Rising Tide (Coastal Fury Book 5)

by Matt Lincoln

  “I’m sorry, Alice.” Diane softened her voice. “We should’ve insisted last night, but I didn’t want to tip our hands until we had you out of there.”

  That discussion was news to me. Then again, I wasn’t unbiased. My boss knew me well enough to suspect I’d at least try to get Alice out of that house if I felt there was more of a threat than it stood at the time. I kicked myself for letting that go. At least she was in safe hands now.

  I took Alice to one of the conference rooms while Holm fetched the blueprints, paperwork, and the new findings for Dragon Tide. We settled into seats next to each other. For once in my life, I wasn’t sure what to say. Alice didn’t seem to have a better time with it herself.

  Holm broke the awkward silence with his arrival. He damn near dropped everything just getting in the door. I jumped up to grab the more precarious blueprint tubes and then handed those to Alice.

  “If I’d know there was so much, I would’ve had you come help,” Holm said with a laugh. We set the pile on the table into something resembling a neat assemblage.

  Alice stood and focused on the tubes. She looked through the labels until she found the one she wanted and opened it. “Phones, please.”

  I raised a brow. “We can’t take photos of these.”

  She snorted. “Unless you have better paperweights, I need your phones to hold down the corners.”

  With a sheepish grin, I set my phone on one corner as Holm and Alice set their phones on two others. We used the stack of reports for the fourth which was closest to me, and then watched as she traced a finger over numbers showing the distance between pilings and column placements.

  “Where are the soil and bedrock reports?” she asked without looking up.

  I dug through the reports and found both versions. The first was the one filed at the time of sale, and the second was the one that was quietly conducted toward the end of the building’s completion. Alice studied them both with a mighty frown. Her frown deepened as she pulled out a side view of the piling and building elevation.

  “Damn,” she whispered. “They screwed this up royally.” Her hand shook as she sat and leaned back. “I was in that building when the explosion happened. I was in there.”

  “Alice?” I swung a nearby seat to face hers and then sat. “What is it?”

  “The hotel was stronger than we thought.” She blinked. “Ethan, it should have collapsed right away. That foundation was shit.”

  Holm dropped into a seat on her other side, and I swallowed. I couldn’t imagine a person as vibrant and smart as Alice dying in that building. In the next breath, I realized Holm and I would have been killed if that building had gone down while we were trying to pull people out from underwater. It took a few moments before anyone spoke.

  “What made it so weak?” Holm broke through the shock.

  “The, um.” Alice swallowed hard. “The pilings were too far apart and too shallow. The high-rise columns were what kept it up for as long as it did, I think. On normal ground, those columns would have been plenty good, and the reinforcements on the lower levels were astounding. I see why Zhu was excited about his tech.”

  “But it wasn’t enough to save the building?” I stared at the diagrams and tried to see what she saw.

  “Only to delay the collapse. It’s a miracle, really.” She shook her head. “Oh my God, I was supposed to die. They really wanted me dead.” She covered her mouth with her hand and kept blinking. “I mean, it was an abstract before, and I could pass it off, but this… oh my God.”

  “Your parents were out of the building away from the water when it happened, right?” I asked.

  She nodded but choked on her words.

  “Where was Zhu?” Holm met my eye. “Did we ever find out?”

  I frowned. The only Zhu at the site was David Zhu. Shawn Zhu had been, as far as I knew, at his office.

  “We weren’t supposed to meet him until after we settled into the suite,” Alice whispered. A glint of hope glowed in her eyes. “Maybe Ma didn’t get involved in this.” She met my eye. “Do you think it could have been Zhu all along?” She gestured to the paperwork. “It would have been humiliating for news to get out that not only did he cut corners but that he’d been swindled, too. Sabotage would make a better story than negligence, and his reputation would stay intact.”

  Damn, the woman was smart. Or she was good at reading minds because I was on the same track. Mostly.

