In Dark Water (Rarity Cove Book 3)

by Leslie Tentler

  Noah’s chest tingled. It could have been just some teenager engaging in theft, but again, he didn’t believe in coincidence.

  His gut told him that whoever had taken that phone had gotten access to Sterling Deveau’s calendar.

  Chapter Seven

  Mercer watched from the bungalow’s front door as Olivia and Anders’s Bentley pulled away, its headlights sweeping over the sand dunes as it left the driveway. She’d had dinner with them in the hotel dining room, although her mother had spent most of the meal fretting over her, something Mercer understood but still didn’t need. She had also declined Mark’s offer to spend another night with his family, but the quiet here was more unnerving than she had expected.

  She went to the bedroom to change into something more comfortable—a well-worn T-shirt of Jonathan’s and pajama pants—then returned to the living area with the intent of watching television. But as she walked past the end table where she had placed her purse, she hesitated before withdrawing Noah Ford’s business card. Printed on plain white card stock with raised black letters and the logo of the Charleston Police Department, it was as no-nonsense and businesslike as he was.

  Her curiosity about him won out. Getting out her laptop, she sat cross-legged on the sofa with the device in her lap and powered it up. She was savvy enough to know that a police officer’s personal data, such as a street address, was unlikely to be located online out of security precautions. The only thing she knew about him was his occupation and that he wore no wedding band, which didn’t mean that he wasn’t in a relationship. Mercer did a search using his name and keywords that she thought might pull something up. She did find a group photo of the Charleston Police Department’s softball team, which had played in a charity league that past summer. Noah stood in the back row, the brim of a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. She went back to scan the rest of the search results. A moment later, her fingers paused on the trackpad, her stomach fluttering at one of the headlines her search had found.

  Marines Rescue Four POWs from the Taliban.

  The online article was from 2009.

  Marines today rescued four troops from a compound eleven miles outside of Kabul, Afghanistan, in a covert operation that took place fourteen days after the soldiers’ Apache helicopter gunship went down over mountainous terrain. Also recovered during the mission were the remains of two U.S. troops who had been executed…

  A chill fell over her as she read the article’s description of the torture that the soldiers had endured. Her throat dry, her heart beating hard, Mercer scanned the rest of the article until she came to the names of the freed soldiers.

  First Sergeant Noah Christopher Ford, ANGLICO Special Operations, from Charleston, South Carolina, was among those listed.

  They had become less frequent over the years, but occasionally the nightmares still came for him. Noah awoke from a black abyss, bathed in sweat, his pulse racing. What had happened to him nearly a decade ago would always be with him, lurking somewhere in the back of his mind. But he was one of the fortunate ones.

  He had come home while others, his brothers, had not.

  Blowing out a breath, he scrubbed his hands over his face, trying to push away the images that cut at him like a knife.

  Aware that sleep wouldn’t be returning to him easily, he reached for his cell phone on the nightstand and squinted at its lit screen. Five-fifteen a.m. He would have to be up in another hour or so, anyway, especially if he planned to hit the gym before work. Pushing back the covers, he rose and pulled on the sweatpants that he had folded and left at the foot of the bed the night before, then walked barefoot and bare-chested into the kitchen to start the coffeemaker. He turned on the small television set on the counter to keep him company while he ground beans and cracked a couple of eggs into a skillet.

  The television was turned to a twenty-four-hour cable news station. He was about to switch it over to ESPN, but he put down the remote when the station moved to a different story, catching his attention. A female field reporter stood in front of a gracious row house in Savannah, Georgia, according to the caption at the screen’s bottom.

  U.S. Attorney Found Dead Inside Savannah Home.

  A microphone gripped in one hand, the reporter spoke.

