Over the earwig, I could hear an occasional yelp or splash, but couldn’t make out anything anyone said. After a moment, Carmichael stood, brushed past two women vying for his attention, and walked over to Chyrel. I turned and started toward the door.
“She’s got it,” Tony said, stopping me.
“My apologies,” I barely heard Carmichael say, as he sat in a chair beside Chyrel. His accent was Midwestern, maybe Missouri or Illinois. “I was just being neighborly. From the sound of your voice I’m guessing you’re a Southern girl, huh?”
Chyrel lifted her head, her ab muscles flexing. She pulled her sunglasses down to look at Carmichael. “Why yes. I’m from Alabama.”
“Sweet home, Alabama,” the man said in a sing-song voice, but way off-key. “Name’s Wilson. I don’t think I caught yours.”
“On account of I haven’t thrown it,” Chyrel replied, sitting up in the lounge chair, and swinging her legs over to the side. “Is there something I can do for you, Mister Wilson?”
“I’m sorry, again,” he said. “Wilson’s my first name. Wilson Carmichael.”
“And just what is it can I help you with, Mister Carmichael?” Chyrel said, playing it very cool.
“We’re having kind of a party here,” he replied. “You’re welcome to join us. Drinks are on me.”
“Do you always address a lady, with your hat on your head?”
Carmichael quickly removed his ball cap and placed it on the foot of her lounger, pulling his own chair closer. “I don’t get a chance to be in the presence of a real lady very often. My apologies.”
“Apology accepted,” she said, smiling disarmingly and picking up his hat. My name’s Ginger.” She turned the hat around in her hands and looked at the front. “John Deere? Are you a farmer?”
“I was raised on a farm in Indiana,” he replied, “but that was long ago. Recently, I was in the Army, until I came into some serious money and left the service. Now I’m what you might call a boat bum—but with money to burn.”
“I see,” Chyrel said, handing his hat back. “And just what is it that you and your friends are celebrating?”
Carmichael looked back at the group lounging in the shade of a Jamaican dogwood tree. “They’re mostly just acquaintances,” he said, taking his hat and holding it between his knees. “And this is sort of a long bon voyage party.”
“Why is it long?”
“My yacht’s being refitted,” he replied. “When it’s done, I’m taking a few friends to the Bahamas for an extended cruise. You’re welcome to join us.”
Chyrel smiled again. “Join your party, or join you on the cruise?”
Carmichael turned the ball cap in his hands. “Well, both,” he said, just a bit flustered. “Or either. I’m sure I can show a lady like yourself a really good time.”
“I appreciate the offer,” Chyrel said. “But I’m waiting on my husband and he probably wouldn’t be too enthused.”
“Ah, I get it. Well, if you should change your mind about either, the party will be going on here at the pool, or in my suite, for the next week or so. You and your husband are both invited; my yacht’s huge. I’m in suite nine-twelve.”
He rose and went back to his seat, glancing back at Chyrel before he reached it. She reclined back in her chair, arching her back and getting comfortable. In a low voice, I heard her say, “Like noodlin’ a catfish out of his hole.”
“Good job, Chyrel,” I heard Deuce say over the earwig. “Did you get the comms to Jesse and Tony and plant the bug?”
“Yep. I don’t think he ever takes that stupid hat off.”
“Okay,” Deuce said. “Go ahead and get out of there when you can. I’m switching the comm freq over to the bug.”
“Jesse,” Chyrel said, “come play the dutiful husband and get me away from this guy. I think I need a shower.”
“On my way,” I said, picking up my beer and rising from the stool.
There was a slight clicking noise in my earwig and suddenly Carmichael’s voice came over the comm. “Yeah, she’s definitely one I’d want coming with us. A woman like that can turn you inside out all night long. Just needs a little training, that’s all.”
Stopping at the door, I looked at Carmichael. He was sitting close to a young Hispanic woman. “Don’t you worry about the training part,” she said. “You just handle the physical stuff, and I’ll break them down emotionally.”
The woman was neither beautiful, nor ugly, and her accent was barely noticeable. She had straight dark hair, past her shoulders, and an average-looking face. She was wearing a bikini also, but her body was long in torso and short on legs. It was the tattoo on her shoulder that drew my attention. A snake wound its way around her upper arm, over her shoulder and disappeared under her bikini top.
“What about the husband?” she said, as I pushed the door open.
“Maybe we can get the two of them to come along, somehow,” Carmichael replied. Then he laughed and added: “He might just have an accident at sea.”
As Chyrel and I started through the bar to the lobby, there was a clicking sound in my earwig, and Deuce’s voice came over it. “I don’t know what you stumbled into, Jesse. What the hell was that all about?”
