Blood of Cain (Sean O'Brien (Mystery/Thrillers)) (11 page)

One picture stopped. It became a freeze-frame when I remembered her eyes.

Like the image of an old National Geographic cover.

Like Courtney’s eyes.

Her name was Andrea Hart. A woman destined for better things than what I could bring to the table after college graduation. She wanted no part of a possible “military life,” hop-scotch jumping from base-to-base if I wanted to climb the ladder while, at the same time, searching for purpose in what I would do. In retrospect, after we went our separate ways, I probably have Andrea to thank for my determination to get through Delta Force training and the Special Activities Division. The experience forever changed me—the good, bad, and ugly, scars and all.

Where was Andrea Hart tonight, twenty something years later? Could she be Courtney Burke’s mother? Could I be her father?
No way
. I touched the cleft in my chin and pictured her face. I stood from the captain’s chair, my back muscles in knots, a slight headache forming over my left eye, my scalp tight. “Come on, Max. Let’s go down. I need to use the computer to track a ghost from my past. If not, the image of Courtney and what she might represent, will haunt me for the rest of my life.”

***

She knew he was looking at her. Even from behind her, Courtney could feel his eyes on her like a breath. She was stirring cream and sugar into her black coffee when the man approached. She sat at the café counter inside the truck stop and sipped from a cup of coffee in front of her. She’d felt the man staring at her twice, both times when he’d walked past her, once heading from the restrooms, the second time when he pretended to be looking at magazines in the rack.

The man moved and sat on one of the stools beside her where he waited for the waitress to return from the kitchen. He glanced at Courtney, his face ruddy and chapped, lips cracked, eyes dancing like flames across her face. He said, “This place has the best coffee of all the truck stops in Florida.”

Courtney nodded. “It’s pretty good.”

“Ought to be real good. I hear the nightshift manager, gal’s name is Flo, puts on a fresh pot ever’ half hour.”

“Really?”

“Hell yeah. But this time of night they’ll go through a few pots ever’ hour anyhow.”

Courtney sipped her coffee.

“What brings a girl like you in here? Can’t imagine you drivin’ a rig.”

“I’m not. I hitched this far. The trucker was going toward Miami. I didn’t want to go down there.”

The man ran his tongue over his front teeth and swallowed. “Where do you want to go?”

“Which way are you headed?”

“It for damn sure ain’t Miami. You almost need a passport to drive through the city. Try askin’ for directions if you don’t speak Spanish.” He grinned, a small crack in his bottom lip strawberry red.

Courtney finished her coffee and turned toward the man. “Where’d you say you were going?”

“Anywhere you want to go, sugar.” He grinned, his breath smelling of beer and beef jerky. “C’mon girl, jet’s jump in the truck. My rig’s fueled up and good to go all night long, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Courtney followed the man out the door, keeping her back to the three security cameras she’d spotted earlier. She unzipped her purse as she walked, her fingers touching the Beretta, her thoughts touching the face of her grandmother so far away.

***

They were in the cab of the big-rig less than a minute when he made his move. The trucker reach behind his seat and pulled out two cans of Budweiser from a small cooler. “How ‘bout a cold one?”

“No thanks. Never got used to how beer tastes.”

“I wonder how you’d taste.” He popped the top on the can and took a long pull, his Adam’s apple moving like a piston.

Courtney rested her hand on the Beretta in her open purse between her right leg and the cab door.

The man used the back of his left hand to wipe his mouth, his lips wet with beer foam and saliva. He grinned. “Best way to learn to like the taste of beer is to slip me some tongue. That way you can get the flavor little doses at a time. You got some damn pretty eyes, girl.”

“Please, just drive.”

He laughed and snorted, his eyes lowering from her face to her lap. “If you won’t slip me some tongue, I’ll slip you some. Take your pants off.”

“I’m on my period.”

“Take your panties off.”

“What if I took your head off?” She raised the Beretta and aimed right between his eyes.

“Oh shit! Put the gun down!”

“Drive!

“Huh?”

“Drive the truck! Head to Tampa.”

He held both hands up, a nerve below his right eye twitching like a beetle was crawling under his skin. “I ain’t goin’ that way.”

“You are now.”

