THIRTY TWO
The coast became familiar as they crossed the reef at Loo Key and followed Hawks Channel heading towards Marathon. Mac leaned against the railing, anxious now that they were getting close to Mel. The patch had held and TJ seemed to be OK. He would need a hospital, but the bleeding was under control and he was obviously not in shock from the way he was flirting with Alicia. They were almost home and he wondered if Mel was still alive, and if the entire ordeal had gotten him anywhere. Norm was dead and he was no closer to clearing his name than when they left. His only chance was the woman wearing the bright orange life jacket. Not a reassuring picture for his future.
“Can you two break it up for a minute,” he said over the Jimmy Buffet music Trufante had blaring on the sound system. They looked at him as if he was ruining their party. “Alicia, I need your help.”
She rose from the deck and Mac noticed their hands pause before they let go.
They moved into the cabin. “Norm made some promises. I did what he asked and need to see Mel,” Mac said. They replaced the cushions on the settee and sat down.
“Oh.” She paused. “With all this going on, I forgot to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“I hacked into the hospital’s computer.” She paused again. “Yesterday, I think, and found some falsified test results from a bullshit doctor in Miami.”
Mac stared at her, surprised by her language, waiting for her to continue.
“I emailed a co-worker and asked him to check it out,” she said and pulled the computer closer. The VHF was on the floor with an assortment of other gear that hadn’t been secured.
Mac waited while she checked TJ’s phone and set it next to the computer. “Don’t you need the radio?”
“No, I’ve got four bars on the phone. It’ll work as a hot-spot. Be faster too.”
He waited while she worked through several screens and finally stopped to read. “Here. This is the response: Doctor handled and test results removed.”
“That’s it?” He was getting frustrated by the lack of information. “It’s Saturday, isn’t it?” he asked.
“I know. They are supposed to make a decision today,” she said. “I can pull up her records.”
“OK,” Mac said and raced from the cabin, passing TJ on the deck and climbing the ladder two rungs at a time. “Head for Boot Harbor and turn in the canal by the hospital. Trufante nodded. “And shut that crap off. We’re trying to run incognito here, you know. There might be a few folks looking for the boat that outran the Cuban Navy.”
He went back down to the cabin, checking on TJ as he went. He nodded back and Mac glanced over the rail. The beach at Bahia Honda was off to the left, putting them about ten miles from the hospital. Alicia was working the screen when he returned and he was surprised to find the life jacket to the side.
She looked up as he sat next to her. “The test results have been removed and there is a note that her condition is unchanged. Treatment is pending a review by the ethics committee at four pm.”
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Three,” she answered. “Can we make it?”
“I think so, but I can’t walk right in there like I came back from the dead.” He slumped back in defeat.
“Actually, you can. You had the power to do that all along.”
Mac stared at her. “What about what Norm said?”
“I’m sorry, but he lied about that, as well as everything else, to facilitate his plan. The worst that could have happened was you would be arrested, but even incarcerated, you would retain your role as decision-maker.”
“So, let me get this straight. I can walk in the hospital, go to the meeting, and they have to listen to me.”
“Exactly,” she said and started typing. “I’ll send the hospital an email and let them know to wait for you.”
He set his hand over hers to stop her. “No. They’ll have the sheriff there. Let me surprise them. After the meeting I can deal with whatever fallout I have to.” He looked at her. “Don’t suppose you can help me with that?” he asked.
***
Mac paced the deck as the boat passed under the old Boot Key Bridge and entered the mooring field. He looked at the canal leading to his house, but turned away and searched for the Thirtieth street canal off to the left. Trufante appeared to be steering right for it and he went to TJ.
“Can you put any weight on it?” he asked. “Hospital’s right up there, but there’s no dock and we’re going to have to walk a few blocks.”
TJ looked up at him and extended a hand. Mac hauled the man to his feet.
“I can put some weight on it. Hurts like all hell though,” he said.
