The Gift of the Dragon (29 page)

Faith’s stomach twisted. There may not be a happy ending here today. He could cause her a great deal of pain, and she would eventually tell him anything to make him stop. Or she could tell him everything and hope for the best, realizing he would most likely kill her anyway. She decided folding would be the best she could do with the hand she held.

Callan

He drove his boat slowly, thinking about what he had learned. He knew she had told him the truth. He had spiked her salt with powdered MDMA, several doses’ worth. In the seventies, psychiatrists used the drug to make their patients trust them. In effect, it made the user trust whomever they were with. She had given in easily and, by the end of the interrogation, was blubbering that she loved him as she told him everything. He had not had to keep her tied up for very long.
 

Now she lay in the cabin, deeply sedated. He thought about killing her to keep his secrets, but there was no need to do that right away. He could leave her under guard in Venice until his business with Northwin was completed and then decide what to do with her. His plan would leave him in a position where he would not have to worry about her knowing what she knew about him. If the plan failed, he would most likely be beyond caring about what she knew.
I will most likely be beyond caring about anything. I’ll be with that gull at the end of the one true line.

Callan turned back to his controls and gave the twin motors gas. The boat rose up and ran swiftly over the water. The warm breeze blew sweet with the smell of the open Gulf as he raced west. He turned his thoughts to what Faith had said.
 

Northwin sent Faith.
 

Northwin had the key to his tablet.

Northwin had Alice Sangerman.

“You are a dead man!” he screamed into the wind.
 

A few hours later, and one hundred and eleven nautical miles from Cat Island, Callan’s boat drifted over the Mississippi Canyon. He put the big grouper poles out, but the hooks at the ends of the eighty-pound-test lines were bare, with nothing but weights on their ends. The motors were turning over, providing enough juice for the powerful scrambler attached to his satellite phone. Even if the best minds at the FBI and NSA were listening in, all they would hear would be a shrimper talking to his girlfriend about what they would do when he returned home.
Sometimes the best defense is banality
. He dialed a number, and on the third ring Franklin McAlister picked up.

“Mr. Grant, do you have my tablet for me?”

Mimicking McAlister’s haughty tone, Callan replied, “Mr. McAlister, I have one last thing to ask of you, and then I’ll provide you with the tablet you seek.”

Callan could hear McAlister sighing over the slightly scratchy line. “What do you need now?”

“Laird Northwin. He’s been hounding me, but he can’t catch me. Have you been holding his leash, or is he free to harass people you have hired on his own?”

“No man is free, Mr. Grant. Only fools and children would think that. Laird Northwin is one third of the leadership of the Apple Creek Corporation. His position is equal to mine. There are many things, such as punishing deserters, he works on without seeking my permission or my counsel.”

“Deserters! You are all such tin-pot dictators! You have a security team, not an army. People quit. You need to get over it.”

“Apple Creek is larger and certainly more powerful than many nations that have armies. We protect our interests.”

“You are standing on the beach, ordering the tide to stop. And killing anyone who says you’re a fool.”

 
“You signed a contract, Mr. Grant. You broke it. Do not play the child with me. I know how old you are. You knew the cost of quitting when you made that choice. We spelled it out quite clearly in black and white.”

“And yet you hired me to do your dirty work. Work you didn’t want to pass off to Laird Northwin.”

“And you took the pay for the work. And you didn’t complete the job. I’m sensing a pattern here, Grant. Are you trying to convince me that Laird is right to want you dead?”

“If you want to try to kill me, please send that pretty son of yours. The one who fancies himself a warrior, not the cripple. Killing Ian would be most entertaining.”

“Come, Grant. Sending encrypted threats bouncing off satellites is not what you are spending ten dollars per minute for. What is it you want?”

“I already told you. Laird Northwin. I want the specifications for his boat.”

“What for?”

“I want to get him a birthday present. Replace the AC on that rust bucket. So I need the complete specifications. Including the ventilation ductwork.”

“I see.”

