Pineapple Jailbird

by Amy Vansant

  I should go kill him…

  Miles had been forced to start over. He caught a few gators and stumbled on to the biggest python he’d ever seen in his life during a trip to the Everglades. He could have made money killing the snake and turning it in for the bounty, but instead, he’d taken it to his daddy’s land to use as an attraction. The damn thing was too big though. That’s why he’d used it to try and get Charlotte. He knew as soon as the police showed up and found Knuckles slowly digesting a woman, they were going to shoot her, but fact was, he couldn’t afford to feed her anymore anyway.

  He’d still miss her.

  Miles rapped on his truck and moved toward the barn.

  Is Jim gonna fire me? When the guy called about taking down Simone, he’d been happy to help. To be paid for taking down a woman he hated with every bone in his body, well, that was just too good to be true. Sure, he might have lied a little to seem more useful to Jim, but who didn’t lie about their resume?

  Miles opened the barn door and walked to the gator moat he’d dug in the corner. Badboi’s eye rolled toward him, his inner eyelid—the one that slid back to front—flicked.

  He needed to take care of Charlotte and get back in Jim’s good graces. He had to stay on the team until he found Simone. Badboi could do the job. He was an aggressive little bastard, especially when he was hungry.

  “I don’t think you’re getting fed tonight, Badboi.”

  The gator grunted.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Midge’s Donuts, can I help you?”

  Charlotte rolled her eyes at Declan, who sat staring at her expectantly, as she began her phone call.

  She doubted the number Jamie last called her on now belonged to a donut shop.

  “Someone tried to kill me with a snake.”

  The woman on the other end of the line paused. “Just a second please.”

  There was a delay and then Charlotte heard Jamie’s voice.

  “Did I say you could call me?”

  “Oh, sorry, were you busy making the crullers? And you wouldn’t have left this line usable if you didn’t think I might call, Midge.”

  “What do you want? Have you made any progress?”

  “No, I haven’t made any progress. It’s only been a day, the helpful packet you sent me didn’t contain anything useful, and someone tried to kill me with a snake. How was I supposed to make any progress?”

  “That’s not my problem. Wait, did you say snake?”

  “Snake. Python to be exact. And all this is kind of your problem. Killing my whole family upon my failure might give you some sense of satisfaction, but your daughter will still be rotting in jail.”

  “You think I don’t have fallbacks? Do you really think I left Stephanie’s fate in your hands alone?”

  “I’m sure you have your bases covered. But wouldn’t it be easier to help me a little?”

  Jamie huffed. “Possibly. Tell me about the snake.”

  “Someone slipped a giant python through my window while I was sleeping. If Abby hadn’t started barking I’d be wrapped in a snakeskin jacket the hard way right now.”

  “Hm.”

  “It wasn’t you, was it?”

  “Me?” Jamie nearly shrieked the word. “Why would I try and kill you with a snake? Why would I try to kill anyone with a snake?”

  “You like to kill in creative ways.”

  “Clever ways,” stressed Jamie, sounding genuinely offended. “What’s clever about throwing a snake at someone?”

  “So is this your swamp man?”

  “I think so. I know someone who uses animals as assassins. He tried to kill me by releasing a troop of brown recluse spiders in my car.”

  “A pack of spiders is called a cluster,” said Charlotte before she could stop herself. She hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

  Jamie snorted a laugh. “Nerd.”

  “Whatever. Got a name for this weirdo?”

  “Miles Davis.”

  Charlotte frowned. “The trumpet player?”

  “No. Coincidence. Believe me, his family never heard of Miles Davis when they named him. He was Kyle Brown in the WITSEC program but he still rolled around calling himself Miles like an idiot. I doubt he’s using Kyle now.”

  “Is he in the fingerprint book? Maybe we can match the prints outside my window.”

  “There won’t be prints outside your window.”

  “Why? He always wears gloves?’

  “No, he has no fingerprints.”

