The Seadragon's Daughter (Dragon de la Sangre)

by Alan F. Troop

  Finally, I walk over to the gumbo limbo tree overlooking the harbor where I buried Elizabeth and sit down in its shade, my back to its trunk. Max lies down next to me, dropping his massive head in my lap. Studying the harbor, scratching behind the dog’s ears, Max making a sound halfway between a sigh and a growl as I do, I wonder just where the Pelk attack will come from and how I can defend my wife and myself.

  Just the process of thinking it out seems to diminish my sorrow. I remember my father’s saying, “Action always trumps despair,” and I smile.

  Thanks to Lorrel, I know where their safehold lies. But I can’t be sure that they’ll attack directly from there. I look back to the veranda and the large oak door that opens to the nearest of my father’s arms rooms. I can make good use of his ancient cannons, rifles and deck guns, and the barrels of gunpowder, canisters of shot and stacks of lead cannonballs stored with them.

  But I also think it might be good to have Claudia arrange some modern firepower. I check my watch and nod when I see it reads only ten forty-five. Plenty of time left for other things. I turn my mind to Jordan Davidson and what I need to do to finish with him.

  “Chloe,” I mindspeak.

  “No, Peter. I told you I don’t want to deal with you right now.”

  “I love you and you love me, right?” I mindspeak.

  “Of course. This isn’t about that.”

  “Good. Then let’s not deal with me or what I did right now. Let’s table the whole thing until after we take care of everything else. I need your help. We have to prepare for the Pelks’ attack. I think we have a couple of days’ leeway, but it could come any time after that. I’d like to settle this whole mess with The Weekly Dish and Pepe Santos’s lawsuit before it happens.”

  Chloe mindspeaks, “Why bother with that now?”

  Max’s ears pick up when I sigh. “Because, if the Pelk win, our children will have troubles enough without having to contend with the legal system and the media over my problems. I think I have it all pretty much worked out. I’m going to wake Derek. After that I’m coming back upstairs to go over what I need with you and Claudia.”

  I’d been prepared to offer my brother-in-law money or to threaten him if necessary, but to my surprise, after I spell out everything I need, Derek says. “Why not, old man? It doesn’t sound very difficult to me.”

  “And you’re sure you remember how to do it?” I say.

  “Bloody well sure,” he says. “You know our kind doesn’t forget things like that.”

  It pains me to stop Claudia from reading through the journal, but I say, “I need you to put the journal down for now. I’d like you to go to shore for me and arrange some things.”

  “No problem, boss,” she says, closing the book. “I haven’t found anything useful in there yet anyway.”

  I nod. “I need you to get in touch with Toba. Didn’t you say that she and Pepe like to go fishing a lot?”

  Claudia looks at me. “Yeah, I did, I think.”

  “Can she get him to go fishing at night, when and where I want?”

  “Probably.”

  “ ‘Probably’ won’t work,” I say. “I want to know exactly when they can be available. Also, I want to know what type of gun she uses. Your father did say she’s a great shot, didn’t he?”

  Claudia nods. “She’s won a lot of marksmanship awards. I think she can shoot most anything, but she carries a small automatic.”

  “I need you to find out the make and model.”

  “Okay, boss,” Claudia says.

  “And Jordan Davidson still has his own boat?”

  “A Robalo 28. He keeps it behind his house.”

  “Can you get one of your operatives to do something so he can’t use it in the next few days? Something that could be easily reversed?”

  “Sure.”

  “You said he likes to play with guns. I need to know whether he has any registered.”

  Claudia nods and I tell her the rest of what I want from her and Toba. She stares at me a moment and then says, “You sure all this will make whatever you’re planning work?”

  “I think so,” I say.

  After Claudia leaves, Chloe says, “Okay, now tell me what’s going on.”

  I explain all of it to her—my plans for Derek, how I intend to use Toba and Pepe, how all of it should come together.

  “And Derek went along with it?” she says.

  “Without even one question.”

