by Tom Lowe
O’Brien caught a glimpse of James Fairmont straggling behind Sheldon as he headed toward the aft section of the schooner. Fairmont made no eye contact with any of the guests, keeping one hand on the leather satchel he carried over his left shoulder. Sheldon approached one of the men that O’Brien knew was hired protection, a man with a military haircut, wide chest stretching the black tux. The sentry nodded and whispered something into a small microphone taped to the inside of his thick left wrist.
Sheldon vanished inside a wooden portal door leading from the wheelhouse to somewhere inside America II. Less than thirty seconds later, Fairmont did the same. The mercenary spoke again into his sleeve. O’Brien stepped to the railing, the river more than twenty-five below. He typed a text to Dave: Cue Hornsby – the show’s about to start –
Kim Davis’s lungs burned. She ran fast through the forest, the moonlight her guide. She stopped near a large bald cypress tree, out of breath, Spanish moss thick and hanging straight down in the motionless night air. She listened for the sounds of pursuit. She knew Silas Jackson was somewhere out there in dark. Coming closer. She heard the whine of mosquitoes looping around her head, the cry of a nighthawk in the air above the forest. If she could only make one call. Phone’s in my purse.
A branch broke. Kim strained her eyes to look through the limbs and undergrowth. Trying to see movement. A wind gust through the trees stirred the boughs, moon lit shadows tiptoed over large ferns and across the forest floor.
She bit her bottom lip and ran. Ran hard. She prayed that she was running toward a road. Maybe an old hunter’s shack someplace in the forest. Anywhere to hide. She could smell campfire smoke in the forest, pinesap and rotting leaves. Kim’s heart pounded so hard it felt as if her breastbone might split.
A beam of light came through the openings in the trees. Kim looked behind her. He was less than one hundred yards away. Run. Just run. The light abruptly vanished. Gone. But he wasn’t. She could hear limbs cracking, the dogged pursuit of a predator smelling blood. Within seconds, she splashed through water covering her ankles. She ran through a dark swamp. She heard his voice echoing through her skull, his ominous warning. ‘More poisonous snakes per square foot than any national forest in the nation.’
Then the water was above her knees. Almost to her hips. Swirling around her, the moon shimmering in the dark broth. She could see her own frightened face reflecting from the surface. Run. She turned, tripping over a cypress knee hidden just below the shadowy surface. She fell. Facedown in water the color of black ink. She held her breath, the dreamlike cushion of swamp water in her ear canals. She heard nothing but her own heart thrashing.
She slowly rose to the surface. Only her head emerging, swamp water rolling down her face. Eyes searching between the massive cypress trees standing like gothic custodians of the bog.
She smelled him first.
The stench of a cheap cigar. Then she spotted the tiny orange glow from the tip of the cigar in the night. It smoldered like a one-eyed beast in the forest. The ash inflamed to a laser-like red color during inhalation, diming to orange when he exhaled.
Kim didn’t move, hiding behind cypress stumps, staring at the single red Cyclops’s eye in the distance. He was brazen. Smoking a cigar while hunting. No hurry. Maybe he won’t look in the water, she thought. Maybe he’ll turn to the right or left and search some other areas. Then I double back, take his truck and leave.
She felt something on the back of her neck. Something digging into her skin. Felt the same tiny teeth chewing between her breasts and then on the inside of her upper arm. She reached behind her neck with one hand, pulling the thing from her skin. Looked at it between her thumb and finger. A black leech, twisting in her fingers. She screamed. Trying to plug the sound of her terror back into her larynx before it escaped. Too late.
Within seconds, Silas Jackson stood at the water’s edge, the flashlight in Kim’s face. He laughed. “I ‘spect you got one of ‘em buggers up your ass. This spot is full of leeches. One of my men nets ‘em out to use them for fishin.’ Let’s go. Get outta there.”
“Go straight to hell.” Kim used her thumb to crush the leech between her breasts, pulling one from her upper arm.
The water exploded a few inches from Kim’s left thigh. A flash of gunfire and the echo of the noise reverberating through the forest. “I said get outta there. Next shot’s in your leg.”