  Charlotte gaped. “So he is the same person you said wouldn’t be in the book but should be?”

  “Yes. The snake confirms I was right to suspect him, but framing Stephanie...I don’t know.”

  “Not his style?”

  “Not his brain power.”

  “So you admit there might be someone else.”

  Jamie grunted the affirmative.

  “Who?’

  “There are a few possibilities. I need to look into some things and get back to you.”

  Charlotte sighed. They’d hit another wall, but at least she felt like Jamie was trying to help her now. She returned her thoughts to the swamp man. With a little more information, he might be within her grasp. It could be one down and one to go.

  “How does this guy have no fingerprints?”

  “Hm?” It sounded as if Jamie, too, had been letting her thoughts wander. “Oh. They were burned off when he was a child. Lightning. Zapped him and escaped through his fingertips, taking more or less of them with it.”

  “Yikes… Can you help me find him?”

  “I don’t know where he is, yet. I can work on that too, now that he’s crawled out of the swamp he ran to after trying to kill me. I can tell you he’s got a grade school education—”

  “Great. I won’t waste time combing through Nobel prize winners.”

  “You didn’t let me finish. He has a doctorate in redneck. Actually, saying that isn’t fair to rednecks. He’s a genuine swamp creature. Oh, and he’s got an amazing tattoo, left by that same lightning strike. It flash-burned the image of his veins on his skin. His chest, upper arms, are all covered in a map of his veins.”

  “Wow. That’s some important information you could have shared earlier.”

  “Don’t get too excited. He can cover it pretty easily with a long sleeve shirt. Might peek up out of a crew neck collar. I don’t remember. I didn’t like to be near him. He smelled like low tide.”

  “Okay. So I’m looking for a smelly guy named after a famous trumpeter with no fingertips and a crazy vein tattoo.”

  “Bingo.”

  “Great. That should narrow it down.”

  “Exactly. You should be grateful. I couldn’t have found you a more distinctive target if he had two heads.”

  “Want to share more information about your real target? The smart one?”

  Jamie fell silent for a moment before muttering one last phrase.

  “Not yet.”

  The line went silent and Charlotte lowered the phone. She looked at Declan.

  “What? What did she say?” he asked.

  “How do you find a guy with a crazy tattoo who loves snakes?”

  “Huh?”

  Charlotte tapped the edge of her phone against her teeth.

  He has to feed the snake.

  She held up an index finger. “Two seconds. I have to make a call.”

  She dialed Frank.

  “Hey, did they autopsy that snake?”

  Frank snorted a laugh. “Why would they autopsy the snake? It didn’t eat you. Did you have a guest sleeping over you forgot to tell us about?”

  “No, but I’d like to know what it’s eaten.”

  “Why?”

  “If its belly is full of nasty-looking wild rats, then this guy probably pulled the monster from the everglades. But if its full of white, fancy rats—”

  “Then he’s buying them from a pet store and we can track him that way.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You k
now what, you’re pretty smart for a lady who almost got eaten by a snake.”

  Charlotte snickered. “Gosh, thanks.”

  “I’ll see what they did with the carcass.”

  “Thanks. Declan has Blade checking the cameras. Maybe we can figure out why this guy didn’t trigger them.”

  “Also a good idea.”

  “I also have a name and partial description.”

  “Of the snake fella? How could you? I thought you were asleep.”

  “My guardian angel, Jamie, reckons this M.O. fits a man named Miles Davis.”

  Frank grew quiet for a moment. “Isn’t he some sort of jazz man?”

  “No. I mean, yes, but not this time. We’re looking for a white man with some sort of crazy tattoo on his chest, back and arms. He was struck by lightning as a kid and it tattooed a map of his veins on him somehow.”

  Frank scoffed. “She’s pulling your leg.”

  “No, he also has no fingerprints, so don’t bother trying to look him up that way.”

  “He burned them off?”

  “The lightning did.”

