the jack plate, listening for the prop to hit the sweet spot, and trimmed the engines. Five seconds later, I was gliding across the water. Fifty-three. Fifty-four. A little more trim and the GPS read fifty-six mph.
Gone Fiction was screaming.
And yet he was outrunning us by nearly forty miles an hour. I might be too late. Bones talked while I steered. “When he picked her up, he circled the island once, all twenty-six miles, but given his course and erratic speed, I gathered that he’s pretty good at looking behind him. Proving—”
I interrupted him. “This is not his first rodeo.”
He continued, “Always moving within sight of the island. I think he was giving Summer time to get comfortable with him. Putting her at ease. Given his movements, he’s done this before. Whatever ‘this’ is.”
The signal was breaking up. I was losing every other word. It would be useless at the Tortugas. If Bones needed me, he’d call my sat phone. “I’m losing service.”
“Roger. Watch your top—”
The phone went dead.
Chapter 44
The Tortugas were sixty miles off Key West. He’d be there in thirty minutes. It’d take me an hour. I also knew I couldn’t come in directly behind him, so I charted a course that came in from the side. If they sat at the center of the clock face, I hovered around four thirty. Bones called the sat phone. “Careful. A guy like that may have someone watching his six.”
Gunner stood nervously sniffing the air. Given our speed, he was hunkered between my knees. Whining. Looking for safe purchase in a boat where it didn’t exist for an animal with paws.
A full moon had risen, casting Gone Fiction’s shadow on the water. Twenty miles off Key West, he circled the Marquesas. A cluster of small islands west of Key West. A few of which were privately owned. Lifestyles of the ultrawealthy. Doing this suggested he did not have eyes in the sky like I did. He wanted to know if anyone was on his tail. Weaving through the islands like a serpent, he was trying to throw them off.
Fear gripped me.
My white knuckles gripped the throttle, trying to push it farther, but it wouldn’t budge. My speed read fifty-eight. My oil pressure was rising, as was my engine temperature. The moon glistened off the sheet of glass in front of me. Below my feet I’d installed a sealed hatch. Situated above the gas tank and below the deck. I unlocked it and swung the lid open on its hinge. Below lay my weapons locker.
I pulled on a fitted black shirt and face mask, then swung my arms through my tactical vest and Velcroed it tight about my chest. I press-checked my Sig 226 and used my fingers to count four eighteen-round magazines in the MOLLE carriers on my chest. Each had been fitted with a plus-two cap, bringing each magazine capacity to twenty rounds. I turned on my RMR, or rigid mounted reflex. It’s a red dot for pistols—a comfort when under duress. I pressed the thumb button on my Streamlight flashlight, making sure it lit up the world around me. It did. I slid the Benelli M4 out of its cradle and Velcroed it barrel down alongside the T-top supports. It held nine mayhem-causing rounds. Before closing the locker, I lifted my AR from the rack and swung it across my shoulder. I counted the six thirty-round AR magazines fitted to my vest and unclicked the night vision goggles.
The vest felt familiar while also heavy. A testimony to the quarter-inch plates covering my chest and back. In the forward locker, I’d stowed my crossbow. It was quiet and accurate out to a hundred yards.
The problem with stepping into the ring with someone bent on evil is just that. Evil. And there’s no way to get around it. You don’t talk with it. Don’t reason with it. Don’t negotiate. Land for peace never works. Never has. If they step into the ring with a baseball bat, you don’t meet them with a spoon. Evil is not interested in peace, and no amount of conversation will lessen its intent.
Gunner looked up at me and whined. I placed my hand on his head and tried to comfort him, but comfort was hard to find. We skimmed across the water, chasing the demon boat. After fifty minutes, the Dry Tortugas came into view in the distance. I’d been looking at them on my chart since I’d left the beach, but now I was laying eyes on them in reality. The fort rose in the distance. Farther west, a large yacht sat parked. Well lit. A hundred fifty–plus feet in length. Probably closer to two hundred. A party on the fore and aft decks.
I studied it through my binoculars. Several tender yachts were anchored nearby. The demon boat idled up to the larger yacht’s stern. Two men from the yacht carried something about the size of a human body off the smaller boat. Then somebody hopped off and onto the stern, shaking hands with someone on board. Interestingly, they kept the two engines running.
They didn’t intend to stay. I didn’t have long.
