The Deep End

by Traci Hunter Abramson

  She pushed through her planned practice, occasionally stopping to check her notes. When she came to the end of her practice, she looked up at the clock, surprised to see that she still had forty-five minutes left. Annoyed that she had miscalculated her workout, especially after spending so much time planning it, CJ set out to swim another set that she hoped would use up the rest of her time.

  Though she tried to keep her thoughts positive, CJ realized that a coach might be more of a necessity than anyone realized.

  Chapter 5

  Leaning on the railing of her hotel-room balcony, Jill looked over the water just a short distance away. The waves rolled lazily over the sand, the roar of the ocean filling the air.

  Despite the palm trees surrounding the hotels along the main strip in Palm Beach, Aruba was not the lush tropical island Jill had imagined. A dry desert breeze ruffled her short hair as she bit into the pastry she had ordered from room service. A few ambitious souls jogged along the beach despite the early hour.

  Jill glanced at her watch, wondering how much longer she should wait before calling Doug’s room to see if he was up. They had arrived so late the night before that they had barely managed to find a restaurant still open to serve them dinner. Doug had been his usual closemouthed self until they had finally gotten to their hotel.

  He hadn’t told her much, but Jill knew enough about this particular case to understand the result of Leonard Abbott’s death. Throughout the night her mind had been filled with concern for her former roommate, now known as CJ.

  Everything had seemed so normal when she and CJ had lived together in Texas. Though CJ’s real name was Christal Jones, at the time she had been using the alias Kylie Ramsey. Despite the fact that she was in the Witness Protection Program, she had made a full life for herself. She spent her time swimming, going to school, and dating Matt Whitmore—an up-and-coming baseball player. Jill had met and started dating Doug.

  Then in a single instant everything had changed. Jill remembered all too well the day CJ disappeared from Texas, the day Doug had barely managed to sneak her past the men sent to kill her. Even now, Jill could only pray that Doug and those working with him would be astute enough to see danger coming before it was too late.

  Walking back into her room, Jill glanced at her watch again. She waited until almost eight before she dialed the number for Doug’s room. The phone rang five times before she finally hung up. Maybe he’s in the shower, she thought to herself, wondering when he would be ready to go out and see the island.

  Less than a minute later, a knock sounded at her door. She opened it up to find Doug standing in the hall. “Good, you’re already up.” Doug leaned in and gave her a quick kiss. “Are you ready to head out?”

  Jill nodded. “I’ve been ready.”

  “I should have known you would be anxious to get the day started. I went out and rented a car. It’s parked out front.”

  They made their way to the elevators and then outside to the tiny hatchback. He shrugged and opened the passenger door for her. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”

  “As long as it gets us where we’re going,” Jill said. As soon as he pulled out of the parking lot, she added, “So where are we going?”

  “I thought you might be willing to do a little poking around with me.”

  “What kind of poking?” Jill asked suspiciously.

  “I wanted to start at the dive shop that Abbott used the day he died.”

  “You don’t expect me to go scuba diving with them, do you?”

  “No, actually, I want you to go in and pretend you’re thinking about it. You know, ask a bunch of questions,” Doug explained. He went on to point out the specific information he needed based on what he had gleaned from the initial reports and suggested how she might lead the conversation where he wanted it to go.

  When they arrived at the dive shop, Jill approached the place alone. A boat was already preparing to set out, and Jill thought she might have already missed her opportunity to talk to the dive instructors. She passed by the modest dive shop and walked toward the dock, noticing several air tanks that were waiting to be loaded on the boat. A man in his late twenties stepped off the boat and headed toward her.

  “Hi there,” Jill greeted him, moving aside as he approached the air tanks.

  The man smiled, glimpsing the strap of her swimsuit beneath her T-shirt. “Are you here for a dive?”

  “No, actually, I’ve never gone scuba diving before.”

  “Well, we can set you up if you’re interested,” he told her with a grin. “You will have to take one of our certification courses, but it only takes a morning, and then you can be diving with an instructor as soon as this afternoon.”

  “I’m still not sure I’m ready to breathe my air out of one of those.” Jill pointed to the air tanks.

  “It takes a little getting used to, but it’s really easy.”

  “How does it work? I mean, how can you tell how much air you have and how long you can stay under?”

  “Let me show you,” he motioned for her to follow him into a room full of dive equipment. He showed her the basic equipment, explaining how the air gauges worked and how each diver rented the necessary equipment and weights if they didn’t have their own.

  “Those air tanks over there,” Jill started as she stepped back outside, “are they for specific people, or do you just give them to whoever needs one?”

  “Usually if people need an air tank, they sign up the night before so that we have them ready by morning.”

  Jill saw Doug come out of the dive shop and head toward her. Doug nodded at the man and put a proprietary hand on Jill’s shoulder. “Has he convinced you that it’s safe yet?”

  “I just don’t know if I want to try that.” Jill forced herself to shudder. “I mean with what happened to that poor man a couple of weeks ago.” Jill turned back toward the dive instructor. “I’m sure you heard about it, the diving accident?”

  The man tensed briefly before responding. “That was unfortunate, but if the guy had stayed with his instructor, it never would have happened.”