Mac looked around the deck and saw a boat hook latched to the gunwale. He released it from the bungee cords securing it and handed it to TJ. “See how that works.”
TJ took a few tentative steps, using the hook for a cane, and sat on the bench. “It’ll work.”
They looked over the rail. Land was on their left and a grid of mooring balls, boats scattered on a few, were on their right. Trufante called out, turned the boat into the canal and eased the boat up to a dock.
“Stay with the boat,” Mac called to Trufante and helped TJ get over the gunwale and onto the dock. “Hold on.” He went to the cabin. “You should come with me,” he said to Alicia. “I might need your skill-set.”
She smiled and rose.
Mac helped her onto the dock and offered his shoulder to TJ. Together they crossed through several back yards and emerged on US 1. Mac could feel TJ’s weight increase. They turned right and walked the two blocks to the hospital.
“Take care of him,” he told Alicia as they entered the Emergency Room and he eased TJ into a vacant wheelchair by the door.
“Wait. They’re required to report the gunshot wound,” she said.
Mac thought for a minute. “Just tell them it was an accident. We’ll deal with it later.” He walked back outside and went to the main entrance, where he paused and looked down at himself before entering. His clothes were salt- crusted and torn. His body resembled a pincushion, lacerations across his arms and legs. He stood there shoeless, wondering who would listen to him, and then remembered he was coming back from the dead - might as well look like it.
With a deep breath, he entered the lobby and went for the restroom, where he did a quick clean-up job, then walked straight to the nurses’ desk.
“Can I help you?” a nurse with a slight southern accent asked.
He couldn’t help but notice the eyes on him. “Ethics committee meeting for Melanie Woodson?” he asked.
Three nurses gathered around and one, who carried herself with more authority, spoke. “And you are?”
He paused. “Mac Travis.”
The words hung in the air for several seconds as the nurses looked back and forth between each other and him. “But the news reports…”
“Were slightly exaggerated.” He couldn’t help but borrow the Mark Twain quote. “Can you tell me where the meeting is?”
“Just a minute,” the head nurse said and walked away.
There was an awkward moment before she came back, and the nurses and Mac exchanged glances. “They are in the meeting room on the fourth floor. I let them know you were coming,” she said.
Mac left the desk, wondering who else she would tell he was alive. He didn’t expect it to be this easy, especially with Bradley Davies involved. The elevator dropped him on the fourth floor and he glanced down the hallway to Mel’s room, wanting to see her, but instead turned to the nurses’ station and asked directions to the meeting room.
He stood outside the door, took a few deep breaths and turned the handle. Five pairs of eyes stared at him as he walked in, closed the door, and focused immediately on Davies. “You can go back to the hole you crawled out of. I’ll take it from here.” The line he had been rehearsing in his head came out better than he expected.
“Well, Travis, you’re alive,” Davies said.
“This is Mac Travis?” one of the doctors asked Davies.
“In the flesh,” Mac answered for him.
“Then he can assume his role in the process,” the doctor said and indicated an empty chair.
“Not so fast.” Davies shuffled some papers.
“Excuse me?” the doctor said. “Miss Woodson was clear in her will.”
Davies smiled and Mac waited. “There is a question of mental health here,” he started.
Mac stared at him in disbelief.
“Mr. Travis has been running from the law for over a week, leaving a path of destruction in his wake. Y’all have seen the news.” Davies slid into a southern drawl, trying to lure them under his spell. They could have been sipping lemonade on his back porch. “Look at him. Is this a man you would trust to make decisions about your life?”
“But ... ” Mac started.
Davies cut him off and he noticed several of the doctors checking the clock on the wall. “I think a full psychological profile is in order before I am willing to allow Mr. Travis his position. What do you folks call it?” He pretended to think. “51-50?”
