Lost Gems (Shark Key Adventures Book 4)

by Chris Niles

  “I never knew what was actually in the stuffed animals. He swore to me it wasn’t drugs, but the first time I walked past a dog in the airport, I was terrified. I was so sure the officers would suspect me or the dog would start barking. I just gritted my teeth and walked on by, and the man just smiled and nodded at me. I guessed my uniform bought me a lot of credibility. And that’s what Rojas was counting on, too.

  “So, for a few trips, I took one every time. I didn’t want to owe the Rojas any more than I owed that shark. But once I had delivered three shipments, I was done. The next time he called, I said to Coco, ’Thanks, but I think you need to find someone else.’ He just shook his head and stuttered in that vacant voice of his and was like, ‘I think you nuh-nuh-need to d-d-do what I ask.’ And he held up a photo of Eddie playing in his nanny’s yard.” Her impression of Gloria Rojas’ mentally deficient cousin was spot-on.

  Tim leaned back against the counter, reflecting on Shelby’s conundrum. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, the Americans like to say. This was one uncontrolled wildfire. He scratched his chin, then leveled his gaze at her.

  “It’s no different than the drug cartels. The product is just different. Once you’re in with them, there’s no getting out.”

  Her shoulders trembled. “What have I done?”

  The Irishman felt a thick ache in his throat and his body grew heavy as he wrapped an arm around her shoulder and guided her to the couch. She burst into tears.

  He handed her a freshly pressed handkerchief and waited.

  When her sobs subsided, he crouched beside the sofa and caught her red, inflamed eyes. “The only way out is to end the game. And in order to win, we need each other.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Eddie’s screams pierced Kate’s ears, luring her headache back and echoing on the white tile of the little shower house. Whiskey sat at attention against the back wall, staring ahead as Eddie’s arms flailed at his shoulders and back.

  “You ate him! Bad dog. You killed Slothie! Bad Whiskey.”

  Kate carefully nudged the tiny emeralds into a pile, separating them from the fluffy polyester stuffing, as Whiskey’s fur puffed into the air and stuck to Eddie’s tear-stained face. Tony crept up beside Eddie, Slothie’s dirt-stained corpse in his hand.

  “Hey, buddy?” Tony’s voice was gentle. Kind. Compassionate. All the things Kate could never be. She hung her head, unable to watch as Tony soothed the boy from the pain of Kate’s attack.

  “Eddie, c’mere. Look.” He shook the limp fabric. “How ‘bout this? Babette is the best veterinarian in all of Shark Key. I bet she can fix him up just like new.”

  Eddie’s thrashing slowed. As Tony wrapped his strong arms around the little boy, restraining him with a tender hug, the room fell into silent darkness. Eddie turned around and beat his weakening fists against Tony’s chest until his wails faded to whimpers and he collapsed into the warrior’s embrace.

  “Power’s out again. Come on.” Tony scooped Eddie up and lay the filthy torn animal on his belly, then pushed to his feet. “Let’s go see if Babette can fix this.” As he carried Eddie outside, he turned and caught Kate’s eye. His single nod told her he understood she’d done what she had to do. But it didn’t make the emptiness in her chest any less empty. Whiskey rose with a whimper and followed them, his head hanging low and his tail drooping lower.

  Sunlight filtered through the room’s high windows. Across the tile, Fish sifted through stuffing, extracting scraps of fabric from the bundle that had held the emeralds deep in the belly of the sloth. As the two piles grew, he sat back. “You did what had to be done. You know Whiskey. You knew he’d never hurt Eddie. He’ll be okay.”

  Kate tipped her head toward the scraps of fabric on the floor in front of him. He pointed to three shreds lying together like puzzle pieces, a distinct stamp on the fabric. An outline of a sloth.

  “I don’t know whose this is. But my attention has been mostly on the cartels moving drugs across the border. We know there’s plenty of other stuff that sneaks across, but drugs are the only thing in our scope.”

  Kate picked up a hunk of stuffing and pulled it apart in tiny chunks as he continued.