“Listen, I’m supposed to have this load to New Orleans in a day. This truck’s got GPS on it, which means dispatch knows where it’s at twenty-four-seven.”

“You should’ve thought about that before you tried to force yourself on me.” She used her thumb to flip the safety off. “Drive.”

He cranked the diesel, his ruddy face now shiny with perspiration. He checked both side mirrors, put the truck in gear, and eased out of the parking lot. “You gonna keep that gun on me the whole way?”

“Yes.”

“You shoot me out there on the highway doin’ seventy, this rig will jack-knife, roll over and you’ll die, too.”

“But you’ll die first. Don’t talk to me again until we’re there.”

***

Although I hadn’t seen Andrea Hart in two decades, it didn’t take long to track her down. If I cared more about politics, I wouldn’t have had to use a combination of data-finding search engines, social media sites, and sites that accessed public records. I learned as much as I could about the woman I’d known as Andrea Hart.

She was now Andrea Logan, wife of U.S. senator, Lloyd Logan, a three-term member of the senate and chairman of the Appropriations Committee. More than that, he was a front-runner in the pack of candidates vying for the Republican presidential nomination. I would have known about her status earlier had I watched cable news the last few months.

They lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan where she worked as director of development for a large conservative think tank guised as a foundation. I couldn’t find anything indicating Andrea had a daughter or any other children. No birth records. No school records. Any adoption records were probably sealed.

I stared at a picture of Andrea. Her eyes were still just as beautiful as the morning I’d first met her in a coffee shop twenty years earlier. I remembered walking in the crowded shop, and after waiting in line to order coffee at the counter, it appeared as if every table in the place was taken. From across the shop I first saw Andrea’s eyes, and then her smile. I stepped to her and she offered me the vacant chair across from her. We spent the entire morning talking. A week later to the day, a Sunday morning, she awoke next to me in bed, and in the soft morning light coming through the window, she traced her finger over my birthmark and said, “That is really beautiful. It’s like art.”

So damned long ago.

As the image of Andrea stared at me from my computer screen, I enlarged the picture then envisioned Courtney Burke’s eyes. Although Andrea’s eyes had a captivating command to them, they didn’t have the mesmerizing power and depth I’d seen in Courtney’s eyes. What would a geneticist say about the probability of Courtney’s iris color having come from the cobalt blue in my eyes and the hazel green in Andrea’s eyes?

Tomorrow I would do my best to find out.

The next morning, as the sun rose over the Atlantic, I jogged along the beach at Ponce Inlet. I ran between the gentle roll of waves breaking, the surge of water yawning and stretching on the cool hard-packed sand under my bare feet. I pictured Andrea Logan’s face, then ran harder for a short burst, the sea foam scattering in the breeze like confetti defying the laws of gravity. The old lighthouse was behind me, Daytona Beach ten miles to the north, my thoughts not in either place. A gull flew over my head, flapped its wings twice, sailing in the cross-breeze and squawking a wake-up call over the crash of waves. I was shirtless, the morning sea breeze already warm across my chest. I glanced at the shamrock-shaped birthmark on my upper left arm and thought of Courtney Burke.

Max followed me at a trot. Twenty feet behind, the tip of her pink tongue visible in her open mouth, panting, short legs moving in a dachshund dash, her eyes bright with the potential discovery of what a new morning by the sea might bring. She stopped to inspect a starfish stranded on the beach. I spun around toward her. “Max, what do you say we return this little fella to the sea?” She cocked her head and stared up at me as I lifted the starfish from the wet sand, walked into the swell of waves lapping over my knees, and lowered the starfish back into the ocean.

I jogged a final fifty yards, Max doing her best to impersonate a greyhound loping along the beach. We stopped and sat on a park bench under a canopy of palm trees. I thought about what I’d say to Andrea when I found her—what I hoped not to hear in return. Then I thought about Courtney again, a girl on the run, a suspect in at least two killings, possible cold-blooded murders.

Where was she at this very moment as the sun peaked over the edge of the world and painted the ocean in rippling brushstrokes of red wine and dark honey? Did it shine light at the end of her dark path? I stared out into the enormity of a crimson sea and felt no larger than little Max resting beside me. I watched the surface of the ocean turn the color of a new penny and I tried to picture what was waiting just beyond the horizon.

