“You mean the cemetery?” Garret asked, appalled. “Even I wasn’t that warped.”
“Part of my misspent youth I’m not proud of,” Jackson admitted.
“Was there somewhere special you used to hide your stash? Who did you buy it from?” Mitch wanted to know. “Maybe Nathan was trying to lead you to a name.”
Jackson thought back to that time in his life, considered the possibilities. “Back then our supplier was Daniel Savitch.”
Garret’s mouth dropped open. “The teacher of literature and the classics? That explains a lot. That asshole never did give me anything better than a B plus.”
Jackson decided he’d have to sway his brothers to action. “You know what we have to do. As soon as we get back we have to go talk to Daniel Savitch and check out the Hollister family vault.”
Garret stuck his hands in his pockets. “I’m not keen on walking through a graveyard. But it would be a kick to mess with Mr. Savitch.”
“As long we get some answers,” Mitch stated.
For now, Garret threw one arm over Mitch’s shoulder. “By the way, nice job scaring the crap out of Dietrich.”
Mitch’s lips bowed up. “Wasn’t it though?”
Walsh stood proud beside the boss. “Yep. Your threat was good enough to almost make me stain my shorts. I’m sure it had the same effect on Dietrich.”
Mitch paced away and back again, did so several times. “The thing is what the hell do we do about all this? I can threaten all I want, but I have a dead body on my hands and haven’t called the Coast Guard about it yet.”
Anniston came back into the little room, crowded now, and put both her hands up for calm. “Just hold on a sec. Let’s not panic. We have time. I need to get back in here and document everything with my camera phone, make notes, before we think about doing anything else.”
“Then do it,” Mitch directed. “If Dietrich was expecting a hero’s salute, he won’t get it from us.”
Raine dreamed of terror, blackish and murky. She tried to crawl out of the bog, but it kept pulling her down. She wanted to surface, to leave it all behind, but couldn’t quite make it to the top, out of the gloom. She was drowning, drowning, going under…
She fought to breathe as her eyes fluttered open from the nightmare. She tried to sit straight up. Big mistake. Her skull felt like it would fly off her shoulders if she did. Since she dared not move her head, she cut her eyes around the room. The bed rocked like she was on a boat. Mitch? She didn’t remember seeing Mitch. Her stomach churned like she could easily throw up the supper she’d eaten the night before. The right side of her neck ached. She didn’t remember getting to this place. Had she been drugged?
The last thing she did recall from…was it last night? She’d made the decision to clean out her closet. How long ago had that been?
When she could manage it, she eased her legs off the bed. Immediate vertigo hit. The room went into a spinning frenzy. She gripped the side of the bunk as if she might just fall off the earth.
Once the dizziness dissipated, she took four steps to get to the cabin door, tried the handle. Of course she found it locked. She yanked and jerked and kicked at the wood. She pounded on the door. “This isn’t funny. Let me out of here! You can’t keep me like this!”
She thought she heard footsteps outside and beat on the door with her fists until her hands hurt.
A voice in the hallway shouted, “Shut up!”
“Just let me out,” she begged.
But nothing she said or did helped to get the door open.
Her eyes landed on the porthole. Even though her legs were still wobbly, she climbed up on the top bunk to get a better idea of where she was. Wishing she had more of a height advantage than her five-three, she had to stand on tiptoes to peer out.
The sun had broken over the water, flaunting a dazzling orange and pink canvas on parade. It made Raine long for home. She felt like a bird with clipped wings that had been relegated to the inside of a cage. She had to find a way out of these confined four walls.
About the time Raine was waking up, Jackson’s cell phone buzzed with a series of text messages from Tessa. After reading the first, he pivoted toward his brother. “Mitch, we might have a problem. Tessa says Raine didn’t show up at The Blue Taco this morning. No one’s heard from her. When Tessa went over to the houseboat, she found the front door unlocked and no Raine. Her cell phone, handbag and other personal stuff were still lying out on the counter.”
