“I had to look hard to tell they’d been moved. Such care is directly opposite from the panic and paranoia in the rest of his life.” She sighed and rested her head in her good hand. How would she ever figure this out? Randy had more faith in her than she did. She’d try not to let him down.
“What’s next?” Jake’s voice was soft.
She placed the belt on the table and removed an unsealed envelope, the kind that held a greeting card. She pulled out a small stack of old square photos, their colors no longer sharp. “Randy’s photos! I knew they would be with his belt. He did bury his treasures.”
“Good call.”
She held out the thin stack. “I don’t remember what any of you looked like in these photos. Except for Randy. There’s a separate photo of each Compass Point. On the backs are each person’s name and his compass position. All in print so I could read them before I learned cursive.” She turned Randy’s snapshot over—Randall Rankin/Rose—and handed it to Jake.
The next photo showed a big man with broad shoulders and blond hair.
Jake tapped it with his thumb. “Ham Bone.”
“I’d forgotten how broad his shoulders were. No wonder he was lethal with the pipe.” She turned it over. Hamblen “Ham Bone” Norberg/North. She passed it over.
Red hair topped the next man’s round face and blue eyes. Looking at him made her smile. She imagined he’d had a great sense of humor, and she regretted not knowing him. Kyle Easley/East.
“Easley never forgot anything. And he was a storyteller. He became a history professor.” Jake took the photo she held out.
“Was Kyle Easley the one whose girlfriend became a movie star while he was gone?”
Jake laughed “Is that what Randy told you?”
“Maybe I remember wrong. Whoever it was, Randy said he didn’t remember her name.”
“No, you have the right Compass Point. She became a movie star all right, but adult movies. Porn.”
“Ah. No wonder he wouldn’t tell me her name.”
The next man appeared nondescript, average height and weight, his face waiting for an artist to add character. Brownish hair and eyes—but with the old technology, she couldn’t tell the color for sure. Ed Wharton/West.
“I always thought he looked like a pastor. I don’t know why.”
“Ed was pretty wild. He would have had a lot of stories to build sermons around. After he got out of the Coast Guard, he joined the fire department. Earned a medal for saving a few lives in some big fire.” Jake’s voice was a monotone. Just-the-facts, no nonsense.
A good man’s life ended by a madman. She wanted to rant and scream at the injustice.
The last photo was Jake, without a doubt, except younger and with black hair. Jake Solomon/South. Like the others, he wore dungarees and a light blue work shirt.
The photos of these men were here in Randy’s treasure box. But Randy’s real treasure had been the Compass Points themselves. The men who made up Solomon’s Compass. Now he had joined all of them—except one.
“So young. And now they’re all gone. What a waste.” He still spoke with the same colorless voice as he slipped the photos back into the envelope.
“You’re here.”
He added Envelope w/photos of Compass Points to the list. “Hmph. Debatable.”
“Add the order the photos were in.”
He just looked at her.
“Damn it. Give me the notebook. I’ll keep my own list.”
“Settle down. I was thinking how thorough you are. Not too many people are these days.”
“The Coast Guard trained me as well as you.” One minute she wanted to kill him, the next push him onto the king-size bed not two feet from where she sat. The bed she was struggling to ignore. She sat back in the chair. Her emotions were already awash in a stormy sea, and looking at Randy’s treasures from the ammo can made the rolls she took faster and steeper.
But she needed to carry on with his wishes.
“Everyone is listed. In order. Next?”
She pulled out a rolled shirt.
Jake pushed the ammo can back. “Unroll it on the table in case something’s inside.”
Nothing fell out. She pushed at the shirt with her hand. “What the hell? Why would he put in an old fishing shirt?”
Jake turned it over. The logo of a local tournament filled the flap on the back. The date was five years earlier. He let the shirt drop to the table and added the information to the list.
She smoothed the fabric and refolded one side.
“Wait.” He finished writing.
He stuck his fingers in the pocket, felt every seam, every hem.