***

The truck driver glanced at the Beretta once again as he slowed the big rig and exited from I-75. He said, “Okay, we’re here. I done what you asked. What the hell else you want?”

Courtney rested her gun hand on her raised left knee, the Beretta still aimed at the driver’s head. “I want you to turn right at the light. Pull into the Shell station.”

The driver went through the gears, and entered the parking lot of a Shell gasoline station and eased to a stop. “What now?”

“Give me your phone.”

“What? Why?”

“Give it to me!”

“All right. Hell, you weren’t jokin’ when you said you were on your period.”

“And I wasn’t joking when I said I’d kill you. The phone. Now.”

He slid the phone across the seat. “You
are
crazy.”

“Maybe. Now, you listen to me, you pervert. You’re gonna turn this truck around, drive up the interstate to New Orleans or wherever you’re supposed to be heading, and you’re not going to tell anybody about our little road tip. Because if you do, then I get to tell them you tried to fuck a teenage girl, me. Your wife will be the first to know.”

“How’d you know I’m married?”

“I didn’t. But most of you creeps are, I just feel very sorry for the wives.” Courtney scooped the phone from the seat, opened the door, and climbed down from the cab, slipping the pistol into her bag.

***

I closed the sliding glass door to
Jupiter’s
salon and sat on the couch with my laptop looking up Senator Lloyd Logan's campaign tour, his fund-raising events. There were a half dozen here in Florida, one was very soon and not far away. A place called The Villages about an hour north of Orlando.

I’d heard about The Villages. It wasn’t a retirement community, but rather a retirement city. High average net worth of its residents. Golf for life. Defibrillators on most corners. A donor pit-stop in every presidential race. Mitt Romney was the last to refuel there. And now it was Senator Lloyd Logan’s turn at the wheel.

All I wanted was a few minutes with his wife, a few minutes to take me back two decades. Maybe it was politically incorrect, but I had to go there, had to go into the past for the sake of a girl whose future was looking very dark.

I took a small can of dog food from the galley and picked up the leash. Max cocked her head, knowing change was in the air. “Come on, kiddo. I have to hit the road for a few hours. Let’s see if Dave or Nick can hang out with you until I get back.” I locked
Jupiter
and stepped onto the dock, Max trotting in front of me, her nose lifting in the air. Smoke signals were coming from Nick’s boat.

Dave Collins and Nick Cronus were sitting in deck chairs on
St. Michael
, a Hibachi behind Nick puffing white smoke, the scent of cooking grouper, garlic, lemon, onion, and red pepper in the air. Max stopped in her tracks and headed for
St. Michael
. Dave had a GPS device in his lap, bifocals at the tip of his nose, and a small jeweler’s screwdriver in his large fingers as he opened the back panel.

“Hot Dog!” Nick bellowed, standing to turn the cooking fish. “Where you been, huh? You supposed to help Uncle Nicky in the kitchen.” Max trotted over the transom and stepped down onto the cockpit, squatting in full attention next to Nick. “Sean, you and Hot Dog come eat. Grouper and snapper’s on the grill. Got some bread, cheese, and Greek wine is in the icebox.”

I stepped aboard as Dave looked up. “Nick has an ailing GPS. I’m trying to re-set its clock, so to speak.”

Nick used a fork to break off a small piece of fish for Max. “My GPS is more than ailing; it’s a sick puppy. Not like you, Hot Dog. I was in my boat half a mile off the rocks last week. Had to use my Greek sailor’s sixth sense to find a school of snapper.” He squeezed a ripe lemon over the sizzling fish and closed the Hibachi lid.

Dave grunted as he removed the back panel. “GPS is a wonderful thing, when it works—which is most of the time. And speaking of time, a global positioning system is really all about timing. Anywhere on the planet, at any given moment, at least four satellites with overlapping radio signals can pinpoint your GPS location within a few meters. It gives weight to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Time moves differently the farther you are from earth and the faster you’re moving. This means that astronauts coming back from the International Space Station actually age less than babies born on the earth at the same time that the astronauts were in space. But it’s all relative.” He looked over his bifocals and grinned, then dropped his smile. “What’s the latest on the girl and the killing?”