“Look, McAlister, Northwin has tried to kill me at least twice. I don’t play nicely with people who do that. He’s a dead man walking. When he is gone, you’ll need someone to take his place. I know Apple Creek needs the Guardians.”

“That is one thing I like about you, Callan, I don’t have to spell things out to you in great detail. Of course, if you were to take his place, I would demand obedience. For example, I do not hire people who accuse me of being a tin pot.”

Callan realized that he had been hotheaded. “Right. Sorry. This has been a tough day. I just stopped another of Northwin’s assassins.” Callan sat down on his captain’s chair. “Can we reset, Franklin? In this thing, we have one of those ‘win-win’ situations.”
My lawyer masquerade might be affecting my language!
“Just get me the specs. When I eliminate Northwin, I’ll send you the tablet. And we can talk.”

“There is another slight problem, though. If what you are planning proves terminal to Laird, his shares will pass to his wife and then to his children. I would prefer that didn’t happen.”

“Northwin won’t survive my visit to him.”

“If that is the course you set, then you must stay on that course until the end of the journey.”

 
“If you send me what I am asking for, you’ll get what you are asking for.”

“I have to be able to trust you, Mr. Grant. My trust for you is fading. I need it back.”

“I’m in the middle of the ocean right now, McAlister. I can’t get the tablet to you now anyway. Send me what I’ve asked for, and I’ll conclude my business with Northwin and his family. Then I’ll send you the tablet from the first UPS I can find.”

“I will send someone for it, tell me where.”

Callan silently clenched his fist in victory. The old lion would play the game. “The plans for the
Endurance
?”

“I signed the requisition for that rust bucket. Sam told the old goat that he would build him a brand-new ship, but Northwin found this ex-German navy corvette and wanted to convert it. Cost more than building him a new one! The complete plans were part of the paperwork I signed.” Callan could hear the man taking a breath. Probably trying to control his indignation at the expenditure.
Always the cheapskate.
“I have them in PDF format, but they are large. How would you like me to send them?”
 

“Encrypt them and send them to [email protected].” Callan spelled out each character carefully and had McAlister repeat them back. He would get the files via an untraceable IP address–spoofing proxy server when he returned to Venice.

“They are on their way. If you get me that tablet, I will be grateful, Callan Grant. We can say your desertion was a cover for missions I ordered. If you succeed and if you finish what I have asked for you to finish.”

“I won’t be your dog, McAlister.”

“Good luck, Mr. Grant. Until next time.”

Callan stared at the silent phone. Then he walked over to the downriggers and pushed the buttons that brought them up. He had some bait, and he didn’t want to come into Venice until after dark. This might be the last day he could fish for a long time.

Alice
 

Alice watched Jacob’s broad, tan back as he leaned over, working on the motor. He said he would do something with a setting called “the timing” to change the temperature the engines ran at. He thought that would throw off the satellite tracking at night. He had already rewired the motor that Sanchez disabled. Sanchez whom she had killed and left drifting in the sea. She felt a pang. She didn’t think Sanchez a good man, but what if he had children? A wife? A daughter like Anna? Regret stabbed her in her gut, twisting. Her eyes filled with tears.
Maybe I should quit now before I kill more children’s fathers.
She shook her head.
What’s over is over. I have to find the one who is behind all this!

She saw sweat running down Jacob’s broad back. He set a little portable stereo to playing a CD softly. Springsteen helped him work, he had said. Now it was playing a song called “I’m on Fire.”
 

She thrust the sadness from her mind, letting another feeling replace it. She longed for him to turn and take her in his arms and kiss her tears away. The feeling shocked her. Since her accident, since Sara’s murder, she had felt nothing for the soft, happy men she had met at Willamette Springs.
 

Nothing for the wild, adventurous ones either. Nor for the muscular lawyer celebrating his big court win, nor a wild-haired man more tan than Jacob who had sold a large amount of some illegal goods and roared through Willamette for a soak in the springs before heading to the city.
 

