The Killing Tide

by Dani Pettrey

  Tess turned to follow the direction of Gabby’s gaze.

  “Oh,” she said, biting her bottom lip before turning back to Gabby. “I guess our time is up.”

  “You got that right,” Finn said.

  Gabby took a stiffening breath. “I have every right to talk to my friend.”

  “That’s not the source of my frustration, and you know it. You have a drug lord sending hit men to kill you.”

  Tess’s eyes widened. “You do?”

  Gabby swallowed with a shrug.

  “That’s great. Shrug off a threat on your life.” Finn released a frustrated exhale. “Noah entrusted you to my care, and you knew not to leave without me.”

  She tilted her head. “I never actually agreed.”

  Finn pinched the bridge of his nose. “Regardless of semantics, it’s time to go. I’m needed back at the station.”

  “Tess can drop me off when we’re done talking.” There was so much more she wanted to ask her.

  “Not a chance,” Finn said.

  “Contrary to what you and Noah think, I don’t need a babysitter.”

  “Given your nonchalant attitude toward a professional hit on your life, I disagree. Maybe not a babysitter, but concerned family members and friends.”

  Finn still considered her a friend? She let that bounce around in her mind as she steeled herself for an intense argument. “I appreciate your concern.” It was endearing . . . and frustrating. “But I can take care of myself.” She’d been embedded undercover in South Sudan for nigh on a year. She knew how to take care of herself—Asim’s lies and actions aside.

  “I made Noah a promise.” Finn pulled out handcuffs. “If you won’t go cordially . . .” He let them dangle.

  She arched her brows. “You can’t be serious.”

  “As serious as I get.”

  She shifted to stand, but before she’d gotten to her feet, he’d cuffed her right arm to his left.

  “Finn!” Embarrassment, mixed with anger, flushed her otherwise cool skin as everyone’s gaze in the café shifted to her. “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “I think it’s the other way around.”

  He looked at Tess. “I’m so sorry about Will, and I’ll be in touch. But please excuse us.”

  At Tess’s nod, he placed his hand on Gabby’s lower back to direct her out. She resisted, refusing to be dragged out like a criminal.

  “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

  “You can’t really believe I’m going to make this easy.”

  “Of course not.” He wrapped his free arm around her and hefted her over his shoulder, lifting their cuffed arms up to rest on her hip.

  “Finn Walker! You cannot be serious.” She squirmed, trying to wriggle her way down, but his hold only tightened as he strode to the door.

  Pushing it open with the sole of his boot, he carried her outside into the rain and straight to his car. He dropped her with a tender hand onto his backseat and, uncuffing his wrist, quickly moved her hands behind her back and locked the free cuff around her other wrist.

  “There.” He moved to the driver’s seat and started the engine.

  “I cannot believe you just did that,” she said as they pulled out of the parking spot.

  “You didn’t give me a choice.” He made a right at the first stoplight, heading back to the office.

  “I was having an important conversation.” She wrestled to get comfortable with her hands cuffed behind her bum.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “She said you should investigate Fletcher? And that got your reporter senses going.”

  “Y . . . es.”

  “I knew it.” He tapped the wheel. “You’re willing to risk your safety for a story . . . anything for a story.”

  “It’s what I do for a living.”

  “Trust me, I know. But I don’t believe it’s just for a living.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean that a story will always come first with you. Even before . . .” He took a breath, holding it as if weighing his next words. Was he about to say before me?

  In all fairness, she had chosen the job in Raleigh over pursuing the feelings that had kindled between them.

  His expression shifted to disappointment. “Even before your safety.”

  She kept quiet.

  He drummed the wheel. “Before everything,” he whispered.

  She sat back, her fists bumping her tailbone. Was he right?

  Did she always put the story above all else? And did that include everyone? Did she put the story before God and His will for her life? She always assumed the pursuit of truth was what He wanted for her life, but she’d never actually prayed and asked Him to reveal His will. She preferred to assume the insatiable drive in her—the urge to discover the truth—was created in her from the start. What about family? Did she put following stories around the world before them?