“What are you looking for?”
“Whatever I find.”
Infuriating.
His fingers continued the inspection. Both plackets, each button. The collar. He stayed with the collar the longest.
“Anything?”
“It has to be the shirt. He showed us he had the belt and the pictures of the Compass Points. Next, a ragged fishing shirt. That tells us the shirt has to do with the deaths.” He scratched his head.
“Maybe we just thought he was careful, and this box is as scattered as the rest of his life had become. Milestones in his life, happy memories.”
The palm of Jake’s hand came down hard on the table. “No. I don’t believe that. I won’t believe it. Scattered doesn’t explain why he made the watch.”
Taylor clenched her jaw. “Damn. It’s frustrating, and it makes me crazy. I hate this.”
“Take a minute. It’s hard. He was your uncle, and you loved him.”
“I know.” She picked at the towel around her palm. “My hand’s freezing. I need to take this off.”
“Let me.” Jake untied the outer towel and removed the washcloths. “Much better. The angry color is gone. Do you have some antibiotic cream?”
She took the towels to the bathroom and came back with a tube of ointment. “Monday I’ll call the Chamber of Commerce and find out who to contact about the fishing tournament. Maybe Randy won.”
Jake stared into space, tapping the eraser end of the pencil against the table. She finished applying the antibiotic and recapped the tube. “I’ll be good as new tomorrow.”
“Huh? Sorry. I was thinking about something else.”
As if that hadn’t been evident. She held out her hand, and Jake flexed her fingers. “Good. Are you ready to look at the next item?”
“Not much is left. The shirt took up most of the space.” She pulled out an old metal peanut can. “The shirt kept this from banging against the sides. Put that on the list, too.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She opened the lid. “Bubble wrap. Oh.”
“What?”
“Belt buckles. Like yours and Randy’s.”
“Let’s see.” He spread them out.
Three. The empty lapis mountings were at the top and sides—north, east, and west.
“Someone else removed these stones. Look at your uncle’s belt.”
“I don’t need to. These buckles aren’t just scratched, they’re gouged. And the prongs have been pried wide. The ones on Ham’s buckle are flat against the surface, and the others are almost as bad.”
Jake rubbed his cheek. “One person removed all the stones except for Randy’s. I wonder how Randy came into possession of them?” He sat still for a while staring into the distance.
She rewrapped the buckles in the bubble wrap, returned them to the can, and closed the lid. By the time she finished, Jake was adding it to the list.
She pulled out a business-size envelope. “This is the last thing.”
“Open it.”
Inside was a letter, several pages long, in Randy’s normal handwriting before he fell victim to the stress near the end of his life. Though she wanted to devour it, her hands shook, and the pages trembled like leaves in a breeze.
Taylor let the pages drop to the table. “I’m exhausted. Can we wait before I read this? I need a minute.”
Jake stood and kneaded her shoulders. “This has been a trying day for you. The reason I didn’t help you dig was that I feared you might beat me with the shovel.”
She smiled to herself. “Smart man.” His hands worked magic on her muscles.
“You were smart to choose a night when neither Knox nor his neighbors appeared to be home.”
She tensed.
“What?” His thumbs made tight circles where the new knots had formed.
“How did you know that was Will’s house? Who, by the way, is at his cousin’s wedding.”
“Do you really need to ask? It’s my job.”
“Mmm. Rub my neck.” His hands moved. Fingers on her neck, palms on her shoulders. She rotated her head. This was heaven. She stopped. This was Jake. She sat up straight.
“What now?”
“Get your hands off me.”
He did as she asked.
She stared at her hand. The cold compress had reduced the swelling and the redness was gone. She stretched and flexed it with no problem. The workout had been good for her.
Jake returned to his chair. “Do you want to talk about what’s really bothering you?”
Hell no. I might strangle you with my bare hands. “Nothing is bothering me. I’m tired.”
“Just asking.”
