by Matt Lincoln
Anticipation squirmed in my stomach, though we still had a while to wait before the real fun began. I hoped it would settle down soon—I didn’t fancy feeling nerves crawl around inside of me for the next twenty minutes. It made me regret those few bites of the dry-yet-soggy sandwich all the more. I could feel the food like a weight within my stomach, dragging on my innards.
18
It was fun to watch the ship make its approach. For a while, it seemed like it simply wasn’t moving, despite the obvious white caps around the pointed bow and the angle of the smoke pointing back the way it came. Over time, I realized that it was growing larger and larger, towering over all the other boats in the harbor who had made sure they were well out of the cruise ship’s way. I whistled, impressed by its size. There were three rows of windows along the hull, and I couldn’t even gauge how long the vessel was. Three red and black smokestacks rose out of the deck, and the white railings ringing everything were a neat complement to the black of the hull. I could see people moving about the deck like ants that slowly grew crisper and clearer the closer the ship got to the marina.
A whistle blew from one of the docks, and all movement in and out of the harbor ceased so the cruise ship could make its final approach. Its nose was turned toward us now, bearing down on the marina like some kind of epic behemoth. For a second, I understood the allure of the cruise. From far away, that ship sang of power and prestige and a great, churning might that would transfer to you if you could only feel it beneath your feet. I imagined that up close, it was a much different story.
“Wow,” I said as I watched it.
“Size means nothing,” Meg told me. “It’s speed that really counts, at least in my opinion. I should take you out on a proper boat ride sometime. You’d love it.”
“That actually sounds really fun,” I said, tearing my eyes away from the massive ship to look over at Meg. “I haven’t spent much time on the water other than our harrowing chase through a massive storm. Not exactly a good first impression.”
“No,” Meg agreed. “But we can change that.”
I grinned at her, the sun shining on her answering smile, and then we returned our attention to the approaching cruise ship.
Meg was right on the money with her twenty-minute guess, though the ship was a bit behind its three o’clock schedule. It loomed over the harbor, its shadow blocking the sun from our faces. Dockworkers hurried about, preparing to receive the ropes from the sailors up above, and they either didn’t know who we were or had been told by Quinn to ignore us because no one paid us any mind as they went about their business. It was hard to make out any details of the people up on the ship because they moved so quickly and the glare of the sun was in the way, but I hoped we would have an easier time making out their features once they descended the gangplank.
The ship finished docking with remarkable efficiency. It took maybe ten minutes for the works to get all the lines secured, and then they set about lowering the gangplank as the passengers milled about the deck, jostling to be the first off the ship.
“Here we go,” I said as the end of the gangplank touched down on the dock.
Meg and I both straightened as if that would somehow help us focus a little better, and conversation ceased as we watched the borderline-orderly, borderline-chaotic parade of people pour off the ship. Most of them were sunburned, some badly with peeling faces and ruby red noses. There was a sharp divide between the Hawaiian shirt, flip-flop wearing vacationers, and those more sharply dressed, though I couldn’t imagine why you would want to wear a blazer and slacks while on a cruise ship. Parents barely held their kids in check from barreling right down the gangplank and bowling the people in front of them over, juggling both the children’s sweaty palms and the bags they carried.
I could mostly ignore the passengers, though I tried to keep half an eye on them just in case Mann was coming ashore for leave in casual clothes (if that was an actual thing. I wasn’t really sure). Two employees flanked the gangplank, making sure no one fell as they stepped off onto the dock, thanking every person who disembarked for choosing Start Shine Cruises. One was young and red-headed, the other older and a little stooped in the shoulders. Neither of them was our man.
I scanned the people up on deck, though they were still hard to see from this angle. Like Meg had said earlier, I wished we had a pair of binoculars, though I supposed they would make our watchful eye pretty obvious.
The last of the passengers disembarked and flooded toward shore, but Meg and I didn’t move, watching the crew members as they finished securing the ship. No doubt there would be a lot of sanitation and repair work to do over the next two days before the ship took off again.