  She stood by the conviction of God first, family second, job third. But did her actions and not just her words prove that she lived out what she professed?

  “Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”

  Actions and truth.

  In truth, she’d been so focused on exposing the falsehoods in others—in those she didn’t know or have a relationship with—that she’d been blinded to the truth of who Asim was.

  She’d known that her relationship with a source was professionally wrong, but she’d focused on her feelings rather than her convictions or faith.

  She swallowed, not wanting to go any deeper on those thoughts. Leave it to Finn to unsettle her. He always did—both in a good and in an extremely frustrating way.

  twenty

  Heat rushed over Rissi as Noah continued to question the detainee who shot Sam, and the man refused to answer.

  Getting angry won’t help. She repeated the words in her head, trying to convince herself, but it was useless. Her muscles tensed and her neck ached from the tightness gripping her. How could the man just stare blankly back at them, like they were wasting his time?

  “You killed a good man today. A husband and father,” Noah said. The vein in his temple flared purple.

  Juan Cadarz remained silent, his gaze fixed on the ground.

  “Who hired you?” Rissi asked, taking a different tack.

  The man blinked, his dark lashes fluttering like butterfly wings.

  She’d hit a nerve.

  “Why were you ordered to kill Dennis Fletcher?” She’d continue in the one direction he’d responded to.

  He swallowed, slumping deeper in his chair.

  “Did you also kill Petty Officer Will Seavers?”

  He shifted in his seat, stroking his thighs.

  Finally, she was making him nervous.

  “Why kill Petty Officer Seavers? Did it involve drugs?”

  She leaned forward, her forearms braced on the black table, her legs crossed underneath. “So it involved drugs,” she said, poking at the nerve she’d hit.

  His gaze darted to the left, fixing on the corner of the room.

  “I’ll assume your evasiveness means yes.”

  A slight smile curled in the corner of her boss’s lips. His silent support spurred her on.

  “Did Fletcher and Seavers catch you smuggling drugs?” Had they stumbled across the drug runners while out fishing? Had they been in the wrong place at the wrong time?

  The man refused to respond verbally, continuing to show zero remorse for killing Sam.

  Rissi fought the urge to throttle answers from him, but at least he was reacting, albeit only with bodily cues.

  After another half hour of questioning met with silence, Noah stood, and she followed him out of the room. The door shut behind them with a thud.

  “We’ll let him stew overnight in the holding cell and try again tomorrow.”

  Rissi nodded. His bail hearing, all three of theirs, was set for 1400 tomorrow.

  She prayed Caleb was
having better luck with the other detainees, but the tense expression on his face as he entered the hall said otherwise.

  “Let’s hope Logan was able to trace the call,” Noah said.

  “Calls,” Caleb said. “The man now identified as Alonso Garcia, thanks to Logan’s digging, also made a call.”

  Rissi pursed her lips. Interesting. Two of the three made calls. Why not the third man?

  Logan came around the corner and strode toward them, his broad shoulders the finishing touch for his toned physique. “The calls went to this number.” He handed Noah a Post-it note.

  Rissi arched a brow, looking around her boss at the numbers scribbled across the yellow square. “Calls? Both men called the same number?”

  Logan rocked back on his heels. “That’s correct.”

  “A lawyer?” Caleb asked.

  “Surprisingly, no.” Logan shook his head, his spikey, blond-tipped hair shifting with the swaying motion. “The number eventually traced to an offshore company called Litman Limited.”

  “Litman?” Rissi frowned. “Never heard of it.”

  “Neither had I, so I did some digging, and it looks like a front company.”

  “Front for what?” Noah asked.

  “I don’t know. That will take a lot more digging.”

  “Get on it,” Noah said.

  “Yes, sir.” Logan turned around, heading back for his desk.

  “Good work,” Noah called after him.

