by Karen Harper
He didn’t really have a specific plan after he landed, but he’d recon and get one. Anything he had to do to find this Clayton Ames who held his daughter’s life in his dirty hands. So what if Nick Markwood said he’d been trying to get the goods on him, even locate him for years because he moved around so much? The guy might be rich, powerful and slippery, but he was going to pay for this, even if Jace had to take orders from Markwood for a while. Even if Claire was staying with the rich lawyer in what were probably luxurious digs on a gorgeous beach on a tropical island. Even if—this really scared him too—she seemed to trust Markwood, to look at him as if...
Damn, why hadn’t Claire been content to just run Clear Path from her home office and steer clear of criminal investigations? She put her life—all their lives—in danger. This whole mess really got to Jace. It would be so easy to just end things up here over this vast blue-green water, to just disappear. Maybe Claire would talk to people he knew to try to find out if he’d been suicidal, why he’d kept changing his work flight schedule, why he’d considered giving up the international flying career he’d worked so hard for. She could use her forensic autopsy skills on him even if they never found his body.
He shook himself loose from that sick daydream. He was going to not only survive, but live. Really live. And with Claire and Lexi by his side.
2
As Claire and Nick’s Cayman Airlines jet dropped toward the island’s airport, Claire pressed her forehead to the window. Her beloved little Lexi was down there somewhere. Terrified? Tied up? Locked up? Drugged? Claire’s mind could not let her go further. She prayed for her daughter’s safety again, trying to send her silent reassurance and love.
“Those two cruise ships anchored there look like toys in a bright blue bathtub,” she told Nick as he leaned closer to look out too. “Amazing, long, white beaches, even compared to those in Naples.”
“That one is Seven Mile Beach. Look how close George Town is to it. Did you learn much when you checked out the islands online last night?”
“Until my eyes crossed. Like a lot of resort areas, it seems a mix of rich and poor, good and bad. For us, I’m hoping for the good.”
She bit her lower lip and blinked back tears. Except when they’d had ginger ale to calm their nervous stomachs, she and Nick had held hands for most of the flight. They pretended to sleep at times so the lady with the British accent in the aisle seat would stop being so chatty. They couldn’t put it past Ames that she was a plant. After all, he’d sent the tickets with the ransom note, so he could have bought three seats instead of two.
“And, of course, it’s a tax haven,” Claire went on, keeping her voice low. “Grand Cayman’s offshore investment reputation means a lot of those pretty pastel-and-glass buildings down there are just fronts for companies that aren’t really located here but want to escape taxes.” She whispered even lower, “I read that big firms like Apple, Walmart and Exxon do business here. No wonder...” She checked what she was going to say about Clayton Ames and finished lamely, “I read too that Osama bin Laden was a genius at stashing money offshore.” Clayton Ames was in good company here, hiding his assets, she thought. At least his Grand Cayman home must be luxurious. So Lexi might—must—be in a good, safe place.
After their aircraft taxied to the gate, they took their two carry-ons from the overhead bins and walked out through people waiting for friends and family. Claire kept scanning the crowd in case someone had a sign with her or Nick’s name on it, to take them to Lexi. They assumed they’d be contacted at their hotel, but she had hopes of something sooner.
But nothing—no one for them.
They stood in line to take a brightly colored taxi, painted with a green turtle like the one on the Cayman Islands flag. Inside, as they’d decided earlier, they kept their conversation to tourist talk again. Claire was so physically and emotionally exhausted that scenery blurred by as the driver took them in heavy traffic—a lot of ritzy cars like BMWs, even Rolls-Royces—toward their hotel, the Sand and Sea Club, at the north end of Seven Mile Beach. Their cabbie spoke in a unique drawl and pronounced Cayman with the emphasis on the man part.
“Oh, look at that sign!” Claire blurted when the cab came to a sudden stop. It read Iguanas Have Right Of Way. Drive Slowly. “I read the iguanas here are blue, the only place in the world,” she added.