  “Technically, this falls under Customs and Border Patrol’s jurisdiction, but they’ve kind of got their hands full. I can make a couple calls, and they’d send a guy out, put these in evidence, and—”

  “And Shelby and Eddie are forgotten.”

  Fish shrugged. “Probably. Now, if Shelby was undocumented…”

  Kate dropped the chunk of stuffing. “What about the FBI? Don’t they investigate kidnapping and black-market stuff?”

  “Once it’s in the country, yeah. But unless they’re already investigating whoever this is, it’s probably low on their list, too. They’ll take the same assumption as the cops—that she’s done a runner on her own. Officially, I have to recommend you report this.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and snapped a picture of the jungle animal’s image.

  Kate straightened an edge of the pile of gems, “But without these emeralds, we’ve got nothing they want. If we can figure out who these belong to, we’ll find Shelby, and then we can go to the authorities with something they can act on.”

  Fish tapped the side of his head. “Now you’re thinking.”

  Kate shrugged off her plaid cotton shirt and spread it on the floor. She carefully scooped the pile of emeralds from the tile and mounded them in the middle of the shirt’s back panel. Then she pulled the edges up and tied it into a loose bundle.

  Kate and Fish stepped out into the hot sun then started across the parking lot. Fish stopped at his Jeep. “Look, I need to not know what you do with those. It’s bad enough I know about them at all. But I’ll run back to base and do a little quiet asking around. I’ll call Tony if I find anything, okay?”

  “Thanks.” Kate patted the Jeep’s hood as Fish swung into the driver’s seat, then the engine roared to life. She proceeded to the restaurant deck, where she dropped the bundle on the bar beside Steve. “I need to run up to the bank.”

  Chuck pushed through the kitchen door, carrying a gray bus tub full of plastic cups.

  Steve grimaced. “That might be a problem. Sailboat took out the power lines just north of here. Be surprised if we’ve got juice back by sunset.”

  Kate looked across to the horizon and smiled. “Plan B, then. Busy this afternoon, Capt’n? Got time for a quiet visit to our friend Katherine K?”

  Steve and Chuck eyed the bundled cotton shirt in unison, and Kate nodded.

  Chuck’s eyebrow ticked up. “Slothie?”

  Kate nodded and began to untie her bundle. “Yeah. I’ll catch you both up on the way out to the reef. Can I get a few plastic bags, please, Chuck?”

  Chuck dropped the tub behind the bar then poked through the swinging door. He returned with a handful of freezer bags. “Here ya go, but I can’t go out this afternoon. Maybe William’ll go with you?”

  As Steve went to find William, Kate opened a plastic bag and piled the emeralds into it, squeezed out all the air, sealed it, then repeated the process until it was packaged five bags thick. She tucked it in the side pocket of her cargo shorts then hopped off the barstool. Kate shrugged back into the long sleeves that would protect her from the blazing sun on the trip out to a familiar old wreck that knew how to keep secrets.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Forty minutes later, Kate and two of her closest friends from Shark Key motored away from the dock on the Island Hopper Too. As they cleared the shallows and the boat shot out onto the choppy Florida Strait, Kate’s phone vibrated in her pocket. She slipped down into Steve’s salon and tapped the green answer button.

  “That was quick, Fish.”

  “I’m nothing if not efficient.” She heard her new friend’s grin through the little speaker. “What’s all that noise?”

  “Just cruising out to the reef for a little underwater time.”

  Fish grunted. “Next time, I’ll take you and Tony out ther
e in the chopper. Gives you a whole new perspective.”

  William perked up. “Chopper? Whatcha got?”

  “Nothing special. Just a little R-44. Fun for island hopping and running the occasional tourist out to the backcountry for an extra couple bucks.”

  “R-44’s a nice little bird. I’ve got about seventy-five hours in one.”

  “Nice. We’ll have to go up sometime.”

  Steve reached over and tapped the mute button, then quipped, “How do you know a guy’s a helicopter pilot?”

  Kate glared at him, her finger hovering over her screen.

  “He’ll tell you…”

  She snickered despite herself, then punched the mute button off as Fish continued. “Anyway, I’ve got something. Ever heard of Rojas?”

