by Cap Daniels
By the time I’d finished, Penny had the anchor on deck, and Aegis was making fourteen knots toward Red Snapper Sink, a hole with no apparent bottom, about thirty miles offshore.
“Well, that was interesting,” I said when I’d finished my Florence Nightingale work and made my way to the cockpit.
“I’m so sorry,” Penny said. “I took off way too early.”
“Relax,” I insisted. “It wasn’t your fault. I failed to consider how much more challenging the jump would be with Sal’s weight.”
“No, I shouldn’t have been in such a hurry.”
“No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy,” I said. “Something always goes wrong. It was a minor hiccup, and you were amazing.”
She smiled. “Thank you for letting me come along. I like working with you.”
“I couldn’t have done it without you,” I admitted. “You just keep us heading for the Sink, and I’m going to find some dry clothes.”
Two and a half hours later, Penny announced, “We’ll be over the Sink in ten minutes.”
I stopped the ketamine drip and hog-tied Sal with his arms and legs behind his back. It took all my strength to wrestle him onto the starboard deck where I’d rigged a hoist from the boom. After connecting the hoist to Sal’s bindings, I gave the line a pull, lifting Sal’s body from the deck and suspending him in midair. I swung the boom over the side, leaving Sal hanging over the water and above the bottomless Red Snapper Sink. It was time to sit back and wait for the ketamine to wear off.
It didn’t take long.
He groggily opened his eyes and tried to make sense of his predicament. His eyes darted wildly and finally came to rest on me as I sat nonchalantly with my legs dangling over the side.
Rage overtook confusion, and he growled like a cornered animal. “You’re a dead man! You have no idea who you’re messing with!”
I smiled. “Look around, Sal. You’re dangling from my boom, over a pit in the ocean, where no one’s been able to locate the bottom. All I have to do is release this line, and no one will ever find your body. Ah, but that’s not really a concern. The sharks would make short work of you anyway, so there wouldn’t be anything left of you for anyone to find.”
His defiance was not diminished. “You’ve started something you can’t finish, asshole!”
I chuckled. “Do you really think you’re in any position to be making threats?”
He was unfazed. “You’re not going to kill me. You’re a cop, and no cop is going to mess with my family. You obviously have no idea who I am.”
I pulled a bag of grapes from the deck beside me and popped them into my mouth one at a time, occasionally throwing one at Sal’s head. “Oh, I know exactly who you are, Salvatore D’Angelo, son of Congresswoman Gail D’Angelo. But I’m no cop.”
“Bullshit,” he roared. “I saw you badge that cop, O’Malley.”
I laughed. “You have no idea what I showed Officer O’Malley, and I assure you, I’m no peace officer. I’m more what you might call an anti-peace officer. I make people like you—people who prey on little kids—regret the day they drew their first breath. I’m not afraid of you, your mother, or anyone else you think you have in your pocket. Now, it’s time for you to do some listening before I let you go for a little swim.”
A look of desperation replaced the mask of futile rage he’d been wearing. “Okay. Look, man. If it’s money you want—”
In feigned excitement, I asked, “How much?”
Realizing I was willing to negotiate, Sal’s eyes lit up. “A hundred grand.”
I bounced a grape off his head. “I’ve got a hundred grand in the safe downstairs. You’ll have to do better than that.”
He squirmed and strained against his restraints. “Okay, okay. Half a million, then. Five hundred grand. Just get me down.”
“Really? You’ve got half a million…in cash?” He didn’t appear to be catching on to my sarcasm.
“Yeah, yeah! Just get me down, and the money’s yours, man.”
“I don’t want your money,” I said, and released the line.
Salvatore D’Angelo fell and splashed face-first into the Atlantic Ocean.
Penny gasped.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not going to let him drown.”
I wound the line around an electric winch and pressed the button. Sal, dripping wet and screaming, rose from the water.
Believing I had Sal’s full attention, I swung the boom back toward the hull and stared into the man’s terrified eyes. I whispered, “How ’bout a million, Sal? Have you got a million bucks? How much is your putrid little life worth to you?”
Through trembling lips, he whimpered, “I don’t have that kinda cash, but I can get it. Forty-eight hours.”
I pressed my knuckles into the bridge of his nose, right between his eyes, hard enough to make him cringe. “You listen to me, and you listen very closely. You have forty-eight hours to put one million dollars in the bank account of Saint Francis Catholic School, and then you disappear from the state of Florida forever. Do you understand?”
“Yes, whatever you say.”
“Oh, and here are a couple more things for you to keep in mind. I have a handy little sample of your DNA that’s going into the National Crime Information Center database at the FBI. My highly placed friends and I will be watching your every move, and we’ll know where you go every day for the rest of your miserable life. If you ever have so much as a fleeting dirty thought about touching anyone under the age of thirty, I will fall down on you from a great height, and you’ll beg me to put you back in this hole in the ocean.”
I raked my knuckles down his nose, leaving a bloody trail as I went. “Don’t make me fall on you, Sal.”
I plunged the second syringe into his butt cheek and watched him drift off.