“They only blue when they mating,” their cabbie said. “April, May, not now. They endangered, nuh.”
Claire wasn’t sure what nuh meant, but it got tacked on the end of sentences here, maybe like an exclamation point.
Again, sights seemed to rotate past: a pile of conch shells for sale, several pirate mannequins advertising Pirates Week Festival next month. The mannequins reminded her of Cecilia and Lola Moran, women she’d interviewed for Nick’s St. Augustine murder/suicide case just last week. How far away that all seemed now.
She tried to convince herself that this warm, breezy location could pass for Naples, but it was far different, a mix of British and Caribbean, an exotic place all its own. Jerk chicken stands stood next to bars and pubs; she saw signs to squash clubs and cricket fields. Duty-free shops and banks were everywhere. She had read some of the workers were from Jamaica, the Philippines or Honduras, so, with the tourists, it was a real mix of people on the streets of George Town.
The American influence was here too. Signs advertised a Wendy’s and a Kentucky Fried Chicken, but there were ones that read Sting Ray City and This Way To Hell. She heard Nick grunt at that. She’d read Hell was a tourist stop where strange seaweed had turned the coral rock shaped like flames black. She didn’t need a place like that; she was so sick at heart about Lexi she felt she was in hell already.
* * *
Jace paid for a ridiculously pricey room over a row of shops on West Bay Road that ran along Seven Mile Beach. He’d told Nick he knew someone who lived on the island, but that wasn’t true. He figured this dive overlooking the front street above a noisy area was at least several miles from the tonier place Nick and Claire would be. Close but not too close.
He ditched his gear, except for his camera and the pistol he’d managed to sneak in. He rented a motorbike, ignoring street hawkers trying to get him to windsurf, Jet Ski or take a jitney bus tour. He bought a really loud shirt with parrots on it and wore it with his worst-looking cutoff shorts and a ratty sailor’s cap to hide his recent haircut. He hated flip-flops, but they looked like the shoe of choice around here, so he bought a pair of those. If he had to run fast, he’d kick them off.
He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days and hoped he looked like a beach bum instead of former navy man. And he hoped that someone that rich and powerful felt secure enough that he didn’t hire guards on his property, though Jace would have to locate it before he could case it. He tried to slouch and lose the military bearing and pilot pose. Top gun, heck. He just wanted to be top dad, that’s all—top husband too.
He rode his motorbike north along West Bay past a loud, brass street band as he headed for the Sand and Sea Club where Claire and Nick would stay. Two massive cruise ships, which had disgorged passengers to shop or hit the tourist sites, were visible through gaps in the tinted glass, pastel-colored office buildings. He’d learned the ritzy places where Ames probably lived were a little ways out of town, but he needed to be where he could keep an eye on Claire and Nick, then follow them when the sick bastard who held Lexi contacted or summoned them.
He found the Sand and Sea Club a six-mile ride away at the north end of Seven Mile Beach in a cluster of similar rentals and “club” apartments, most really nice-looking if a bit dated. The Sand and Sea Club offered oceanfront suites and a restaurant with a menu posted outside that he stopped to glare at. It offered turtle stew, jerk chicken, coconut bread, conch fritters and panfried fish like snapper, grouper and marlin. His stomach rumbled but not from hunger. He was as tense as when he used to get in the
captain’s seat for combat.
He took a flyer from a glass box that touted Cemetery Reef as a great snorkeling site, only fifty yards out. Man, that’s all he needed, to think about someone dumping a body out at sea at a place called Cemetery Reef.
Trying to blend in with the locals and tourists, he chained and padlocked his bike to a palm tree and slouched between two buildings to wait for Nick and Claire’s arrival. On his phone, he shot a few pictures of the entrances to the club and the beach. The sand was wide, blinding white and crowded. Maybe he could rent a beach umbrella to hide behind. He figured he’d beat them here by about two hours, but he was content to wait. Content at least for that, because he’d like to kill Lexi’s kidnapper right now.
