Finding Harmony (Katie & Annalise Book 3) (11 page)

After a forty-five-minute wait at the bar, during which we worked out our strategy, we dined at La Yola, a restaurant shaped like a fishing boat. It was right on the water, with a glass floor to the sea life below. Somehow, the 360-degree view calmed me, even though I wasn’t expecting the Chihuahuas’ mafioso to come up at me through the floor. We didn’t see anyone watching us, anyway.

The restaurant smelled like dead fish, which matched how I felt. Kurt ordered pork roast but visions of Wilbur revolted me. I opted for the penne pasta with fresh vegetables. When it arrived, the food looked decent enough, but everything tasted like sawdust. Kurt pushed his pork around on his plate. We stared at our food in uncomfortable silence.

After dinner we headed back to our new accommodations, which the hotel called a casita rather than a suite. Same difference. We had paid the exorbitant in-room wifi charge at check-in, and after I’d showered and changed I booted up my laptop at the small dining table and perched on a chair with a red velour seat. It matched the sofa upholstered in cream with giant red hibiscus. Red everywhere, like flags in front of the bull: me. I longed for a mellow blue and a soothing green.

While the startup sequence ran, I checked my phone. The old iPhone hadn’t rung all day. No message indicators, either. Surely that couldn’t be right . . . I pressed and held the home and start buttons for a reboot.

The two screens came to life almost simultaneously. I logged into email on the laptop like a fisherman pulling up a lobster trap. And I had a catch.

I spoke loud enough for Kurt to hear from the bathroom, where the sound of the shower had ceased a minute earlier. “Kurt, I have an email from A. Friend, and I should have the same message on my iPhone but don’t. Apparently, my iPhone isn’t transmitting data. It looks like it came in hours ago, about three o’clock.”

Kurt walked in, freshly dressed, hair wet. “What does it say?”

“Mrs. Kovacs: Very sorry to hear about Nick. He didn’t say where he was going. We assumed he was just going back to St. Marcos. A. Friend.” I made an “arggggggggg” sound and thumped my forehead against the table. “Not very helpful, A. Friend.”

“Well, it confirmed Nick was coming home,” Kurt said as he walked back toward the bathroom.

“Not really. It was only a guess,” I called after him. “I wish that A. Friend had said who they are and what’s going on. And what package Nick delivered,” I said, recalling the original message. I looked down at the iPhone, which now had message indicators for texts and email. Lost time again.
I’m sorry, Nick.

I scrolled through the texts. There were none from any of the numbers Kurt had copied from Nick’s phone for me. One from Julie caught my eye, though. “Your brother called. I told him what’s going on. He said he’ll land in Punta Cana tomorrow at 1:35 p.m.”

Collin. My big brother by eleven months. Collin worked anti-drug operations with the New Mexico state police and was truly a badass, even if I was his proud little sister. He had always bossed me around some, but when our parents died two years before, he had taken on the father role to me in a way that made my throat tight.

I called his mobile and got his voicemail. “Collin, I hear you need a ride from the airport in Punta Cana tomorrow. Coincidentally, I will be at the airport just at that time. You didn’t have to come, but I’m so glad you are. We are really scared. I love you.”

I took in the casita. Hell, we had room for him here if we spent another night. One room held a queen bed and the other had two twins.

I walked over to see what progress Kurt had made while I was on the phone. He had positioned himself at the coffee table in the sitting area with a laminated map of the northwestern Caribbean spread out in front of him. Beside it were a pen and yellow pad for notes, and he held a big dry wax pen for marking the maps.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m going to plot search areas,” he said.

“Won’t the Coast Guard do that?”

“I don’t trust them. I trust myself.”

“Oh. How do you know where to look? He could be anywhere between here and St. Marcos, couldn’t he?” Hopefully between here and St. Marcos.

“Yes, but I’m going to start broad tonight. I’ll familiarize myself with the direction the water moves and the bodies of land in the area. Tomorrow I’ll look for more information to pinpoint the search area.”

I trusted him, come to think of it, much more than he trusted the Coast Guard.

I needed his help. He needed mine. We didn’t need friction between us.

“Kurt, I’m sorry I got mad at you earlier. I have to be able to handle the truth, and you didn’t say anything I wasn’t already worried about.”

He grunted. “It was stupid of me to say any of it. I know my son loves you and the kids. Every man gets a little antsy now and then, especially with a house full of babies. Doesn’t mean anything.”

I wondered if he was right. Well, I couldn’t dwell on it now. Onward.

“My brother is coming,” I told him. “I just got the message from Julie.”

Kurt had met my brother several times and they got along well.

“Good. He’s just the right person to have with us,” Kurt said.

“I think so, too. Hey, I’m going to see if I can get Julie and the kids on Skype. I’ll let you know when it’s time to say hello, if you’d like.”