It took about an hour, but then the employees finished stowing everything away and began to disembark themselves. I nudged Meg, who’d been dozing lightly while we waited, and she jerked upright, rubbing at her eyes.
“Crew’s coming down,” I told her and texted the same thing to Rachel.
I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees as I watched the descending crew. I studied each face as best I could. Thankfully, there were far fewer crew members than passengers, and they walked down the gangplank in a more orderly fashion, making it easier to take a good look at each one.
My worry grew with each person who stepped onto the dock that wasn’t Rick Mann. It would be a huge, lucky coincidence for him to be on this specific route, after all, but if he wasn’t, then what would we do? Fly to Florida to speak with Sasha Richards? It would eat up precious time. Time Malia might not have.
Focus on the positive. There were still quite a few people on the ship. Mann would be there. He had to be.
And he was. He was one of the last to step off the gangplank, and when I finally spotted him, relief flooded through me so quickly that I felt a little lightheaded. He’d lost his beard but for a spray of stubble across his cheeks, but his thick eyebrows were unmistakable, even cast in shadow by the brim of his hat. There was more gray in his hair, and his whole face had a haggard, worn down look to it, a slump to his shoulders that he couldn’t quite hide despite his best efforts.
“There he is,” I said to Meg, who hadn’t seen him yet. She gasped as soon as her eyes found him, and I texted Rachel to tell her we’d found him. “Come on, let’s join the others.”
We stood and strode down our dock, keeping pace with Mann so we wouldn’t lose him. He didn’t notice us. His gaze was solely focused on the approaching shore. He carried a single duffle bag in one hand and undid his shirt’s top button as he walked. The other crew members chatted amongst themselves as they went, but Mann remained removed, and the others let him be like this was a common occurrence.
Linda and Rachel had pushed off of the tree they’d been leaning against and approached the dock, standing just to the side of the post. Rachel’s expression was hard, determined, and she stared at each new face with such intensity that those who noticed her flinched and hurried on, eyes on the ground.
I picked up our pace slightly, so that we surpassed Mann, and we cut straight for the other dock so that we could cut Mann off from multiple directions if he tried to make a run for it. Rachel met my gaze, and I nodded toward Mann, just in case she hadn’t spotted him yet. He was one of the shorter people of the bunch, but he was stocky and broad and so still easy to make out amidst the crowd.
The moment he stepped onto land, Rachel stepped forward into his path, causing a bottleneck behind him.
“Rick Mann?” she asked sharply.
Mann went rigid, instantly sniffing out the fact that she was a fed. I could tell from the way his nostrils flared and his entire posture tightened, his eyes darting from side to side. He noticed Meg and me next, standing off to the side but still within reach, and Linda just behind Rachel, her stance loose and ready.
“Am I in trouble?” he asked cautiously. He had a tight grip on his bag, but his instinct to run looked like it was borne more out of old habits and not the actual desire to do so right now.<
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“Not at all,” Rachel said, but she couldn’t quite shake the tone that said, “but you might be.” “We just want to ask you a few questions about an old acquaintance. Do you mind?”
Mann shifted his bag to his other hand and carefully stepped out of the way so that his coworkers could pass more easily, keeping his eyes on Rachel so we would know he wasn’t trying to bolt.
“I guess I could do that,” he agreed. “So long as we’re clear that I’m not in any trouble.”
“You’re not in any trouble.” Rachel finally got her tone to soften, and Mann nodded, satisfied.
“There’s a cafe near here that I like. Should we talk there?” he asked. “Where it’s more comfortable?”
We all looked at Rachel, who hesitated, clearly desperate to dive right in, but she nodded. “I suppose so. Lead the way.”
Mann adjusted his grip on his bag again. He seemed a little more comfortable now that we’d agreed to speak on his own turf, but he definitely didn’t like not knowing exactly what we wanted from him. After glancing at Rachel to make sure it was okay, he took the lead and walked us out of the marina. I kept my eyes on his back, just in case he suddenly decided to bolt. I would probably be able to see his muscles bunch even through the fabric of his navy blue coat. His shoulders were a little straighter and more assured now that he was away from the cruise ship, and there was just a bit of swagger in his stride.