“Oh God,” Mitch said, rubbing his forehead. “Did Tessa check Marla’s house? Maybe something happened to her mother or grandmother. You should point her in that direction, ask Tessa to check the hospital.”
Before he could go on in more detail, Jenkins walked up, stood in the doorway. “Duarte is on the satellite phone. He says you’ll need to take his call.”
His stomach twisted into knots as he followed Jenkins into the command center. He picked up the receiver. “What can I do for you, Duarte?”
“You can give me back the lying, cheating snake you took off this boat. Give me back Hollister.”
Mitch’s brow creased. “Why? Why would you want him back?”
“Other than the fact he’s a lying traitor who tried to sabotage my dives? That man could’ve killed two of my divers, namely Andre Todd, who just happens to be my son-in-law’s second cousin. I gave him this job myself, promised his mother I’d take care of him. Now he has something wrong with his brain. I want Hollister to pay for that. I have a score to settle.”
Since Nathan had been dead for hours, all Mitch could do was bluff. “Why should I give him back to you? Just because you asked me so nicely? Hollister holds the answers I need to find out what happened to my sister’s family. I have a score to settle.”
“I figured that might be your first response, but I have someone here who wants to talk to you,” Duarte said.
Mitch’s insides flipped and something dark moved through his brain. He guessed what was coming and when he heard Raine’s voice on the other end, he swore under his breath. “Are you okay?”
“Other than the headache banging my skull, I’m fine. Someone gave me a shot of…something. It put me out. I don’t remember what happened until I woke up a couple hours ago.”
Mitch heard Duarte’s voice in the background. “Tell him you’re fine for now.”
“I told him already,” Raine said to Duarte.
“Do it again. Make him believe you’re okay.”
Raine sighed into the phone. “I’m okay. I’m not hurt or anything.”
“I’ll get you out of there. You’ll be back home by the end of the day. That’s a promise. Hang in there, baby. Now put that asshole back on.”
“So now that you know I have a bargaining chip, I propose an exchange, the woman for Hollister.”
“If you hurt her, I’ll hunt you down—”
“I’m not in the habit of abusing women. I have a daughter, grandkids of my own.”
“Then you should know if anything happens to Raine and she doesn’t come back to me, I’ll make it my personal mission to hunt down your entire family myself. Are we clear on that?”
“Yeah, I got it. But it won’t be necessary. I just want to trade her for Hollister.”
“Okay. I think I can work something out. Give me twenty minutes.” Mitch hung up knowing full well all he could give Duarte was Nathan’s dead body. It might be enough, Mitch surmised. If not, he’d trade Dietrich for Raine. The old man might have a certain value after all.
Five minutes later, Mitch called a hurried meeting and everyone gathered in the galley. He told them about Raine. “Don’t give me a hard time about this because I’ve already decided to give him Dietrich…and that’s it. The floor isn’t open for further discussion about it. I don’t want to, but I feel I have no choice. I’ll try to pacify Duarte first by offering Nathan’s body up. It’d be proof I’m not lying about the guy being dead. But if that doesn’t work—and it probably won’t—I’ll have to have a backup
, and that’s the old man as the bonus. End of story.”
“I wouldn’t think about giving you a hard time,” Garret admitted, sending Anniston a long look from across the room. “If Duarte had her, I’d do exactly the same thing.”
“Same here if they had Tessa,” Jackson added. “How do we work the exchange though? And if you intend to give Duarte…a…body…then…how do we handle that aspect of it? Because, let’s face it, we won’t be able to call the Coast Guard after the exchange. They’ll want to know why we let Dietrich go. Too many questions to satisfy an official inquiry.”
“Most people already believe Nathan took off anyway,” Mitch concluded. “Which works in our favor.”
“Wendy knows different though,” Jackson pointed out. “But if she’s as heavily involved in this as I think she is she won’t be a factor in raising an alarm.”
“That’s right, one less person around to divvy up the gold,” Garret added. “Besides, I’m looking forward to bringing all those sorry bastards in town to their knees.”
Mitch turned to stare at Sebastian. “Who took Raine? Was it Baskin or Dandridge or both?”