  “If Zhu was behind it, he could’ve worked with anyone.” I hated the way her face fell when I said that, but she needed to keep her expectations realistic. “We’ll go out today, but if things get hairy, we’re coming back here right away.”

  She nodded. “Are you sure it’s okay to go out?”

  “Not looking like this.” I gestured at my blazer and dress pants. Holm and I were investigators, and we looked the part. “We’ll change, and Diane and Sylvia can help you change your look. Otherwise, we’ll go straight to the safehouse.”

  Alice bit her lower lip and looked down. A smile spread across her face.

  “Let’s go to the beach and relax,” she suggested. “I need fresh air. If I can borrow a good camera, I’d like to get some interesting photos.”

  That sounded familiar. It reminded me of Tessa, the professional photographer I sometimes saw. A small pang tugged at my heart, but it passed. As much as I liked her, my chances with Tessa were slim. She lived in New York and wasn’t about to move to Florida. Alice was right here, and she needed a day away from worries. And damn, was she beautiful, and kind, and smart.

  “We can get you a camera,” I promised. Bonnie almost always had something handy. “Even better, I know just the place. You’re gonna love this.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Hugh Taylor Birch State Park lay in the heart of Fort Lauderdale. It’d been a while since I visited, and given Alice’s hopes for the day, it was perfect.

  “I can’t believe I never came here,” Alice admitted as we wound through the subtropical forest. She twisted in her seat and looked through the back window. “You’re absolutely sure we weren’t followed?”

  “I’ve been watching,” Holm assured her. “The only person following was Agent Sulley, and she’s parked at the entrance. If she sees anyone suspicious, we’ll take care of it.”

  Alice’s fresh awareness of her mortality had settled over her like a thorny blanket. Holm and I had faced that realization more times than I cared to think, but that fear helped to keep us alive. Well, that and a few good surgeons.

  I parked in a small side lot that was surrounded by trees. As we got out of the car, a light breeze rippled the tropical shirt I’d thrown on over my t-shirt and shoulder holster. Holm had chosen a loose-fitting pair of tan seersucker pants to hide his ankle holster. His mint-green button-up shirt and Panama hat completed his dapper-beach look. I smirked at the white boat shoes.

  “You know those are gonna get muddy,” I warned him.

  “They’ll wash off.” He shrugged and smiled. “These are the old ones, anyway. They’re comfy.”

  Alice got out of the car. She sported a loose, untucked blouse with a poppy print, courtesy of Bonnie. One of Warner’s friends in Cybercrimes loaned Alice a wide-brimmed straw hat with a loose weave. It was floppy but stylish. She’d opted to keep on her khaki capris and Teva sport sandals.

  “I haven’t shot in infrared before,” she told us as we pulled out the two camera bags Bonnie has also loaned us. “That was cool of her to let me borrow it.”

  “If anything happens to these cameras, it’s on my head,” I reminded her. “Especially the IR camera. She must really like you.”

  “Yeah,” Holm agreed. “Not to make you nervous or anything, but Bonnie just got this. She bought the camera brand new and had it converted.”

  “Thanks.” Alice rolled her eyes. “I feel so much better.”

  We opted to hit the beach first before the afternoon crowds descended. It was a short hike past the nature center and through a tunnel that went unde
r the road parallel to the beach. Alice snapped a few photos of us walking up the tunnel stairs. She showed me the result, and I smiled. Holm and I were shoulder-to-shoulder silhouettes against the bright Florida sky. I was a step ahead, which put me even with his height and created the illusion that our arms were joined in a seamless line. Brotherhood.

  “Robbie, come see this,” I called from back in the shady tunnel. He grinned at the image, and I gave him a light punch to the shoulder. “We should get this one framed for Diane’s office.”

  Holm barked out a laugh. “Oh jeez, can you imagine her face if we snuck it in there?”

  “You know, I think she’d love it,” Alice told us. “She didn’t say it in these words exactly, but she thinks the world of you guys. It would be a great gift.”

