At first, he couldn't see the speeding RIB. The white scar of the wake cutting through the blue water was what finally attracted his attention. It was like a white arrowhead pointed toward the distant sailboat. He tweaked the zoom and focus and managed to pick out the dark gray shape of the RIB they had been following before their engine failure.
"Got him!" he barked. "Throttle down to idle speed. Bearing is 355 magnetic. Range is 1,500 meters. The sailboat's a couple of miles beyond him, so be sure what you lock onto."
"I have the target," the man with the Javelin shoulder-fired missile announced. "Confirm, bearing is 355 magnetic, range is 1,500 meters. I have a lock."
"Fire," the leader ordered. There was the whooshing sound of the Javelin's soft launch; a few seconds later, he saw the flash that marked the obliteration of the RIB. "Let's go confirm the kill," he said, putting his binoculars down as the man at the controls opened the throttle on their single working engine and took up a course for the already dispersing cloud of smoke.
Chapter 25
"When I went below looking for Marilyn, she'd been snooping through Nick's briefcase," Liz said. She and Dani sat in the cockpit, relaxing with a glass of wine. Vengeance was tied stern-to at the quay in Nelson's Dockyard in English Harbour.
"I thought you said she was in the head."
"She was when I went down, but she'd left the case open on the chart table, with the papers strewn around," Liz explained.
"How do you know Nick didn't leave it like that?"
"I saw it when Mickey was helping us move Nick's body. Remember? I was on the companionway ladder, lifting his legs. The case was closed, on the cabin sole under the chart table."
"I don't know if it matters, at this point," Dani said.
"Maybe, maybe not, but I think it's odd, just the same. What would motivate her to do that, right in the midst of all that confusion?"
"Well, that's a good question. I would have expected her to either be beside herself or to be fussing around, trying to sort Gerald out. He was a basket case, wasn't he?"
"He certainly was. She said she was going to give him some kind of tranquilizer when she got him to her suite."
"He seemed pretty calm — just spaced out. Why give him a tranquilizer?"
"She said it was something her doctor prescribed after her husband's death to help her sleep. She thought a good night's sleep would do Gerald more good than anything else."
"Well, she may have something, there. He did keep mumbling; I guess his mind was racing."
"But back to Nick's briefcase," Liz said. "I flipped through it. There were those old, ratty looking charts with all the wrecks marked on them. You know, the ones we'd see him poring over?"
"Right. What else?"
"The usual kind of stuff — pens, paper clips, business cards. That reminds me, though; there was a little spiral notebook. We ought to take a look at that. I'll be right back."
Liz went below. Dani sipped her wine as she listened to Liz rummaging around at the chart table. In a moment, she came back up. In one hand, she held the bottle of wine they had opened earlier, and in the other she gripped a small, spiral-bound notebook with a red cover. She added a little wine to each of their glasses and sat down next to Dani.
Liz put the notebook on the table between them and flipped the cover open. There was a telephone number at the top of the first page. The balance of the page was covered in apparently meaningless doodles.
"Same area code as Elaine," Dani observed. "So I guess whoever he called was in the Fort Lauderdale area."
"I should have brought the business cards up," Liz said.
"We can check them in a minute. Let's see what else we've got." Dani flipped the page. After a moment's study, she said, "That's a web address. And that, right under it, could be a user name and password."
"You recognize the address?" Liz asked.
"No. Should I?"
"Not really. Guess it's just my memory for trivia, but I think it's one of those sites for the little satellite trackers that all the cruisers are carrying these days so their relatives can keep up with them."
"I'll get the laptop," Dani said, sliding out from under the table. In less than a minute, she was seated again and was logging on to the marina's Wi-Fi service. "Read that address to me."
She keyed it in and shifted her position so that both of them could see the computer screen. "You're right, Liz. What's the user name and password?"
She keyed in the information and in seconds a screen popped up showing an outline map of Antigua with a blinking, star-shaped icon.
"Let's zoom it in," Liz said, reaching over and tapping the trackpad.
