Fallen Angel: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 9) (6 page)

BOOK: Fallen Angel: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 9)
8.4Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Deuce’s smile broadened. Having an alternative place to get fuel when in the Bahamas, especially one that didn’t keep sales records, could be very useful.

“There’s only one catch,” I said, knowing both men were thinking the same thing I was. “He’s reliant on 1980s technology. His computer’s hooked up to a phone line, and out here, that’s not a whole lot better than smoke signals.”

One thing I’ve learned about Stockwell in the short time that I’ve known him is his quick decisiveness. He knew his operational limitations and didn’t need to check with anyone to confirm his decisions within those limitations.

“I’ll have Miss Koshinski on the next flight to Andros with the equipment,” Travis said. “She can get him all hooked up and explain how it operates.”

“Equipment for what?” Henry asked, puzzled.

I turned to Henry and explained the future needs of Deuce’s two teams and how he’d need to keep it completely under his hat. If and when his services were ever needed, those needing them would appear to be just as we did now, sportfishermen needing fuel and maybe a place to rest up. In exchange, he’d get a good price for the fuel and free satellite Internet to run his charter business.

“You can do all that?” Henry asked with a wry grin.

“He can’t,” Travis said, also grinning. “He’s just a boat bum.
My
IT person will have you up and running by end of business tomorrow.” He then told me he’d have Deuce call my sat phone as soon as he was able to talk to the Secretary, but go ahead and prepare to move forward with my plan.

Back on the dock, Henry cautioned me, “Watch your six with those Jamaicans. They’re a ruthless bunch, but for a price they’ll do just about anything.”

A
ndrew, Tony, and Art each had their own cottage, and Pat and Chrissy had a fourth. Even with two more empty cottages, I chose to stay aboard the
Revenge
. It’d been a long couple of days. I was able to perform some much-needed maintenance on the
Revenge
, cleaning the water filter strainers and the whole boat in general.

Several hours later, with the sun slipping closer to the treetops on the west side of the lagoon, Henry came down to the dock and told me that dinner would be at the outdoor table in an hour. Conch fritters and snapper, fried light.

“Angelique brought your guests plenty of new clothes and stuff,” he said. “They’re resting up in their cottage. I got a chance to sit down and talk with the woman for a bit. Seems like a really nice lady.”

We talked about what might become of the granddaughter for a while, before he had to go tend to one of the Bertrams that had an electrical issue.

After he left, I showered and changed into clean clothes. Standing in front of the mirror, I debated shaving. The stubble on my face was more beard than stubble, and it was beginning to itch my neck. I’d shaved every day since I was seventeen and had never seen what I looked like with facial hair. I decided I kind of liked the look, even if there were more grays on my face than in my hair.

When I stepped up to the dock, a flats skiff was idling into the lagoon. The man aboard it quickly tied off with the other smaller boats and killed the engine. This skiff was a little different than the others. It looked like a solid little boat, big casting deck forward and a smaller one aft the dual console cockpit. The lines of the boat were close to my own Maverick Mirage, but this one was hand-built. The man tying her off straightened and looked first at the
Revenge
and then at me, before walking toward me.

Angelique’s husband introduced himself as Rene Cook. Nearly as tall as my six-three, broad-shouldered, and dark-tanned, his smile was quick and genuine. I took the offered hand and introduced myself.

“That’s a beautiful vessel, Jesse.”

“Thanks,” I replied. “That your own personal skiff?”

He turned to the skiff and crossed his arms, obviously proud of the little boat. “Yeah, I built her myself, when things got slow here.”

I immediately liked the younger man. He was probably in his late twenties, a few years older than his wife, and seemed to have a quiet, confident way of carrying himself. The fact that he once lived aboard and made his living from the sea was a plus.

We talked about boat building and I looked closer at his skiff, telling him about the barrel-back runabout my friend Carl and I had built. He told me his skiff was twenty feet, stem to stern, which is a couple feet longer than my Maverick. With a wide beam and plenty of deck space between the two consoles, it was perfectly suited for the shallows.

