Dark Path: A Ryan Weller Thriller

by Evan Graver

  As the rain continued to pour outside, Ryan grabbed a beer from the boat’s fridge and checked his messages. Jinks had sent a text, letting him know that Scott Gregory, a member of Trident and a former Navy SEAL, was inbound aboard Dark Water Research’s Beechcraft King Air, accompanied by two others. He looked up from his phone. “Hey, Em, Mango and Jennifer are coming.”

  “What?” She snuggled in close beside him on the chart table seat and read the text. “I thought they went back to the South Pacific?”

  “You and me both. But Jinks says they’re on the plane. I guess Mango wanted to get in on the action.”

  Emily rolled her eyes, and Ryan knew she was thinking about the danger that lurked ahead.

  Ryan turned to Paul. “How well do you know Terrence? How many men does he have at his disposal and where would he hole up in a storm like this?”

  “I don’t know him that well. We used to meet at my office. Until yesterday, I didn’t know he had a yacht.”

  Emily got up and started boiling a kettle of water. “Is there anything at your office that could help us? More paperwork or evidence we could turn over to the police?”

  “It’s all in the box,” Paul replied.

  “It wouldn’t hurt to look, you never know what we might find,” Emily said.

  Ryan liked the way she thought. There might be something at Paul’s office that could help them locate Joseph and get a jump on the meeting. He glanced at his phone to see if his friends had messaged him, but there were no notifications on the screen.

  Emily poured herself a cup of tea, and Paul asked for one as well. They sat sipping from mugs while Ryan drank coffee, which was much needed after the exertion of the dive. When they finished, she suggested they borrow the yacht club’s car to go to Paul’s office.

  The trio pulled on rain slickers, walked to the marina office, and got the car keys. Paul drove because he was used to driving on the left side of the road. They parked in a narrow lot between two buildings, and Paul led them through the rain to a set of stairs to the second floor of the office building. The upper balcony had a view of the harbor across the street. Ryan looked out on the luxury yachts that lined the docks. Not long ago, he and his crew had run a sting there to take down a sex cruise operation.

  Paul didn’t have to use his key to open the door. The doorknob was in pieces. Someone had ransacked the interior, much like his house. The small outer office contained a desk and a few chairs for waiting clients, while Paul’s office was larger and better furnished, although none of it was usable anymore. The intruders had slit open the sofa cushions and pulled the stuffing from them, and they’d cut open the backs and bottoms of the chairs. Desk drawers lay on the floor, empty of their contents, and the filing cabinet drawers stood open.

  “My computer is gone,” Paul said, stepping over the piles of stuffing to reach the desk.

  “Anything else?” Ryan asked.

  “No clue.” The accountant shrugged. “Look at this mess.” Paul righted his desk chair and dropped wearily into it. He placed his elbows on the desktop and cupped his face with his hands. “I really screwed up.”

  “What if you gave the money back?” Emily asked. “I’ve dealt with insurance fraud cases where the clients returned the funds in exchange for reduced charges.”

  “He can give the money back, Em, but whoever he stole from will still kill him and Diane,” Ryan said. “They’ll use them as an object lesson for the other members of the network.”

  Paul started sobbing.

  Emily raised her eyebrows and crossed her arms. “Really?”

  Fortunately for Ryan, his phone started ringing. “It’s Mango,” he said.

  Before he could answer, Ryan heard a man order him to put the phone down. Then the ominous click of a pistol’s hammer being cocked reached his ears.

  Ryan glanced at Emily, who was staring at the person behind him. She slowly raised her hands and nodded her head toward the desk.

  Ryan pressed the button to answer the call, tossed the phone onto the desk, and said loudly, “Don’t shoot.”

  Chapter Six

  The green hills of the U.S. Virgin Islands reminded Oscar López of his home in Venezuela.

