“Yeah,” I replied. “For a few beers, probably.”
“Cool. Always good to have a familiar face in the audience.” He handed me a business card. “If you gotta leave before my break, that’s cool. But give me a call tomorrow; I’m playing a party on a friend’s yacht in the evening, and we’re doing some diving before that. Always room for more.” He reached over and rubbed Finn’s neck, then stood and walked away.
Finn cocked his head, looking up at me.
“It’s a mystery to me, Bubba.”
The lights on the stage came up as Eric stepped up to the mic. He took up his acoustic guitar, throwing the strap over his shoulder, and the people in the bar began clapping. He checked his tuning, then launched into a slow ballad that I immediately recognized and had even been able to strum along with.
“You know Eric?” a middle-aged blonde asked from the next table. She was sitting with another woman and two men.
“We know each other from Marathon,” I replied.
“Bring your pooch over and join us,” the man sitting next to the blonde said. “We’re big fans.”
The following morning, I woke up with a dry mouth and my head hurt. It wasn’t a throbbing hangover, just a dull ache in the back of my neck and head. I’d only planned on a few beers but ended up watching Eric play three full sets while talking with two couples cruising together.
After the first set, Eric brought his wife over and introduced her. She also mentioned how Rusty and I had saved their plans to sail to the BVI, which further ingratiated me with my tablemates.
At some point during the evening, Eric asked what had brought me to Tortola and I’d let it slip that I was looking for someone.
Rising from my bunk, I decided to call Rusty and find out firsthand if what Eric had said was true. Taking my sat-phone up to the cockpit, I pulled up Rusty’s number and stabbed the Talk button.
“Where the hell are you?” my old friend said, instead of the usual polite hello.
“Watching the sun come up over Myett’s from the middle of Cane Garden Bay,” I replied. “The weather is here, wish you were beautiful.”
“Hardy-har,” Rusty said. “You looked in the mirror lately?”
“Ran into Eric Stone last night,” I said. “He told me some interesting news.”
“He did, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Some BS about you settling down.”
“Well, I don’t know if I’d go that far.”
“Who is she?”
Rusty laughed. “You take off outta here and gone six weeks, and the only time ya call me is to ask about my sex life?”
Rusty isn’t one to squirm, but he was wiggling now. “Not all the sordid details,” I replied. “Just curious how she lost her sight.”
“She’s a nice lady, bro. You’ll like her.” He sighed again. “A lot of folks here worried about your ugly mug. The BVI is a long-ass way from Marathon. When ya comin’ home?”
Looking off to my left, I saw a stately-looking trawler moving slowly through the anchorage. I watched as the Grand Banks stopped and dropped anchor a hundred yards away, then reversed and payed out the anchor chain.
“Jesse?” Rusty’s voice came over the phone, now a few inches from my ear. “You still there?”
In the bow of the Grand Banks, a blond girl’s head and shoulders appeared. She waved up to the bridge and the chain rode tightened. The big trawler backed down on the anchor, pushing the flukes deep into the sandy bottom.
“Hello?”
I put the phone back to my ear. “She’s here,” I said.
“Who’s there?”
“Savannah,” I replied, watching her step out of the side hatch. “She just dropped anchor a hundred yards away. Gotta go.”
Ending the call, I felt suddenly nervous. How was she going to react, seeing me here? I stood and was about to call out to her when I noticed a center-console tender heading toward her boat. It was polished white, about twenty feet, with a blue Bimini top, and gleaming white outboard. Not your typical small sailboat dinghy. A man in a long-sleeved white shirt and khaki cargo pants sat at the helm. Looking back in the direction the tender had come from, I saw a large motoryacht on the north side of the bay, easily eighty feet long, glossy white with smoked windows.
Looking back, I saw Savannah, with Florence at her side, something blue in her hand. They were standing at Sea Biscuit’s side rail and Savannah was waving toward the tender. Her big, black Rottweiler was standing on the aft cabin roof, watching the approaching boat intently. Mother and daughter wore matching blue and white sundresses.