At the entrance to the marina, we turned right and went a short way down the sidewalk until we came into a little hole-in-the-wall cafe with a fish on its sign rather than a name. Mann glanced back and then gestured awkwardly to the door. “Here we are.”
“We’ll sit outside,” Rachel said, looking around the empty patio. “You guys sit. I’ll get us some menus. I’m famished.” She hadn’t eaten very much of her marina sandwich either.
Linda picked the large wire table in the corner, and I dragged an extra chair over so we could all sit. We made Mann sit at the back of the table, by the corner of the railing, so there’d be no quick and easy escape route if he suddenly decided to bail.
Linda, Meg, and I stared at him, unblinking, while we waited for Rachel to return. I was happy to turn up the heat a little and make him uncomfortable so he’d be more likely to talk just to get us to stop staring like that.
Rachel appeared through the door with a server in tow who had glasses and a pitcher of water for us. She picked up on the vibe of the table in an instant and swallowed, smoothing down her apron after she placed the water before us.
“I’ll be back in a bit,” she said and fled back inside the cafe.
Rachel dragged her chair out slowly so that the legs squalled against the cobblestones, and then she sat, leaning back in the seat with both arms spread out along the armrests.
“Alright,” she said cooly, gaze fixed on Rick Mann. “Let’s have a chat.”
19
Rachel picked at her nails for a moment, making Mann wait for it. Jace, Linda, and Meg flanked her, and she felt powerful with the three of them at her sides, like she wasn’t actually falling apart bit by tiny bit. It was good to have a task to focus on, something to keep her moving forward through time rather than drifting back to that night.
She studied Mann for a moment. He was nervous, but he hid it well. It showed only in the occasional tap of his index finger against the table and the way he shifted in his seat every so often. He met her gaze evenly but could only keep it for about ten seconds at a time before he had to glance away.
“So,” Rachel said finally, and the rest of the table straightened, hanging on her words. “I want to talk to you about Frances Dowell.”
That clearly wasn’t what Mann had been expecting her to say. His eyes widened, and his mouth dropped open slightly.
“We need to find him,” Rachel continued. “Do you know how we can do that?”
“I’ll admit, I haven’t heard that name in a while,” Mann began, and Rachel felt her heart start to sink. He scratched at his stubble, tilting his head to the side as he thought about it. “I only worked with him for a few years, and I left all that behind a long time ago. I want to be very clear about that.”
Rachel nodded and motioned for him to go on.
“Right. I worked with him at his restaurant in New Mexico. As I’m sure you know, it was mostly just a front for his smuggling business.” He smiled faintly and rubbed his nose. “Those were good years. Business was good, money was good, the work wasn’t all that hard. It was fairly safe, too, as far as criminal enterprises go. We were well respected. All sorts of people wanted to do business with us. And then he met Simon Ward.”
“Is this going to end with you telling us how to find Dowell? Because otherwise, I’m not interested in all the backstory,” Rachel said, her tone cold. If this man was stalling for time until he could find an avenue to escape, she was going to rip his stupid beard right off his face.
Mann held up his hands. “I promise I’m getting there. It’s a whole story if you want to understand what happened.”
“Not really,” Rachel sneered. “I just want to know where to find him.”
Jace reached over and lightly touched her arm. When she glanced over, he was doing that thing with his eyes where he made them very large and wide and sincere as he entreated her to listen to him.
“Maybe we should hear the whole story, Rachel,” he urged. “Information is power, right?”
He was right. Rachel knew he was right. She was just so damn itchy to be doing something, to be out there saving Malia, that she couldn’t stand to sit there at that stupid café for any longer.