  He was sitting at a fast-food restaurant across from the St. Thomas Skyride, but the skyride wasn’t his target. While he ate his burger, he kept an eye on a building across the street with a natural food store on the ground floor and a series of offices and apartments above it. There was no one on the sidewalk because of the rain, but cars still entered and exited the parking lots and sped along the road. He’d been casing the place since yesterday, after trailing a money launderer there. He popped a French fry into his mouth and watched the office window.

  Oscar had grown up in the seaside town of Güiria, and St. Thomas prompted memories of his childhood. His father had been a fisherman, plying his trade in the Gulf of Paria. Oscar remembered going out with his father and hauling in giant Spanish mackerel and kingfish. Those were carefree days. They didn’t have to fight off pirates or smugglers or pay for protection just to do their job. Oil money flowed through the country like water, and even his poor father had a brand-new Ford F150.

  In 1998, Hugo Chávez took his presidential oath of office after making widespread promises of social and economic reforms, gaining him the trust and favor of the poor and the working class. The economy slowly tapered off as Chávez implemented his “reforms.” Desperate to help his struggling family, Oscar had joined the Venezuelan Marine Corps, where he became a member of the 8th Marine Special Operations Command.

  His reminiscing stopped when he saw two men—one of them the smurf—and a gorgeous blonde get out of a car and head up the stairs toward the smurf’s office. Then he saw a black man step out of the shadows of another building and put a phone to his ear. Oscar wiped his hands on a napkin as he watched the caller put away the phone and follow the trio, pulling a pistol from his waistband as he went.

  Oscar knew instinctively that the gunman was after the smurf. He jumped up, dashed out of the restaurant, and ran across the parking lot, ducking his head to shield his eyes from the rain. He didn’t slow as he entered the four-lane road.

  A horn blared, but Oscar kept running. The man with the pistol disappeared through the door at the top of the stairs. Oscar took the steps two or three at a time, using the railing to help himself leap upward. At the landing, he stopped and pushed the door open just enough to see through the crack. The hallway was empty.

  He slipped inside and held the door as it closed to keep it from banging against the frame. Oscar stayed on the balls of his feet as he crept toward the office. He heard a man say, “Put it down,” and another male replied, “Don’t shoot.”

  Glancing around for a weapon, Oscar spotted a fire extinguisher. He lifted it gingerly from its hook on the wall, hefted it with both hands, and tiptoed through the smurf’s outer office. The gunman had his back to the door.

  Oscar thought the man should have moved to his right where he would have been out of the line of sight of the outer office door, but he was grateful for the man’s tactical blunder. He drew the extinguisher back and slammed it into the back of the gunman’s head.

  The man spun to face Oscar, but he only made it halfway around before the younger man in the trio being held hostage struck the gunman with an open palm strike to his jaw. Completely dazed, the gunman fell to the floor. The man’s pistol slid across the tile and stopped at the feet of the statuesque blonde.

  Before Oscar could react, she snatched the Beretta up and ordered him inside the office. Oscar set the fire extinguisher on the floor, raised his hands, and stepped inside. The younger man patted him down. Between the thoroughness of the pat-down and the quickness of the palm strike, Oscar believed the man had some Special Forces training.

  “Who are you?” the man asked him.

  “I’m here for the smurf,” Oscar replied.

  “Are you working for Terrence Joseph?”

  “No.” Oscar shook hi
s head, not knowing who Joseph was.

  “What do you want with Paul?” the blonde asked.

  Oscar’s eyes went to the phone on the desk when a tinny voice called, “Ryan? Ryan, can you hear me?”

  The man Oscar now knew as Ryan snatched up the phone and said to the woman, “Keep him covered. Paul, tie both these guys up.”

  Oscar watched as Ryan stepped out of the room with the phone and Paul grabbed a roll of Scotch Tape. He bent to wrap the black man’s hands. Oscar kept his face impassive, but inside, he was smiling. The tape would be easy to free himself from. It would have been better to secure him, the greater threat, before the unconscious man, but the Marine kept that tidbit to himself.

  Paul glanced up at the blonde when she said, “Use the printer cord.”

