by Karen Harper
“Not precisely,” he admitted, frowning, “but I’ve warned both of you about behavior unbecoming of your brains and beauty.”
“Thanks for the backhanded compliment.”
“Hate to put it this way, Bree, but you’re in too deep. You needed a couple more days under doctors’ care, and you shouldn’t be on your own right now. You should never have chosen to get into a business with so much danger involved.”
“There was nothing dangerous about checking the sea grass meadow for the fifty-eighth time!” she exploded. “I appreciate Amelia’s help in the hospital and your continued concern, but—”
“Just listen for a second. You need a level head here, so I called both the coast guard and the air patrol and told them to report to me if they learned anything.”
“Oh, no…oh, no!” she cried, and collapsed onto the sofa with her head in her hands. “And they called you? Did they find her? The boat?”
“No, but the fact they didn’t isn’t good news either. Calm down,” he went on, turning toward her and putting a hand on her slumped shoulder. “Amelia and I just want to help. This pipe dream, this search-and-salvage endeavor of yours, should be left to the likes of Sam Travers. You know he contacted me last year about buying you out, and I counseled you to take the offer.”
She was angry now. Not only had Ben scared her, maybe intentionally, but he was still doling out advice she—they—didn’t need or want. And now he was trying to become the kingpin in the search for Daria, taking over like he did everything and everyone.
She forced herself to inhale deeply, slowly.
“Ben, I know you don’t approve of what Daria and I chose to do, and that’s your business. But this search-and-salvage shop and finding Daria is my business, though I thank you for sideline support.”
He leaned back on the sofa, one bouncing ankle crossed over his other knee as if he hadn’t heard or heeded a thing she’d said. His voice was soothing, as if he spoke to a child, and that grated on her already raw nerves.
“Come on now, Bree. Why don’t you get some things together and come on home with me for a couple of days? It would do you and Amelia both good, and the boys would love to see you, though I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell them all those deep-dive stories or promise them scuba lessons again—not until they’re ready.”
“Which won’t be until you and Amelia are ready and that might be never. I know you have friends in high places, so I repeat, any support you can lend to keep the search going is much appreciated, but I will be the contact and the spokesperson. Now, can I get you some coffee? It’s all ready,” she said, standing.
“Have you been drinking it to stay up? You need your sleep? You look like hell.”
Bree spun back to face him. “That’s because I’m in hell on earth until I can find my sister!”
“You can find her?” He sat up straight again. “That’s exactly what Amelia’s worried about.”
“It’s not just me. I’ve got volunteers who are coming to help tomorrow.”
“You’d better not get in the way of the professional searchers. I’ve seen a lot of missing persons cases, and the best advice I can give you is to keep calm and keep out of it. Sure, stay informed, but let the authorities—”
“The authorities need my help. I know that gulf out there, and I know Daria as well as I know myself. I realize you’ve seen a lot of dire situations, and if someone has deliberately harmed her, you’ll be the first person I’ll ask for advice. I know you’re the prosecutor for the entire county. You do realize I’d think of that, at least?”
“Fine, I hear you. If that turns out to be the case, all I can promise is that we’ll find whoever’s to blame and prosecute him or her to the full extent of the law. And Amelia and I will keep in constant touch.”
Bree nodded, but she wanted to scream at him that she didn’t care about the law, or his levelheaded rules, only about finding Daria any way she could.
It was nearly nine at night by the time Cole had six stitches in his wrist and got home to shower and chow down a hamburger. Despite that, he drove back to the Turtle Bay Marina. He parked along the dock and glanced up at Bree’s lighted apartment. He was totally tempted to see how she was doing, but he hesitated. He’d called her from the urgent-care clinic, and it might be overkill to stop by like this so late. She needed sleep, though he figured she’d be hard-pressed to get any.
He leaned against the wrought-iron lamppost, then squinted up at the second-floor veranda and double doors. Two figures stood within the apartment—Bree and a silver-haired man.