"Whoever he's tracking, they're right here in English Harbour," Dani said.
Liz moved the cursor to a button marked "show track" and tapped again. They watched as the screen was populated with a series of dots, each with a time and date stamp. In a moment, dashed lines connected the dots.
"Zoom it out just a little," Dani said.
Liz complied, and they studied the track for a moment. "Damn," she murmured. "Am I seeing what I think I'm seeing here?"
"One way to know for sure," Dani said, getting up and stepping behind the helm. She powered on the GPS receiver. As it was acquiring satellites, she said, "Get the lat and lon for that last position on the track."
"Okay," Liz said. "You ready?"
"Ready."
"17 degrees, zero point 486 minutes North, 61 degrees, 45 point 851 minutes West," Liz said.
"That's within about a hundred feet of our current position. What's the time stamp?" Dani asked.
"15:45 this afternoon," Liz said. "It's us; that's about when we tied up here."
Dani turned off the GPS and returned to her seat beside Liz. Liz flipped to the next page in the notebook.
"Nothing but doodles," she said, flipping through the rest of the pages.
"Odds are it's that treasure hunter he used to work for," Dani said.
"Bond. Merrill Bond," Liz said. "But when we saw Pisces of Atë the other day, they were working the area we surveyed last week."
"You think Nick found something he didn't share with Gerald?" Dani asked.
"It sure looks that way. We need to tell Gerald, I guess," Liz said.
"We'll have to wait, then. He's in no shape to deal with it now, and I don't trust Marilyn with this."
"No argument from me on either point," Liz said. "Let's see if the phone number matches a business card."
She went below for a moment, returning with a card which she put on the table next to the notebook. Dani flipped back to the first page.
"Bond," she said.
Liz nodded. "There's not much else I can think of to do until we can talk to Gerald."
They sipped their wine in silence for a few minutes, each lost in her thoughts.
Dani set her empty glass on the table and stood up, putting her hands on her hips and bending back, stretching. When she saw that Liz had finished her wine, she asked, "What say we walk up to the pizza place for dinner?"
****
Gerald had passed through his initial shock and was now pacing the floor of Marilyn's suite wringing his hands, his jaw clenched. He muttered under his breath constantly as Marilyn watched, frowning.
"Just take one of these, Gerald. Please?" Marilyn held the bottle of prescription tranquilizers toward him. "They're what my doctor gave me for the shock when Harry died. They're not going to ... "
"In a minute. I've got to work my way through this. None of it makes sense, and with Nick gone, I don't know how I'm going to find Phaedra."
"A minute ago, you said you weren't even sure it mattered. Which is it, Gerald?"
He shook his head, pacing, smacking his right fist into his left palm. "And why the hell did Dix Beauregard pay Jackson and Semmes? I never told him ... where'd he even get the money ... I'm kind of strapped for cash ... need to ... "
"What, Gerald? You need to what?"
"There's stuff I haven't tol
d you, Marilyn. You wouldn't ... I'm not ... "
"Whenever you're ready to talk, I'll listen, but you're driving me up the wall. You're like a damned long-tailed cat on a porch full of rocking chairs. Please take one of these." She shook two of the tablets into her palm. "Better yet, take two — I'm sure it goes by body weight. You're a lot bigger than I am. They'll help you get some rest, and then everything will make more sense. Trust me; I've been there, honey."
He paused and looked at her, making eye contact for the first time since the attack. "You're right. I'm like one of those rats running on a wheel." He extended his hand and she dropped the tablets into his palm. He studied them for a moment and then tossed them in his mouth. She handed him the glass of ice water she'd fixed for him a few minutes ago. He took a big drink, swallowing the pills, and set the glass on the dresser.
"Could you ... " he started to ask.
"Could I what?" she said, putting an arm around his shoulders and leading him to the bed. The two of them sat down side by side, her arm still supporting him as he leaned back.
"Just hold me. Just until the pills work. Please?"