  As the smurf ripped the cord from the printer, the woman motioned toward Oscar with the gun and said, “Tie his hands first.”

  At least she has some common sense, Oscar thought.

  Paul tied Oscar’s hands in front of him, and the blonde told him to sit in the chair behind the desk.

  Ryan stepped back into the room. He helped Paul truss up the black man, working in silence.

  When they finished, Ryan stood and turned to Oscar. “Who do you work for?”

  Oscar looked away.

  “Are you here to kill Paul?”

  Again, Oscar refused to answer the question. He’d been through torture training, and this guy wouldn’t break him. The cord around his wrist was loose and he could escape if given the chance. He slowly moved his wrists, testing the bonds.

  Paul’s phone rang. He held it up and said, “It’s Terrence,” before he and Ryan stepped into the outer office.

  Despite the distance, Oscar could hear the conversation.

  Paul said, “I have the documents. Where do you want to meet?”

  Oscar knew immediately that he needed those documents.

  “I want to talk to Diane,” Paul said. A moment later, he said, “Are you okay, Di?” Silence as he listened, then, “We have the box, and I’m coming to get you.” After another silent moment, he said, “Okay, he’ll be at American Yacht at midnight.”

  Ryan said, “Tell him to make it three a.m. There’s less chance someone will see the exchange.”

  Whoever was on the other end of the line agreed after he and Paul went back and forth several times, then Paul ended the call.

  The whole time they’d been talking, Oscar had been working on his bonds. His hands were below the desk where the woman couldn’t see them. Despite aiming the gun at Oscar, she had paid more attention to the phone conversation. He loosened his right hand, then pulled the cord from his left wrist. At the same time, he planted his feet by the chair’s wheels and readied himself to strike. It would be a shame to hit such a beautiful woman, but Oscar had to escape. Then he could tail these people to the documents and steal them.

  When the woman looked away, Oscar sprang onto the desk. The sudden movement startled her, and she took a step backward, the gun swinging toward the floor. Jumping from the desk, he snatched the pistol from her hand and shoved her through the open door. He jerked the door shut as she crashed into Ryan.

  With a twist of his fingers, Oscar locked the doorknob and turned to the window. He used the butt of the pistol to smash the glass and looked down at the parking lot. The jump from the second-floor window to the pavement was about twelve feet, but below him was a compact sedan. Oscar mounted the window frame as the office door splintered and flew open. He jumped onto the roof of the car, bending his knees to absorb the shock, and rolled down the rear hatch to the ground. As he sprinted toward the bushes at the rear of the building, he tucked the gun into his waistband.

  He knew where they were going and when they’d be there. Now all he had to do was lie in wait.

  Chapter Seven

  Ryan Weller leaned out the broken window of Paul Langston’s office and watched as the man they’d just been holding captive escaped into the brush at the far end of the parking lot. He thought about going after him, but he didn’t want to jump on the car and bring any more attention to them than they already had. Despite the rain, people were still grocery shopping, and some had stopped to watch the action, so he pulled back from the window.

  “Is there a back way out of here?” he barked at Paul.

  Paul paused in the frame of the splintered door, looking around his once immaculate office. He nodded and pointed through the outer office. “There’s another set of stairs.”

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  Paul led them out the back entrance, and they got in the car. As they pulled out of the lot, Ryan told Paul to call the building supervisor and have him fix the window. He figured by the time the super got around to repairing it, the unconscious assailant would have disappeared. Now they had time to kill until their late-night meeting.

  “What did Mango say?” Emily asked as Paul drove them on an extended, rain-soaked tour of the island while the wipers sluiced back and forth on high.

  “They had to divert to Puerto Rico until the rain lets up,” Ryan replied.

  “Will they get here before we meet with Joseph?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” Ryan checked the weather forecast on his phone. The bands of rain around the storm made it appear larger than it was. He sent a quick text to Mango, letting him know the time and location of the meet, along with a description of Joseph’s yacht. He put the phone in his lap and stared out the window.

