by Ben Rehder
Would Roy turn his phone off if he were going to confront Holloway? No reason he should. He might mute it, but he wouldn’t turn it off.
Should she call the cops? If she did that every time she was worried about me, it would be a weekly occurrence, and most of the calls would be false alarms.
She turned her car around and headed west.
Another thirty minutes passed with no conversation and no incoming calls or texts to Holloway’s phone. My body had now gone so numb from being hogtied that it was actually more comfortable than before. Weird. I hoped I wasn’t going to sustain any sort of long-term damage to my ligaments or cartilage.
My brain, on the other hand, was free to do its thing—and it did. I had another idea. A big one.
“No word from Moss, I guess?” I said. “Can’t reach him?”
“Jesus Christ,” Byrd said. “You seriously never stop talking, do you?”
“You’re doing the right thing,” I said to Holloway. “No reason he should get off so easy. In fact, I just came up with a great idea. Get ready to have your mind blown.” I waited a beat, then said, “The four of us could blackmail the ever-loving crap out of him.”
Neither man responded, but I didn’t expect a congratulatory clap on the back. I had to sell the idea. Make them see the beauty of it.
“Think about it,” I said. “Moss and the four of us are the only people who know the truth. What would he pay to keep us quiet? We’ve got him by the balls, guys. That’s the bottom line.”
I noticed that Anson Byrd stole a sideways glance at Holloway to check his reaction.
I said, “Plus, it stops you from committing murder, which, if you ask me, is a pretty good upside. See, then I’d have a great reason to keep my mouth shut, too. It’s perfect, really.”
I waited. Nobody was telling me to shut up now. I wondered what Meatball was doing. Probably staying at the helm, away from these two lunatics. Couldn’t blame him.
I said, “Either of you know how much Eric Moss is worth? Because I do. It’s probably a lot more than you think. A lot more.”
Throwing out some bait. Seeing if either of them would bite.
Finally, Holloway said, “How much?”
“Based on my research—and I have access to a lot of good information—it’s about thirty-seven million dollars.”
It was a total lie—I had no idea what Eric Moss was worth—but it had the effect I wanted.
Holloway said, “Holy shit.”
Anson Byrd looked at me with distrust.
“And he might have more tucked away somewhere,” I said. “Most rich bastards do. To avoid paying taxes. If he had an offshore account somewhere, I would have no way of finding that out. That’s the whole point. He could be worth millions more. Yet here you are, out on this boat, doing what? Ignoring the biggest opportunity of your life, that’s what.”
“No way he’s worth that much,” Byrd said.
“You can check it out yourself,” I said, knowing he wouldn’t. “Or cut me loose and I’ll show you everything myself.”
Both men were contemplating my suggestion—no question about it. Now Holloway turned to Anson Byrd with an expression that plainly said, You in on this?
Byrd opened his mouth, about to answer, but right then Meatball yelled a warning from behind the helm of the barge.
“Someone’s coming!”
Reacting quickly, Anson Byrd grabbed the neck of my shirt and began to drag me along the carpeted deck, which stoked the fire in my joints again. My knees were going to have a serious case of carpet burn. I was tempted to yell, but if the person was too far away to hear me, my scream might only get me gagged. So I kept quiet.
We went past the captain’s helm, with Meatball standing behind the wheel, trying to appear casual, and then Byrd pulled me into the enclosed storage area behind the helm. It was basically a closet, with built-in shelves, but it was roomier than I would have guessed. It shared a wall with the bathroom. Excuse me, the head.
I was still facedown.
Anson pulled a lock-blade knife from his cargo shorts and flicked it open with the ball of his thumb. Then he poked the point of the blade into the side of my neck, in the soft spot below my jaw. I knew the carotid artery was somewhere in that neighborhood. Wouldn’t take much pressure for that blade to sink in deep.
“Just so you know, I’m cool with the blackmail idea,” Byrd said. “But right now, you need to stay quiet. I’ll cut you if I have to. Hear me?”
I grunted an affirmation.
Was he just saying that to keep me quiet? If so, pretty smart.
Now I could hear the engine of an approaching craft. Sounded like a jet ski.
“How’s it going?” a woman’s voice called cheerfully.
“Afternoon,” Holloway answered.
“No passengers today?”
Oh, good Lord. That wasn’t just some woman. Not by a long shot.
Earlier, when Mia had arrived at the marina, found my car, and still had not heard back from me, she’d acted quickly.
She rented a jet ski and headed out to find the Island Hopper. Big lake, but it was a big boat, too, and she’d spotted it in just a few minutes.
Now she had a plan.
It revolved around a single question. If she was wrong about the situation—meaning I was not being held on the Island Hopper against my will—how would the crew members react when she showed up?
How would most men react if Mia approached them? Almost sad to say how predictable the result was in most cases—which is why we so often used her as bait when trying to catch a fraudster. Most men would jump through hoops to please her, to help her out, to catch her eye, to believe for just a moment that they might have a shot with her. They would smile, be friendly, crack jokes, and put on the best show possible.
Unless they had a captive on board.