He was reclining by now. She crawled onto the king-sized bed, and he swung his legs up, stretching out as she settled herself beside him, her head on his shoulder, her right hand stroking his face with a gentle touch.
"It's all going to be all right," she murmured.
"Mm," he said. Moments later, she felt the rhythm of his breathing smooth out, and soon he was snoring softly.
****
As Yates began to snore, Marilyn crept from the bed. She went out into the sitting area and plopped down on the couch. She began trying to work out what was happening. The Rodriguez man had mentioned that Dani had killed his son. Marilyn had trouble believing that of the small, slender woman. But then she recalled the practiced skill with which Dani and Liz had dispatched Rodriguez earlier in the day.
She was all right with that; he'd deserved what he got, but she was still stunned by the way Dani provoked him. The girl had guts, and Liz hadn't hesitated to help finish him off. It was like they'd done that kind of thing before. It was an awakening for Marilyn. Until today, she had considered herself the lone she-wolf among the world's sheep. The idea that there were others was unnerving, in a way.
And that guy, Mickey Semmes, where did he fit into this? He had boarded Vengeance with Rodriguez, yet he stood by and watched while the two women killed him. Then Semmes had taken charge of the bodies, outlining some plan that she couldn't follow. Gerald had said Mickey Semmes was Marc Jackson's partner, and Mickey had said that Rodriguez had just killed Jackson, whose body was apparently in that little gray boat in which they'd arrived.
She shook her head, remembering that Gerald had said he owed Jackson money and couldn't pay him. She had to find out why Gerald owed him the money, and further, why Gerald couldn't pay him. What was it that Gerald hadn't told her? He'd seemed troubled that he'd held it back, whatever it was. Did his debt to Jackson and Semmes have something to do with the gold on Phaedra? She reminded herself that Gerald still didn't know that she knew about that.
He was still pretending that he was looking for the wreck for sentimental reasons; he had no idea that she knew the truth. That was another problem. She'd kept that from him. Now that she had fallen for him, she wished that she had been more open with him. She had to figure out how to come clean without ruining their burgeoning relationship.
The thought of hiding things reminded her of Nick Thompson's duplicity. She'd only spent a few seconds going through that case of his, worried that one of the others would come below and discover what she was doing. That had been enough, though. She had recognized Bond's phone number on the first page of that little notebook.
She had suspected that Bond had someone feeding him information on Gerald's search, and she had wondered why he needed that. She had given him the precise location of the wreck; she had even provided a photocopy of her great-great-grandfather's handwritten memo.
How would Gerald react if he learned that she was Zebulon Yates's great-great-granddaughter by an extramarital relationship? That made her some kind of bastard cousin of his; she could never keep track of all those degrees of kinship. The relationship was distant enough so that no sane person would worry about it, but it was still hanging there, yet another element of deception between the two of them.
She smiled wryly at the thought of how far she had strayed from her original, simple plan. She'd intended for Bond to take the gold; he would eventually pay her for her share with a transfer to one of her offshore accounts. That could still work except that she was experiencing pangs of conscience.
Her emotions aside, she found that amusing; until now, she had never realized that she even had a conscience. She'd always thought of that as foolishness — a luxury that had no place in her life. Now, she wasn't so sure.
The second element of her original scheme — to marry Yates and then deal with him as she had with Harry, adding his family wealth to her already immense fortune — didn't seem attractive to her now. She'd fallen in love with the miserable bastard. Love — another one of those useless concepts that she'd associated with suckers.
She'd given herself a headache. She walked back into the bedroom and picked up the bottle of tranquilizers. Shaking one out into her hand, she tossed it back with a sip of the still-cold water from the glass on the nightstand beside Gerald. She slipped into bed beside him, reminding herself of what she'd told him as she'd put him to bed a little while ago. "It'll all be all right," she whispered as she closed her eyes.
****
Jones was puzzled and annoyed by the report he'd received from Alex after the commando team had taken care of Jackson and Rodriguez. The team had made a cursory survey of the wreckage left by their rocket attack. There hadn't been much for them to see except the mangled bodies.