  “U.S. Attorney Richard Townsend was found dead from an apparent gunshot wound in his home here in Savannah’s Historic District late yesterday. According to investigators, Townsend lived alone and appeared to have been deceased for several days—possibly as long as a week—prior to the body’s discovery by a housecleaner. Investigators do not believe it to be a suicide. Townsend had a successful thirty-year legal career that included time prosecuting federal cases in Charleston, South Carolina, and more recently, here in Savannah…”

  The coffeemaker gurgled behind him. Noah resisted the impulse to call Tyson—not only would he be rousing him early, he would also be risking awakening his wife and little girls. Noah decided to can the gym and go directly to the precinct as soon as he showered and dressed.

  A judge and a prosecutor, both working in Charleston, both shot dead within a week of one another. There was at least a fair chance the murders were related.

  They were poring over Deveau’s current docket but still needed to look at past trials, which numbered in the hundreds. If they could find a defendant who Townsend had prosecuted in Deveau’s courtroom, things might be about to break their way.

  Sunlight slanted through the barred windows in the visitation room as Lex Draper peered at the approaching, white-haired male in the orange jumpsuit. Flanked by two muscle-bound guards, he rolled a mobile canister of oxygen behind him, a nasal cannula clipped under his nose. As the old man stiffly eased down at the table across from Lex, the guards receded, their attention turning to the handful of other prisoners who sat at tables with visitors of their own. The guards gave the old man a wide berth, just like they gave him the table in the far corner that allowed the most privacy for business—as they should, since they were on his payroll.

  “You’ve got a problem, Lex. A big one.” The old man leaned forward, his features stern in his creased face. His voice, roughened by a lifetime of tobacco use, dropped to a gravelly whisper. “You left a witness behind at the gallery.”

  Lex’s heart skipped a beat, but he kept his face impassive. The others at the compound called him Iceman for a reason. His chin raised fractionally. “That’s impossible.”

  “You think my sources lie?” He narrowed his jaundiced, pale blue eyes, a flash of the imposing man who had led them all these years reappearing despite the frailness of his body. “I’m letting you know out of courtesy, son, so you can do something about it. If I were you, I’d find out who she is—”

  “I will,” Lex stressed, lifting his palms from the table. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “You damn well better, unless you want to end up in here with me.” Their conversation moved to other business until the old man began to cough, a phlegmy, wheezing sound. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and spat into it before stuffing it away again. Scraping back the plastic chair, he stood slowly, then tottered out with one of the guards in his wake.

  There were a few whispers that this need for retribution was the product of a failing mind. But the old man was their leader and was still widely revered. He still called the shots, even from behind bars.

  Lex frowned as he stood, his hands balling involuntarily into fists at his sides. He wanted to be named the new leader when the old man finally bit the dust. Having his blessing was imperative. The old man had chosen him to do his bidding and Lex had accepted the task to seal the deal. But if he went down as the trigger man, it was over.

  A goddamn eyewitness.

  Biting the inside of his cheek to control his outrage, Lex waited impatiently for a guard to open the door. Then he strode from the visitation room, the laminated guest pass flapping against his shirt pocket as the heavy thud of his boots echoed along the empty corridor. He understood now why the old man had sent f
or him. The phone lines here were monitored.

  His mind worked to think of some room in that gallery, some closet or cubbyhole that he had missed. He had planned too carefully for this. They had known all along that the police would eventually figure out the connection between the shootings. But the plan had been for there to be no evidence. The old man wanted them to know that he had gotten his revenge and they couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

  So, the situation had changed some, Lex conceded tensely as he walked through the metal detectors, then waited for another guard to allow him to exit the building. When the last set of electronic bars finally clanged open, he stalked through the lobby and outside, leaving the bleach-over-piss odor of the penitentiary behind. He scowled to himself despite the warm afternoon sun on his shoulders, aware of the guards with rifles patrolling from the widow’s walk above him as he reached his pickup truck in the high-walled parking lot.

  Briefly, he regretted having stuck his neck out again for the old man. But there was no way in hell that he was spending the rest of his life rotting in some jail cell, awaiting execution.