The tender came alongside, and the man held the two boats apart as Savannah stepped down first. Florence placed what I could now see was a water bottle on the deck. Savannah helped her down.
The man took Savannah’s hands, holding them up and out as they both smiled and spoke. I could hear their voices but couldn’t make out their words. He stepped into her arms and they held each other close, looking into one another’s faces. Then they kissed.
I fell back against the combing, dropping my phone. It felt like I’d been gut-punched. The tender turned and continued toward a sailboat just beyond Savannah’s trawler. Breathing became difficult. My mind was swirling in all directions. I’d dreamt of this day for months. I’d even decided I’d give up my island and we’d sail off together. The time we had, so many years ago, had been special. And finding her again, I’d felt that she’d known it also.
But that was years ago. I’d moved on, remarried, and become a widower. I’d been with other women since then, hurting some and being hurt, but that special feeling had never been there.
I knew that Savannah had returned to her husband, then left him again, and had a child. I didn’t know anything about the ensuing years. We’d only run into each other a couple of months ago, when her sister was killed. I’d assumed from her body language, and the things I thought she’d wanted to say but didn’t, that she wanted me. That she wanted me to be Florence’s father.
Had I read the signs all wrong again? Of course I had. I always did. Savannah had a life for the last eight years and I wasn’t in it.
The tender slowed as it approached the sailboat, a center-cockpit Morgan. At this distance, I couldn’t make out the people on the sailboat. Absently, I opened the side hatch on the helm console and raised a pair of binoculars to my eyes.
Forcing my attention away from the tender, I found the sailboat. Eric and Kim Stone were waving to the approaching boat, a guitar case at his side. After a moment, Savannah’s tender came alongside, and the couple stepped down into it. The man at the helm, with Savannah on his arm, greeted the Stones, then turned the tender back the way he’d come.
Setting the binoculars aside, I picked up the phone, lying on the deck. I fished the card from my pocket and dialed Eric’s number. I could just hear his voice over the buffeting wind from his end.
“Eric,” I said loudly. “It’s Jesse, but don’t say my name.”
“Hey, I was hoping you’d call,” he replied.
“I have to leave suddenly,” I said. My voice breaking a little. He probably couldn’t tell over the wind, wave, and engine noises, as the tender sped away. “Do me a favor, man. Don’t say anything about me being here to Savannah.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t mention my name to Savannah or Florence.” I had tears in my eyes. “Please, man, I made a mistake.”
His voice changed. “Oh, um, yeah, dude. Don’t worry about that. I’ll make sure Kim knows, too.”
The call ended. A moment later, the tender slowed and approached the stern of the sleek-looking yacht. They were much too far away to see, but I figured there were a lot of smiling, happy faces.
I sat there a moment, still somewhat dazed. A feeling started to rise from the pit of my stomach. An urge to get moving came over me. It was a sudden, overpowe
ring need be somewhere else. Anywhere. I couldn’t take the chance of running into Savannah on Tortola. She’d know why I’d come here, why I’d crossed some twelve hundred miles of ocean.
Reaching for the binoculars to put them away, I glanced over at Savannah’s boat, and something caught my eye. Raising the binos to my eyes, I scanned the boat. The big dog was trotting along the side deck. He stopped and sniffed at the nearly empty water bottle Florence had left, knocking it overboard.
Thinking of the girl, I again wondered. Savannah maintained that she didn’t know who the father was. At least that’s what she’d told both Rusty and Charity, and what they’d told me. I’d never asked, and she’d never volunteered that her ex might not be the father.
I went to my dinghy and stepped down into it, telling Finn to stay put. He paced the deck as I motored slowly away, trying not to attract any attention.