A famous—according to Jenny—funnyman had come to the springs after giving a show in Portland. He had left her rolling on the dirt floor of the community yurt with laughter. None of them had stirred in Alice more than the appreciative sort of attraction she also felt looking at a nice painting or a sunset. She realized her eyes were closed. She opened them to see Jacob looking at her intently. She opened her eyes wider, her jaw dropping open at the surprise of her feeling and the surprise of being discovered feeling it. She blushed and looked down at the sand-covered deck of the boat.
 

“What are you looking at?”

“You. Look back at me, Alice.”

She glared at him then, suddenly angry. “Okay, I’m looking.”

He moved almost as fast as she could, and he stood in front of her. “Alice,” he said.

She closed her eyes again as he kissed her.

She shuddered and thought for a second that she would fall down. He touched her face with his hand, and sparks seemed to leap from her cheek down to her stomach. She felt him hesitate.
He feels it too,
she thought.
It is too powerful for him
. She opened her eyes and saw him looking down at her with that intent look again. Then he gently cupped her cheek, and she opened her lips. He brushed his lips against hers, and more sparks flew.
 

Yes,
she thought,
take away the sadness. Let me feel nothing but this
. He tilted her head back and covered her mouth with his. Shaking, she felt his tongue move between her willing lips, warm, soft. The singer repeated, “Ooh ooh," and so did she. The taste of the man filled her up, and her thoughts dissolved into a hot, warm place as she squinted over his shoulder into the red heat of the September sun.

Naked and hot, Alice stared up at the rough cabin ceiling. She lay next to Jacob in what would be a pleasant afterglow if the poorly ventilated cabin weren't so close in temperature to Hell in the late afternoon. Down on her belly, she could see streams of sweat popping out of her skin as if she were a field full of springs. It ran down in tiny rivers and contributed to the sogginess of the rough fishing boat mattress she lay on.
 

“Whew.” Jacob reached up and opened the large square port in the top of the cabin, which let some slightly cooler air in. He also switched on a small electric fan bolted to the roof. That made it a little closer to bearable.

“Well, Mr. Castellan, I have to say I’m a little shocked with myself. Of course after what we have just been through, it’s surprising I haven’t gone completely insane.” She stared up at the fiberglass ceiling of the boat cabin. It had a rough, corrugated pattern, and there were pockets of darkness in the hollows.
Probably mildew.
 

“Yeah,” was all he said.

Alice felt her eyebrows furrowing. “Jacob, I’ve no idea if I am the kind of girl to sleep with someone I don’t know very well. Something came over me. Obviously, it came over you too.” She thought she had made a big mistake. He might act weird now.

“It happens when two people are involved in a dangerous situation, Alice. I mean—it doesn’t always. But it can.”

That made her angry. She didn’t know why. “This happened to you before? The last time you saw your sister killed?” Alice instantly regretted saying that. “I’m sorry, Jacob. Impulse control is one of the things I have trouble with since this.” She touched her head. She looked at him now. He looked hurt.

“No problem, hon—Alice.”

“Did you almost call me honey?”
 

“Sorry.”

I am not ready for this!
“Look, I just need to get back to Miami and get my things. I need to find out who killed Sara and what this is for.” She grabbed the necklace from the side of the boat’s queen-size bed, where she had tucked it under the mattress. She sat up and put it back around her neck. It felt hot against her skin.

“You haven’t told me what happened with Sara.”

Yes, change the subject, please!
“I don’t really know for sure. I only remember flashes from that night. I remember seeing her get shot.” Her throat closed and her eyes filled with tears. “He shot her right in front of me, and her blood, her brains, got all over me.” Jacob put his arms around her. She let him. After a bit, she could talk again. “My friend, Jenny, found me almost dead along the side of the river with this.” Alice touched the necklace. “I can’t remember being in the river or getting out of it. The first thing I recall after Sara’s murder is waking up at Jenny’s place a few days later.”

“You don’t remember what the man looked like at all?”

Alice called up the memory again. She found no more there than before, as before she had seen brief flashes in a smoky glass. She remembered Jenny saying that her kind of memory loss sometimes got better on its own, but sometimes it never healed. “Dark hair, dark eyes. Asian but tall. That is what I told Jenny when she found me.”