29
“That’s the Island Hopper, right?” Mia asked.
She was wearing shorts and a tank top, rather than a swimsuit—because she hadn’t planned to be on the lake—but it didn’t raise any red flags with Holloway.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, sounding plenty composed.
Anson Byrd was straddling me, all hot and sweaty. Still, it would be easy to call out to Mia—to let her know I was in here—but I didn’t want to put her at risk.
“And you’re the captain?” Mia asked.
“That’s right.”
“Cool boat. How many people can you carry?”
I had no idea how she’d figured out where I was, but she was obviously playing an angle to see if I was on board and okay.
“About a hundred, but that’s kind of tight,” Holloway said. “Fifty to seventy-five is better.”
“That would be perfect,” Mia said. “My twin sister and I are looking for a place to celebrate our birthday next month.”
I almost grinned. The imaginary twin sister was a great touch. The only thing better than a woman who looked like Mia was two of her.
“Well, you can book it through our website,” Holloway said, still friendly, but trying to wrap up the conversation.
“Could I hop on board and take a look around?” Mia asked.
Brilliant tactic. Under normal circumstances, a man like Gilbert Holloway would welcome Mia on board with overwhelming enthusiasm. By the time she left, he’d be offering a major discount on her booking. Anything to get her and her friends on board for a party.
But these weren’t normal circumstances for Holloway.
“Uh, right now?” he said.
“Sure. I can tie up. Just a quick peek.”
She began to grab for a ladder on the side of the barge, as if preparing to come aboard.
“Sorry, no!” Holloway said sharply. “Now isn’t a good time. I need to get back to the dock.”
And that reaction—or overreaction—gave Mia the answer she needed.
So she said, “In that case, I’ll take off, but Roy will be coming with me.”
I couldn’t see
Holloway, but I’m sure he tried to appear confused. “I’m sorry, who?”
“We’re not going to play it that way,” Mia said. “Look behind me. See a black truck parked at Windy Point? A friend of mine is in that truck, watching us.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Have you been drinking?”
“If Roy doesn’t leave with me, my friend will call the cops,” Mia said. “You already know there’s a sheriff’s boat that patrols this part of the lake. They’ll be here in less than five minutes. Plus, there’s this.”
“Jesus!” Holloway said. “What the hell’re you doing?” He managed to sound both fearful and indignant.
I could picture what she was doing. She was aiming a gun at him. That’s the only thing that made sense. That changed the situation entirely—for better or worse would remain to be seen.
“Where’s Roy?” Mia asked.
“I still don’t know what—”
“Right here!” I yelled.
Anson Byrd poked the knife a little harder.
“You okay?” Mia called out.
“Not bad,” I said. “Except for the knife at my throat.”
Byrd increased the pressure again, and now I could feel a trickle of blood running down my skin.
“You get one warning,” I said to Byrd. “If you don’t remove that knife, I’ll find you later and shove a cattle prod up your ass. I mean that literally.”
He eased up, but just a little.
“Let him loose,” Mia said to Holloway. “You’ve got ten seconds.”
“Jeez, take it easy,” Holloway said. “He came out here and started threatening me again. Trying to make me drop the charges against him. What was I supposed to do?”
It was just a lame excuse, but one that would be hard for me to dispute, since Meatball and Anson Byrd would back him up.
“So you brought him to the middle of the lake?” Mia said. “Why would you do that?”
“Just to scare him,” Holloway said.
“Well, your fun is over,” Mia said. “Let him go.”
“You’re a bossy little bitch, aren’t you?” Holloway said. “Why don’t you come up here and get him?” Daring her. Taunting her.
“I might,” Mia said. “But if I do, I’m going to shoot you in the face first.”
For about five seconds, Holloway didn’t reply. I’m sure he was reluctant to let a woman force his hand—but he had no other options.
“Let him go,” he finally called out.
“Fuck,” Anson Byrd muttered. But he pulled the knife away from my neck and began to saw the rope behind my back.
“I didn’t call the cops,” Mia said, “because I wasn’t sure you were even on the boat.”
I could tell she was wired to the max from adrenaline.
“I understand. You did the right thing,” I said, rubbing a chafed spot on my wrist.
We were sitting in Mia’s Mustang, parked outside a convenience store on Hudson Bend Road. She had followed me here, and I’d noticed that my hands had trembled on the wheel of the Toyota as I’d been driving. I’d pulled in here to settle my nerves, and because we’d needed to talk about what had just happened. I hadn’t wanted to have that conversation at the marina.
She said, “There was also the possibility that you forced Holloway to take the barge out onto the lake, where you were going to extract information from him in ways that could land you in jail.”
“Yeah, that sounds like me,” I said.
Mia had already described how she had grown concerned earlier about my lack of communication, and how she’d located me using Find My iPhone.
And I’d recounted everything, too, starting with the abduction at the dock.
My body was still aching. After Anson Byrd had cut me loose, it had taken me a couple of minutes before I could stand up and walk on my own. I’d been in no shape to take a swing at anybody, but I’d come close anyway. Revenge would have to wait.