Two hours later, just as the hull of the RHIB came to rest on the beach in front of his house, I woke Sal from his slumber.
“Remember what I told you. You now have forty-six hours to put one million dollars into Saint Francis’s bank account and Florida in your rearview. Capiche?”
Free of his bindings, and groggy but aware, he said, “Yeah, I got it.”
I placed the heel of my boot against his hip, and then rolled him off the RHIB and into the shallow surf right in front of his oceanfront palace.
Chapter 6
Cause of Death
Penny was uncharacteristically quiet, and that concerned me.
“Are you okay?”
“I think so,” she said. “It’s just that I’ve never seen anything like that before. Is that what you do when you’re gone?”
I knew it would happen, but I hadn’t prepared myself for the inevitable conversation. “Yes, that’s what I do. I don’t always kill people. Sometimes I just let them think I’m going to kill them. The psychology of believing you’re about to die is primordial. No greater instinct is hardwired into our psyche than the will and desire to stay alive.”
She wouldn’t make eye contact. “It’s kind of scary.”
“It’s supposed to be scary. That’s why it works. It all happens in the brain’s hippocampus and amygdala. When a person believes he’s about to die—”
She placed her hand on my arm. “Chase, I don’t want a biology lesson. I want to know how you do it. Doesn’t it bother you at all?”
I brushed her hair back with the tips of my fingers and held her perfect face in my hands. “Remember those two kids you want? A boy and a girl?”
She nodded.
“Imagine Salvatore D’Angelo taking our beautiful little daughter by the hand and leading her to his car.”
Her face lost its color, and she shivered in my hands.
“That’s how I do it. Everything I do is to stop evil from prevailing. I’m not a soulless killer. What I do saves lives and protects countless people from facing unthinkable evils lurking in the shadows.”
“Is Clark like you?”
I closed my eyes and tried t
o come up with the right words. “No. Clark is very different. He’s a freight train on Main Street.”
She furrowed her brow. “Huh?”
“Those are his words, not mine. He says I’m a surgeon, cutting out cancer with a very sharp scalpel, and he’s a freight train on Main Street killing everyone in his way. Our operational styles are quite different, but both are crucial. What we do makes it possible for routine life to go on every day without most people knowing we exist. Everything we do is behind the scenes. We don’t get medals or keys to the city. You’ll never see us on the news or read about us in the newspaper, but we get to go to sleep at night knowing we’ve made a difference in the world.”
The look on her face said she wasn’t buying it. “Would you have killed him if he hadn’t agreed to your terms?”
I considered her question. “I never had any intention of killing him. I held the position of power throughout the operation. I was in total control from start to finish. I would’ve kept pushing him until he believed I was going to kill him and he gave me what I wanted.”
“The money. Do you think he’ll really give it to the school?”
“The money wasn’t part of the plan. I was just going to scare him out of Florida. He put the money in play, so I took advantage of what he offered. You heard what O’Malley said about the congresswoman trying to shut down the school. That kind of money will make closing the school nearly impossible. It was an unexpected collateral benefit. Sometimes those things happen. We score a piece of intelligence we didn’t expect, or a scumbag pukes up a million bucks for a school.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I knew what you did was dangerous, but I never imagined what it was really like.”
“Don’t be sorry. This isn’t easy for anyone to swallow.”
“Did you kill anyone in Panama?”
The dramatic shift in her line of questioning took me by surprise, and I remembered the promise I’d made to her.
I will never lie to you.
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Would they have killed you if you hadn’t killed them?”
“Yes, without question. In fact, everyone I killed was actively trying to kill me.”
“Then I’m glad you did it,” she said, pulling me into her arms.
I wondered if the conversation was over, but I was smart enough not to ask.
“Get a room, you two!” Earl’s shrill voice pierced the sincerity of our moment.
“This is our room,” I said.
“Yeah, well, that might be your room, but them engines in there are mine. How long’s it been since the oil’s been changed?”
“I have no idea, Earl, but you can bet your buns that nobody’s touched them except you.”
“That better be the truth, and I’ll know if it ain’t as soon as I get my hands on ’em. I’ve got the oil and filters, so I figured I oughta go ahead and get that done before you run off again to God knows where.”
I grinned. “Thanks, Earl. We’ve had a long day, so we’re going to have a little siesta while you work your magic in the engine rooms.”
“Fine by me,” she said, “but I’m gonna service the generator and water maker while I’m down there, so I can’t promise you I’ll be none too quiet.”
“Don’t you worry, Earl,” Penny said. “If you wake us up, I’m sure I can find some way to keep Stud Muffin here occupied.”
“Ha! You go on and have your fun, Little Miss Sugar-Britches, but remember, I’ve been on the planet twice as long as you. My belly may not be flat like yours, but old girls like me know tricks you young chicks can’t even spell yet.”
Recognizing that as my cue to make an exit, I stood from the settee and headed for my bunk. I was looking forward to Penny keeping me occupied, but exhaustion had other plans for us. We were asleep within minutes, and we never heard Earl make a sound.