The perplexing thing was that there were four bodies instead of the three they had been expecting. The team hadn't gotten a close look at their victims before the strike, so they weren't able to identify them. The leader had made photographs with his cell phone, and Alex had recognized them, identifying the fourth, unexpected man as Nick Thompson.
The team had been sure that there had been only three passengers aboard the dark gray RIB when it left Jolly Harbour, and Alex's team at the villa had seen Thompson board Vengeance this morning with Yates. It was clear to Jones that the RIB had reached Vengeance and picked up Thompson while the commandos were working on the broken engine.
Jones could not come up with a plausible explanation for the facts. Rodriguez and the others had picked up Thompson from Vengeance, but why? Beyond that, for some reason the four men in the RIB had apparently been going back to Vengeance when they were killed.
The commando team had reported that Vengeance was hull-down, almost over the horizon when they destroyed the RIB. It was unlikely that the people on Vengeance had been aware of the rocket attack. The surveillance team at the villa had reported that neither Yates nor the Muir woman had returned to the villa, and Alex had seen Vengeance tie up in the marina at Nelson's Dockyard in the late afternoon. Yates and the woman had been aboard, and they had gone to her suite at the Admiral's Inn.
No matter how Jones turned and twisted the facts, it still appeared that Rodriguez, Jackson, and Semmes had been working with Yates and company. That was the only explanation for Thompson's presence in the RIB.
He and Dix Beauregard had both suspected that Thompson was feeding information to Merrill Bond. Thompson had gone somewhere with the three men in the RIB. He must have gone somewhere nearby, given the timing. That meant he had visited another boat, probably Bond's boat, and with Yates's knowledge. Jones concluded that Yates was working with Bond somehow. Although that seemed at odds with what Beauregard had told him about Yates, he couldn't find another explanation that was consistent with the facts he possessed.
****
"Joe Denardo," Dani said. She and Liz were talking to Phillip Davis on the sate
llite phone. "I remember his name. He was the guy in the Savannah Police Department that Paul talked to about Connie, back when we were trying to figure out who she really was."
"Right," Phillip said. "That's the guy."
"What did you learn?" Liz asked.
"Nothing we didn't know already, but he's going to ask around and call me back — see if he finds any sign of BSV or Jacob Meyers. Nice guy — he was pleased to hear that Connie and Paul had gotten together. Anything new from your end?"
"Yes. We had a big day," Dani said. She filled him in on the visit from Rodriguez and Jackson.
"Berto Rodriguez?" Phillip asked. "That was his son that was collecting for the bookie?"
"So he said. You know anything about him?"
"Yes. There'll be a lot of people glad he's gone. The DEA's been after him for years, but they could never pin anything on him. His organization's going to be in turmoil. Is there any way for anybody to connect him with Vengeance?"
"I don't think so," Dani said. "Why? Think we're in trouble?"
"Could be. I don't know enough about his crew to guess, but it would be better if nobody knew how he died. You trust this Mickey character?"
"Trust is stretching it, but he had as much to lose as we did, and Yates said he was solid."
"Okay. Hmm ... "
"Hmm what, Phillip?" Dani asked.
"I'm just wondering how much of a connection Rodriguez had with Jackson, if his son worked for Jackson. I would have expected that he'd have his son working for him, that's all."
"Maybe Denardo would know. Mickey's probably on his way back to Savannah by now," Liz said.
"Good thought. I'll ask Denardo. I need to let him know Jackson's not coming home."
"That reminds me. Another name popped up that you might mention to him," Dani said. "Dix Beauregard — he's Yates's lawyer."
"Okay, but how does he fit in?"
"I'm not sure, but Mickey said he had paid off Yates's gambling debt, and Yates seemed troubled by that."
Bluewater Bullion: The Seventh Novel in the Caribbean Mystery and Adventure Series (Bluewater Thrillers Book 7) Page 16