  Emmalyne approached. “I found some info on our third drug runner—Manuel Rodriguez. He’s the only American citizen of the three but emigrated from Cuba like the others a couple years back.”

  She stepped forward. “I also have results on the bullet Finn retrieved. Three were .40 caliber rounds.”

  “Like Coast Guard standard issue in their P229 DAK, among other guns that use that caliber. And the other?” Noah asked.

  “It’s .45 caliber.”

  Why two different guns? Why such different ones? And had the .40 been fired from a Coast Guard issued DAK? When Finn searched the boat, he’d found no firearms, so what happened to them?

  Exasperation flaring like ignited rocket fuel sizzled through Finn’s veins as he pulled up to the station and shifted into Park. A man was trying to kill Gabby. How could she care so little about her own safety? How could she be so bold as to leave the team’s watch and protection?

  He knew from her career choice, risk drove her. She craved it, as he did.

  There was something inside them both—a pulse reverberating through them—a longing for the adrenaline rush during that split-second when anything could happen.

  Waiting on the precipice of a rush brought him to life—being in the dead calm of a storm waiting for it to cascade over him or standing with his toes on the edge of a plane before freefalling into a dive.

  It was no different for Gabby, though he thought she tempted death far more readily than he did. It was like she enjoyed taunting it.

  Cutting the ignition, he climbed out of the car. Reaching back in, he flipped open the child-safety lock on her door.

  She stepped out and handed the unclasped cuffs to him. “Thanks for the ride, Sparky.”

  His brows hiked, a smile curling on his lips. How had she . . . ? The lady was impressive—frustrating as all get-out, but attractively impressive.

  Gabby entered the office, Finn fast on her heels, fully expecting him to rat her out to Noah for bailing on him with Tess. Thankfully Noah didn’t ask how the afternoon had gone, and shockingly, Finn didn’t bring it up.

  She wondered if he was trying to protect his own neck or hers.

  “How is it going with the interrogation?” Finn asked.

  Noah brushed a hand over his short-cropped hair. “The men refused to talk. But two of them placed phone calls to the same number.”

  “A number that leads to a front company,” Logan said, striding toward them. “All I can find on Litman Limited is a false address in the Bahamas where it’s registered.”

  “Okay, keep digging,” Noah said.

  “On it.” Logan headed back for his desk.

  “I got to speak with Fletcher,” Finn said.

  “He’s awake?” Rissi asked.

  “Yes. And I’ve got a lot to tell you both.”

  twenty-one

  “All right,” Noah said, in front of the team’s case board. He lifted a bright blue marker and flipped the top off, setting it on the whiteboard’s silver tray. The scent of blueberry wafted in the air. “Okay . . .” Noah’s brown brows hiked. “Who bought fruit-scented markers?”

  “Guilty.” Emmalyne raised her hand. “If we have to write down awful details, the task can at least smell good.”

  Noah shook his head with a slight smile while Finn struggled to hold back a laugh. A smile curled on his lips. Typical Emmalyne—always looking to bring light to a dark situation.

  Noah took a swig of his coffee, then asked, “What do we know?”

  Finn sat forward and exhaled. “Fletcher said two men in dive suits and masks entered the boat. He said they argued with Will in Spanish and then shot him. Fletcher was able to escape and got away in the outboard. The next thing he remembers was waking up at the hospital.”

  He looked over at Gabby, beside him on the large cushy gray sofa. The air was cold, and she only wore a lightweight burgundy T-shirt. He slipped off his black windbreaker and offered it to her.

  “Thanks.” She slipped it on, her arms swimming in the sleeves.

  He smiled. He liked the look of his friend bundled up in his jacket.

  “We know that two of the men we processed called the same number, which as Logan discovered . . .” Rissi said, glancing back at him leaning against the far wall.

  “Leads to what appears to be a front company registered in the Bahamas named Litman Limited,” he said.