  Alice wasn’t wrong, and I filed that thought for later as we emerged onto the beach. There were more people than I’d expected, but it wasn’t crowded. A nearby family laughed as their toddler threw sand at a big sister. Alice went over to get permission to take their photos. They swapped email addresses, and she spent a good half hour photographing the family.

  “She looks happy,” Holm observed. We lingered next to the lifeguard chair closest to them and enjoyed the scene. “It’s a damn shame she didn’t get to have that.”

  “She might’ve been happy before she knew the truth about her family,” I mused. “Even if she was, all that horrible shit later must have outweighed it.”

  “Hard telling.”

  Alice eventually made her way over to us. “They were fantastic. I’m ready for some hiking.”

  We went back through the tunnel with Alice in the lead. Holm made a hand sign, and I nodded. He dropped back to make sure nobody followed. We knew better than to take the surprise location for granted, especially after what happened at the botanic gardens.

  The state park had a magical element that even I, jaded as I was at times, could appreciate. It was nestled in the middle of a city, and yet, walking the trails felt like wandering through a jungle. We spent the first leg pointing out interesting trees and birds. Alice used me as her camera mule as she switched between Bonnie’s standard and IR cameras.

  “I get how infrared thermal images work,” I told her as she fitted a lens to one of the camera bodies. “What I don’t get is how you get these photos without the subjects giving off heat.”

  “Infrared light is along a spectrum just like every color we can see.” Alice let the camera hang from the strap around her neck and held out her hands to suggest the line or bar that everyone knew from textbooks that showed visible and ultraviolet light. “There’s a range within IR that goes from heat at one end and near-visible light at the other. The cameras pick up that light…” She trailed off to capture a few shots of a butterfly. “I don’t really get how they convert the camera so that we can see what we do in the images.” She shrugged and grinned. “It looks super cool, though.”

  The first break in the forest opened up to a campground that the park offered to kids during the weekends and summers. In the absence of small humans, nature filled the air with bird song and croaks, not to mention chirping insects that covered the city rumble from outside the park.

  “That’s the banyan tree.”

  Holm headed over to a tree that dwarfed everything around it. Vine-like branches hung to the ground down the trunk and from the overhanging limbs. A group of visitors took selfies and group photos at the base. I’d read somewhere that it took twelve people holding hands to encircle it.

  “Can you believe it’s a hundred years old?” Alice whispered. “If my green buildings last that long, I’ll have done my job.”

  “What inspired you to sustainable design?” I asked as we walked the perimeter of the stately giant. “That’s pretty niche.”

  “It won’t be niche for long.” She touched one of the hanging fingers and caressed it. “Fossil fuels will run out. Bàba, my dad, he used to tell me how he invested in solar in the eighties even when Yéyé told him it was foolish. Some of the companies died, but my dad picked one or two that are doing well now. He did the same when wind power came up.”

  “That’s pretty forward-thinking.” I stopped at her side as she closed her eyes for a few moments. “Alice?”

  “I was just thinking how nice it would be if Bàba had gone into investment banking instead of staying with the family.” She laughed on a wry note. “He could have if he’d had more ambition than a turtle on a log.”

  She pointed at a turtle on a log, and I laughed. It was a young gopher turtle that had climbed up a mossy ramp of sorts to catch sunlight on the end of a log. Alice lay on the ground and snapped photos of the little creature on its level. She swapped camera bodies and repeated the process. I had to admit a couple of things. First, those would be some damn fine shots. Second, from where I stood, I had a damn fine view of her backside. Holm shouldered my arm and rolled his eyes.

  Alice got to her feet and dusted off her borrowed blouse and led the way toward where the path picked up on the other side of the campground. Holm lagged behind, alert as always. I stuck next to Alice.

  “Why do you think your dad doesn’t try to do more?” I asked as she scanned the area around the trail for more photo opportunities.

  “He grew up feeling entitled to Yéyé’s empire,” she answered. “For a while, he tried that investment banking thing, but Yéyé threatened to pull his inheritance if he didn’t stay with the family business.”