Later, at dinner, my sat phone chirped. It was an incoming text message from Deuce with only one word, “Go.” When I looked up, Bourke was watching me. I gave him a nod, then turned to Pat, across the table from me.

“Pat,” I said, getting her attention. “We’re returning to Cat Island in the morning. You and Chrissy will stay here until we get back, probably about dark.”

“Going back?” she asked. “What for?”

I glanced at Henry, sitting at the head of the table. His nod told me all I needed to know, though I was already sure of it anyway. While I might not be good at guessing a woman’s age, I had an uncanny sense at picking up a man’s morality. With only a nod, old Henry told me that Rene and Angelique could be trusted.

Turning back to Pat, I said, “We’ve disabled the Jamaicans’ ability to contact your son-in-law.” I watched Chrissy carefully to judge her reaction. “When we get to Cat Island, we’re going to convince them to tell the congressman that the rescue was unsuccessful and if he doesn’t pay double what they agreed on within twenty-four hours, they’ll turn you and Chrissy over to the FBI and spill the beans on the whole thing.”

Chrissy stared at me. “It’s not true,” she said, but her statement lacked any real conviction. I truly felt sorry for this girl. She was only two years younger than my youngest daughter, Kim. Chrissy had lost her mother in a terrible accident when she was thirteen, a very formative age for girls. Or so my friend Rusty tells me. My wife left with our daughters when they were little and I’d only reunited with them recently. Chrissy’s father seemed to be one of those kinds of dads who was there, but only in a physical sense. I’d learned from Pat that Chrissy was attending boarding school in South Carolina and only saw her father once a month, if he wasn’t too busy.

Bourke put a hand on the girl’s shoulder and spoke soothingly. “I’m sorry, Chrissy. I truly am. But everything Jesse and our boss has found out indicates that it is true. I wouldn’t lie to you. I know that’s a lot to swallow on top of all you’ve been through. We’ll afford your dad every opportunity to back out and deny these accusations, and we’ll record everything he says.”

Looking up at Bourke, Chrissy nodded. “I want to hear it.”

Bourke nodded back and pulled her head to his forehead in a short hug, tousling her hair. “We’ll keep you in the loop the whole way, kiddo. That’s a promise.”

Continuing, I said to Pat, “We’re going to offer the Jamaicans a large sum of money to play along and convince them to tell your son-in-law that the payment will have to be made in person. We’ll have one of our people standing in to take the payment.”

“What happens then?” Pat asked. “The man’s not without power, or you wouldn’t be here in the first place. He has a lot of people in his pocket, too.”

“The exchange will be one-on-one and face-to-face. It’ll be recorded on video and audio. When he makes the money exchange, he’ll go away for a long time.”

“Even in prison, we wouldn’t be out of his reach,” Pat said.

Nodding toward the
Revenge
, I stood up and Pat followed me out of earshot of the girl. “Everything my boss has learned screams that this man’s doing exactly as you said, Pat. I have two girls myself, not much older than Chrissy. There’s got to be more to it than getting people to feel sorry for him and reelect him. What have you not told us?” I know only one way to ask a question.

She studied my eyes carefully, as if trying to read my thoughts. Then she turned and looked over at the
Revenge
. “That boat of yours is really something. How much do you still owe on it?”

Owe
, I thought. “I don’t borrow,” I said by way of a reply, not seeing where she was going.

“And your house?”

“Built it myself on a tiny island I also paid cash for,” I replied, irritably. “What the hell’s my finances have to do with your son-in-law?”

She turned back toward me and looked me over once more, as if appraising me again. “You can’t judge a book by its cover. What if I told you I could buy your boat and your island?”

“They’re not for sale.”

She smiled. “Everyone has a price, Jesse. If I were so inclined, I could make you an offer that would change your mind. Henry too. Along with every bar in Key West.”

It was my turn to appraise her.
A long line of single heirs
, I thought, remembering what she’d said earlier.

“Chrissy is your only heir?” I asked.