Kim climbed out of the swamp, slipping in the slick mud at the water’s edge. Jackson used his left hand and arm to lift her up. He pushed her against a cypress tree like he was propping up a disjointed doll. He held the cigar between clenched yellow teeth. Eyes wide in the moonlight, nostrils working with a doglike rhythm, testing the molecules in the air.
Kim went rigid. “Don’t touch me!” She raked her fingernails across his scruffy cheek.
“Shut up!” He backhanded her with his right hand, knocking her head against the tree. Then he used his fist, striking her hard in the jaw. Kim went down, knees buckling. She looked at his Civil War boots, the mud on the ridges. She lay there with her face against the cool pine straw and decaying cypress leaves. She spit blood, felt a back tooth knocked out, bits of her flesh torn like tiny pieces of chewed meat in her mouth. She was nauseous, woozy. She leaned over and vomited in the ferns and pine straw.
Silas Jackson squatted, grabbed her chin with a strong, heavy hand and turned her head left and right, his eyes drinking her in, examining, as if he was inspecting a fish in the market. “You made me do this.” His voice was just above a whisper. “This won’t be good, not while you’re ripe, in the cycle. You need to be calmed down and cleaned up. Then we will commence.” He placed an open palm against her stomach. “You’re handpicked by God to birth a new leader. You’re the hope for the rise of the South.”
All heads began to turn. The guests were looking toward the bow, chuckling, and some pointing, the sailboat rocking slightly moving through the inky current. “Now that’s a great performance,” said a twenty-something actor to his friend, winking and gesturing toward a naked blonde woman slowly walking across the bowsprit, the wind billowing her long hair, the river beneath her, the woman’s bare breasts pointing in the direction that America II was sailing.
O’Brien approached the bodyguard, the man using his thick index finger to push the tiny earpiece deeper into his ear canal. O’Brien stepped up to him and shouted, “She may be a jumper! She didn’t get the part and is overcome with depression.”
“Not on my watch!” He took off, running down the ship’s deck toward the bow. O’Brien could see two other guards doing the same thing. He waited a few seconds, opened the wooden door near the wheelhouse and entered. O’Brien remembered the video footage from the newscast when the reporter and camera crew, led by Sheldon, walked through the interior of the ship. Low-wattage lamps designed to mimic flickering candlelight, giving the illusion of shadows dancing over the wooden floor and roughhewn walls, lighted the hallways.
He heard the muffled voice of the man before he saw him. Past the galley, past the crew’s quarters, further into the bowels of the ship. The man said, “If she jumps, somebody’s got to go after her. There’s no way in hell that we’re gonna have a suicide tonight. You need me up there?”
A long pause. The man listening. O’Brien removed his shoes, walking in his socks down the hallway. Then the man was back on the radio. “When you grab her, take her to the guest’s quarters. Give her the Gettysburg cabin. Maybe she’ll sleep it off until we get back to Jacksonville.”
O’Brien turned the corner, the man’s back to him. Wide shoulders. Big hands. Ears that protruded slightly from his skull.
The wood floor creaked.
O’Brien saw the man reach into his coat, reaching for his sidearm. The man turned, trying to level the pistol.
O’Brien was faster. He stepped to within three feet of the bodyguard, a hard right fist connecting directly to the man’s left jaw. The impact sounded deceivingly subtle, as if someone had cracked an egg on
the lip of a cast-iron frying pan. The sound of bones splintering. Muscles dislocating. Lower teeth uprooting. The man fell where he stood. O’Brien reached in, removing the gun. It was a 9mm Beretta.
He walked farther down the hall, stopping to listen. Could barely hear the calypso beat, like steel drums in the distance. As he rounded another hall, he saw the closed door. Above the door was a hand-carved sign that read: Captain’s Quarters - Private. O’Brien placed his hand on the brass doorknob and slowly turned. Locked. He could see light coming from the large, antiquated keyhole. He knelt down, looked into the keyhole. There was no sign of James Fairmont. Could he be standing near the door? Anywhere in the room outside of the tunnel vision through the keyhole?
Frank Sheldon was there. Sitting behind an antique French desk, an opulent chandelier above him, and someone below him. The brunette in the small black dress that O’Brien had spotted on deck, Sheldon had whispered in her ear. She was now on her knees giving Sheldon oral sex as he sipped whiskey from a leaden crystal glass while staring at something.
