Tropical Getaway

by Roxanne St Claire

  His reading collection was eclectic. Very little fiction, but a vast range of biographies, history books, and a full shelf of world geography. There were literally dozens of books on legends and superstitions, maritime history and tall ships.

  On his desk, she saw papers that hadn’t been there when she called Grayson Boyd the day before, and she glanced at the typewritten labels on a precarious stack of files. Celestia Sales Brochure/Euro Version. Ad Copy/Nirvana. Personnel/Valhalla. The last one grabbed her attention and she gingerly slid it from the pile.

  The file contained job descriptions and the names of all crewmen. She perused the list, looking for a clue. An idea. Anything. There were none. She set the folder on top of the others and started fanning through the next one. With a whoosh, the entire stack fluttered off his desk.

  “Damn.” She knelt to pick them up when she noticed that on the desk, under one folder that had not fallen, lay a sleek leather book. Without thinking, Ava lifted it up and opened it. A twinge of guilt tickled her, but she stifled it as soon as she recognized a woman’s handwriting.

  Dane’s acting like nothing happened. I’ll pretend I was drunk. He thought I was a little tipsy. Drunk with lust. He didn’t even touch me. He wouldn’t put his hands on my breasts. I practically stuck his face there. He never stopped talking. Even when I touched him. He wasn’t hard. He can’t even get a fucking hard-on for me. He buttoned my blouse and walked me out. I hate Dane Erikson. I hate Dane Erikson. I love him so much that I hate him.

  A sickening wave rolled through Ava. Nothing, no power on earth could make her close the book. She flipped through more pages. The handwriting changed. It was curved and sweet, almost as though a teenager had written it.

  * * *

  He laughed with me today. We stayed late to finish the final cuts for the TV commercials and he made jokes about the models and we just laughed until we cried. I must run to him now. I hope he’s alone. I love him more than ever.

  The next page was scratched, written with hate. Uneven and shaky, like a drunk.

  That whore redhead model is back. She arrived today. No wonder he made jokes about the models. He knew he’d be fucking one. They are locked in his castle. I saw the lights. In his bedroom. He will be inside the bitch. In her red fucking hair. I hate her.

  Ava’s hands shook as much as Genevieve’s must have when she wrote the words. The ink blurred in front of her eyes. She leafed to the last few entries, afraid of what she’d find but unable to stop.

  This is the last one. The last one I have to watch. The black-eyed bitch from Boston. That stupid jerk’s sister. I’m glad he’s dead. I’m glad they’re all dead. Even though it brought her here. Now he has to fuck her, too. To shut her up and get rid of her smarmy lawyer. I saw her there tonight. Laughing in the driveway, getting his playful kisses. Then she drove right past me. Too bad I won’t get to watch little miss Ava whimper home after he’s done with her. I’ll be long gone by then.

  She slammed the book shut and dropped it on the desk as though it burned her. Genevieve had watched her. Had seen her in his driveway. Laughed at her. Hated her.

  An uncontrollable shiver shook her body, and Ava just stood in the middle of the study and let it knock her to the bones.

  Max Roper couldn’t decide who had the more shocked look on his face. The pretty boy Erikson, who looked at Basille like he was a ghost, or poor little Jacques. His expression was one for the books. Clearly, he hadn’t expected this visitor.

  Max grudgingly gave Dane Erikson credit. He didn’t lunge at the kid or demand the information he wanted; he let it happen slowly. He was a cool son of a bitch. Max wondered if he was cool enough to be the Cali middleman. His gut said no, but he wasn’t completely ready to rule it out.

  “We buried you, Basille,” Dane said with no preliminaries. “It was a really nice service.”

  Jacques cringed and glanced guiltily at Max before he answered in excellent English. “I’m…I’m sorry, Dane.”

  “Yeah, me too.” Dane took a chair across from the kid. “Your mother came from France. And, of course, your cousin Philippe. They were real broken up.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What the hell is going on, Jacques?” Dane leaned forward. “How’d you manage to jump ship?”