* * *
Claire’s skin crawled as they checked into the Sand and Sea Club. It wasn’t the humidity, because there was a nice sea breeze that also kept the bugs pretty much away. It was the prickly feeling they were being watched. Yet she hesitated to scan the people waiting for some sort of snorkeling tour with fins and masks in hand. She didn’t want to stare back at anyone in a challenging way. Patience. They had to be patient and wait to be contacted.
She went with Nick to their suite down a hall with breezeways throughout. Two double beds, thank heavens, instead of one. A sitting area and decent-sized bathroom. Fantastic view, of course, through sliding glass doors that led to a private lanai set off from the rooms next to it by flowered trellises. Bright beach umbrellas stuck in the sand provided some shade for patrons in the glare of the sun. Too much of that and Claire’s skin would freckle and turn as red as her hair, but what did any of that matter now—matter ever again if they didn’t get Lexi back and soon?
Nick put her small bag on the bed farthest from the door. “Don’t unpack too much,” he said. “I’m sure things will work out and you and Lexi, at least, will be leaving soon, and I’ll do whatever our friend wants.”
Dialogue prepared in case there were mics or cameras in the room, of course. That gave her the creeps too: Did Clayton Ames hope for some sort of reading on Nick’s relationship with her? Were they being watched to see if they were affectionate? Made love? More than once, she would have liked to but she’d thought they barely knew each other and circumstances were bad then—ha! How could they even pretend more than clinging to each other when things were so dangerous and desperate? Ames obviously knew enough of what they meant to each other to be sure that threatening Lexi’s well-being would turn the screws on Nick.
She made some small talk about the hotel and the view, unpacked a change of clothes and went into the bathroom. She propped her hands on the seashell-shaped pink sink and stared at herself in the mirror. Grayish bags under her eyes like half-moons. Windblown hair. A bruised bottom lip she’d chewed too hard. Exhaustion. Terror she was trying to control. She hadn’t eaten a thing and she could throw up in this basin right now.
She set to work washing up and changing, then twisted her hair into a topknot. Or, since she didn’t wear it like that much, would that set Lexi off when they were reunited? She took her hair down and brushed it loose again, refreshed her makeup and went out.
Nick was stretched out on his bed, using his laptop. Wi-Fi was included here. She wondered if the dangerous, ubiquitous lackeys who reported to Ames had a way to snag whatever Nick was sending or reading online. Probably. But surely he knew that.
“Lie down and take a nap,” Nick said. “I’ll be here, waiting.”
“Yes, all right. But I’d rather pace. I’m praying we will have Lexi back safe and sound as soon as possible,” she said in a loud voice. Let the eavesdroppers and spies report that to Clayton Ames, she thought.
She leaned against the open sliding glass door and watched the sunbathers in various sizes of bathing suits or near undress. Could their contact be out there? Was Jace out there?
She jolted when a knock sounded on their hallway door. Had Nick ordered anything while she was in the bathroom? He got up from the bed, but she beat him to the door, slid the bolt and pulled it open.
3
The plump, chatty British woman they’d sat next to on the plane stood there, dressed the same as before with a little smile on her lips and a beige envelope in her hand. Claire gasped as Nick appeared beside her. “We meet again,” he said to the woman.
“Indeed. A friend has sent you this,” she said, extending the envelope to him. “I wasn’t to give it to you earlier. If I were you, I’d follow those directions straightaway. That is all I know, so don’t inquire more. Ta-ta, then.” She turned away and scurried down the hall.
Claire tugged Nick out into the now empty hallway and whispered, “What does it say?”
They bent close as he pulled a card from the stiff vellum envelope. “It’s a handwritten invitation,” he muttered so quietly that she could hardly hear him. “Our presence is requested, and so on—smart-aleck wording. But here’s his address. I’d love to let the FBI have this, but Lexi comes first.”
As he started to go back into their room, she grabbed his arm and mouthed, “The FBI? Are they in on this?”