  Relax, Lex. You can fix this.

  He took a deep breath. This was a hiccup, was all.

  One that could still be easily handled.

  Chapter Eight

  An empty feeling in her stomach, Mercer looked up from the photos that Noah had laid on the desk in her office. There were a dozen images of balding, Caucasian males who appeared to be in their early forties in front of her, all of them with sullen expressions and a hardness in their eyes. But she had recognized the man from the art gallery immediately, his image turning her blood to ice.

  “Who is he?” she wanted to know, unable to keep the breathy tremor from her voice. When Noah seemed reluctant to answer, Mercer rose from behind the desk. Arms wrapped around her midriff, she went to stand in front of him. “I have a right to know, don’t I?”

  “His name is Lex Draper,” he said finally. “He’s a member of an extremist organization called The Brotherhood. It’s classified as a sovereign militia group.”

  “Sovereign militia?” She had heard the term before but wasn’t exactly certain of its meaning.

  “Groups like these espouse an anti-government, conspiracy-oriented ideology. They’re obsessed with weaponry and defending themselves against what they believe to be attacks on their freedom. As groups like these go, The Brotherhood’s particularly out there.” As he spoke, Noah rubbed tiredly at the back of his neck. It was late Wednesday afternoon and he was casually dressed in sneakers, jeans, and an untucked, button-down shirt that partially concealed the gun at his waist. Mercer herself wore athletic clothes, her hair in a ponytail since she had already left work for the day but had returned when she had received his call to let her know that he was coming to the hotel with photos. The news had rattled her.

  “How’d you zero in on him?” she asked. “Did you get some kind of tip?”

  “There was a U.S. attorney named Richard Townsend who was murdered in Savannah last week. He previously worked in Charleston. My partner—Detective Beaufain—and I went through Sterling Deveau’s trial history, looking for cases that Townsend had prosecuted in Deveau’s courtroom. It was a process of elimination, but we found a case from seven years ago that got our attention. From there, we went through mugshots of The Brotherhood’s known members until we came across one that fit your description.”

  “This man, Lex Draper—he was the one on trial?”

  Noah shook his dark head. “The leader of The Brotherhood was. His name’s Orion Scott. He was convicted and is serving out a twenty-five-year sentence in federal prison.”

  “For what?” Mercer asked in a quiet voice.

  “For ordering the murder of his son’s ex-wife’s fiancé. He was African American, and Scott didn’t want his grandchildren being raised in a mixed-race household. The Brotherhood also has white supremacist leanings. The murder attempt was unsuccessful—the victim survived but will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Scott was convicted for conspiracy to commit.”

  Sickened by what she had been told, Mercer absently laid a hand against her stomach.

  “Scott’s also seventy-nine. We found out this morning he’s in late-stage heart failure. Even with a terminal illness, he was turned down for parole again last month and won’t get another hearing for two years. He’ll most likely be dead before then. Richard Townsend spoke at the parole hearing and stated his belief to the board that Scott should remain incarcerated.” Noah shifted his stance. “We think that the murders were retribution against Townsend and the judge who sentenced him—a final act, since he has nothing to lose at this point. Draper was the hit man. Draper’s been a person of interest in other investigations over the years but nothing’s stuck.”

  Mercer swallowed past the dryness in her throat. “So, you’re just going to go arrest him now?”

  “Your identification should be enough to get a judge to sign-off on an arrest warrant, as well as a search warrant for the compound,” Noah said. “Draper lives there, as do some of the other members. We’ll serve the warrants hopefully overnight. The compound’s in a rural area about an hour north of here.”

  “You and Detective Beaufain aren’t going out there alone, are you?”

  “We’re taking a SWAT team and several other detectives. There’s always a chance with this group that things could get ugly.”

  Things were moving much faster than she had expected. Mercer looked away, suddenly feeling ill-equipped to handle all this.