Mac stood speechless while the doctors talked amongst themselves. Finally one spoke, looking at Davies and not Mac. He knew this wasn’t going his way. “We agree that a psych profile should be done before we change anything.”
“Thank you. That’s the responsible thing to do,” Davies said. “Now, can we excuse Mr. Travis and finish our discussion?”
The doctor cleared his throat. “We have also agreed to continue life support until the determination about Mr. Travis is made.”
Before Davies offer his rebuttal, the door opened and the sheriff entered. “Mac Travis. You are under arrest.” He signalled to two deputies standing behind him. As Mac rose to comply, he could see the smile on Davies’s face. They were about to leave the room when Alicia burst through the door.
“What’s going on here?” she asked, her voice cracking slightly.
“Taking Travis to the station for processing, then I think these old boys want to 51-50 him. And you are?”
Alicia stumbled. “Alicia Phon, CIA,” she said.
“You got credentials? It’s my jurisdiction.”
“No, sir,” she said. “Mr. Travis is involved in an ongoing assignment with us.”
The sheriff was silent for a moment. “I’ll have to check this out.” He turned to the deputies. “Take her too.”
Mac saw Davies smile as a zip tie was placed on his wrists. Just before the officer had a chance to pull it tight, Alicia jabbed him in the ribs forcing him to raise his arms while she made a show of resisting.
“Good call, Sheriff,” Davies said. “She doesn’t look like any CIA agent I’ve ever seen.”
“We’ll sort this out at the station,” the sheriff said, pushed Mac towards the door and walked him to the elevator.
The down arrow illuminated and there was a beep as the cab arrived. The doors started to open. Alicia suddenly threw her elbows up and pulled her hands free of the restraints. Before the deputies could react, she kicked the closest one in the shin, sliding her foot down the tender tissue. He fell in pain and she immobilized the other man with a chop to the neck. Mac mimicked her move, freed himself, then threw a roundhouse punch at the sheriff.
The doors opened and they entered the elevator, the lawmen too stunned to move. She pushed the door close button repeatedly and then the button for the second floor.
“Nice work,” Mac said. “Is that what you hit me in the ribs for?”
“Can’t believe the training actually worked,” she said.
The doors opened on the second floor and they exited the elevator. Alicia took a glance at the exit plan posted above the call buttons and started running down the hall. “Come on. We’ll take the back stairs.”
“What about TJ?” Mac asked as he caught up to her.
“They admitted him. That’s all we can do for now.”
They reached the stairwell and were soon outside the building. Mac followed her back through the parking lot and into the neighboring yards they had crossed on the way there.
“Fire it up,” He yelled to Trufante, who appeared to be sleeping on the bridge. He grabbed the dock lines, tossed them on the deck and jumped aboard. Alicia was just behind him. He heard the engines start and shift into forward. Seconds later they were moving towards the harbor.
THIRTY THREE
“That just got us in more trouble, but I guess we had no choice,” Mac said as they left the dock and headed towards Sisters Creek. Although they were probably looking for him and Alicia by now, the boat, as of yet, did not have a target on it.
“They know you’re alive now. Once the sheriff checks my credentials, we should be OK,” she said.
Mac wasn’t quite sure if OK was the right word, and figured resisting arrest, as well as assaulting an officer, would be added to the growing list of charges he would eventually face.
“At least it bought us a little time,” he said. Now that he was alive again, they had agreed to delay the decision, but was it the right thing to leave Mel in limbo? He had thought until now that all he had to do was show up and she would be saved. He sat next to Alicia in the cabin, reading the notes on the screen. After reading the file, even with the bogus doctor’s report, he wasn’t at all sure what decision he should make or how he could make it. The one thing he did know was that he had to deal with Davies.
“Can you pull up what you can on Bradley Davies. Last I heard he was supposed to be in jail.” Something slammed on the roof of the cabin and he heard Trufante call from the deck. He left Alicia studying the screen, went out of the cabin and climbed the ladder to the flybridge, carefully stepping around the blood dried on the deck.