“Her mother would have been. Now, when I’m gone, Chrissy will receive a trust that would last a hundred lifetimes. With her father as trustee until she’s twenty-one.”

“So, Chrissy wasn’t the only target?”

“No,” she simply replied.

“And if you and she were both victims?”

“I only learned of his plot two days ago. Had he been successful, Chrissy and I would both be dead in some random kidnap and murder, then my estate would be in the hands of the trust. With no one to disburse the trust to, probate court would award him everything.”

Money
, I thought. A friend of mine, also a member of Deuce’s counterterrorist team, has a PhD in criminal psychology. Paul Bender told me quite a bit about what motivates evil people. At the top of his list was money.

I thought of my own daughters and my grandson, Fred. His first name’s Alfredo, but he has my first name for his middle name. Eve asked me not to call him little Jesse, so I compromised with Fred. There’s just no way I’m calling my grandson Alfie. Though I’d only been recently reunited with Eve and Kim, and little Fred was less than a year old, I just couldn’t comprehend life without them in it.

“Prison’s too easy,” I mumbled, gazing out over the lagoon with Pat.

“I’m inclined to agree,” she replied under her breath.

Looking at the side of her face, I saw a steely resolve there. This was a woman who would do anything for her granddaughter, including sacrificing her own life.

“Do you really think he can reach out from inside a prison?”

Pat continued to stare out over the water. “I’m certain of it, Jesse. Not all his dealings before getting into politics have been aboveboard. He knows people in the criminal world.”

I considered that and immediately knew what had to be done. “If you can’t raise the bridge,” I said.

Looking at me, she grinned. “Lower the river? Chrissy and I could disappear?”

I grinned back. I liked this woman. She had a quick mind. “With a little help from your uncle, you can turn into vapor. How big is your business?”

“There isn’t one,” she replied as we turned to go back to the others. “I’m an investor, as was my father and his father before him. Our family’s entire wealth is mostly in old stocks and land. I only have one full-time employee, a personal secretary.”

“We’ll have a tech person here tomorrow,” I said. “Name’s Chyrel. You’ll like her. She’s coming to hook Henry up to the Internet via satellite, and she’d be the one to talk to about setting up a new identity.”

“You say that like it’s a foregone conclusion,” Pat said, turning toward the table. “I’d still prefer the bastard dead.”

After dinner, I climbed up to the bridge on the
Revenge
for a beer and to think. The sun slowly started to fall below the tree line on the other side of the lagoon as I sat watching, contemplating our next move. A light breeze played over the island, causing the tree branches, palm fronds, and shadows to dance and sway. The red-orange sun shining through them made it appear as if the whole forest was on fire.

My sat phone chirped in my pocket. I hate carrying the damned thing, but lately I’d found it necessary to be able to stay in touch with others. Kim was about to finish her first year of college in Gainesville, and Eve was up in Miami.

I looked at the caller ID and was surprised to see who it was. I clicked the green button to accept the call. “Is Pescador, er, Nadador alright?”

Celia Minnich, the new CEO of a high-tech government contractor in Miami, replied, “He’s fine, Mister McDermitt. That’s not why I called. Not exactly, anyway.”

“I’m sorry. What can I do for you, Missus Minnich?”

“First,” she replied, “you can start calling me Celia. Second, I was wondering if you might like to have a companion?”

A companion?
I thought. Celia and her husband had been kidnapped by an East European black market gang some time ago and her husband had been shot and killed right in front of her. As things turned out, the dog who had been with me for the last two years had originally belonged to them. I’d found Pescador after Hurricane Wilma and could never locate who he belonged to. That is, until he recognized the Minnichs’ abandoned yacht floating in the Gulf Stream. The same yacht he’d been swept off of during the hurricane.

BOOK: Fallen Angel: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 9)
8.4Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Finding Hannah by John R Kess
Beta Test (#gaymers) by Annabeth Albert
SNOWFIRES by Caroline Clemmons
Rising In The East by Rob Kidd
Emily's Dream by Jacqueline Pearce
Bound By Darkness by Alexandra Ivy
My Oedipus Complex by Frank O'Connor