  Kate shook her head, then remembered. Phone. “Assuming you don’t mean the infielder for the Marlins, then no.”

  Fish laughed. “Would not have pegged you for a baseball fan.”

  “I’m not, but you can’t spend time with Tony and not pick up a few names.”

  “True, true. But you’re right. This is an entirely different Rojas. The Rojas cartel is one of a few organizations that skim or steal Colombian emeralds and then smuggle them into the US.”

  “Colombia?”

  “Mm hmm. You know much about the gem trade?”

  Kate froze. The only thing she knew about gems was the small pile of them sitting beside several bars of gold in a safe deposit box with her name on it. Chuck had insisted she keep a share of his grandfather’s treasure they’d discovered the summer before on the wreck they were motoring toward. To hide more gems.

  Everything comes full circle. It always does.

  “No,” she answered Fish’s question. “I know less than nothing.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing I did a little googling before I picked up the phone, then. You’ll want to read up, but in short, the diamond trade is mostly out of South Africa. They’ve been at it a while, and security is tight. Emeralds and other semiprecious gems are a little different. Emeralds are mined almost exclusively in the mountains of Colombia near Bogota. There are thousands of mines, mostly privately owned, and the miners are locals who are paid by what they collect. Each mine handles its own security, and a little bit of skimming is common, but in most cases, security costs more than the losses, so the mine owners look the other way until it gets too much. But there are a few gangs — cartels — who aren’t content with simple skimming. They raid safe houses, ambush deliveries, steal and smuggle. They’ve followed the models of the drug cartels, and they’re every bit as deadly.

  “Anyway, the Rojas cartel is in transition right now. The patriarch, Ernesto Rojas Solarte, is dying, and his lieutenants, including his only daughter, are jockeying for his seat.”

  “His daughter?”

  Fish chuckled. “Gloria Rojas Restrepo. She’s more ruthless and cold-hearted than the rest of them put together.”

  Kate sighed. “The daughter always has to work twice as hard for half the recognition.”

  “Exactly. So, she’s worked four times as hard, and she’s still clawing at his chair. Intel says Daddy is planning to crown an outsider, and that it’s likely to mean all-out war among the cartel. Odds are, Gloria will come out on top.

  “Normally, this wouldn’t hit our radar. But the spooks are interested because while most of the drug lords are lining their pockets, Rojas is funneling money to ELN and the remnants of FARC who aren’t abiding by the cease-fire.”

  “ELN? Fart?”

  Fish burst out laughing. “F. A. R. C. Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia. The leftist militants who’ve been causing problems in the mountain regions for as long as any of us have been paying attention. Officially, they agreed to a cease-fire a few years ago. But not everyone got the memo.”

  “So, Rojas is funding militants?”

  “Yup.”

  “With stolen emeralds.”

  “Yup again.”

  “The stolen emeralds in my pocket?”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “So, the sooner I’m rid of these, the better?”

  “I’m sticking my fingers in my ears. Lalalalala.”

  “Fine, okay. Just trying to make sure I’m clear on where we stand.”

  “I think you’re clear. My point, Kate, is that these are bad people. And at least in the US, they’ve covered their tracks very well. We have almost nothing on them inside our borders. But that doesn’t mean they’re not active. They are. They’re just very, very good.”

  “Well, I’m better.”

  Fish sighed. “No. You’re not. Not even close. Not with Tony behind you. Not with a whole friggin’ special ops unit behind you. These guys don’t just ignore the rules, Kate. They don’t have rules.” He paused. “Kate, remember when we all said don’t mess with the Dixie Kings?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Eduardo Rojas and his crew make the Dixies look like Quakers.”

  “Where do I find him?”

  “I highly recommend you don’t.”

  “That’s what you said last time.”

  “Yeah, but Kate, I’m serious. You’ll be able to find almost as much on Google as what we know, because no one who’s ever gotten close to them has lived to tell about it.”

  “Then I need to go to Bogota.”

  “No, Kate. You need to stand down.”

