by Evan Graver
Dark Path
A Ryan Weller Thriller
Evan Graver
Dark Path
© 2020 Evan Graver
www.evangraver.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any forms or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic, or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Cover: Wicked Good Book Covers
Editing: Novel Approach Manuscript Services
Proofreading: Gerald Shaw
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, business, companies, institutions, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Published by Third Reef Publishing, LLC
Hollywood, Florida
www.thirdreefpublishing.com
Created with Vellum
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by Evan Graver
Chapter One
East of St. John’s U.S. Virgin Islands
The speedboat came out of nowhere, its sleek, colorful hull slicing easily through the two-foot waves. The roar of its powerful engines drowned out everything else as it swept past the sailboat.
Paul Langston stood as the speedboat’s wake violently rocked the sailboat. He grasped the steering wheel, trying to keep himself upright and maintain the boat on its original heading. His gaze shot to the compass mounted on the bulkhead beside the cockpit door, then back to the flashy orange, red, and blue Cigarette boat.
Diane Langston looked at her husband as the speedboat slowed to turn, sensing this had something to do with their sudden departure from St. Thomas. She ran a hand through her shoulder-length brown hair. She was a few inches shorter than her husband at five-foot-six, and her sixty-six-year-old body was still trim from hours of yoga and jogging along the mountainous roads near their home. Diane took pride in her youthful figure, and unlike her girlfriends back in New Jersey, she’d never had plastic surgery. She had changed into a black one-piece swimsuit once they were aboard and had been lounging in the cockpit ever since, enjoying the sunshine and wondering why they had made such a hasty exit from their home.
Paul watched from his place at the wheel, his eyes squinting against the afternoon sun even behind his designer Ray-Bans. She’d always thought he was a handsome man, even though his once thick brown hair had dissipated into a thinly disguised comb over. He was well-tanned from lying by their pool or on one of the secluded beaches on the island, but his lack of physical activity over the years had left him with what he liked to say was “Dunlap’s disease,” his joking explanation as to why his gut done lapped over his belt.
“Who are they?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
There was something in Paul’s tone of voice that made Diane believe he might not know the men in the boat, but he knew why they were there. Paul was an accountant who had passed the bar and become a lawyer. In the late seventies and early eighties, he had worked at a firm in New Jersey before he’d quit and opened his own practice. She remembered visiting him at the little storefront in a strip mall in Perth Amboy, not far from the Harborside Marina, where he’d kept a thirty-foot motor launch for entertaining clients. Paul’s office had been spartan, with just two rooms: Paul’s inner office, where he spent long hours, and an outer reception area where a heavy-set blonde woman named Karen had worked. Diane was never quite sure if she and Paul were sleeping together, and if they were, she certainly didn’t understand the attraction, especially when he had a fit, willing wife at home.
She had never seen or met any of his clients, but she knew he had worked for the Mob. Almost everyone had a connection to them during those chaotic years in New Jersey, and Diane was happy that Paul had somehow kept them away from her family.
When their three children had left home to begin their own journeys in the world, Paul had taken Diane on a vacation to St. Thomas. After a week in the tropics, he had announced they were moving there. They’d settled on a modest house set on a hill off Frenchman Bay Road, which offered stunning views of Long Bay and the Caribbean Sea. Diane had fallen in love with the place at first sight, and it met Paul’s primary requirement that it have a pool. He continued to work remotely and had a small office on the second floor of a building across from the cruise port. The kids came periodically throughout the year, but they would all gather to celebrate Christmas together in the warm weather.
Now, standing in the sailboat’s cockpit and watching the speedboat full of men armed with large black guns, Diane Langston knew their life had come to an inglorious end, thanks to Paul’s nefarious dealings. She wanted to scream at him, but she knew she was just as complicit as him because she had taken the money the Mob so handsomely paid her husband with and created an enjoyable life for them and their children. Still, she couldn’t help herself. “Dammit, Paul. What did you do?”
“Get below,” Paul ordered, ignoring her tirade. He reengaged the autopilot and stepped around the wheel. Pushing his wife into the cabin, he jumped down beside her and went to the V-berth. Outside, the Cigarette slowed alongside the sailboat, matching its speed.
“What do they want?” Diane asked, watching her husband lift the mattress.
Before he could reach for the shotgun he kept there, bullets punched through the sailboat’s delicate fiberglass hull. The men in the speedboat continued to pour round upon round through their target.