Sebastian was already primed for the answer. “I’ve had access to the surveillance we set up and I’ve been monitoring them from on board. Neither one was out and about last night. But there are a number of security cameras near Raine’s houseboat. Her neighbor has a top of the line, upgraded system she’s shared with us already when we were looking to find activity about Ryan’s whereabouts over Labor Day. If Raine’s abduction happened anywhere near her place, we’ll have the CCTV. I’m confident of that.”
“I want to know who it is as soon as you hit port. I’m doing the exchange,” Mitch said matter-of-factly. “Don’t even try to talk me out of it. Anything happens to me—”
“You aren’t going alone,” Jackson told him. Crossing his arms over his chest in a stubborn bent, he added, “That’s nonnegotiable. You’ll take me, Garret, and Walsh with you as backup or we’ll figure out another way.”
Mitch blew out a breath and glanced over at the other members of his crewPrentiss, Jenkins, and Blaineand the friends he’d made over the past few weeks, Anniston and Sebastian. “I’m counting on y’all to handle things until we get back. All of youtogether as a team.” He pointed a finger at Prentiss. “And don’t be so hard on yourself because of what happened earlier. It wasn’t easy walking into that cabin and seeing all that blood.”
“I’ll clean it up,” Prentiss promised. “By the time you get back the cabin will be…it’ll look a lot better…not so bloody.”
“That’s fine,” Mitch told the young man as he glanced at his watch. “Now it’s up to me to sell Duarte on the exchange for Raine. Jenkins, get me Duarte on the phone again.”
Back in the command center, Mitch was at his best. “Look, I can’t give you Hollister alive. The truth is, the man’s already dead, an unfortunate accident last night at the end of a knife. Does knowing that satisfy you?”
“I want the body.”
“Figured you would.”
But Duarte wasn’t stupid. “Do you plan to come after the gold? If we’re your competition that changes things.”
“I just want the people responsible for killing my sister and her family.”
“All right. Will you tell me what happened to Werner Dietrich? He hasn’t been seen in days. The scuttlebutt is he’s on board The Black Rum.”
“As it happens, I can confirm that rumor. But how did you know?”
“Actually, it was my crew chief, Sandoval, who figured it out. Apparently, Dietrich had tried to persuade him to make a trip out to Sugarloaf Key to find Reiner. In case you haven’t heard, they found two bodies there. The thing is, when Dietrich pressed, I refused to allow Sandoval to accompany him, saying I needed him here more. After that, it appears Dietrich improvised.”
Mitch couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “So you knew Dietrich intended to kill Reiner all along?”
Duarte sighed into the phone. “You can’t stop Dietrich from doing anything. You might as well trade the old bastard to me along with Nathan’s body for the woman. I’m happy to take Werner off your hands.”
Jackson handed his brother a map with an area circled in red and mouthed the word, “here.”
Mitch nodded. “Okay, it’s a deal, but I pick the meeting place. Write down these coordinates.” He rattled off the latitude and longitude.
On the other end, Duarte repeated the GPS numbers to his crew. A few seconds went by before he responded. “That’s an uninhabited sandbar. That’ll work for me.”
“Is Raine okay?”
“She’s fine. Just don’t go messing with me, Indigo. I don’t like to be double-crossed.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. All I want is Raine, smooth and easy, and no one else has to suffer. But if you hurt her there’s nowhere you’ll be able to hide.”
Raine had had better mornings. On board the Patagonia Pike, her stomach still hadn’t settled. She’d thrown up once, which left her with a horrible taste in her mouth that told her she needed a toothbrush and soon. She couldn’t shake her headache. It held on like a hungry shark chomping away at its prey. She’d overheard a member of the crew tell the captain she’d been given Ketamine. While she wasn’t sure exactly what it was, she did watch CSI shows and knew it was often used as a recreational drug. She could attest to its nasty side effects. That’s why she felt lucky to be standing at all.
At least they’d finally let her out of that dreary stateroom and put her on deck.