“Yup,” he said, and he dropped his attention back to his maps.

Notwithstanding hurting my feelings earlier—a lot—Kurt was the right person to have, too. His maritime expertise and aeronautical knowledge were godsends. Kurt had pursued an airplane pilot license almost as a joke. “Everybody thinks I fly a plane when I tell them I’m a pilot, so I might as well.” He had twenty-five years of experience in the air to go with his thirty-five on the water.

Nick had first soloed and earned his pilot’s license while he was still in high school, but he had quit flying until his father moved to St. Marcos. He had earned his instrument rating just a month ago, which allowed him to fly in bad weather and poor visibility by relying just on his instruments. Really, though, while he was a naturally gifted pilot whose instructor said had a feel for the air, he hadn’t logged many more cockpit hours above the requirements. Maybe not enough hours.

But he had visited me in my dreams and told me he was all right.

Have faith, Katie, you have to have more faith.

I texted Julie for twenty minutes to no avail, trying to get her to join me via video on Skype. Finally, I gave up and just sent her an email update and a message to read to Taylor. I missed my three little munchkins. What I wouldn’t give to curl up with my warm husband and warm babies around me right now.

I ran back through the rest of my texts and emails quickly. Rashidi reported that he and his searchers had turned up nothing. I let him know that Nick had shown up in and left Punta Cana, presumably back to St. Marcos. I hesitated to suggest he call off the search, but I wanted him to know the likelihood of finding Nick on St. Marcos had decreased. Theoretically, it was possible that he had made it back and someone else had taken the plane after his return. Possible, yet unlikely.

Ava had sent me an update on their graveyard sleuthing. My God, I’d forgotten about the Annalise problems. Rashidi had put her in charge and she was working with the friends he’d told me about, Rob the curator and Laura the librarian. No breakthroughs yet.

The rest were messages of support from well-wishers. I pulled out the spiral notebook and updated my lists, then put my head down on my forearm and closed my eyes. I would answer the messages later, much later, when I could tell everyone our worries were over, and that Nick had returned home with me.

A little while later, I pried my eyelids open and lifted my cheek off the puddle of drool on my arm. “Kurt, I’m going to try to sleep,” I said.

“Yup,” he responded. “Think I’ll do the same. ’Night.”

Kurt walked to the couch and starting pushing it across the room.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“If bad guys show up, I’d like to have some advance warning.”

I pitched in and we made a barrier of sofa, chairs, and end tables against the door.

I went through the motions of getting ready for bed. Then I did something I hadn’t done in so long I couldn’t remember the last time. I knelt beside the bed with my hands clasped as my parents had taught me to pray.

“Dear God, please keep Nick safe. Please help us find him as fast as possible. I know I don’t tell you often enough, but I am so grateful for my husband and kids and all of our blessings. I can’t promise I’ll always do better, but I can promise I am appreciative. Amen. Oh—and please, when this is all over, please help my husband understand that he has to be more careful, truthful, and communicative.”

Before I got in bed, I created a booby trap against my bedroom door with the desk, lamp, and chair. Much better.

I was almost afraid to close my eyes. Nearly every time I’d fallen asleep since he had disappeared, Nick had visited my dreams. I longed to see him, and I feared waking up if I didn’t. Somewhere along the way, the decision was taken from me, and I lost myself to slumber. But the dream that came was very different, and yet wholly familiar.

After I met Nick but before we got together, I dreamed about him a lot. The result? Sexy, realistic nighttime experiences that I called spontaneous combustion. Teenage boys call them wet dreams. I awoke flushed, sweating, and moaning.
God, don’t let Kurt hear me.
As fantastic as I felt, it was short-lived. I woke up remembering that Nick was missing.

My body was torturing my heart, and they both cried out for Nick.

My phone alarm rang at 6:30 a.m. I listened for the sound of my father-in-law stirring, but it was quiet. I pushed snooze and fell back asleep.

“I didn’t want to interrupt you last night, honey, because you seemed like you were having a good time, but I need to talk to you. Can you wake up for me?” It was Nick, sitting at the foot of my bed in my suite at the Puntacana Resort.

“I’m up, I’m up, I’m up,” I said. I reached for him, but he was too far away to touch.

“I can talk to Annalise from here,” he said.

“Talk in words, like real talk?”

“Yes. I’ll tell you all about it when you find me. But you need to hurry, Katie. And you can’t rely on anyone else. My little Wild Irish Kate.”

The phone alarm rang again and I sat up, the dream so fresh I could still taste the words in my mouth. I remembered what he said, but I had no idea what he meant. Between Annalise and Nick, it would help if I could get one straightforward message. Here I was again, confounded and panicked. And very, very sad.