“And why not?” he muttered to himself, and shoved away from the pole. “She has friends and needs them now.” He knew that she’d arranged a search of other possible spots in the gulf by local divers tomorrow, and he and Manny were going to be there at the crack of dawn to help. But it bothered him that another man was with her tonight.
Besides, Cole told himself, he had come to talk to Dom Verdugo, not Bree. Although “the godfather of offshore gambling,” as the local paper had dubbed him, had not dared to bring his one-hundred-eighty-foot floating casino into its berth at the end of the main marina dock yet. He kept his private yacht, the Xanadu, there. Just as Cole had noted before, the sleek ship seemed to sprout its own bodyguards.
“Hey, how ya doing?” the stocky young man who was obviously standing sentinel near the gangway asked as Cole approached. He had a shaved head, which seemed planted directly on his shoulders with no neck. His black T-shirt and dark pants made him almost blend with the night.
“Not doing too bad,” he told the guy. “I’m Cole DeRoca. Mr. Verdugo asked me to panel the main salon of the casino boat, so I thought I’d have a word with him about it. It’s after office hours, but I figured it was worth a try.”
A second man, who looked like a clone of this one, materialized from down the dock. With a nod to his friend but his eyes assessing Cole, the first man said, “I’ll check.”
Cole tried not to judge the situation in a negative way. The anti-casino-boat locals insisted a flock of security people reeked of organized crime, but those who were pro offshore gambling argued that any rich man with an expensive yacht would want some protection these days.
Personally, but privately, Cole was antigambling, because he’d seen how it could ruin a family—his own. He used to hate his mother because she’d gambled so much of their lives and happiness away, but ever since she’d died, several years before his father had, he regretted he’d shown her anger and not understanding and love.
Cole was an only child, and he’d once adored his beautiful, vibrant mother. Still, he’d never been able to forgive her for her lies and deceit over her gambling addiction. Time after time she’d sworn she wouldn’t squander family funds again, get them in debt, or hang out with people who only wanted her money. She’d drunk too much, too, and had been drunk when she’d gone swimming late at night and accidentally drowned—at least, Cole and his father had told themselves it had been an accident. Surely, she would not have taken her own life, no matter how guilty she’d felt—and how upset she was they could not understand the sickness that made her risk all her husband had worked for and continually gamble away her only son’s esteem and maybe his financial future, too.
But it was not the promise of money that brought Cole here today, considering a job from a man whose glittering gambling empire could ruin people’s lives. His offer from the Miami business mogul was to panel the large central gambling salon of the casino yacht with Caribbean rosewood. Though the job was worth big bucks, Cole had planned to turn it down in protest of Verdugo’s hell-bent push to bring gambling into the Turtle Bay area, one of the few regions left with old-Florida ambience.
But because of Cole’s feelings for Bree, he was considering giving this a try, however much it went against his grain to deal with the devil. If there was anyone Cole could think of who might have the means, the might and maybe the motive to keep the Devon sisters’ dire ecological report from be
ing released next week, it was Verdugo. The man had been pouring money into promoting the new jobs and tourist benefits that would come from voting his way. But if the twins and the Clear the Gulf Commission made a big deal about the gulf waters not recovering from pollution, the swing vote might turn against a big gambling cruise boat making numerous trips in and out of Turtle Bay.
As Marla Sherborne, one of the candidates for the U.S. Senate, had put it in a brochure he’d read, “Verdugo’s Fun ’n’ Sun Cruises are unregulated, and such ships dump waste right off Florida’s pristine shores.”
Besides helping Bree by keeping an eye on Verdugo, it perversely pleased Cole to think a gambler would be paying him. He could use the money from this lucrative job. He wanted desperately to set up a sailboat-building business and get out of doing luxury yacht interiors. Florida was the center of the universe for handcrafted wooden boats. Since net fishing was illegal now, the sloops he’d make would be strictly for pleasure. For years, far too much of his own money had gone down the sewer hole of paying off his mother’s massive gambling debts.
“Okay, he’ll see you now,” the first guard called from behind the polished mahogany rail of the main deck. “Mr. Verdugo’s having a drink and says come join him.”