  “He went off on his own?” Jill asked incredulously.

  The instructor nodded. “Apparently he lost touch with the rest of his group and panicked. I guess he tried to surface too fast because by the time the instructor found him, he was already dead.”

  Jill turned back to look at Doug. “If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll stick with snorkeling.”

  “I had a feeling you would say that.” Doug nodded to the instructor. “Have a good one.”

  Jill waited until Doug pulled out into the light traffic before asking, “What did you find out?”

  “Not much. Everything seems to agree with the witness reports that Abbott went on the advanced dive and apparently went off on his own.”

  “It could have happened that way.” Jill shrugged.

  “His wife said that he’s been scuba diving for years. It just doesn’t add up that an experienced diver would surface too fast.”

  “Maybe something was wrong with his equipment.”

  “The island police said they checked it out and it was fine.”

  “Then Abbott was either out of practice and got careless, or someone did a great job of making it look like an accident.”

  “I just wish I could find something that would tell me which one.” Doug pulled the car into a parking lot near the marina.

  “What are we doing here?”

  “I thought we could go for a sail.”

  “I think I can handle that.” Jill grinned.

  * * *

  The woman who owned the sailboat Doug had chartered lived below deck when she wasn’t working. Shirley had left her home in Miami nearly fifteen years before, and she chattered on about the history of the island, the tourism industry, and the constant influx of tourists from the U.S. Her skin was weathered from the sun and the wind, making her look about fifty years old, but Doug guessed that she was closer to forty.

&
nbsp; Doug only had to ask a couple of general questions about scuba diving before Shirley started rambling on about the accident. The news was still fresh on the island, and she was already worried about how the bad press might affect tourism and the diving industry in the future.

  Above them the sails billowed in the wind, and except for an occasional boat, most of the water traffic was far behind them. Doug studied the island, anticipating from the curve of the land that they were nearing the site where Abbott had died.

  Jill moved onto the deck to soak up some sun. Her simple blue swimsuit was a modest one-piece, and she had carefully applied sunscreen to protect herself against the hot sun. Doug wished that he could have relaxed on deck with her and just enjoyed the view.

  Turning away from his beautiful fiancée, Doug sat with his back to her and tried to glean from Shirley’s wealth of knowledge of local diving spots. Still listening to her, Doug absorbed her descriptions of the dive sites as they approached Malmok Reef. From the map he had studied earlier, it was one of only four dive sites along this section of the island.

  When Shirley stopped to take a breath, Doug asked, “Do a lot of people come out and use these sites?”

  “It varies. Most people go to the sites that are closer to the hotels. These take a bit longer to get to.” Shirley pointed farther out to sea. “That one over there is a beginner dive, so it’s used pretty frequently. Apparently some beginners were diving over there around the time the accident occurred here at Malmok.”

  “Was the other group still around when the accident happened?”

  Shirley shook her head. “I heard they were already long gone. The beginner group usually only goes down for forty-five minutes or so. That site is only about thirty-five feet deep.”

  “What about this one?” Doug asked as she slowed near Malmok Reef.

  “It’s about twice that. Seventy feet, give or take a few.”

  “Sounds kind of deep,” Doug commented.

  “Not really. Even beginners sometimes go down forty or fifty feet.” Shirley shrugged. “Seventy isn’t that bad for someone who has some experience.”

  “Sounds like he wasn’t experienced enough.” Doug turned and studied Malmok Reef. The beginner dive site was some distance away, far enough that the beginners probably would not have noticed anything suspicious. It was perfect, Doug thought. Just deep enough for Abbott to get into trouble, but not quite deep enough to raise suspicions.

  Doug glanced up at Jill. She’s right, he thought to himself. Either Abbott really had gotten careless, or someone had gone to great lengths to make his death look like an accident.

  Chapter 6

  Jimmy Malloy stepped out of the rental car and looked up at the federal building. It was a gamble to come himself, but Malloy liked to think of it as a calculated risk. He supposed he should be uncomfortable visiting a jail, fully aware that dozens of his past actions could land him inside these walls as a resident rather than as a visitor. Malloy didn’t like to entertain such thoughts, however, so he pushed them aside and concentrated on the situation at hand.

  In another month, Chris Rush would either become a permanent resident of the federal penitentiary or of the local morgue. Malloy had done enough poking around to know that the girl testifying against him was well hidden. If he couldn’t find her through traditional channels, he doubted anyone else would either. Of course, he didn’t particularly care for traditional channels. The reward for Christal Jones’s death was a hefty one, and collecting it was just one of the possible outcomes of Malloy’s current plans.

  For now, however, he had more pressing matters to attend to. The legal expenses Rush was piling up had been causing a cash drain on the organization for some time. Now that the trial was just around the corner, Rush was once again depleting his operational funds to attain the location of the girl.

  Rebuilding was expensive, and Malloy needed another influx of cash so that he could maintain the standard of living he had grown accustomed to. He couldn’t cut Rush off from his funds without risking some kind of reprisal from those still loyal to Rush within the organization. Instead, he had turned his attention to other possible sources. Taking care of the girl would give him a nice little windfall of money, and then there were the diamonds.