  Frank grunted, sounding impressed. “Hm. I guess when lightning burns off your prints, why not be a bad guy?”

  “Does feel a little like destiny. Oh, and that’s his real name. In WITSEC he was Kyle Brown but Jamie says he never warmed up to his new identity.”

  “Hm. I’ll see what I can do.”

  Charlotte said her goodbyes as Declan moved beside her at the kitchen table and pointed to her open laptop screen.

  “You’re not making another call until you talk to me. What is that?”

  She looked at the picture she’d Googled while talking to Frank.

  “Crazy, isn’t it? It’s a woman who was struck by lightning and somehow the electricity tattooed her veins on her skin.”

  “So you decided to give up on the case and start a freak show?”

  “No, Jamie thinks the guy involved is a man named Miles Davis—”

  “I heard you say that to Frank. The Miles Davis?”

  “No, he’s dead.”

  Declan nodded. “That would make it harder for him to be involved.”

  “Right. Our Miles Davis has no fingerprints and a tattoo like this one on his chest, back and arms.”

  “From lightning?”

  “Yep. Hit as a kid.”

  “Huh.”

  Declan fell silent and Charlotte looked at him. She could tell by the expression on his face his mind was whirring.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “That branching tattoo looks like coral.”

  She studied the screen. “It does, doesn’t it?”

  “I hadn’t had a chance to tell you, but Stephanie called me with a message for you. She said she keeps having this dream about being underwater and swimming through a giant red coral reef.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “She thinks it has something to do with what happened in the warehouse, but she doesn’t know what. She just swims, sees the reef, panics, feels like she’s drowning and wakes up.”

  “I almost feel bad for her.”

  Declan nodded. “Every once in a while she admits to being human, as hard as that is to believe.”

  “That she’s admitting it or that she’s human?”

  “Both.”

  “So, you’re thinking she must have seen this guy without realizing it before she knocked herself out.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So there’s a good chance Jamie is right.”

  “So this is the guy out to get her?”

  Charlotte shook her head. “Yes and no. I think Miles works for the real enemy. And so does she, she just either doesn’t know or won’t tell me who she suspects yet. But if we can find the swamp creature, maybe we can follow the thread from there.”

  “Hm.” Declan kissed her on the side of the head. “I’m going to run out and check in with Blade for you. Are you going to be alright here?”

  “I’m in my house with two ex-mafia hit men sitting in the car outside and surrounded by cameras in the daylight. I’ll be fine.”

  “Says the girl who was almost eaten by a giant snake.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she slapped his hip. “Get out of here.”

  Charlotte found herself staring at Abby, who lay sleeping on the cool kitchen floor after her harrowing evening. She lowered herself to the ground and slipped her head under the dog’s front leg so it felt as though Abby were hugging her as they slept.

  “Tough night, huh?” she asked.

  The dog yawned and moved her foot to press against Charlotte’s shoulder, stretching.

  Charlotte closed her eyes until the dog shifted again and put her paw directly on her face.

  “Okay, this tender moment isn’t working for me anymore,” said Charlotte, sitting up.

  Her phone rang with the tone that said unknown number and she stood to grab it. She didn’t recognize the number.

  “Hello?”

  “I know who you’re lookin’ fer.”

  The male voice on the other side of the line was low with a rough southern twang.

  “You do? Who?”

  “The man huntin’ Simone.”

  Simone. The person on the other end of the line had to be one of Jamie’s witness protection clients. They were the only ones who’d known her as Simone.

  Charlotte suspected she was talking to Miles Davis, but she didn’t want him to know she was zeroing in on him.

  “Okay. Who’s after Simone?”

  The voice dropped an octave lower. “Come to the Riverwalk and I’ll show ya. I’ve got stuff that will lead you right to him.”

  “Can’t you just tell me his name?”

  The man sniffed. “It’s complicated. I don’t rightly understand what I’m lookin’ at here but I think you will.”