Even if she was still wearing the same clothes from the night before—that pair of brightly colored yellow shorts and her navy button-down blouse, she felt glad to be alive. Underdressed though, she shivered in the path of the northerly wind that whipped around her bare legs. Her feet were cold—she had no idea what had happened to her sandals, and at this point, didn’t care. She wanted off this boat, away from the stares and ogles of the crewmen, who just kept eyeing her like she was the next piece of tasty candy out of their Halloween bag.
Feeling like a disheveled hag, she kept her eyes glued to the water, waiting on deck for any sign of the island or Mitch’s boat.
It took ninety long minutes before she saw a speck on the horizon, and even then she could barely make it out as land. Her heart beat faster knowing, hoping, praying, she’d be back home by nightfall.
The Black Rum reached the unpopulated morsel of sand known as Mutiny Bay before the Pike did. The strip of land had held that name since the 1700s when it became a notorious spot where pirates often switched sides, marooning captains and crew there, if not downright disposing of them before continuing on to Jamaica and their quest for more loot.
Mitch stood at the rail with a pair of high-powered binoculars scanning the horizon.
“Any sign yet?” Jackson asked.
“There’s a dot coming in on the portside. Get Dietrich ready.”
Garret came up behind his brothers. “Any idea why that old man doesn’t want to leave this boat? Anniston and I can’t get him to do anything but scowl at us. He keeps repeating he’s not leaving unless he can take his knife with him. And so far, neither one of us has gotten Dietrich to budge.”
Mitch squinted as the other ship began to get closer to the island. “My personal opinion is he’s losing it. Did you see his face this morning? After killing Nathan, he went off the deep end. He probably didn’t sleep more than an hour or so. That’s what it looked like to me anyway.”
He shifted his focus back to the Pike. “They’re coming in on the western shore of the beach, dropping anchor across from us. Our two launches will come in from the opposite side. Walsh and Garret in one, holding Dietrich. Jackson and I will be in the other with Hollister’s body. Then we meet Duarte in the middle of the island. Walsh will have his weapon drawn and ready while Garret stays back holding on to Dietrich. Anything goes wrong, don’t shoot until I get Raine out of there. Are we clear?”
“Yep. We’ll have it cov
ered,” Garret promised.
Mitch watched through the field glasses as Duarte assembled his men on deck. They scuttled down the ladder with Raine in between. His heart pounded at the sight of her. “Let’s load up.”
Sebastian appeared with a reluctant Dietrich. “Nathan’s corpse is already loaded in the one you and Jackson will take.”
Mitch nodded. He’d never been part of anything so morbid before in his life, but to get Raine back, he’d make a deal with the devil if he had to.
Dietrich started to protest. “I want my knife back. It’s a valuable keepsake from my father. I’m not moving from this spot unless I get my knife. I’m not going back with Duarte unarmed.”
“Why is that?” Mitch wanted to know. He held up his hand. “Never mind. I don’t have time to stand here and argue with you. Either get in the damn boat or I’ll shoot you where you stand within sight of Duarte.”
Dietrich recognized the steely determination in Mitch’s eyes and scrambled down the ladder.
The showdown came fifteen minutes later when Mitch met Duarte on the sand.
Duarte’s focus ran to Dietrich, who was standing some distance away with Garret. “So this is where he’s been keeping himself. I wondered.”
“Your men can check out the body, it’s wrapped in a sheet,” Mitch offered, pointing to the launch they’d left at water’s edge. “But I want Raine. Now.”
Duarte bobbed his head toward the raft. “As soon as I make sure it’s Hollister.”
Sandoval went over to inspect the remains. “It’s him, captain!”
“You’re certain?”
“It’s him,” Sandoval said again.
The captain motioned for Raine to come closer. “Very pretty woman. Yours?”
Mitch smiled. “Yep, has been for a long time back.”
“You should keep a better eye on what’s yours then, I think.”
“From now on, I intend to.”
Duarte eyed Dietrich and leaned closer. “This might turn out to my advantage.”
The Indigo Brothers Trilogy Boxed Set Page 69