  “Are you all right, Ms. Leighton?”

  “I’m…fine,” she lied. Mercer thought of what she had learned about him. “You should know that I’m guilty of Googling you.” At the impulsive admission, she felt heat rise on her skin. “I didn’t know that you were a military hero, Detective Ford. Mark didn’t, either. I’m sure it was on the news back then, but we somehow missed it or didn’t make the connection.”

  A shadow seemed to pass over his face. “That was a long time ago. And I don’t consider myself a hero.”

  Looking up at him, she shook her head. “What you went through…I can’t imagine.”

  He slid the photos back into their envelope. “I need to get going. Thank you again, Ms. Leighton. I’ll keep you updated.”

  He made an abrupt exit from her office. Left in his wake, Mercer took a tight breath. Noah Ford remained a mystery. Thinking about what he planned to do tonight—arrest the man who had filled her nightmares as of late—she felt a strong sense of unease. Through the window, she was aware of the approaching evening. Samantha couldn’t go with her tonight, but she needed a run to try to burn off her anxiety.

  He should have already left, but Noah sat inside his SUV in the St. Clair parking lot, one elbow propped against the window as he stared blindly out. Mercer Leighton’s mention of his past had thrown him. He had talked a little to Corinne and Tyson about it over the years but if anyone else asked, Noah typically would just shut down on them.

  Many soldiers who had seen active duty suffered from some form of PTSD. Noah had a better reason than most to succumb to it, but he hadn’t, at least not to the extent that ruined so many veterans’ lives. After returning home, he had seen the mandated military shrinks while hospitalized for his injuries. Then, after his medical discharge from service, there had been the twice weekly counseling sessions for nearly a year, something the police department had mandated as a condition of his returning to work. Noah had been able to go on with his life. He had learned to compartmentalize the trauma, but that didn’t mean that what had happened didn’t still grab him by the throat sometimes.

  Still, he regretted the curt way that he had left Mercer Leighton’s office. Despite her apprehension, she was cooperating fully with the investigation. She had tried to reach out to him and he’d put up a wall between them.

  Noah straightened as he saw her emerge from the hotel’s front. It was impossible not to notice her shapely figure, especially in the tight spandex runn
ing pants that stopped at mid-calf and equally fitted shirt that clung to her breasts and revealed a glimpse of the hot pink straps of a jog bra. He watched as she spoke to one of the valets, then headed toward the boardwalk, her honey-blond ponytail swaying with her movement. Noah frowned. Based on her attire, he had hoped that she was on her way to the hotel’s fitness studio and not the beach. This was a high-end resort and Rarity Cove was generally a safe place, but it was nearing dusk and he didn’t like the idea of her running alone so close to dark. Once he had gotten a positive ID on the shooter, he had called Tyson to get him started on the paperwork for the warrant. Considering what faced them tonight, he should be headed back himself. But instead, Noah got out of his vehicle and traveled in the direction that Mercer had taken. He was uncertain whether he could catch her before she ran off, but as he reached the boardwalk he saw her, stretching her legs on a sun-bleached wood railing on a ramp that led down to the beach. Between the lighter tourist season and the fact that it was dinnertime, there were only a few hotel guests out strolling on the boardwalk. Still, he was glad for the untucked shirt he wore that pretty much concealed his gun so that he didn’t attract attention.

  She appeared surprised, the heavy lashes that shadowed her cheeks flying upward as he descended the ramp and reached the railing beside her.

  “Detective Ford.”

  “I…want to apologize for earlier. The brusque way I left your office. I didn’t mean to be impolite. You just caught me off guard.”

  A long strand of her hair had escaped her ponytail in the ocean breeze, and she tucked it behind her ear in what seemed like an almost nervous gesture. “I get that you don’t like to talk about it. I shouldn’t have brought it up. I shouldn’t have Googled you, either, but…” Her slender shoulders rose in a shrug. “I guess that I was curious about you.”