  He hoped Mango and Scott arrived before the meeting time. If they didn’t, he wasn’t sure how things would go down. And now there was a third element in the mix.

  Turning to Paul, he asked, “Do you know that guy who jumped out the window?”

  Paul shook his head. “I’ve never seen him before in my life. This whole situation has brought out the crazies, if ya know what I mean?”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have been skimming money,” Emily suggested.

  They remained silent as Paul circumnavigated the island. It took just over an hour for them to get back to American Yacht Harbor, where Windseeker waited patiently at the dock. Ryan wanted to get on her and sail away, but, once again, he’d been swept up in a life-or-death situation, and he couldn’t let Diane die at the hands of some deadbeat street thug.

  He and Emily had talked about his lifestyle several times during their sail north. She had come to terms with the fact that Dark Water Research might call him back to work, even though Ryan had told Greg he was done being his troubleshooter. He wanted to stop putting himself in harm’s way so he could build a life with Emily, but trouble seemed to be drawn to him like a magnet to steel.

  When they arrived at the yacht club, they returned the car keys and ran to the boat. The cabin door lock lay broken in the cockpit and the door was wide open, allowing the rain to pour in. They stepped inside and looked around. The interior of Windseeker was in complete disarray.

  “You and your stupid box,” Ryan muttered to Paul. He closed the door while Emily grabbed towels to mop up the rainwater.

  “I’m sorry to get you into such a mess,” Paul said, sinking into the settee and holding his head in his hands.

  “Just shut up,” Ryan retorted. He started shoving things back into cupboards and cubbies. It was one thing to tear up Paul’s office and home, but now these bastards had done the same to his.

  “Sit down,” Emily ordered her boyfriend.

  Ryan stopped slamming pots and pans around and glared at her.

  “You’re pissed,” she said, holding up her hands. “I get it, but don’t make it worse. Sit down and take a breath. I’ll make some coffee.”

  “Thanks.” He dropped into the seat at the navigation station and rubbed his face with both hands. This was the kind of shit he wanted to avoid for Emily’s sake, but she seemed to be handling it better than he was, or at least she hid her frustration better. After a few deep breaths to help force the anger from his body, he checked the weather. He wanted to have his friends backing him
up with a long gun, but he would have to make do if Mango and Scott didn’t arrive soon. He would have to be the shooter and send Emily into the fray with Paul. While she was more than capable of taking care of herself, he did not want to her to be involved any more than she was.

  Emily handed him a steaming cup of coffee, and he sipped it while he scrolled around on a map application, looking at the marina and Vessup Bay. Across from American Yacht Harbor were mooring balls for boat owners who didn’t want to pay for dock space, and farther on were houses scattered among the trees on the low hills. The houses were too far away for Ryan’s needs, and the shooter would be blind to the action taking place on the dock side of Terrence’s yacht.

  Unsatisfied with the results of his search, Ryan pocketed his laser rangefinder from its place on the navigation table, pulled on a rain slicker, and told Emily he was going for a walk. Not only did he want to scout the area, but it would help him cool off, because he was still intensely angry.

  His quickness to anger had increased since spending time in prison. Emily wanted him to talk to someone about it, but he wasn’t ready yet. He didn’t know if he would ever be, but he needed to do something. It wasn’t healthy to always be angry about something. He drew in a deep breath and tried to push the fury from his belly by imagining it was roaring out like a dragon breathing fire upon its enemies.

  The rain was now just a steady drizzle, and Ryan hoped the break in the weather would give the DWR crew a flight window. Ryan walked along the waterfront dock beside the rear of the long, low building that housed the yacht club and various shops. The area was more commercial than residential, with shopping centers on both sides of the street.

  The walkway ended in a thick clump of mangroves and palms, so he turned around and started back. He took a left and walked to the street where he turned right and headed east again. As he walked, he peered into the thickets and up at the buildings, looking for the perfect place to position a sniper hide, disappointed there wasn’t any cover for his operation.