  Jacques inhaled slowly, looking for his pack of cigarettes. Dane grabbed them and tossed them to the opposite end of the table. The kid trembled, and Max bit back a smile of mild respect.

  “Don’t lie to me,” he warned.

  Jacques looked squarely at Dane but said nothing. Max stayed standing in the corner, waiting for one of them to make the next move.

  “What happened to the ship?” Dane asked softly.

  Max cleared his throat. Remember our agreement, Erikson. Names first, confessions later.

  Jacques leaned forward and whispered, “Do you think I can make some kind of deal, Mr. Erikson?”

  “Depends, Jacques. How much can you tell these guys?”

  “A little, I guess. Only what Philippe told me. I don’t know who he worked for. I know some of the other runners. I know where we picked stuff up and hid the stash. I just got paid to make deliveries.”

  Max knew it was probably true. One of the hallmarks of the traffickers was to keep walls between the layers of people so that they couldn’t reveal the names of the higher-ups. They didn’t know them.

  “Were you going to make the delivery in Grenada?” Dane asked quietly.

  “Yeah. I had to. That’s why…that’s why…”

  “What?” Dane urged him.

  “I got off the ship before it exploded.”

  “What?” Max watched Dane jerk back in his chair as though he’d been hit. “Before it what?”

  “It exploded.” Jacques choked, his eyes filling as he fought frightened tears. “Can I make some kind of deal. Now, sir?”

  Max stepped in and sat beside the stunned cruise line owner. “We can make a deal, Basille. Who were you working for?”

  “How did the ship explode?” Dane demanded.

  “Gimme a name, Basille.”

  “Did anyone else get off with you?”

  Jacques looked from one to the other.

  Dane leaned across the table and grabbed Jacques’s shirt, spitting venom as he repeated his question. “Did anyone else get off the ship, Jacques?”

  Jacques nodded, then shook his head, and Dane yanked the kid’s collar again.

  “Y—yes. But he’s dead. He was…shot. I left him passed out in some alley in St. George’s as the hurricane hit.”

  “Who was it?”

  “The second mate. Santori.”

  They practically had to tie Dane down. He’d looked at the other men they’d arrested and recognized none of them, dashing his hopes that more crewmen had survived. Now all he wanted to do was get to St. George’s.

  “You’re done with me, for Christ’s sake,” Dane growled at the two burly DEA agents who held him like some kind of criminal. “You got what you want. I want to get the hell out of here.”

  “Just wait for Agent Roper,” MacPherson said. “He’ll be out in a few minutes.”

  Marco was in St. George’s.

  Dead or alive. Shot in the leg, Jacques admitted, in a tussle they had on board. But not at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea. Dane almost burst with the knowledge; a tiny spark of hope kept flaring up inside of him. But if Marco were alive, he would have called or come home by now. Unless he was in on the drug trafficking?

  No. Dane rejected the possibility immediately. Jacques’s story about the explosion was rife with lies. The punk knew a lot more than he was telling, but Dane doubted that anyone else had gotten off the ship. He suspected there was more to Jacques’s story of leaving Marco in St. George’s. Maybe he’d killed Marco before he left him. Or just figured the storm would kill Marco, who couldn’t walk from the “accidental” gunshot. Four hundred people had died in the destruction of Hurricane Carlos; he had to accept that Marco might be among them.

&nb
sp; But Paradisio, it seemed, would never be found.

  An explosion, for Christ’s sake. What could have caused it to explode? Lightning, fire, dynamite, a bomb—Jacques knew, but wasn’t saying. He claimed that once he learned the ship would not sail to Grenada, he’d held Marco at gunpoint and forced him onto a launch to help get him to the island. Then, after they got off, Paradisio had mysteriously exploded. That part of the story sounded like bullshit. No doubt Jacques thought he’d get off easier without adding mass murder to his rap sheet.

  No wonder the search team hadn’t found anything. The crew had been subjected to a completely different kind of hell. Blown apart and burned. Maybe, Dane prayed, it was faster than being crushed by mountains of waves and strangled by the wind and sea.