The second, silent man gestured he should board. As Cole walked up the gangway and followed the first guard to the stern stateroom, he heard a woman’s whining voice on board somewhere aft. He’d seen bigger, plusher yachts, but not in Turtle Bay. The Xanadu stuck out like a manicured thumb in a handful of unpolished nails compared to the other vintage craft moored nearby.
As he entered the golden glow of the stateroom, Cole recognized Verdugo from newspaper photos, though they’d managed to obscure his stature, perhaps intentionally. Short and portly, the fifty-something entrepreneur greeted him with an outstretched hand. “I hear you’re the hero of the hour, DeRoca.”
“For rare woodworking or breaking news?”
He followed his host into a room larger than most landlocked living rooms. A huge horseshoe couch of ivory leather arched around a freeform glass-topped table; what appeared to be two authentic Picassos overlooked a grand piano. The paintings, a scattering of throw pillows and a large aquarium built into one wall were the only real color in the room of ecru and white with metallic touches. A round area rug muted footsteps. Soft music—an opera?—played in some sort of surround sound.
“You bet, the rescue of that woman—what did I hear she was? Oh, yeah, the ecology photographer,” Verdugo said, his voice naturally gruff but bearing no foreign accent as Cole had expected. “Any word of her sister or the missing boat yet?”
“Unfortunately, no,” Cole said, noting that Verdugo had twice said he’d “heard” something, as if he had eyes and ears out getting information for him. Did the man watch TV, or did his lackeys keep him informed? Or did he somehow know things firsthand?
“I woulda volunteered this boat, but I didn’t want to get in the way of the official search. That storm must have capsized the other sister. Man, can you imagine surfacing from a routine dive and you’re all alone? Is Scotch all right? Neat or on the rocks?”
“Rocks would be fine.” Cole was going to ask him where he’d heard the twins were out on a routine dive, since he hadn’t heard or seen that in the media, but Verdugo pointed at a huge metal bowl and spoke again.
“Have some caramel popcorn with it. People think I’m nuts, but they go together great. Love this stuff,” he added, and grinned to show perfect teeth—probably perfectly false—as he tossed some popcorn in the air and adeptly caught it with his mouth.
“So look,” he went on, pouring drinks behind a metal and white leather bar, “I assume you’ve decided to take my offer to panel the casino ship, or you surely would not be here. Right?”
“I’m here to discuss the possibility.”
“Okay, then,” Verdugo said, and pointed again to the bowl of popcorn as he carried the drinks toward the couch. Cole leaned over, took a small handful of the popcorn and ate some. He studied Dom Verdugo as he handed him a drink and sat on the curved couch, facing him across the glass table.
The man wore tailored Bermuda shorts and a muted silk print shirt, tails out. He was barefooted and deeply tanned, perhaps not as much from the sun as from his obvious Latin heritage; his hooked nose looked Italian and his narrowed, deep-set eyes were just plain hawk-like. He led some small talk, mostly about Cole’s work. The guy was as smooth as the Scotch, and Cole had to remind himself that Verdugo bore watching. He wondered if he had been watching—or “hearing about”—the twins and knew about their coming report, but he couldn’t figure out a way to broach that subject without giving his intentions away. He was probably just overly suspicious, since he’d become so attached to Briana so quickly and, damn it, deeply.
After his first sip, he swirled the Scotch in his glass, chewed on his popcorn and tried not to stare at the beautiful wood paneling on the grand piano. From here it looked like Mexican cocobolo wood, and that stuff was difficult to harvest. Verdugo’s wealth—and the additional fortune he could no doubt make from getting a toehold in southwest Florida with lucrative gambling cruises—made Cole realize he’d probably never harm anyone directly. He’d just have one of his hey-boys do it.
“Actually, I’d like a chance to see the cruise-ship salon before I accept your offer,” he told Verdugo, since the other man had started to talk as if Cole’s employment was a done deal.
“Money’s not an issue.”
Cole swallowed hard at that thought. “But my doing an excellent job for you is. I can see from the stunning surroundings here you have excellent taste.”