One hour later, Victor met us outside the hotel, and ten minutes after that he deposited us at the entrance to Terminal Three. We bid him adios as he went off to park and await our call. I smoothed my green-checked capri pants down and tucked in my white sleeveless blouse again. My pants felt looser today; nothing like a stress and terror diet. I adjusted my straw-brimmed hat, which I’d purchased for an exorbitant sum straight out of the hands of a woman in the hotel lobby that morning and tucked every last strand of my red hair into.

Today, as part of our safety strategy, Kurt and I intended to blend in, just in case someone was looking for me. Or us. His version of blending was donning a fisherman’s cap, an untucked tropical shirt over baggy Tommy Bahama khaki shorts, and a pair of new deck shoes. Atrocious white tube socks with three red stripes around the tops were my touch. In a normal environment we would have attracted attention, but in this crowd, our outfits camouflaged us perfectly.

We had arranged yesterday to meet Gabriel at eight a.m. We walked at tortoise-like tourist speed to Gabriel’s office, but it was locked up tight. He might be helpful and friendly, but he was still a native of the islands, and lived and worked on island time.

“Dammit!” I said.

“I could use a coffee. Want one?” Kurt asked me.

“No, I want to wait here for Gabriel.”

He scanned the terminal. “We really need to stay together. Just because we don’t see anyone that looks scary doesn’t mean you aren’t at risk.”

He was probably right, and my tight capris weren’t really suited to high karate kicks if self-defense became necessary. After one more look around the terminal for the tardy Mr. Marrero, I walked with Kurt to the cafeteria and we picked up heavenly-smelling Arabica coffees. The young man we’d spoken to the day before waved to us discreetly from where he was clearing a table in the dining area. I waved back. Kurt didn’t notice him and walked to a nearby newsstand. So much for staying together.

The young man looked around, right and left, left and right, then darted over to me. He wore dark sunglasses and a circa-1990 walkman that had round ear-sized headphones with spongy covers. I expected to hear Dominican music blaring from them, but instead I caught a snatch of “Hotel California” before he turned it off. I hoped it wasn’t prophetic.

“Hey lady, your husband, the man who eat here?” he asked me in English so guttural I would almost have understood his Spanish better.

“Yes, what about him?” I asked.

“Tú hablas español?” He asked me if I spoke Spanish.

“Un poco,” I said.

“OK, I tell you. Your husband, he no talk, but the other man did.”

“What other man?”

“The man that walk behind him and his amigos?” he said in the form of a question, begging me to understand.

Walk behind? I formed a mental image of men walking behind Nick. Aha! “Men following him?”

He looked relieved that I understood. “Sí. A man following your husband. I see him and he watching them in the gift shop. Like on TV.” He leaned toward me and said, “I want to be a detective, like Magnum, P.I.” Vintage American TV was a staple on Caribbean stations. I didn’t comment, so he went on. “Then he follow them here and talk on his phone.” He frowned. “Same man following me last night. I no tell you about them, so I happy to see you today.”

“Why did he follow you?” Fear tingled its way up my arms from my fingers, all the way to my face, where it settled in my lips, leaving them numb.

“He ask if I know who he is. I say no. I not stupid.” He smiled with the confidence of youth. “He ask if I tell the Americanos about him. I say, ‘Tell who? Tell what?’ He say good, but if I do, he kill me. He and his partner beat me up so I know he’s true.” He thumped his chest primally and took off his sunglasses to show me his two black eyes.

Shit!
What if those men were watching us now? We had to finish this conversation, fast. This kid was doing exactly what the men had warned him not to do—talking to me. I could not let myself worry about what might happen to this boy later. Or at least, I would try not to.

I kept my English simple. “When he was here in the cafeteria, did you hear him say anything?” I tried it in Spanish for good measure, hoping I said it right. “Él habla?”

“Sí. He talk on the phone, in English, but like from the islands. He tell his boss man that the plane no fly to Mexico now, and he back very soon. He laugh. Ha ha.”

Everything in the terminal moved in slow motion as I considered this. If he was right, the man had followed Nick and his passengers, and he had told his boss that Nick, Elena, the man, and her mother would not fly to Mexico, and laughed. It sounded like the man thought the group was going to try to go to Mexico.

“Did he say why Nick could not fly to Mexico?”

“He say, ‘Sylis fix the plane. We careful. No one see us.’”

Sylis? Did Sylis and this man cause Nick not to make it home—or know why he hadn’t made it? I yelled for my father-in-law. I needed Spanish-speaking reinforcement, fast. “Kurt, can you come over here?”

Kurt put up the newspaper and made his way over.

But at about that same time, the cafeteria manager realized his employee was not working. Personally, I didn’t think that was such a big deal in the islands, but el jefe came after the busboy with a rag, flicking it at his thighs and shouting, “Trabaja ahora. Ahora!” You get to work, NOW.

The young man raised his palms, shook his head back and forth and mouthed, “I’m sorry,” in Spanish.