Finn’s tail was thumping against the gunwale when I returned a few minutes later. I tied the dinghy off securely to a stern cleat and climbed aboard. A moment later, Salty Dog’s engine was purring, and I engaged both it and the windlass, pulling the anchor rode up in short order. I pointed the bow toward Jost Van Dyke, just a few miles beyond the bay, activated the autopilot, and went forward to secure the anchor.
With the anchor locked in place, I paused at the bow, and looked toward the island four miles in the distance. My ketch was moving toward a spot on the south shore. I could motor over in just forty minutes or so, make the Soggy Dollar by happy hour, and drown myself with cheap rum. Or…
Going below, I got a freezer bag from the galley and returned to the cockpit. Finn jumped up onto the windward bench seat and lay with his head on his paws, his sad eyes looking up at me. He knew something was wrong.
“Let’s go see what’s on the other side of that horizon,” I told him, scratching the top of his head. I dropped Florence’s water bottle into the zippered bag, threw a loop around the winch and hoisted the main.
The End
Monterey, California, fourteen months after Jesse’s disappearance
On a nearly barren promontory, jutting out into Monterey Bay, stands the oldest active lighthouse on the west coast. Point Pinos Lighthouse rises above the rocky shoreline at the southern end of the bay and has been guiding mariners to safe harbor for more than a hundred and fifty years.
Unlike many lighthouses, it barely rose above the roof of the tender’s home, built around it. The land itself lifts the lighthouse above the Pacific and the bay to allow its piercing light to be seen for miles.
Inland just a couple hundred yards are the artificially green fields of Pacific Grove Golf Links and El Carmelo Cemetery.
Two men had been watching from the observation deck of the lighthouse since the sun had made its first appearance over the rugged landscape. One man was tall and ruggedly built. The other, slight and balding, looked like he’d be more at home in an office cubicle.
The early morning golfers were on the course, and occasionally a car would turn into the cemetery.
“How sure are you that she will be here?”
“I’m not,” the taller man replied, his voice gravelly. “You asked where I thought she might be, and this is my best guess.”
“And you haven’t had contact with her in over a year?”
The tall man shifted his weight, as he watched through powerful binoculars. “Correct.”
“So, how do you know she’ll be here?”
Lowering the binos, he looked down at the smaller man. “Like I said, I don’t know. But I do know human nature, Bremmer. She was an only child, abandoned by her mother when she was very young and orphaned before reaching adulthood. I know she sailed into the Pacific a year ago last January. She could be in Hong Kong. Or she could be standing right behind me. Do not take this woman’s abilities lightly.”
“I’ve read her jacket.”
Travis Stockwell raised his binos again, peering toward the cemetery. “Not all her training was included.”
The smaller man, wearing a gray business suit, sans the tie, looked out toward the links. “You keep alluding to that but never mention specifics. Our agency wants to know more.”
“Not from me, you don’t. She won’t want to be a part of your organization.” Stockwell lowered his glasses and looked at the balding man. “By the way, your organization could use a better name.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not for me to decide,” Charlie Bremmer replied, looking up at the former Army Airborne Officer. “We’re counting on you and the others to persuade her, Colonel. All of you have said she’s the only person who can find McDermitt.”
Stockwell grunted. “There’s another one who doesn’t want to be found. What do you want with him, anyway?”
“It’s not just you and Livingston who have said that he’s the absolute best at infiltration.”
“Yeah,” Stockwell said. “There’s that. He could be standing behind her, standing behind me, and neither of us would know it. But last I heard, he slipped off the deep end.”
“And nobody’s heard from him in over a year?”
“Have you ever been to old South Florida, Bremmer?”
“I am the AIC in our Miami office.”
“Fishermen settled the Keys more than a hundred years before anyone even thought about draining the swamps to build a trading post called Miami. The people of the Keys are tough and resilient; that’s why they’re called Conchs. And they look after one another. He’s been back there now and again, I’m sure. But nobody on those bony rocks will say anything about it to an outsider. He’s one of them.”