Just then my satellite phone rang. I didn’t have time to talk to Bones, but caller ID read “Unknown.” Below that, the description read “Wi-Fi call.” I answered. Her voice was shaking, and when she spoke I knew she was struggling to find clarity. “Padre—” Fear echoed across the line. “I want off this boat.”
Angel. “Where are you?”
She whispered. I could hear commotion in the background. “I . . . I don’t know.”
“Can you see out?”
I heard movement. She whispered, “Blindfolded. Siri dialed for me.”
“Where are you in the boat?”
“My hands and feet are tied. We’re not moving. Boat’s not rocking.”
“How long have you been there?”
“I don’t . . . don’t know how long.”
“Can you hear anything?”
“Men talking. They . . . Padre, I’m pretty messed up—”
“Hear anything else? Anything at all?”
“I think another boat just swung around us. I can hear the engine.”
That might have been the demon boat. “Make yourself invisible.” I heard commotion in the background. “Angel?”
Her voice was shaking. Her whisper lower. “Padre?”
“Yes.”
Her next words sounded with finality. “Tell my mom I’m sorry. Tell her—” She whimpered and the line went dead.
Chapter 45
Time was growing short. I guessed the demon boat had come to pick up Angel and deliver her to the buyer. Cuba or Bimini. Maybe somewhere in the Gulf. I circled behind the island, putting the fort between the yacht and me. I tied off at the wall, and Gunner and I crept around the seawall, staring at the yacht anchored about a half mile in the distance. I pulled on my fins and locked my phone in a watertight Pelican case just big enough to hold it.
I climbed down into the water and looked at Gunner. “Come on.” Gunner launched himself in the water, and we began swimming. My plate carrier and all the weight attached to it, not to mention the AR slung across my back, pulled me down. The thought of Summer and Angel pulled me up. But it did little to alleviate the drag. We swam a hundred yards. Then two. Then two more. I could hear voices on the decks. We swam within a hundred yards and clung to a thirty-six-foot Yellowfin anchored in about six feet of water. Possibly a client’s boat. I held the ladder with one hand and slid the other beneath Gunner, giving him a break. His eyes were trained on the yacht. The name on the back read Pluto.
Most would read that and think of a cute Disney character. But Pluto was the adopted Roman name for the Greek god Hades, god of the underworld. The message was clear. “Welcome to hell.”
I dove to the bottom and disconnected the quick-connect of the Yellowfin’s anchor chain. The quick-connect would hold some twenty or thirty thousand pounds, but it was designed with a pin that unscrewed relatively easily on the off chance that the anchor became hung up and needed to be sacrificed to free the boat. We swam quietly. With the current flowing in our favor, I let it drift us toward Pluto. I dove again, secured the quick-connect to the larger yacht’s anchor, and watched as the thirty-six-foot Yellowfin settled into place. The captain would never know he had a problem until he tried to leave and started dragging th
e smaller boat with him.
I swam around the starboard side, in the shadows, and snaked a three-quarter-inch stern line toward the stern of the demon boat, securing it to the U-bolt just above the surface of the water. The stern was dark, so I lifted Gunner and placed his feet on the aft deck. He shook and stood looking at me. I climbed up and tilted my AR to drain the water out of the gas tube. If I did have to depress the trigger, I didn’t want it to blow up in my hands.
Inside, music thumped, lights flashed, and voices sounded. If I charged in through the back door, things would get loud quickly and I’d risk hurting innocent people. Not good. I told Gunner to stay, and he looked at me like I was crazy. “Okay, but keep your eyes open.” He made no response. Other than his eyes were already open.
We crept up the side walkway and climbed the steps to the third story and the captain’s deck, which was empty. I guesstimated there might have been fifty or more people aboard. I’m no expert at making things go boom, but I needed a diversion. A loud noise accompanied with enough damage to cause these people to want to get off this boat.
Below me, on the second level, was what I like to call the frolic deck, where two dozen men and women either swam in the pool, soaked in the Jacuzzi, or reclined on one of the loungers displaying various degrees of public affection. Some were clothed. Most were not. Many smoked. Everyone drank. In one corner stood a group of men smoking cigars. The red glow plugs sticking out of their mouths matched the intent in their eyes. Given their body language, I judged them to be customers and not crew. Directly below me, the DJ was working to create some sort of mood.
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