Diane flattened herself to the cabin sole, watching her husband squat beside the bed and rack the shotgun. He poked the barrel through a hole in the hull and fired. The boom was deafening inside the confined cabin. Diane covered her ears, trying to make everything go away. She had known they were in trouble from the moment they’d set sail. Paul had been acting jumpy the last few days, and their flight from the island was so sudden that she’d barely had time to grab her purse. Paul had told her to leave everything, and yet he’d carried a yellow waterproof box under his arm as he’d grabbed her by the elbow and steered her toward their car.
What had Paul done to cause these men to destroy their precious sailboat?
Paul racked the shotgun again, thrusting a fresh shell into the chamber. As he stood to move, it looked to Diane as if an invisible hammer struck a blow to his body. He spun and fell to the floor; the shotgun flying from his grasp. She could see blood gushing
from the wound to his hand. It dripped into the water, pooling on the cabin floor and turning an ugly black color.
Diane crawled to her husband through the rising water. The sailboat listed heavier to starboard. The waves caused little geysers to erupt through the bullet holes as the water gushed in. She glanced up through the clear hatch cover at the jib, luffing in the breeze. Despite the damage to the canvas, the boat was still moving forward.
“Paul! Paul!” she cried, her tears mingling with the seawater.
Her husband rolled onto his side and looked at her with fear and sorrow in his eyes. He gripped her hand in his. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse and full of pain. “I’m sorry, Di.”
She glanced around the bullet-riddled berth. The shooters were higher in the speedboat, firing down at an angle with their shots, creating holes above the waterline on the port side upon impact and perforating the hull beneath the waterline on the starboard side on exit. If she and Paul stayed close to the port side and low to the sole, they might survive the intended massacre.
An explosion rocked the stern of the boat and a wall of water flowed through the cabin, smashing the couple against the V-berth bed. Diane fought to keep ahold of her husband, but the raging water forced them apart. It was in her mouth, her nose, and her eyes. She gagged and fought her way to the surface, reaching underwater to pull her husband up with her. She couldn’t let him drown.
As Diane struggled to stay afloat, the boat began to sink by its stern, gently pulling the Langstons into a watery grave.
Chapter Two
The sun-dappled water of the Caribbean Sea rolled endlessly to the western horizon, where there was nothing but water meeting the sky. To the east were the green hills of Peter and Norman Islands. A light wind billowed the white sails of the thirty-five-foot Lafitte 44 sailboat, Windseeker, heeling her over in a gentle four-degree list to port as she made her way north from the British Virgin Islands toward St. John in the USVI.
Ryan Weller stood in the cockpit, checking the speed on the GPS screen mounted to the pulpit in front of the sailboat’s wheel. Not for the first time this trip, he thought, There’s something wrong with sailing north.
It felt weird to be heading for Florida. His journey as a commercial diver working on the Peggy Lynn with his old crew had ended, and a new adventure was beginning with his girlfriend, Emily Hunt. Ryan had no idea what lay ahead, and part of him dreaded it. It wasn’t his new relationship that bothered him, but the prospect of having to find another job. Had his life aboard his boat, bouncing from island to island and risking life and limb as a troubleshooter for Dark Water Research, really come to a screeching halt?
He had promised Emily that he’d give up that life and step away from doing dangerous things in the service of his friend’s company, but part of him didn’t know if he could keep that promise. It gnawed at his stomach, twisting his gut into knots.
He looked at Emily, resting on the starboard cockpit bench, her long legs propped on the port side. Her thick blonde mane, the color of harvest wheat, waved in the wind, blowing strands across her face. She must have felt his gaze on her because she turned and looked at him with those cornflower-blue eyes that he found so intoxicating. Emily brushed a strand of hair from her cheek and smiled. She was just two inches shorter than his six-foot height, and she wore a blue bikini over her lithe body. The sun had kissed her, making her skin glow.
Yeah, he thought with a grin. Everything is gonna be all right.
But was he trying to convince himself that it would be?
And what the heck were they doing sailing north during hurricane season?
Before leaving Trinidad over three months ago, he and Emily had prepared Windseeker for cruising. Ramesh, the hulking owner of Five Islands Yacht Club, had done as Ryan had asked while Ryan was working off the coast of Nicaragua and Windseeker had been sitting on the hard at Five Islands. Ramesh had replaced the aging Perkins diesel with a brand-new Volvo Penta, scraped the hull, and re-coated it with anti-foul paint. He’d changed the bearing on the propeller shaft and repacked the stuffing box where the shaft ran through the hull, then he’d added a folding propeller that collapsed when not in use.