“What we gonna do?” the Cajun asked.
“Hole up in Sister Creek until we can figure this out,” Mac said, and sat in the chair next to him.
“I could use something to eat. We ran out of beer and chips a while ago.”
“You guys can sure provision a boat,” Mac jibed. “You know that canal at the end of Flamingo Key where we caught all that mullet. Head up in there and we can cut over to the Anchor. One of those Hogfish sandwiches that Rufus makes would sit good about now and Rusty will cover for us if anyone gets curious.” His stomach grumbled at the mention of food.
“What about Mel?”
“I gotta figure that one out. The girl is working on clearing us with the sheriff and figuring out why Davies is roaming around the island like a free man.”
“Why not just break her out,” Trufante said, “like we did old Wood.”
Mac almost laughed, remembering the old man, then realized Trufante had no idea how severe Mel’s condition was. He decided to let the comment go and zoomed the chart-plotter in on the maze of canals they were about to enter. The canal he planned to tie up in was remote and he knew they could anchor in the vacant dead-end.
Alicia came out of the cabin and climbed the ladder. “No life jacket?” Mac asked.
She shot him a cocky look and leaned against the rail.
He looked at her and was proud, in a strange sort of way, of how she had grown in the last few days. She might have a future if they could get out of this mess. “You know that you don’t have to follow this through. The threat to the ferry is over.”
“I’m kinda liking hanging out with you two. Look at all the stuff I’m learning. If it’s alright with you, I’d like to see justice, and that brings me to Bradley Davies. What a piece of work. He somehow got released under the sheriff’s recognizance.”
“It didn’t seem like that at the meeting, more like the other way around. The sheriff was clearly answering to him,” Mac said and thought for a minute. “Son of a bitch bought his way out of jail.” Things were falling into place. “Mel knows every skeleton in his closet. He’d want to see her dead, if he could, before skipping the country.”
They were quiet as Trufante wound the boat through the canals that were co
nfigured like a road system in a subdivision with docks lining both sides instead of cars. At the end of a dead end, he saw a house with its hurricane shutters in place and had Trufante pull up to the dock. Off to the side of the house they could see the mangrove-lined trail leading to the Rusty Anchor.
They climbed onto the dock and set off down the trail where after a quarter mile it opened up to a large crushed coral turnaround with the bar backed up to a turning basin leading to the Atlantic.
“Mac?” Rusty called when he saw them enter.
“Hey, Rusty, got a beer for a dead man?” Mac asked as they sat at a small table by the bar. “Rufus around? We could use a few of those Hogfish sandwiches.”
Rusty brought over three beers and set them in front of the group. “Good to see ya, Mac. I knew all that wasn’t true.” He set the beers down and walked away.
Trufante was halfway through his beer when he looked over at Alicia’s untouched bottle. “Better I handle that for you,” he said. He finished his bottle in one swallow and grabbed hers. “Yo, Rusty, how ‘bout a Coke for the lady.”
“Watch the beers,” Mac warned him. We’re not out of the woods yet.” Mac sipped his and thought while they waited for the food, trying to imagine what he would do if he were Davies. His reappearance along with a CIA agent would force Davies to make a move. Men like him would save their own skin first - but how? There was only one road off the island and he would have to go through Miami to leave the country. Boats were more common than cars here, but most were limited in range to the Bahamas, or maybe Cuba. That was it, he thought.
“With all these new agreements with Cuba, did they agree to an extradition treaty?” he asked Alicia.
“I don’t think so.”
The food came and they dug into the famous sandwiches. Mac heard the buzz of a small plane flying overhead, about to descend into Marathon Airport, and he knew the answer. The airport had few commercial flights now, but was a hub for private planes. If Davies could rent one, he could be out of the country by dark.
Mac shoved the rest of the sandwich in his mouth and went to the bar, “We need a check and a favor.”
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