Mia said, “That part about just trying to scare you—think he meant it?”
“Hell, no. They were going to toss me over. You saved my life.”
We talked further and agreed that calling 911 to report the abduction would be a waste of time—and it might actually work against me. Holloway would repeat the claim that I had come out to the marina and threatened him, and that would be used against me in the current assault case.
“I’m going to send you a bill for my phone,” I’d said to Holloway on my way off the boat, which sounded pretty lame in hindsight.
Holloway had simply glared at me without responding. He realized by now that I had the skills and the persistence to screw his world up in a major way.
And now I also had the knowledge.
“I know what happened on the boat that night,” I said.
Mia looked at me. “Well, what? Tell me!”
I pulled out my back-up phone, which had been in the Toyota. “I need to show you something. This is big.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“I bet you have.”
I accessed my cloud storage and opened a folder of photos from the evening of the ill-fated cruise. I scrolled through them quickly, then stopped at a photo of Jayci taken in full sunlight on the upper deck.
“Who’s that chicky?” Mia asked.
“Forget her. Look at the carpet.”
“Okay. I see it. What, uh, am I looking for?”
“See that there is a herringbone pattern to it?”
“Yeah.”
I flipped through some other photos from the upper deck. “And see that there is no place on the upper deck where the carpet doesn’t have that pattern?”
“Yeah, okay.”
Now I opened the key photo—the selfie of Jayci and her friend Cady. This was the one that had also captured Jeremy Sawyer in the background, flipping over the railing, with Anson Byrd nearby, and Starlyn Kurtis to the right of him.
“See the carpet here?”
“No pattern,” Mia said. “So this photo must’ve been taken on the lower deck.”
“Exactly. The carpets don’t match. Makes sense, because the upper deck gets more sun, so the carpet up there probably wears out faster.”
Mia hadn’t studied the layout of the party barge as extensively as I had—it wasn’t her case, so why would she?—and as a result, she wasn’t connecting the dots.
I said, “We always thought Jeremy went overboard from the upper deck, but this proves we were wrong. So was Harvey. He was too drunk to remember which deck they were on when it happened.”
“Okay, but I don’t see how any of this matters,” Mia said.
I couldn’t help taking a dramatic pause.
“See Starlyn over here? She’s standing behind a little wall or something that is about chest high. When I first saw the photo, I thought she was standing behind the little bar on the upper deck. But she wasn’t. She was standing behind the captain’s helm.”
Mia’s eyes widened as she figured it out.
I said, “The problem—for her and Eric Moss and Gilbert Holloway—was that Starlyn was illegally driving the boat.”
30
Detective Ruelas had seen the photograph before—Jayci had sent it to him—but now he looked at it on my iPad with a fresh eye. I waited patiently. The two of us were in an interview room at the sheriff’s substation, which, coincidentally, was on Hudson Bend Road, a few miles south of the marina. It was now 4:30 on Saturday afternoon. Mia had rescheduled her appointment with Roscoe and Lorene and was on her way over there right now.
I didn’t like the look on Ruelas’s face, but that was nothing new. He was dressed casually—a red polo shirt, faded blue jeans, and some leather loafers. His day off. I had called him several hours after Mia had rescued me—after pondering my options. I’d narrowed it down to this one. Tell Ruelas. Dump it in his lap and wash my hands of it, basically.
Ruelas used his thumb and forefinger to zoom in on the photo. I had already explained the context once, but I couldn
’t help repeating myself.
“That little wall in front of Starlyn is actually—”
“Yeah, I get it,” Ruelas said. “It’s the helm.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“And you think this proves she was driving the boat.”
“Well, if you look at some of the other photos, you can pretty much tell exactly where she was standing, which was right in front of the steering wheel. So she was driving. Probably not her first time, either. I’m guessing her attitude was, hey, it’s no big deal, right? I mean, she’s the owner’s stepdaughter, so why couldn’t she drive the boat now and then? Just on open water, though. Not docking it or anything tricky. She left that stuff to the captain. But even just steering it was illegal. She’s not licensed.”
Ruelas was shaking his head, and I realized he wasn’t buying it.
“Even if she knew what she was doing,” I said, “the liability—the legal exposure—was enormous. It’s like a commercial pilot letting a passenger fly a plane. Maybe the risks aren’t as great on a boat, but still, she wasn’t qualified to captain the vessel. That’s the point. That kind of thing could lead to a major lawsuit, and a man like Eric Moss has plenty to lose. Gilbert Holloway, too. That’s what the cover-up has been about all along. To avoid a lawsuit.”
“Not to shoot a hole in your brilliant work,” Ruelas said, plainly enjoying the very idea, “but just because she was standing in front of the wheel, that doesn’t mean she was driving the boat. Holloway could’ve been standing right beside her.”
“Or he might not have been,” I said. “But even if they were only kinda sorta pretending to let her steer, the liability is still there, if her hands were on the wheel. Moss’s lawyers would cringe if they saw this. Scroll to the next photo and you’ll see Starlyn wearing the captain’s hat.”