I opened my eyes, and Penny was sitting beside me with her legs crossed and the paperwork from the probate court on her lap. Her hair fell across her shoulders, and the light through the hatch above her head made her look like an angel.
“You’re beautiful,” I whispered as I laid my hand on her knee.
She tried to smile, but it was tempered with an emotion I couldn’t define.
Is it doubt?
She placed her hand atop mine. “Is she dangerous?”
“Is who dangerous?” I asked, still not fully awake.
“Anya.”
I couldn’t remember if I’d ever heard Penny say her name before then. I opened my mouth, but the voice in my head screamed, “You promised not to lie to her!”
“Yes,” I said. “She’s the most dangerous person I know.”
“Then why do you love her?”
The question made me feel like I’d been hit by a truck. I took Penny’s hand in mine and pulled her toward me. Her body came to rest against mine.
“I love you, Penny Thomas.”
She ran her fingers through my hair. “I know, but—”
“But nothing,” I said. “You’re the woman I love, and there’s no one else. There was a time when I thought I loved her, but it was before I knew the truth. It was when my feelings were based on a lie…on a whole collection of lies. But none of it was real.”
“It was real for you at the time.”
Perhaps Penny was a better psychologist than I’d ever be, but I needed her to understand how I could compartmentalize the feelings I’d once had for Anya against the reality that it had all been a cruel ruse.
“Think of it like Sal hanging over the water this morning. He was in no real danger, and I was never going to kill him. I wasn’t even going to hurt him, but he didn’t know that. He believed I was seconds away from taking his life, but just because he believed that doesn’t mean it was true. The truth doesn’t change because of our perception. Water is wet. Fire is hot. No matter what we believe, the truth remains. I believed Anya was in love with me. I believed she was defecting. I believed all sorts of things, none of which were true, and none of which changed the truth. She never loved me, and she never stopped working for the Russians.”
She held up the court paperwork. “So, even after all that, you’re still going to risk your life to find her and give her this money?”
“It’s rightfully hers,” I said.
Penny squinted and swallowed hard.
I took her hand. “Say what you’re thinking.”
She inhaled deeply as if carefully considering what she was about to say. “It’s just that . . .”
Silence filled the air, and I waited…and waited.
The corners of her mouth turned downward.
“It’s okay,” I tried to reassure her. “Just say it.”
“It’s just that she did those horrible things to you, and you still think she deserves the money.” She blurted out the words as if they’d been boiling inside her.
“It’s not that she deserves the money. It’s just what’s right. She’s Dr. Richter’s daughter, and—”
“Oh, bullshit! I don’t care if she’s the pope’s daughter. She hurt you, and I love you, and that money isn’t going to change that.” She clenched her jaw. “Besides, she’s beautiful and dangerous, and you’re going after her, and what if she does it again? What if you can’t tell her no? What if you can’t resist and then I lose you? And then what? Huh? Am I supposed to just sit here on this boat waiting for you to come back, or maybe not come back at all? Maybe you’ll decide to stay with her because she’s beautiful and—”
I reached for her, intending to take her in my arms, but she slapped at my hands. “No, Chase! No! That’s not going to fix this. I love you, and I don’t want to lose you to her.” Her shoulders drooped, and she pushed her palms into her eyes in a useless attempt to quell the tears.
“Penny,” I said softly. “Listen to me.”
“No! You listen to me.” She cleared her throat and wiped her face. “It’s not your responsibility. If you want her to have the money, that’s fine, but what
about the other stuff?”
“What other stuff?” I asked, knowing I was walking a tightrope between logic and emotion.
“The airplane and the house and all the personal effects? How about that diary or whatever it is you were reading about the war? What about all that stuff? Are you giving all of that to her, as well?”
I had no idea what to say.
What would Anya—or Norikova, or whatever her name is—do with a retired professor’s house in Athens, Georgia? What would she do with a P-51 Mustang? Is it even possible for a Russian national, living illegally in the country, to own a house and an airplane?
“That’s what I thought,” said huffed. “You don’t plan on giving her the rest of the stuff, do you? You just plan on giving her the money.”
“I don’t have a plan,” I admitted. “I don’t know what to do. I just don’t think it’s right—”
She cut me off. “You’re right. It’s not right! It’s not right that she should get away with doing what she did to you, and besides . . .” Indecision was obvious on her face. She closed her eyes and whispered, “Who was the last person to see him alive?”
“What?”
“God forgive me, Chase, but I can’t stop thinking that she was the last person to see Dr. Richter alive.”
“No!” I said, refusing to follow her down the path she was taking.
“I’m not saying she killed him, Chase. I’m just saying . . .”
The thought of Anya killing her father was more than I wanted to let myself believe, but I had to accept her for what she was at her core: one of the world’s deadliest assassins.
“Okay, I get it,” I said. “You’re right.”
“About what?”
I sighed. “When Anya Burinkova is the last person to see someone alive, there’s no question about the cause of death.”
Chapter 7
Playboy Mush
“She killed him,” I said into the phone.
“Penny killed D’Angelo?” questioned Clark.
“No, Penny didn’t kill anyone. I think Anya killed Dr. Richter.”