  He erased the image. “When is he going to be finished in there?” It ticked him off that Roper hadn’t let him stay in the room. He wanted to know who, beyond Philippe Basille, was in on this. Then he wanted to find the bastard and kill him with his own bare hands.

  Finally, Roper opened the door.

  “Let me outta here, Roper,” Dane demanded. “You’re done with me. I’ve got to find someone.”

  Roper stared at him. “How you plannin’ to do that? You don’t have a car or a clue, Erikson.”

  “I’ll figure it out. Just let me go.” Dane’s body burned with the need to go, to find out the truth. To tear what was left of St. George’s apart until he found Marco and took him—or his body—home.

  Roper smiled and gave him a skeptical once-over. “What are you going to do, charm your way around?” He touched his holster. “You won’t get far without help.”

  Dane’s fists balled up, along with the knot in his stomach.

  Roper leaned over to the two agents. “Get a team in St. Barts prepped for a full search and sting. We don’t have time to go under. But don’t alert the locals yet, or the crew. Just surround the ships quietly.”

  “I’ve already alerted the locals, Roper,” Dane interjected. “You don’t have to worry about them beating you to the punch; they’re asleep. And by now there are no passengers or crew left on the ships. Just their baggage.”

  Roper looked up to meet Dane’s piercing gaze. “Seems you’ve been very busy, Mr. Erikson.”

  “I wanted to be ready for your visit.”

  They continued to stare at each other, then Roper turned back to the other agent. “Have a plane ready for me at Pearls by noon to fly to St. Barts. First, I gotta make a quick trip down south.”

  “I don’t need an escort, Roper. Just let me out of here.”

  “It’ll take the better part of an hour to get there. You’ve got two hours in St. George’s and then we turn around and leave.” Roper grinned at Dane as he kicked open the flimsy door of the precinct. “So, we’ll have a little time to get to know each other.”

  14

  A va fell into a chair, and picked up the journal, willing herself to stop shaking. Calm. Down. Ava. She could hear Dane’s voice say the words.

  Or would he shrug and say he couldn’t be held responsible for some nutty stalker who thought she loved him? Would he remind her with his sexy grin that he couldn’t be crucified for romancing redhead models, as the entries had detailed? Oh, he’d be right, she admitted grudgingly. He was young, single, and virile, God knows. And he clearly hadn’t done anything to encourage Genevieve.

  She picked up the journal again, compelled to read more. Who was this woman who’d loved and hated Dane with such passion, and why had she betrayed him? Ava wanted to know her, to understand her. She opened the cover and ran her hand over the first page. How many times had Genevieve held this book, aching for emotional relief and finding solace in her own words? Ava closed her eyes and pictured the cool blond with haunting gray eyes and porcelain skin. Icy and cold. Perhaps that’s why Dane wasn’t attracted to her. He’d described his parents that way.

  Ava ran her fingers along the cover, connecting to the woman who bared her broken dreams on these pages. She should hate Genevieve, but pity was all she could muster.

  She pressed her hand hard against the little book, knowing that, in a weird way, she sympathized with the woman more than condemned her. But something felt…

  She jerked the journal up for closer inspection. The first page was glued to the inside cover, and underneath it, she felt a round, flat disk slightly larger than her palm, artfully concealed inside. She switched on the desk lamp and held the open book under it, her fingernail digging at the raised paper, tracing the circular shape beneath it.

  In Dane’s top drawer she found a letter opener. Sliding it along the glued edge, she broke the seal between the paper and the leather. She tore at the paper carefully, then turned the book upside down with a little shake. A silver compact disc slid onto the desk.

  Ava stared at it, then picked it up with two fingers. A computer disk. There was no label or identification. Her heart started to pound. Calm. Down. Ava. It might hold anything. For all she knew, it could be music Genevieve played when she wrote in her journal.

  But something told Ava it wasn’t. She found his laptop on the floor, leaning against the desk, and prayed Dane would own one advanced enough to have a CD drive. Flipping it open, she felt around the sides. Yes. A long, thin drive. Power on. A flash of confirmation. Please enter password. She tapped the desk in frustration. Mother of God!