“No,” he whispered so quietly she had to read his lips. “But an agent questioned me—grilled me—a couple of years ago over what I knew about the man I used to call ‘Uncle Clay.’ They’re not interested in my father’s death but looking into IRS taxation questions about Ames’s global companies that are under the umbrella of a massive conglomerate called Ames High. I could only tell them I’d tried to track him but he kept moving and lives mostly as an expat now. Let’s get a cab and go see him before he disappears again.”
“With Lexi,” she muttered as they went back into the room to grab their things. She was annoyed he had not told her about the FBI earlier. What else was he hiding? She’d barely glimpsed the so-called printed invitation, but she would read it on the way.
Before they grabbed their gear, they fell into each other’s arms, holding hard. It terrified her to think this might be the last time—if, just maybe, things went wrong. He suddenly held her at arm’s length, almost as if he was thrusting her away. He stared into her teary eyes.
“You will leave here with Lexi, no matter what else happens. I said it before and I mean it now—more than ever.”
* * *
Jace had to move fast when he saw Claire and Nick emerge from the front of the club. His hands shook as he unlocked the chain around his bike. He saw Nick scanning the area, frowning, but he didn’t react as if he recognized him. Was he looking for him or a spy or stalker? It didn’t matter since they waited barely a minute before a brightly colored cab pulled up and they got in. He had to keep up with his motorbike, but at least the cab had to stop a lot, heading back into George Town.
Jace thought Claire looked pale and nervous, but why wouldn’t she? He pictured Lexi, green-eyed like Claire, though she was more blonde than red-haired. Well, strawberry blonde. And she loved strawberry ice cream and her so-called Frozen doll—what a name for a doll. She loved her cousin Jilly, the same age. Yeah, she was as close to Jilly as Claire was to her sister, Jilly’s mom, Darcy. That and his international traveling were reasons he’d never so much as considered trying to take “Princess Alexandra,” alias Lexi, from Claire when they divorced. But if Claire ever married Nick or anyone else, he’d sure sue for equal time with his daughter. But first, they had to get her back.
He swore under his breath as the cab got through an intersection when the light changed but he didn’t. Too many tourists loose in town, taking too long to cross the street, rushing back to their ships. A policeman with a pointed white cap was still holding up his line of traffic.
He revved the bike and stretched as tall as he could, trying to pick out the cab they were in from vehicles one block ahead now. He should have memorized the number on its back, 4-4 something. If they got much farther ahead, he’d have to just guess which private mansion along the area called
South Sound they’d gone to, since that’s where it looked like they were headed. He prayed he hadn’t already ruined his chance to help them and save Lexi.
* * *
Claire gazed at the mansions along the South Sound. Some of them reminded her of the massive ones in the Port Royal area of Naples. Even behind privacy walls, they loomed vast, beige-and-white concrete and stucco, some with wood pillars or pastel trim. Their fronts bordered on the canal with boat access. “More like yachts, nuh,” their driver said—you might know, the same driver they’d had before, no doubt someone else on Ames’s payroll. She could see tall masts or an occasional yacht through the spaces between the buildings. The houses’ rears, where she glimpsed an occasional gardener working or a maid putting out the trash or a service or repair truck, faced the road with the South Sound, a lagoon that merged with the blue-green sea. She read on scripted signs lovely names of these huge homes like Golden Pond, Lazy Lagoon, Happy Days, Sea and Sky—and, the one they pulled into through ornate, open wrought iron gates, Nightshade.
Claire squinted, scanning the back garden area within tall walls for any sign of Lexi. A burly man, who wasn’t dressed like a gardener, stood on the other side of a shaded fountain, watching them. Could that be Clayton Ames? No, because Nick glared at the man but didn’t react.
As they got out—the driver said he’d already been paid—Claire noted the well-kept grass and flowers. The fountain in the shape of a huge, fluted clamshell dominated the area and the wind blew spray onto the surrounding plants.
As the cabbie drove away, Claire tugged on Nick’s arm. “See those tall, purplish, trumpetlike flowers around the fountain where that man is standing? They’re called deadly nightshade, and their berries are poison.”