  A stash of diamonds had been lost three years before when a cop had infiltrated deep into their operations. Malloy knew that the cop had taken the diamonds, presumably for evidence. Unfortunately, Malloy’s men had killed the cop before the stones were recovered.

  Some subtle probing had convinced Malloy that the diamonds were still out there somewhere. Originally, he hadn’t concerned himself with the missing gems, but most of the current profits were needed to cover the high operational costs necessary to rebuild his empire. Malloy figured twenty million dollars worth of precious stones would give him just enough to tide him over until Rush was removed from the company one way or another.

  His research had revealed that the two men convicted of killing the cop wouldn’t have had time to stash the diamonds before they were arrested, and Malloy’s search into those close to the two convicts revealed nothing remotely suspicious.

  Malloy’s investigation of the cop’s family had convinced him that they hadn’t discovered the diamonds either. The search of the cop’s apartment had been more thorough than he had first believed, and none of the people involved in the case had suddenly come into any money. That left the girl.

  Rush knew more about her than did anyone else within the organization. He also had the most reasons to want her dead—reasons that contributed to Malloy’s unlikely visit to the federal jail.

  Malloy handed over his fake ID and plucked a piece of lint off the sleeve of his Armani jacket. The security officer took his name and told him to take a seat. Malloy stood. He was not about to sit on one of the filthy chairs in the waiting room.

  Ten minutes later his name was called, and he was led into the visiting area. He retrieved a handkerchief from his inside pocket and wiped off the vinyl seat before sitting down. While he waited for Rush to be brought in, he picked up the telephone receiver and wiped that down as well.

  The man that sat down opposite him was not the formidable man Malloy remembered. His normally tanned skin was chalky white, and he had deep circles under his eyes. Those dark eyes had once been capable of dropping a man with a single glance, had once emanated power, authority, control. Now they just looked evil. The once-athletic build now appeared thin, almost fragile in the bright orange prison uniform.

  Rush picked up the receiver on his side of the security glass. “What are you doing here?”

  “Just thought I would pay a visit to an old friend,” Malloy stated calmly.

  “If you had honored our agreement, I wouldn’t be here for you to visit,” Rush hissed over the phone.

  “I’m working on that.” Malloy aimed a meaningful look at the guard in the corner of the room. “I also wanted to ask you about the merchandise you lost several years ago.”

  Rush’s eyes sparked with interest, and he leaned back in his seat, a remnant of his former self returning.

  Malloy continued, “Did you know the courier’s girlfriend well?”

  Rush’s lips snarled somewhere between a grin and a grimace. “I only met her once. Pretty girl. Dark hair, smoky eyes. A very talented swimmer. Breaststroke was her favorite, I believe.”

  Malloy leaned back as he spoke companionably with Rush. “Tell me, did she have any good luck charms she liked to keep with her? Something your courier might have given her?”

  Rush shook his head and sneered. “The diamonds are gone. Don’t waste your time.”

  “It happens I have bit of free time on my hands.” Malloy stood, brushing absently at his slacks. Without a backwards glance, he strode out of the room.

  * * *

  “I don’t like it,” Doug spoke into his cell phone as he paced his office. After spending three days in Aruba, he and Jill had returned the day before, and he had been working ever si
nce. Thankfully, Jill had offered to go out with the realtor by herself to start narrowing down their housing choices.

  Keith Toblin’s voice came through the line. “I can’t say I’m crazy about the idea either, but the marshals have a valid argument. We know that the hotel reservations have been traced through our travel system. They think she will be safer if the FBI isn’t involved.”

  “You know as well as I do that she isn’t the typical Witness Protection Program candidate. The FBI has been running the show since she went underground.”

  “I had this same argument with the marshals. They insisted that the only way they will approve the security plan is if they have complete control.” Keith’s sigh came over the line. “We both know how much this meet means to CJ, and two marshals are going to be with her at all times.”

  “I still don’t like it,” Doug stated firmly.

  “Neither do I.”

  * * *

  CJ sat in the waiting area of the Philadelphia airport, her earphones on so that she could hear the ball game on her palm-sized radio. The afternoon game had been delayed by nearly an hour because of a passing thunderstorm that had come through just as the game was scheduled to start. CJ had hoped to hear the whole game before her four o’clock flight, but now she was just hoping the clouds in the distance wouldn’t cause any more trouble.

  Keith Toblin sat beside her, the latest edition of Sports Illustrated in his hand. CJ knew the magazine was just a prop, despite the two marshals who were hovering nearby. One of the marshals would be on the same flight as CJ, routing through Chicago before heading to Minneapolis. Tara would take a direct flight into Minneapolis, arriving early enough to secure their transportation and hotel accommodations.

  CJ noticed the other passengers preparing to board, but she waited until the line was nearly gone before she stood and picked up her duffel bag.

  “I’ll see you in a couple of days,” Keith said as she headed for the gate.

  CJ nodded, knowing that he would remain close by until she was safely in the air. The marshal that was traveling with her had already boarded, and CJ was not surprised to see him settled in a seat two rows behind her.