  Nothing about Miles’ invitation felt right, but Charlotte couldn’t risk missing a chance to end the case. She was familiar with the Riverwalk, a paved walking trail lining a nearby river. It ran about five miles long and served as a favorite path for joggers.

  Why would he pick such a public place to set a trap? It’s worth a shot.

  But she needed better directions.

  “Where on the walk?”

  “Near the condos.”

  In her mind, Charlotte pictured that spot on the walk. It was one of the more public areas, with single-story condos on one side and the river on the other. It seemed like a relatively safe place to meet. It would be a bad place to choose if he intended to murder her. And she’d be able to see him carting a giant snake from a mile away.

  Maybe old Miles had decided to turn in his boss. Maybe he’d be willing to testify that Stephanie didn’t kill Jason Walsh.

  “Okay. I can be there in twenty minutes. Does that work?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you there.”

  She was about to hang up when she heard him speak again.

  “Charlotte?”

  He knows my name.

  She raised the phone back to her ear. “Yes?”

  “Don’t bring your dog.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Cormac glanced at Blade’s sofa. Every dark red cushion was covered in white cat hair, and Blade, noticing this for the first time, suffered a moment of embarrassment. He hadn’t been expecting company, or he would have vacuumed.

  Cormac remained standing in his dark suit pants. He was a tall man, not as tall as Blade but impressively large, barrel-chested and fit for a man in his mid-sixties. When he spoke, it was hard not to listen. He seemed like a man fully in control of the world around him at all times.

  At least that was the side of him he allowed Blade to see. Blade knew he wasn’t always in control of everything.

  For one thing, he didn’t know how to dress for the heat.

  Who wears dark pants in Florida anyway? You have to go with the tropical flow...

  “You want a kitchen chair?” asked Blade.

  Corm
ac shook his head. “No. So there’s nothing on the cameras?”

  “No. Your man did a good job avoiding them.”

  Cormac grimaced. Blade was grateful he didn’t plan to deny his involvement. He was barely keeping himself from throttling the man for endangering Charlotte as it was. If he started lying—

  “I didn’t tell him to kill her. He misunderstood me.”

  “I’m pretty angry at myself for not doing a better job on my end with the cameras. He should have never got that close.”

  “How’d you know it was me?”

  “You asked me too many questions about the cameras and about Charlotte, though I’ll admit it didn’t hit me until after the snake.”

  Cormac nodded. “And you’re sure she’s not working for Jamie?”

  “Yes. Miss Charlotte is wonderful.” It made Blade smile just thinking about her.

  “She’s trying to get Stephanie out of jail—”

  “Jamie threatened her family. You should have asked me before you had that idiot try to kill her. Miss Charlotte is on our side. Always. You only needed to talk to her.”

  “I’m not ready to do that.” Cormac sighed and nearly lowered himself to the sofa. At the last second he realized his mistake and sprang back up, lifting his hand into the air. “Who’s to say she isn’t a plant to kill Declan?”

  “Do you think I didn’t check her out when I got here? She grew up with her grandmother in Charity after her mother died. Jamie didn’t orphan her just so she’d move in with her grandmother ten minutes from Declan in the hopes they’d meet and fall in love and Charlotte could someday kill him. She’s not some kind of Russian sleeper agent. Not even Jamie’s that good.”

  Cormac grunted. “Sometimes I wonder. And so what if she grew up here? It doesn’t mean she wasn’t recruited.”

  “She wasn’t.” Blade said the words through gritted teeth and saw Cormac’s eyebrows raise with what looked like surprise.

  “I haven’t seen you get that upset in a long time.”

  “I don’t usually let myself feel harmful emotions like anger anymore, man, but you’re making me mad. Miss Charlotte is sweet. She’s the best thing that ever happened to Declan. I won’t let you kill her.”

  Cormac sighed. “Fine. If you’re so sure.”

  “I am. You should have checked with me first. I’ve been here for months. I know stuff.”