“We want him to be one of us,” Bremmer said, looking through the binos once more.
“None of us have agreed,” Stockwell said. “And those two? It’ll take a helluva lot more than money to win them over.”
“We’re working on that,” Bremmer said. He paused, leaning forward until his binoculars almost touched the glass surrounding the lighthouse’s observation deck. “Is that her?”
Stockwell had already seen her. She’d arrived on a small scooter, wearing jeans, a blue flannel shirt, and boots, a small pack on her back. She’d parked a hundred feet from where he knew her father was buried.
The woman got off her scooter and stood, looking all around. She was tall and lean. Her hair was piled beneath a faded blue cap, but a few blond locks fell on either side of her face.
“She’s beautiful,” Bremmer said.
“She’s also a cold-blooded killer. If you screw this up, neither of us might ever leave here. You shut up and let me do the talking.”
“This is—”
“It’s my meet,” Stockwell said, lowering his glasses and glaring at the man. “She was my asset. And I think a part of her saw me as a friend. Now let’s go.”
Exiting the front of the lightkeeper’s house, the two men got into a white Suburban with dark tinted glass. Though the cemetery was only two hundred yards from the lighthouse, the landscape made it faster to take the road around the point.
Bremmer pulled into a parking spot just past the cemetery entrance, and shut off the engine. He started to reach for the door, but Stockwell stopped him.
A narrow lane turned off the entrance road and ran parallel to the main road. Stockwell could see the scooter, leaning on its stand, but the woman was nowhere in sight.
“Sit tight,” Stockwell said, his hands on his knees. “Roll down the windows and keep your hands on the wheel.”
“What—”
“Just do it, Bremmer. She was expecting us.”
“I don’t see her.”
“Me neither,” Stockwell said. “I haven’t had any contact with her in a year. And at that time, she suspected I might be trying to kill her. So not seeing her has me a little on edge. Best thing to do is sit tight and let her make the next move.”
For ten minutes, the two men s
at in the car, looking beyond the weathered picket fence in the direction of the scooter. The only movement either man saw was occasional crows flying from one tree to another, cawing at one another.
There was the slightest sound of crunching stone outside his window, but before Stockwell could shift his eyes to the passenger side mirror, the long barrel of a suppressed pistol was placed against the side of his head.
“What do you want?” Charity Styles asked, her voice calm and deadly serious.
Stockwell didn’t flinch. He kept both hands on his knees, and prayed Brenner kept his on the wheel.
“Jesse’s missing.”
“No, he knows exactly where he is. But you don’t.”
“We’re just here to talk,” Brenner said. Stockwell winced slightly.
“Shut up, whoever you are,” Charity hissed. “Or the next thing you won’t feel is a nine-millimeter jacketed round exiting Stockwell’s head and entering yours.”
Neither man said anything.
“I asked you what you want.”
“We want you to find Jesse.”
“Why?”
“So the man beside me can ask him for his help.”
“Unlock the back door.”
Bremmer moved his left hand very slowly and pushed the button. The doors unlocked.
“Both of you,” Charity ordered. “Left hand only; disarm and toss them in the back.”
“I’m unarmed,” Bremmer said.
Slowly, Stockwell pulled his jacket open with his left hand. Even more slowly, he lifted his Colt with two fingers and moved it over his head, releasing it to fall to the floor behind him.
In an instant, Charity opened the back door and slid in. Stockwell didn’t have to see that she’d picked up his gun, he heard the hammer cock.
“You won’t be offended if I don’t take you at your word,” she said, reaching over Bremmer’s shoulder, and holding Stockwell’s pistol against the man’s chest.
Stockwell noticed that his Colt needed only change a few degrees of angle to be pointing at him. Charity used her right hand to search under Bremmer’s jacket and all around his waistband. He knew that she was equally adept at offhand shooting and was more than familiar with a Colt 1911.
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