  “The Bahamas are a known location for registering front companies.” Noah added the bulleted points to the information Fletcher had relayed.

  “A common place for laundering money through offshore accounts,” Rissi said.

  Finn glanced at the clock. The tired expressions of his teammates were evidence of the length and sadness of the day weighing on them.

  “Tess said Will told her before he left last night that he’d gotten into something he shouldn’t have, was in over his head, and was planning to get out,” Gabby said, her hands interlaced around her knee as she leaned back.

  Noah stared at his sister for a moment, and then his gaze settled on Finn, his brows arched.

  “Gabby spoke with Tess while I was speaking with Fletcher,” he said.

  “Gabs.” Noah’s eyebrows hiked higher. “You know this is an open investigation.”

  “Trust me.” Frustration sparked in her eyes. “Finn made that perfectly clear.”

  She was like a bulldog with a bone—ceaseless when she caught a whiff of a story.

  “But you did it anyway,” Noah said, his tone terse.

  “She wanted to confide in a friend,” Gabby said, her lips pursing to the side in that stubborn way they did when she’d pushed the boundaries. Which happened far too often for Finn’s liking.

  Noah’s face softened. “I get that. I just don’t want you getting involved in a delicate situation while you’re supposed to be lying low.”

  She nodded reluctantly.

  “Emmy, why don’t you go over the results you’ve processed so far?” Noah said, switching his attention to her.

  “Sure,” Emmalyne said, sharing the information about the bullets again, then proceeding to say, “The fingerprints Finn collected show Will, Fletcher, and several dozen guardsmen, along with Fletcher’s wife, Valerie, had been on Fletcher’s boat.”

  “His estranged wife,” Gabby added.

  Noah’s brows arched.

  “I know. It’s an open investigation. . . .” She released a stream of air.

  “We’ll need to run through all the guardsmen who’d been on the boat, but the possibility they were simp
ly friends of Fletcher’s who’d he’d taken out fishing or for a boat ride is high.”

  Noah added a notation to check into each man, or woman in Valerie Fletcher’s case, who’d been on Fletcher’s boat.

  “If the men entered in full dive suits, masks, and gloves as Fletcher described,” Finn said, “they didn’t leave fingerprints.”

  “Unfortunately,” Caleb said, shifting on Rissi’s left.

  “I’m still processing the rest,” Emmy, Finn’s CSI assistant and evidence-chaser extraordinaire, said.

  “The ME’s office called and said Will’s autopsy is set for 1000, and the drug runners’ bail hearing is at 1400,” Finn said.

  “Rissi and I will be at the competition, as it was postponed until tomorrow, after the incident. Which means, Gabby, you’ll come with us.”

  “I’d rather stay in town so Tess can come hang with me if she needs a friend.”

  “Understandable,” Noah said. “But I don’t want you alone at the loft, even if Tess is with you.”

  “Agreed,” Finn said.

  “Fine. Then I’ll stay at the office. Tess can visit me here.”

  Caleb raised his hand. “I’ll be here.”

  Gabby exhaled. “I appreciate everyone’s concern. Really, I do, but I don’t need a babysitter. Being away from Raleigh is safety enough.”

  “No, it’s not,” Finn said, his limbs heating.

  “I agree with Finn,” Noah said.

  “Of course you do.” Gabby took a shaky inhale.

  “We’re just trying to protect you,” Finn said. They weren’t trying to babysit her. They wanted her safe. She mattered so much to them. To him.

  “Gabs.” Noah inclined his head.

  “All right,” she said on an exhale. “The office it is.”

  “Thank you.” Noah dipped his head before glancing back at the board. “Anything I’m missing?”

  “I’ll continue to dig deeper on Litman Limited,” Logan said, pushing away from the wall.

  “I’ll follow up with the guys who nearly ran Rissi over,” Caleb said, his jaw tight.

  “Since their bail hearing isn’t set until 1400 tomorrow, Rissi and I should be back in plenty of time for it,” Noah said.