“What did the man look like?” I yelled.

“Negro,” he mouthed, disappearing into the cafeteria’s back room.

I felt my knees buckle.

“What’s up?” Kurt asked as he stepped forward just in time to catch me.

I held on to him and rallied as best I could. I almost couldn’t get the words out between my panicked gasps. “The busboy from yesterday that saw Elena and Nick? Well, he told me just now that a man followed them to the cafeteria and told some ‘boss man’ that a guy named Sylis fixed Nick’s plane so it wouldn’t make it to Mexico.”

“Did he describe him? Or say how they fixed the plane?”

“Negro—which means black, right?—is all he said. He didn’t say how they fixed the plane, and I’m not sure how much more he knew. Kurt, he had two black eyes—the guy found him last night and told him he would kill him if he talked to us. The man already knew he talked to us yesterday!”

Kurt stroked his thumb across his lips over and over. I hoped he was thinking and not having an aneurysm, like I seemed to be. “We need to talk to that kid some more, Katie.”

“Yes, we do,” I said. Movement near Gabriel’s office caught my eye. “Look, there’s Gabriel, finally.” I pointed far across the terminal floor. “We’ll have to come back to the kid later. We need to get on the phone with the FAA, ASAP.”

Kurt nodded. We tried to tourist-walk again, but I found it really hard to walk like a turtle when my heart was racing like a rabbit. We rushed into Gabriel’s office just seconds behind him. Gabriel smiled when he saw us, the kind of smile that covers your whole face. His white teeth gleamed against his dark skin and hair. Apparently, he had forgiven or forgotten my outburst yesterday.

“Kovacs, please come in. I trust your evening was a pleasant one? May I get you an espresso?” Gabriel put down his briefcase and turned on a small espresso machine, betraying absolutely no sense of urgency. I wanted to scream.

“No, thank you,” Kurt and I said at exactly the same time.

I continued. “We are fine, but we have learned several new things that we think will be helpful. We really need to get in touch with the FAA for a status report immediately. And with the Coast Guard so we can stay abreast of their search.”

“Please, tell me your news so we can make the phone call,” Gabriel said. He pressed brew on his machine and turned toward us.

I gave him the short version of the information gleaned from Victor and the busboy, omitting the black eyes and death threats.

“Your news about the men following Mr. Kovacs is interesting. Very, very interesting.” Gabriel dialed his phone and said, “I will talk to the FAA. I have some ideas about—” Gabriel changed paths mid-sentence. “Oh, hello, yes, this is Gabriel Marrero, Punta Cana International Airport, manager of Terminal Three. I am with the family who has reported its plane missing, registration number RJ7041.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece as if to speak to us, then put it back and said, “So the Coast Guard is searching the waters off the west side of St. Marcos? Do you have a contact name for me with the Coast Guard, and a phone number?” He spoke perfectly clear English with a thick Dominican accent. “I understand they know how to reach us, but we would like to make contact with them ourselves.” He scribbled something on a sticky note and hung up the phone.

“Well?” I asked.

“They said the Coast Guard is searching near St. Marcos this morning and will work their way towards Puerto Rico. But they were quite reluctant to give me a name and number for the Coast Guard, other than their central number for Puerto Rico. They finally gave me a number for the operations desk.” He dialed again. “So we will give it a shot, no? Hello?” He repeated his introduction and requested to speak to someone with an update. “I appreciate that someone will call us if they find him. But we would like to be able to share information, if and when we come across it, directly with the Coast Guard searchers. I see. Well, we will call this number then. Can I confirm you have the right contact information to reach us? Thank you.”

He hung up the phone, glowering this time. “Not helpful at all. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

Kurt said, “I have a good contact, very high up, within the Coast Guard. If we need to use him later, we can. For now, I don’t know where else to tell them to search. I assume they will make their way east along the flight path from San Juan to St. Marcos, taking into account elapsed time, weather conditions, and the movement of the water.”

“One would assume,” Gabriel said. “Hopefully we will hear from them soon. While we wait, I had a thought that maybe you would like to talk to some of our employees who work in the area where your plane was tied down while Nick was here? Maybe someone saw one of these two men that the busboy saw, down near Nick’s plane?”

I realized I had gripped a handful of capris in each hand while Gabriel was on the phone. I let go now and exhaled through my mouth. I willed all the tiny muscles in my face to relax. I rolled my neck and it made several popping sounds. I heard Nick’s voice again: “Don’t rely on anyone else.”

Kurt said, “Yup. We would.”

I added, “Thank you for letting us talk to them directly, Gabriel. Sounds like a great idea. Let’s get moving, the faster the better. We have to find Nick.”

The men stared at me. Only for a few seconds, but long enough to let me know that my optimism about finding Nick alive was mine alone.

“Let’s go, gentlemen.” I led the way.