“Actually, I do want to know something. When you were telling me about your clandestine work . . . I’ve been thinking about events that happened back then. My master’s is in International Affairs.”
“I know. George Washington University.”
She shook her head. “Of course you do. Were you involved in Nixon’s trip to China?”
He raised that damn eyebrow. “I’ve been to China.”
“You’re impossible. And I suppose you’ve visited Chile? Never mind Pinochet’s coup took place during that time.”
“As a matter of fact, I’ve skied in Chile. Like your mother.”
“For God’s sake, leave her out of this. I get enough of her without you bringing her up.”
He shook his head. “Listen, Taylor, you know about nondisclosure agreements. I can’t give you details. I trained as a sniper. I used the skill in my job. More than once. I created accidents and natural deaths. In. My. Job. I also saved people, prevented people from being killed by someone like me. I rescued people from both political and natural disasters. I located and re-kidnapped abducted children. Twice I delivered a baby. Those babies were the highest highs I’ve ever experienced. I won’t provide details about those babies or anything else to anyone. Not even you.”
For the first time since he began to speak she looked at him and found a depth of emotion in his eyes she’d never seen before. Gone was his general expression of amusement and mischief. He cared.
“You did all that, yet you let Randy die because you wouldn’t use your resources to save him. I don’t understand you.”
“Follow the money.”
“Money has nothing to do with it.”
“You’re wrong. Money has everything to do with it. People can be bought.”
“Not everyone. You vet those who work for you.”
“I do. Basically I trust each and every one of them. But everyone has a price. Even you.”
“No.”
“It’s a matter of finding the price. Our government bought me for the price of keeping my friend out of prison. My life and education were secondary. None of us knows what our price is until it’s offered.”
His words stung. What if something happened to her mother? If she were caught up in a terror kidnapping? As much as they fought, Taylor would do anything to obtain her mother’s freedom, including breaking laws.
“The same with those who work for me. All it would take is for the Compass Points killer to find one of them and discover his weakness. Or hers. It might be money. It might be family. It might be something else. Had I asked others to help, I would have knowingly placed them and their families at risk. We do so for clients every day, but I won’t ask for personal benefit.”
“Their help wouldn’t have been for you. It would have been for your friends. That’s a cop-out.”
“You’re wrong. I wasn’t the first Compass Point killed. That meant the killer wanted me to agonize over their deaths. A child of one of the Compass Points has also died. It’s inconclusive if the death was a homicide. The case remains open. Though it was beyond my control and not my desire, our belts say Solomon’s Compass. My name, my responsibility.”
“You could have used a team. Two teams. Three. You could have found the killer and stopped him.”
“The man I believe to be responsible—Fallon—is a chameleon. I searched for him under rocks. I baited traps. He’s the best in the business, and he has strong motivation.”
“Still . . .”
“The mother of his unborn child got in the way on one of my operations. The outcome was fatal. He swore he would even the score. He tried once before. This is his style. It doesn’t get any more personal.”
“These men were your friends. That’s personal, too.”
“Taylor, I knew Fallon. I know what he’s capable of. I also know I’m smarter. I didn’t realize he was more cunning. He may kill more Compass Point family members before he comes for me. I shared that insight with Randy, along with some physical details, which is why he asked me to protect you.”
“I think it’s time you shared those physical details with me.”
Jake got up and moved around. “You’re right. And I should have shared them with you earlier. Like I said, the man is a master at changing his appearance and identification. He has a burn scar on his left arm that runs from his left elbow up to his lower left jaw. With the advances in medicine, it’s possible the scar no longer exists. He also wears a black stainless bracelet. It’s a cuff style, eighteen millimeters in width. This item is personal to him. He never removes it. Those are the only details I have about him that are permanent.”
“I haven’t noticed either of those. But I’ll stay alert.”
“Looking back, I might have made the wrong decision about not hiring CPI to identify and locate the killer. But I made the best decision I could make at the time. I stand by it. At least my employees and their families are not at extraordinary risk. The killing will stop with me.”