  Chloe shakes her head. “It sounds as if it could work. Do you really think we can pull this off?”

  “With luck, maybe,” I say.

  She smiles. “So now what?”

  “I have to call Ian. I thought maybe you’d take a swim with me after that.”

  “You want to go swimming now?”

  I grin. “I want to show you something.”

  Ian Tindall picks up his phone as soon as his secretary tells him who’s on the line. “Damn you, Peter,” he says. “Where the hell have you been?”

  I smile, say into the receiver, “Hi, Ian. Good to hear from you too.”

  “Look, don’t expect sweetness and light from me. Your disappearance has made it unbelievably difficult for me to do my job for you. Missing the deposition is probably the stupidest thing you’ve ever done. Gil Martinez is sick to his stomach over it. When he ran for district attorney we were his biggest contributors. And because of you, he had to ask for a warrant for your arrest.”

  “Believe me, Ian, it wasn’t my choice to go. But I’m back now and I want to get things worked out.”

  “Are you out on Caya DelaSangre? No, don’t tell me that. Just tell me what your plans are.”

  “That’s why I’m calling. I want to come in and surrender, get the whole thing over with.”

  “Good. I can arrange it with Gil. We can probably have you in and bailed out within minutes, before the media even gets wind of it.”

  “No,” I say, picturing Ian’s expression, the red flush that will soon start spreading across his pale face. “I want the media there. I want Martinez to do the whole show, the perp walk, the fingerprints, everything. And I want to refuse bail. . . .”

  “What? Are you crazy? There’s no need for that.”

  “I want you to tell Martinez and the press that I’m refusing bail to show how unfair this accusation is. I want as many people as possible to know I’m in jail.”

  “It makes no sense, Peter.”

  “It doesn’t have to make sense to you. It makes sense to me. Can you negotiate my surrender without it leaking?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good, then start the conversation. I’ll come in sometime in the next few days. It will be at night. You’ll get an advance warning.”

  “Could you be any more melodramatic?”

  “I don’t need you to be a drama critic. Just get it arranged,” I say.

  35

  “Peter, what’s the big deal? Why did you rush away?” Chloe says, catching up to me just as I reach the stone jutting out into Wayward Channel.

  I turn to her, look at the tiny blue bikini—so tight on her that the elastic digs into her flesh. “You and I both know you didn’t choose that suit by accident,” I say.

  She looks down at her suit, her face all innocence. “That’s no reason for you to walk away from me as soon as I walked out onto the veranda. It’s my bikini. There’s no reason I shouldn’t wear it.”

  “I don’t need to be shamed. I feel bad enough already.”

  Chloe’s eyes narrow. “Not bad enough,” she says.

  Words well up in my mind, but I shake my head. I put my hands up, chest high, palms out. “No more. I didn’t come back to fight with you. I thought we agreed to let all this alone until everything else is settled.”

  “We are going to have to deal with it sometime.”

  “Just later, okay?” I turn away from Chloe. I ache for her to touch me the way she always did before. I want to hold her again. But for now I have to accept that it’s not a po
ssibility.

  I say nothing more, just stand still and stare at the dark blue water in the channel. The afternoon sun bakes me, the heat of it barely cooled by the light, steady ocean breeze. After all the time I’ve had to spend in caves and underwater, I have little desire to go below again. I take a breath and wonder just how deep I’ll have to swim, how long it will take.

  A Styrofoam cup floats by on its way to the ocean and I exhale. “The tide’s going out,” I say, studying the cup’s rapid movement. “The current’s going to be strong. Take a deep breath. We may be underwater for a long time.”

  I dive into the cool water. A moment later, Chloe splashes after me. “Are you going to explain where we’re going? What we’re looking for?” she mindspeaks.

  “A safehold,” I mindspeak, explaining what they are and how the Pelk use them, as I swim under the rock and run my hand over the island’s sheer side, feeling for any indentation, any protruding piece of metal that might signify the existence of a trap door like Lorrel found near Bimini. But I encounter only stone.