“Nothing but the best,” he said, and lifted his glass as if in toast to Cole. “And that’s what the Fun ’n’ Sun Casino Cruises will bring to this area—jobs, the best new restaurants and upscale stores, even more luxury yachts that need rare wood paneling, eh? Our critics call my other floating casinos ‘pay for play’ boats and ‘cruises to nowhere,’ but I beg to differ. We give the customer what he or she wants—craps, blackjack, slots, booze, live entertainment, lots of laughs, you name it. It’s not a cruise to nowhere, no way, but a cruise to fun and profit for everyone.”
You name it…a cruise to nowhere. The words caught in Cole’s mind. He agreed to drive to Miami by Monday to see the cruise ship’s salon and decide whether or not to take the job. If Dom Verdugo could give his customers anything they wanted, he could surely give himself the same. How badly did this man want to stop a negative report on the local environment from coming out? Cole wondered. He’d never tell Bree, but since Daria and Mermaids II were still missing from a storm they should have been able to ride out, he expected the worst. At any rate, if he took the job, he planned to keep his eyes and ears open around Verdugo.
As he reached his car, he saw Bree’s lights were still on. Surely her visitor had left by now. Cole leaned his arms on the top of his car and gazed out over the sailboats and motor craft nodding from their perches on the inky bay. A single small vessel was heading out past the lighted buoys with its fore and aft lights glowing until the blackness of the gulf devoured it.
Cole shook his head and shuddered. Had Daria Devon somehow taken a cruise to nowhere?
It was almost ten-thirty when Amelia heard Ben drive into the garage. She met him in her nightgown the minute he came in through the laundry room.
“She’s not with you,” she greeted him. “I knew she wouldn’t want to come stay with me—even now.”
“I tried, but I guess my powers of persuasion only work in a courtroom. She’s obsessed with finding Daria, and I can’t blame her for that, at least.” He walked into the kitchen. Amelia hurried barefoot behind him. Flopping his briefcase on the counter, he kissed her cheek. “You’ve been crying again.”
“Of course I’ve been crying. Daria’s my sister, too, not just Briana’s. I should go to her, sleep on her sofa, keep an eye on her. I’ve got to know what she’s planning. You never know what she’ll do.”
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“She seemed totally distraught one minute, but full steam ahead the next. When I was leaving, she told me the guy who picked her up in his sailboat is going to help her run a search with other divers tomorrow. It sounds to me as if he’s keeping close tabs on her. I thought they didn’t really know each other before the storm, but they sound…close.”
“Actually, they had met once briefly,” she said. “He’s her rescuing angel,” she muttered, “and I hope not her avenging angel.”
“What’s that about revenge?”
“I didn’t say revenge. It’s nothing.”
Ben reached for the door of the fridge but turned back and put his hands gently on her shoulders. “Bree’s really going to need you when they find Daria.”
“Find her body, you mean.”
Her stomach cramped. Tears blurred Ben to make two of him—like the two of them, little Bree and Daria, always the center of attention, of Dad’s world, of everything in the damned universe. Even her boys were ecstatic when her sisters came over—no doubt to see them, not her—as if Santa and the Easter Bunny and every Star Wars character they adored had all rolled into one and come to visit.
“Yeah, I’m afraid I do mean find her body,” he said with a sigh as he pulled her into his arms. “The odds aren’t good they’ll find Daria afloat on a piece of board or shipwrecked on one of the Ten Thousand Islands.”
“I’ve been racking my brain for what could have happened to her,” she said, leaning against him with her head turned on his shoulder. “Even crazy thoughts like maybe someone found her on the boat alone and kidnapped her, but then wouldn’t we have received a call about ransom? Or what if those horrible people who steal those poor women for labor and sex—”
“Human traffickers?” he interrupted. “Hell, I’d love to prosecute one of those modern-day slave traders who import girls from South America and force them into labor or prostitution. That’s been growing in Miami, and now they’re avoiding law enforcement across the state by coming in here at night, since this coast is darker and less populated. No, I don’t think those boats come in during the day.”