Ryan and Emily had done even more work to Windseeker when they arrived at Five Islands. They’d inspected the rigging, replaced lines and halyards, scrubbed the sails to remove the mold that had accumulated from being folded up in the lockers, or rolled up on the mainmast boom and the jib roller furler. Then they’d put the old girl in the water and taken her for a test run. The Lafitte 44 was a true bluewater boat. She’d seen her previous owner around the world and had now taken Ryan around the Caribbean.
After saying goodbye to Ramesh, Emily and Ryan sailed north, stopping at every island in the necklace of green gems that made up the Lesser Antilles. Some islands had sheer volcanic walls that rose straight out of the water and were topped with dense jungle, while others had lush tropical beaches uninhabited by man. Ryan enjoyed both, and this trip was a dream come true for him. He had finally found a woman who wanted to sail with him to exotic ports and run wild on the beaches.
He should have been happy, but there was a part of him that wouldn’t fully let go. When they reached Florida, they would have less time together. Emily would want to go back to work, and he would be left at loose ends. Ryan didn’t need to work. There was more money than he could spend in a lifetime deposited in his Cayman Islands bank account. The bankers had invested well and increased his holdings, firmly banishing any financial worries he might have had.
What was he going to do? He wanted this relationship to work, but he also knew he couldn’t give it his all while he felt that a piece of him was missing. He wanted to continue chasing criminals.
Even though Emily had told him that their work wasn’t all that different, he thought it was. Investigating insurance fraud was a far cry from disarming bombs, fast-roping onto ships, and dealing with the scum of the earth.
He ran a hand through his thick brown hair. Like his girlfriend, his lean muscular body was deeply tanned. Today, he wore orange swim trunks that Emily had picked out for him, saying they flattered his shapely behind, and a white T-shirt bearing the logo of his old employer, Dark Water Research, the global commercial dive and salvage firm.
Emily interrupted his thoughts by suddenly pointing at the horizon. “Do you see that smoke?”
Ryan grabbed a pair of binoculars and held them to his green eyes. He fidgeted with the focus dial, but whatever was burning was over the horizon. He glanced at the GPS screen and radar, verifying there was nothing but empty sea between themselves and the smoke. Standing in the cockpit, he could only see for three miles, but the radar dome mounted on the mast fifty foot above him gave a sweeping view of nine miles, and it showed the burning boat to be near the edge of their screen.
He punched the starter button on the diesel engine. It rumbled to life and idled smoothly before he engaged the drive and shoved the throttle forward.
“Get the mainsail down,” he ordered while grasping the jib’s furling line, jerking it hard and causing the jib to furl around the forestay.
“What is it?” Emily asked.
“I don’t know, but smoke like that can’t be good. Somebody is in trouble.” He caught her worried glance, but they both knew they had to find the source of the smoke.
Windseeker’s original Perkins engine had made just fifty horsepower while the Volvo that Ryan was now throttling up was nearly twice that. The extra ponies pushed the sailboat to ten knots at max throttle, and that was where the GPS speed number hovered as the bow bucked through the waves.
Emily had the main sail collapsed into the lazy jacks and was strapping it to the boom. Ryan put the binos back to his eyes, centering on the smoke, but they were still too far away to see anything.
Windseeker surged through the waves, making impressive progress courtesy of the vessel’s upgrades. As Ryan continued to watch through the binos, a mast head appeared above a sinking sailboat. Its tattered m
ain sail hung over the cockpit, and black smoldering smoke rose into the air. More than half of the hull was underwater. Suddenly, a woman pushed aside part of the main sail and fell over the side of the boat.
“Get the life ring, Em,” Ryan ordered.
She moved with urgency, grabbing it from the rail and loosening the coil of rope attached to it, so she was ready to throw the ring when commanded.
Ryan drove Windseeker straight toward the distressed boat. Five minutes later, he was abreast of the sinking vessel and bringing his sailboat to a stop. Emily threw the life ring to the bedraggled woman, who was struggling to stay afloat in the water. She snagged the life ring with both arms. Ryan reflexively hit a button on the GPS, marking their location, before helping Emily drag the woman through the water and pull her aboard the sailboat.
Shivering as she sat on the cockpit bench, the older woman looked up at Ryan and said, “You have to help my husband. He’s in the V-berth.”
As the last words came out of her mouth, Ryan saw the nose of the sinking boat tip up into the air as the stern slipped beneath the waves. Within seconds, the boat was fully submerged. Ryan ripped off the bench seat cushions and retrieved the box that contained his dive gear.
In the middle of mounting his wing and backplate buoyancy compensating device, or BCD, to a tank, Emily said, “What are you doing?”