  She jammed the CD in the side slot anyway. After a quick whispered whir, the password screen disappeared and a block of file names came up. One for every island—St. Kitts, St. Lucia, Antigua, Guadeloupe, Nevis, Anguilla, Barbados, Dominica, and more. With her fingertip, Ava guided a spongy red button to the word Guadeloupe and hit Enter.

  A spreadsheet. At the top it read “E. Calliope” and then listed random words: duckweed, piedmont, greyhound. Code names? Throughout the grid of the spreadsheet, she saw numbers and dates. They meant nothing to her. She closed the file and went back to the main screen of island names. She tried St. Kitts. At the top was the name O. Molinet. The rest looked exactly the same as the first. She tried two more files, similar but with different names and numbers. Nothing recognizable except Calliope, the contact Dane had “met” in Guadeloupe.

  Going back to the program file one more time, she scrolled to the bottom. There was one unnamed file. Just a square icon, indicating a “Word” document. Ava clicked on it, hoping for something enlightening.

  And that’s exactly what she got. The document was an orderly schedule of times, dates, cruises, addresses, and names of couriers. She scanned the list, her hands shaking as adrenaline pumped through her body.

  The first name she recognized was Jacques Basille. That was Philippe’s cousin, she remembered, killed on Paradisio. His name appeared five times next to the word Paradisio and an island, date and time. Jacques Basille…Paradisio…October 6, Grenada, 6:00 P. M …. The last communication with Paradisio was October 4.

  Then a new name came into the rotation. Philippe Basille.

  Lovely, kind, warm, friendly Philippe? With a start, she remembered the moment she eyed him warily in the galley. Did you score, Maurice had asked. Of course, he had no idea what he was asking Philippe. He’d wanted peppers. Didn’t he?

  The other four names were vaguely familiar; she’d seen them in the personnel list or heard them. She was fairly certain she’d never met them. On a hunch, she picked up a Valhalla personnel file to cross check. Ricardo Salazar was listed on both; also a cook, she noticed. The Spanish voice?

  At least two of these men worked for Maurice Arnot. Could he be involved? Could the famous little chef be a drug dealer? She examined every file again, but his name was nowhere on any list.

  Once again, she studied the names she recognized. They were all connected to the kitchen. She thought of Arnot’s crooked smile, his talented hands. He wouldn’t risk a world-famous reputation with drug trafficking. No. He could be just the person to help. He had every reason to help identify the culprits and clear his name.

  This was surely wha
t the local law enforcement officers needed to move past the brick wall that Dane referred to. Names. She shook her head and stared at the list, focusing on Philippe Basille. She would never, ever have suspected him.

  She closed the file, removed the disk, and turned off the computer. She couldn’t wait for Dane to come back from the search site. This was too urgent.

  In the open desk drawer, she saw a set of car keys. She wouldn’t have to let anyone here know she was leaving. She’d just go straight to the Utopia offices to find Maurice. He would help her explain the situation to the constable. In French.

  My woman of action. She winced at the words. She wasn’t his anything.

  To Dane’s satisfaction, Roper drove like a maniac through the mountains and mud of Grenada. He was a skilled and smooth driver, unafraid of what might be coming around the bend. As the forest gave way to drier woodlands and blue sky, Roper kept shooting questions at Dane.

  “Howd’ ya meet Calliope?”

  Dane told him. He explained how he got the list of transshipment points and gave him the highlights of the “accident” that killed Genevieve.

  The agent zeroed in on it, wanting to know everything about Genevieve, her background, her habits, her friends.

  It made Dane realize how little he knew about a woman he’d known for twenty years and worked with for the last ten. “Her work was her life,” he explained.

  “No boyfriends? Lovers?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.” Was that his fault? Did he prevent her from having a social life?

  “Did she travel much?”

  “She went to New York, Miami, and London at least twice a year to market the ships to a select group of travel agents, and she spent some time in France a few months ago when we hired Arnot.”

  “Who?”

  “Our chef from France.”