  “Lorrel said this one has two entrances. I need to know where they are so I can plan our defense. We’re looking for a hole or a crevice—anything that might lead to a tunnel.”

  “Under our island?”

  “I’m afraid so,” I mindspeak, swimming further down, staring, feeling. “Lorrel says she stayed in it.”

  “That gives me the creeps,” Chloe mindspeaks, swimming a few yards away, searching the island’s wall too. About twenty feet down, she stops and points in front of her. “Here, look at this.”

  The hole is more angular than round—almost an irregular zig-zag cut through the stone—wide enough at its center for us to squeeze through. At my insistence, we surface for fresh air before we try to see what we can find.

  Since it’s too tight for both of us to swim through together, I go in first. Chloe follows, close enough that she occasionally brushes against my feet. The tunnel narrows and turns after fifteen feet, and we lose light shortly after that.

  “We should have brought a light,” Chloe mindspeaks.

  “It’s not necessary,” I mindspeak, feeling my way forward. “We’ll have light once we reach the safehold.”

  “What if your Pelk girlfriend lied and we’re just lost in a tunnel to nowhere?”

  “She isn’t my girlfriend and we’re not lost,” I mindspeak. But I smile in the dark water a few minutes later when the tunnel ends and I feel a square stone shaft rising up from it.

  I surface in a small underground pond, take a breath and feel my way around its edges until I find a stone ledge. Chloe surfaces behind me and gasps in air. I take her hand and tug her to the ledge. “Pull yourself up here,” I say, hauling myself out of the water. “I’m going to get us some light.”

  Walking forward, I step into a glowpool with my right foot and almost fall over. A few yards later, I feel a wall and stone shelves. I run my hands along the shelf until I touch a small seaweed bag. I bring it back to the glowpool and dump the contents of the bag into it.

  A green glow spreads across the water and illuminates the cavern. Sitting by the ledge, Chloe looks at me with wide eyes. She stares up at the cavern’s stone ceiling. “What are we under?” she says.

  I shrug.

  “She really stayed down here?”

  Pointing to a crumpled seaweed blanket by the far wall and a dozen or so discarded seaweed bags near it, I say, “For a while, I think.”

  “Isn’t this too small for Mowdar and all of his men?” Chloe says.

  Shaking my head, I walk to the shelves, opening chests, showing Chloe the stores of dried fish, the blankets, ropes and phosphorescent powder stored along the wall. At the end of the shelf I find a crevice in the wall.

  I go back to the shelf, take a bag of phosphorescence and say, “Wait here a minute.” I have to squeeze my way for only a few feet before I find myself in another underground chamber. I locate another glowpool, pour powder into it and call for Chloe to come. As I swirl the glowpool’s water, the light grows, showing us a large room with even more supplies and another pool toward its far end.

  Chloe comes through the crevice and puts her hands on her hips, looking around, studying everything. “Pretty sophisticated when you think of it,” she says.

  “Lorrel said in the old days they had safeholds all over the Carribean.”

  “Well, good for her,” Chloe says.

  I sigh and point toward the pond. “I have to take that—to see where it comes out. You can go back the other way if you want.”

  This time the tunnel leads to a crevice, a vertical slash in the stone really, so narrow that I scrape my back and chest squeezing through it. Chloe follows right behind me, both of us surprised to find ourselves at the far end of our harbor, close to a stand of red mangrove trees.

  Chloe looks around, treading water, “We could blow up the entrances to their cave,” she says.

  I shake my head. “That would just make them set up camp elsewhere. This way, at least we’ll know where they’re going to come from.”

  “You hope,” Chloe says. She walks away from me as soon as we get on the dock.

  By the time I get to our bedroom, Chloe has already stepped out of her bikini. I stare at her naked human form, the brown swell of her breasts, the tight black curls of her pubic hair. She picks up a towel and covers herself. “I’ve been thinking about it. I’d be a lot more comfortable if you’d move to Henri’s room for a while.”