It was the painting of the woman. Hanging on Sheldon’s wall. Next to it in shadow boxes lit with small direct lamps, was the diamond and what appeared to be the Civil War contract. O’Brien bent one of the two prongs on the small cocktail fork and slid it into the keyhole. He slowly rotated the fork. Stopped, feeling for the metal. Then he twisted the fork to the right, felt the metal move. O’Brien stood, one hand on the doorknob, the other holding the Beretta. He dropped the fork into his pocket and pulled out his phone, pressing the video record button, quietly stepping inside the cabin.
The woman’s back was turned toward O’Brien. Sheldon had his eyes closed. It appeared that no one else was in the spacious cabin adorned with Civil War memorabilia. O’Brien recorded the sex for twenty seconds, Sheldon’s groans, the woman’s sloppy murmurs. And then O’Brien said, “I spotted Mrs. Sheldon only once. She was deep into conversation with the art director for Back River. I don’t think the young lady here is part of Mrs. Sheldon’s decoration plan.”
Sheldon pushed the woman away, quickly pulling up his pants. He started to reach for a drawer on the desk. “Don’t!” O’Brien said. “You open the drawer and you won’t live out your maiden voyage. He turned to the woman, red lipstick smeared. Eyes wide. She stared at O’Brien’s gun. He said, “Go stand in the closet over there. Shut the door and don’t say a word. Can you do that?”
She nodded, eyes watering. She stepped quickly across the cabin and shut herself inside the closet.
Sheldon stared at O’Brien, unbelieving. Muscles knotted on both sides of his lower jaw. “Who the hell are you? How’d you get in here?”
O’Brien saw Sheldon’s cell phone on the desk. “Where’s Fairmont?”
“Gone.”
“Where?”
“On deck.”
“So you finished your transaction.”
Silence.
“I asked you a question.”
“Yes.”
“What’d you buy?”
Sheldon hesitated, glancing at the diamond under glass and the old document. “The stuff you see under the glass.”
“Describe them.”
“What? Why?”
“Do it!”
“The fuckin’ diamond and the Civil War contract between England and the Confederacy. You won’t make it off this yacht alive, asshole.”
“Oh, I will make it out.” He gestured at his phone. The quality of high-definition video that these phones record is stunning…and, the audio, amazing fidelity. It can even pick up grunts and groans across the room. Right now, Sheldon your little rendezvous was uploaded and living in a hidden spot on the cloud. To keep it forever in the cloud, and out of the media, or the eyes of Mrs. Sheldon, you will give up some toys. The first one is the painting on the wall. It was stolen. You bought stolen goods.”
“That’s news to me because—”
“Shut up. It was stolen. The diamond you bought was stolen. As was the Civil War contract. Sheldon, you’re like a fat cat pawnbroker. Buying stolen things that were never for sale by the real owners.”
“I’ll return them.”
“Yes, you will, but I’ll do it for you. With the exception of the painting. I have your number. I’ll text you the return address. The owner is Laura Jordan. You had her husband, Jack, killed.”
“No! No, I didn’t. It was James Fairmont. It was his idea after Jack reached out to the British consulate, trying to find someone to quietly return the contract and diamond to the Royal Family. Fairmont set up a bidding war. He said I’d won. He planned the whole thing. I’m just a buyer, and investor.”
O’Brien stepped closer to Sheldon. Sheldon backed away, holding up his pants, staring at the Beretta. He looked at O’Brien. “I’ll pay you. Five million. Destroy the video and just go away. Tell me where to deposit the money.”
“You’re fly’s open.” When Sheldon looked down at his zipper, O’Brien hit him on the jaw with the pistol grip. Sheldon fell back into his leather chair, eyes rolling. Out cold.
O’Brien opened the shadow box. He reached in and removed the diamond. Never in his life had he seen such a striking gem. Under the small, intense lights, it radiated splendor, colors off the chart of the rainbow, fireworks that seemed trapped inside the time capsule history, cut and carats that was the Koh-i-Noor, the Mountain of Light.