  “Fish, you saw Eddie this morning. His mother is mixed up in all this, and she’s missing. She’s not dead yet because they want what I’ve got. But if they have her, I can darn sure tell you she’s not feeling good right about now.”

  Kate stumbled as the boat slowed. She felt the familiar rocking as Steve tied up to the mooring ball. The engine noise silenced, then the stern drifted back on the current. She tapped her screen to end the call before dropping her phone on the camera table.

  Steve and Kate had been running dive charters to the Katherine K since they’d cleared the site of all the loot they could find. The story of lost treasure, the explosive chase to recover it, and the possibility of finding a stray stone drew the tourists in, but the dive itself, while meaningful to Kate and Steve, was just average. There were many better wrecks throughout the Keys for the tourists to dive. So other charter services hadn’t really picked up on the site. And that was fine by Kate.

  She slid the salon hatch open and handed the weighted bundle to William, her dive skin dangling over her hips. “I’m gonna have to fly tomorrow, so let’s make this quick and hide this well. It’s about to hit the fan.”

  Steve watched her with a raised eyebrow as she tugged her skin up, cranked her air valve, then slid into her faded buoyancy compensation vest. The BC’s seams were frayed and the outer fabric was soft with age, but all its seals held strong. She knew she was ready for a new one, but she just couldn’t part with the vest that had carried her through so much bottom time.

  She quickly scanned William’s gear and checked his air, then turned and let him do the same buddy check for her. Then she grabbed her faded mask and slipped it over her head.

  “Wait, aren’t we gonna test out the new comms?” William dangled his new full face mask in front of her.

  Kate shook her head. “Sorry, not today. I need to hear nothing but my breaths and bubbles for a bit. You boys can play with your new toys another day.”

  “I can respect that.” He snatched his mask and snorkel from the camera table. A moment later, the two friends backrolled into the warm, clear Atlantic.

  At fifteen feet, Kate leveled off, glanced over at William, and flashed an okay sign. He signaled back, then the two dropped down toward the shadowy hull of the Katherine K. The fifty-five-foot tugboat had rested on the bottom, its hull torn in the center, since a hurricane ripped it from Key West Harbor a hundred and one years earlier.

  As she approached the coral-encrusted tug, Kate squeezed two puffs of compressed air into her BC, then slowly pulled a breath through her second stage with a hollow his
s. Her body rose and fell in the water as she sipped gentle breaths in, then blew a steady stream of bubbles behind her. She clasped her hands at her waist and rolled to her side facing the little boat’s starboard bow.

  With a light twitch of her ankle, her fins propelled her around the bow and along the port gunwale to the gaping tear in the center of the hull. She twisted and continued her circuit, pausing to gently release a tangled wad of fishing line from a delicate branch of lavender finger coral. She tucked the debris in the pocket of her BC, then glided around the Katherine K’s transom.

  Kate retrieved a crushed aluminum can and an empty beer bottle by the time her circuit was complete. She returned to the gash in the starboard hull to find William hovering several feet above a resting nurse shark. He glanced toward her, then signaled, cradling his arms like a baby.

  Kate cocked her head to her shoulder in an exaggerated question, but William just waved her over to his side. She finned up and leveled off beside him just as a tiny pup wiggled from beneath the stationary mother and swam into the darkness of the Katherine K’s stern.

  “A birth!” Kate squealed through her mouthpiece. She raised her arm and caught her phone dangling in its housing from a lanyard on her left wrist and flipped on the video in time to catch one more pup emerge. Then the nurse shark twitched and slowly swam to the sandy bottom before easing herself south toward deeper water.

  Kate looked at William, her grin so wide her mask began to leak. His smile was equally wide. They’d have quite a story to tell when they got back.

  After she did what they came for.

  Kate made her way through the torn hull and into the tugboat’s wheelhouse. She spotted a series of drawers directly below the helm. She pulled at each one until the third finally gave way and slid open. After reaching past the trash in her BC pocket to retrieve the tightly wrapped package of emeralds, she tucked it into the back of the drawer, then slid the drawer back into place.