His eyes pleaded with her to understand. She studied her hands. If she asked him to leave, he would go. He would keep watch over her, but he would go. She didn’t want him to go. Jake understood her, and she understood him.
She reached for the letter Randy left and unfolded the dampish sheets of paper. “I know you wish the results were different. So do I. But I also know the difficulty of making a command decision. I should have let you explain before. At times it’s necessary to put good lives at risk.”
He struggled to smile. “You still don’t agree.”
She got up and walked back and forth. “Not true. I see your point. You traded Randy’s life for those of the employees you would’ve pulled in to help you find the killer. Perhaps they would have located him before he killed Randy. Perhaps not. You went with the less risky choice. As we’re taught. And you did warn Randy. I don’t know if I could have made that decision—played God and balanced life against life—when all the lives were friends or family.”
“A lot of things in this world are hard to come to grips with. You’re a straight-arrow Coast Guard officer. Faced with the same choices, you would make the same decision. The important choices are never easy.”
Boy, did he ever have that one right. She returned to the chair. “I’m glad you told me all this. I think you would have rather not shared, but I’m glad you trusted me enough. I’m ready to read Randy’s letter now. How about you?”
He kept staring at the smoke detector. After a second or two, he glanced her way. “Go for it.”
“It’s dated the week before he died.” She swallowed a lump in her throat.
“Hi Taylor—
“I hoped you’d never be reading this. Since you
are, I guess the worst has happened, and I’m trying to trade St. Peter a couple of used boat motors for a ticket inside the Pearly Gates.”
Jake bolted upright. “That doesn’t sound like a man who’s a delusional mess.”
She nodded. He looked again at the smoke detector. What was going on?
“Do you remember old Solomon, the big yellow cat I had when you came to visit me as a little girl? I named him after a Coastie I served with over in Nam—Jake Solomon.”
She glanced at Jake as a big smile spread across his face.
“Jake was one of the Compass Points we always talked about. I showed you their photos. Jake, Kyle, Ed, Ham, and me.”
The letter went on several pages while Randy related a condensed version of the story Jake told her. Jake interrupted once to clarify a point before Randy moved on to things new to her.
“After Jake told me he and I were the only ones left, I thought if I acted as if I was going crazy—what do us old folks get? Alzheimer’s, yeah—whoever was after me would leave me alone. So I pretended I couldn’t remember shit. I spent a whole weekend trashing the shop. As I bought new things, I loaded them in the house and left it a mess. Sorry you found the place that way.”
She put the letter down to keep from tearing up. “Damn it!”
Jake reached for her and held her close. Putting down the letter didn’t work. Both her cheeks and Jake’s were wet, and she didn’t know if the tears were all hers.
She allowed herself the luxury. All the sorrow and loss she’d been unable to express when she learned of Uncle Randy’s death poured out, and the emptiness in her heart spilled over into her whole being except for where her body touched Jake’s. That part burned white hot. Jake’s scent, his muscles, each breath he took intruded on her grief and replaced the emptiness with longing.
She raised her head. “I need some tissues.”
Jake got up without a word and brought her several from the vanity dispenser.
She used them all to blow her nose and wipe her eyes. “I’ve got to find some grit and hold it together.”
“You’re doing fine.” He ran his fingers through her hair. “Randy would be proud of you.”
She picked up the letter again.
“I couldn’t tell if anyone had taken an interest in me or not. Everything seemed normal, yet my gut told me different. So I started acting real paranoid around these people I’ve known for years. Hell, some I’ve known all my life. I was a real ass. Asked them straight out crazy questions. Were they trying to kill me? Did they hire a hit man? Did they know so-and-so was trying to kill me? Never asked the same question twice to any of them, but over the months, I asked everybody all the questions I knew to ask. I asked new people in town, too. Even the cops and the sheriff. And I watched when they answered.”
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