He lifted out a large Ziploc bag from his coat pocket, unfolded the bag, dropping the diamond inside. Then he gently placed the old contract in the bag, sealing and putting it in his coat pocket.
He looked up at the painting on the wall, looked into the intelligent and beautiful eyes of Angelina Hopkins. “And there you are,” he whispered. “We’ll get you home.”
O’Brien stepped over to the wall and removed the painting, turning it around to see what was on the back. It was there on the center of the back canvas, in neat handwriting.
‘To Angelina Hopkins, my wife and the center of my life.
Dearest Angelina, I had this painting commissioned from the photograph that I so treasure of We shall display the painting prominently in our home for all to see…as your beautiful face is always displayed privately in my heart.’
Your loving husband, Henry.
In smaller handwriting, in the bottom left side corner was something else. It read:
“We are a nation of brothers who, together, must always be united to stop the threat of all others. To that end, what is left of the treasury, the Confederate gold, can be used to ensure our Constitution is never sold. Perhaps it’s nothing more than the spoils of a tragic war, but the treasure sits on the river floor. It may be found not treasure treafar from where the diamond and precious life was far lost. But to unlock the potential good the gold may one day deliver, from the hand of God our benevolent giver – those who seek it must dive and enter into the dark and dangerous waters, the heart of a black river.”
O’Brien placed the painting back on the wall. The Confederate gold. He stared at the enigmatic face of Angelina Hopkins. He thought of Kim. Where are you? He glanced down at his phone, a text message arriving. It was from Dave. He wrote: Kim’s car is in the marina lot. There are torn Confederate rose petals under the wipers, around the base of the car. I fear she’s been taken. Call immediately.
O’Brien felt an adrenaline rush. The brake lights. Silas Jackson. O’Brien was so absorbed in thought, he didn’t hear the slight creak in the wood floor. He did see the reflection move across the glass in the shadow box. He turned around just as James Fairmont looked him directly in the eye, trying to plunge a hypodermic needle into O’Brien’s neck.
The needle entered his shoulder, embedding in a bone, Fairmont pressing the syringe with his thumb. His sea-green eyes arrogant, superior. Some of the content entered O’Brien before the needle snapped in two pieces, the remaining chemical yellow liquid squirting across Frank Sheldon’s unconscious face. O’Brien reached for the pistol.
Fairmont charged, connecting a hard punch into O�
��Brien’s stomach. He pushed O’Brien against the wall, shattering the glass shadow boxes. His left fist caught O’Brien above the eyebrow, ripping skin, blood flowing. O’Brien brought his elbow down hard on the crown of Fairmont’s head. The blow dazed him. O’Brien reached for the Beretta just as the woman bolted from the closet. She ran, slipping. Fairmont turned, grabbing the woman by her wrist and hurling her in front of him. She screamed, urine flowing down her legs onto the polished wood floor.
Fairmont grinned at O’Brien and said, “There’s enough in you to put you out, maybe a coma from which you will never awake. Sleep well, Sean O’Brien.” He pulled the woman with him, backing out of the captain’s quarters and running down the hall.
O’Brien felt nauseous. Head pounding. He glanced down at his phone, re-read the text and hit Dave’s number. Dave said, “I don’t like finding pieces of a Confederate rose around Kim’s car.”
“She’s been kidnapped. I think it was Silas Jackson. I saw a pickup truck at the far end of the lot. One of the brake lights wasn’t working. That day I tailed Jackson from the courthouse to his hideout on the forest, his left brake light was out. It’s him, Dave. It has to be.”
“Where are you now?”
“Sheldon’s schooner. On the river. I found the diamond, the Civil War contract and the painting. And I found James Fairmont, or he found me. He blindsided me. Hit me with a syringe. The needle snapped. But some of whatever he was packing got in my bloodstream.”
“Where’s Fairmont?”
“He used a girl as a body shield to exit. Frank Sheldon’s out cold in his private cabin.”
“Sean, I’m calling 911. You’ll need to be air-lifted off that damn boat.”
“No. The man who killed your best friend and five other people is on this yacht. He can’t escape unless he goes overboard. I’ll find him.”
“If whatever poison is in your bloodstream slows you down, causes you to miss a beat…Fairmont will have the upper hand. He will kill you.”