Rachel took a deep breath and then another, trying to calm herself down. Her fingers trembled atop the table, and she moved to pull them down into her lap where the others couldn’t see, but another hand grabbed hers before she could, and she opened her eyes to find Linda smiling at her. It was a soft smile, a promise that things would be okay, and though Rachel had wanted to hit everyone else who looked at her like that, she found that she believed Linda with all her heart. A pang rose up within her, and she wanted to cry, but she wouldn’t, not in front of Richard Mann.
Instead, she fixed him with a steely gaze and nodded. “Continue.”
Mann shifted in his seat and swallowed heavily, his throat bobbing. His eyes went to the café windows where their server was staring out at them, clearly wondering if she should attempt to come out and take their order. Rachel pointedly ignored her and focused on Mann.
“Right,” he said as the server turned and quickly scooted away from the window. “Where was I?”
“Dowell had just met Ward,” Linda supplied.
Mann nodded a couple of times. “Right, right. Well, shit changed after that. It got serious, dangerous. I mean, it was always that, but suddenly, shit was real. Real money. Real drugs. Human trafficking. Dowell never would have touched that with a thirty-foot pole before he met Ward. It all got way too real, way too fast for me, but Ward wasn’t about to let anyone out.” Mann sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know if Dowell liked it. He kind of stopped talking to me for a while. He was super enmeshed with Ward. The money was good, real good. But I don’t know if it was worth some of the stuff we were doing.”
Rachel thought Mann looked genuinely regretful about his time in Ward’s crew. His eyes slanted down toward the table, and he drummed his thumb against the metal, watching the motion of his finger with lidded eyes. There was a slump to his shoulders as he relived those months and years, and he finally dragged his gaze back up to Rachel’s before he continued.
“Then the U.S. Marshals started sniffing around. Dowell came back to me after Ward killed that marshal. It was finally too much for him. He said he wanted out and could I help him. I’d kept myself low on the ladder, off Ward’s radar. Dowell thought I could help him get out because of that. I’m ashamed to say I turned him away.”
“Why ashamed?” Linda asked.
Mann spread his hands across the table, finally halting the ceas
eless drumming of his thumb. “I was selfish, I guess. I knew that I could slip away unnoticed. There was too much chaos around Ward for him to notice one missing grunt, but I knew that Dowell was too close to Ward, and he would never be able to get away. I didn’t want him dragging me back with him. So I refused to help him. The look in his eyes…” Mann trailed off. “It was betrayal. But he had left me first. What was I supposed to do?”
He looked around the table as if for some kind of absolution, but Rachel had none for him. She didn’t care about his sob story. She still just wanted to know where the hell Dowell was.
Mann cleared his throat. “Anyway. I got out, and I left Dowell there. I heard through the grapevine how it all went down. Ward was arrested, and Dowell disappeared. I thought that he was dead, that Ward or one of your marshals had killed him.”
“Wait a second,” Rachel interrupted, and Mann snapped his mouth shut at the sharp bite in her voice. “It sounds a lot to me like you have no idea where Dowell is. If you’re wasting our time…”
“I didn’t say that,” Mann said hurriedly. “I just don’t know where he went right after the showdown.”
Rachel’s anger mounted, and she started to rise—though to do what, she wasn’t sure—but Linda’s and Jace’s hands fell on her shoulders simultaneously, urging her back into her seat. Meg was the only one who hadn’t moved or spoken since they’d sat down at the table, tucked into her chair as she listened to everything with her brow slightly furrowed. Rachel calmed herself with a great amount of effort and nodded for Mann to continue.
Mann hesitated for a second before he did so and then opened his mouth and went on. “He reached out to me three years ago—a letter. I don’t know how he found me since I was moving around so much at that point. There was a return address on it. Different name, but it was definitely his handwriting. I never replied. Never even opened it, actually. I felt too guilty leaving him behind like that, and I didn’t want to risk getting sucked back into that life. I got out and intend to stay that way. Here.” He leaned down so he could heft his duffle bag up onto his lap. He unzipped it and dug through the contents until he pulled out a slightly yellowed envelope and held it out to her.