  My mouth drops open and I say and do nothing.

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d grab some clothes and go there now, Peter. I don’t want you here right now.”

  I want to scream out, to refuse to go. Instead I say, “If not now, then when?”

  Chloe shakes her head. “Go. You asked me not to fight with you until everything’s over. I’ll have this conversation with you then.”

  A small spot starts burning in my midriff. I wince and rub over the spot with my hand for a moment, though the motion brings absolutely no relief. The burning reminds me all too well that almost three days have gone by since I last drained a bottle of temporary antidote. It will grow from now until I take my next dose.

  Fortunately, the bag holding the bottles lies on the dining table in the great room, only a matter of a minute or two to reach. I gather up an armload of clothes and rush from the room, muttering, “If either of us is still alive by then.”

  36

  Sleep should have been elusive. I should have tossed and turned all night, consumed by worries, racked with anguish. I should have jumped out of bed at the first light of dawn, glad to be done with a night full of bad dreams and restless moments. But instead, I wake from a dreamless night to find light streaming into the room and Henri’s alarm clock showing nine forty-five.

  I jump from bed, wash, throw on cutoffs and a T-shirt and rush up the steps. In the great room, Claudia looks up from the table, a bowl of cereal and a bottle of milk by her right hand, my father’s journal by her left.

  “Haven’t found anything in the journal yet,” she says, taking a spoonful of cereal. She smiles at my stare, motions to a grocery bag on the kitchen counter. “Brought my own today.”

  Looking around the kitchen and the great room, I see no sign of my wife. “Where’s Chloe?” I say.

  Claudia eats another spoonful of cereal. “She’s out working on her garden. I wouldn’t go down to see her if I were you. I don’t think she’s in the mood. She said that when and if you ever get up, you should warm up your own breakfast.”

  I shrug. After my rejection yesterday, I have no desire to offer her another opportunity to hurt me. “And where’s Derek?” I say.

  “Still sleeping, I suppose.” Claudia leans over, brings up a large leather purse, digs through it and pulls out a silver-cased Palm Pilot. Turning it on, she says, “I have some answers for you, boss.”

  “Go ahead.” I walk to the refrigerator, take a steak out of the freezer while she searches through her Palm Pilot for h
er notes.

  “Okay. You want the good or the bad first?”

  “Is there a bad?” I say, putting the steak in the microwave, punching buttons.

  “Not too bad,” Claudia says. “Toba says Pepe went to Tampa. He won’t be back until late tomorrow. They can go fishing the next night.”

  I grimace, thinking how few bottles of antidote remain. I’ll have to take another one early on that evening. After that, only a half bottle will remain for me.

  Claudia looks at my face. “It’s not that bad, is it boss?”

  “No. It’s workable,” I say.

  She flashes me a wide-mouthed smile and looks at her Palm Pilot. “Good. Now let me give you the rest.”

  I nod. The microwave buzzer goes off and I take out my steak and carry it to the table.

  “Toba carries a .25-caliber, Berretta Bobcat semiauto, model 21. Its magazine holds eight rounds, and she claims she can hit a fly with it at thirty feet.”

  “I want you to buy one of those.” I cut a piece of meat and put it in my mouth.

  Claudia grins and rummages in her purse again. She produces a small automatic, the gun dull-gray except for its black plastic grips, and puts it on the table. “Already did. I got it when I was arranging the other weapons you asked for. Cute, huh? I’ll bring the others out tomorrow.”

  She turns her attention back to her Palm Pilot. “I recruited a team to take care of Davidson’s boat. Two good guys. We can use them for the main operation too. That way you don’t have to hassle with any wires or anything.”

  “Do we need to worry about any neighbors?”

  “No. He lives on a point lot. No one behind him or in front.”

  “And next door?”

  “Only to one side, and they’ve already gone back to their summer home in the Hamptons. We have Mr. Davidson all to ourselves. You don’t have to worry about anything except for his guns.”