  I’d be sore if Gramps had done the same when I decided not to keep up with the orange grove he and my grandmother ran. Sore and hurt, but it wouldn’t have stopped me from joining the Navy and SEALs. An orange grove couldn’t compare to what John Liu might leave to his descendants, though.

  “Was this before he met your mother?”

  Alice threw me a pained look, and I felt a guilty stab for bringing up the ugliness on such a gorgeous day.

  “Before. Yéyé paid for college and then my dad’s MBA so that he’d have a successor.” She clutched the camera to her chest. “I didn’t know about it until after I graduated with my degree in architecture. Yéyé paid for it with no strings, and my parents got angry with him for it.”

  “He paid for your way out of the syndicate,” I suggested.

  “Yeah. I guess two decades changed his perspective.” She stopped and met my eye. “I really don’t want to talk about it, but I’ll say this last thing. Yéyé told me he hoped I’d have better, a clear conscience as I get older. That’s why it was a shock when he asked me to take over. He thought I could clean out the crime from our family, but it’s impossible, Ethan. I’m not going to have anything to do with it.”

  She stepped away and continued down the trail without waiting for me.

  “What did you say to her?” Holm asked when he caught up. “She sure walked away in a hurry.”

  “Too many questions,” I admitted. “I should’ve left her alone to enjoy the day. I learned a few things, but she’s upset.”

  “It’s our job to look for answers,” he reminded me. “That said, I agree. Let her have some time to relax.”

  We spent the rest of the day exploring the trails and stopping for lunch when we circled back to the beach. By the time we had to head back to the office, Alice had returned to her warm personality and apparently forgiven me.

  Halfway back to the office, Holm hissed from the Charger’s back seat.

  “We picked up a tail,” he growled. “I don’t know how, but someone found us.”

  “Alice, you left your phone off in Diane’s office, right?” I looked up to the rearview mirror and saw the tan sedan I’d begun to notice in the past few minutes.

  “Yeah.” She started to twist in her seat, but I put my hand on her arm. “Right, don’t look,” she muttered.

  “Is there anything else from home that could be bugged?” Holm wanted to know.

  Alice thought and then checked the bag she’d been loaned. Her wallet didn’t turn up anything. She felt around her capri pant
s’ waistband and cuffs with no results. Embedded in a sandal strap, however, was a tiny chip.

  “Dammit.” I thought through a list of alleys and side roads that I could use to lose the tail long enough to dump the sandals.

  “There’s a way through behind that strip mall.” Alice pointed at a sign down the street. “I’ll throw my sandals out the window, and then you take off before he sees us.” I glanced at her with a raised brow. A tight smile crossed her lips. “I’ve watched a few movies.”

  “He’s dropped back,” I said to Holm. “Think we could time it right?”

  “It’s worth a try, but they’ll just wait for us outside MBLIS.”

  He wasn’t wrong. “Let’s worry about it once we’re clear.”

  I drove the next block as if we hadn’t noticed the tail. Fate shined on us, and we just missed the red light. Our tail got caught in the turn lane, but not for long. As soon as we were out of sight, I hung a hard right into the alley behind the strip mall. Alice rolled her window down and chucked the sandals into a dumpster. I floored it and peeled out to the left on the street at the far end.

  “Nice aim,” Holm said with a woot.

  “I play basketball at the park district,” she answered in a proud tone.

  The more I learned, the more I liked her. As I wound through back streets toward the only place I could think of that would be safe enough for Alice, I couldn’t help hoping I’d get a chance to know her even better.

  CHAPTER 31

  “You took her where?” Diane rarely raised her voice. This was one of those few exceptions. “Ethan, you can’t have Alice Liu at your houseboat.”

  “I’m thinking that the people are tracking her can’t find this place.” I paused and searched for a way to lighten the news. “Hey, I moved my Mustang outside so I could park the department car in the garage. Even if they thought of the marina, they wouldn’t see the Charger in the lot.”

  “Oh, good God,” Diane muttered. “Tell me Robbie is still with you.”