“Are you still recording?” Chyrel asked.
“Yeah,” Deuce replied. “Paul’s still listening live, and he’ll break in if anything interesting comes up.”
“The Hispanic woman is following you,” Tony said, as we crossed the bar toward him.
“Shit,” Deuce said. “Paul just told me that Carmichael told her to find out what room you’re in. You guys can’t just leave and you can’t hang out at the bar.”
“Got it covered,” Chyrel said, taking my arm and hurrying toward the lobby. “I hacked into their computer before coming up here, just in case. We have a suite available to us—open ended.”
We exited the lounge just as the Hispanic woman came into it from the opposite door.
“Give the desk clerk your coke dealer name,” Chyrel said. “Tell him you forgot your key card. We’re in suite nine-fifteen.”
A moment later, armed with a key card, Chyrel and I got on the elevator. “She’s waiting for the next elevator,” Tony’s voice informed us over the comm. “And watching yours to see which floor you’re getting off on.”
“Let’s make sure she knows,” I said, as the elevator door opened. “Getting off on nine now.”
Chyrel and I started down the hall to the left, and Tony informed us the woman was getting on the other elevator.
“Moving toward the suite,” I said, walking with Chyrel down the long hallway. “I don’t have a clue what these people are into besides having stolen something. You come up with anything on Carmichael?”
“Nothing jumped out at me,” Chyrel replied, stopping in front of room nine-twelve. She knelt and placed a small listening device on the floor outside the door, then activated it.
Taking a narrow black rod from her oversized purse, she telescoped it out to four feet and pushed the bug under the door and to the left, until she hit something.
“His military history looks clean and boring,” she said, putting the rod away as we hurried down the hall. “I couldn’t find anything at all prior to that. Deuce, bug number two is three feet inside his room. It’s against the wall, probably right next to the bathroom door jamb, or maybe a table leg.”
In front of room nine-fifteen, I swiped the card and pushed the door open, holding it with my foot. When the elevator chimed its arrival, Chyrel stood up on her toes, and threw her arms around my neck, as the elevator opened.
“Make it look good,” she said, leaning into me, and pulling my face down to hers.
I was shocked as her mouth closed on mine and she pressed her body against me. Recovering quickly, I returned the kiss, putting my arms around her bare waist. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the Hispanic woman standing outside the elevator, watching us. Chyrel pushed me backward, and we nearly tumbled into the room.
Clos
ing the door, I turned toward Chyrel, who had her phone out and was tapping on the screen. “Are you nuts?” I hissed quietly. “I’m old enough to be your… big brother. Was that really necessary?”
Holding a finger to her lips, Chyrel pointed toward the door and handed me the phone.
On the screen was a grainy security camera view of the hallway. The woman was standing in front of a door, glancing both ways, before pressing an ear to the door. I held the screen up to Chyrel and she immediately sat back hard onto the bed and began bouncing up and down. Her low moans sounded very realistic, even through her grin. On the screen, the woman turned away from the door, walking toward the camera. She was smiling.
“What’s going on?” Deuce asked, as Chyrel took the phone back.
Looking over her shoulder, I could see the Hispanic woman stopping at the door Chyrel had slid the bug under. She swiped a key card and pushed the door open.
“She’s gone into Carmichael’s room,” I said.
“Was what necessary?” Tony asked, and I could see his big tooth grin in my mind.
“Had to put on a show,” Chyrel said. “Besides, I always wondered how good a kisser Jesse is.”
My face flushed as I wheeled on her. I could hear Deuce and Tony both laughing. Chyrel sat on the edge of the bed, hands folded demurely in her lap, and her smile bright enough to light the inside of a dark cave.
“Whatever you stumbled into,” she said softly, “it’s a whole heck of a lot more than stealing something. Those people were talking about killing you and kidnapping me. Or whatever other hapless female might come along.”
“I have to agree,” Deuce said. “Stay in the room for an hour, I’m on my way up there in the van. Both bugs are working well, and Paul just told me the woman called Carmichael from the room. He’s making notes on the time stamp of the recording of what’s being said on both ends. He’ll work on cutting out the chit-chat while we’re driving, and we’ll be able to listen to the Reader’s Digest version by the time I get there.”
“Those devices only have a battery life of one hour,” Chyrel said. “They’ll be dead by the time you get here.”
“We have plenty more,” Deuce said. “Power down the comms to save their batteries. And Jesse, keep your phone on.”
Taking the earwig out, I switched it off and stuck it in my back pocket. Chyrel did the same, placing hers in a pocket inside her purse.
“What are we supposed to do for an hour?” I asked, pacing the floor at the foot of the king-sized bed. “I have to get back to the island.”
Less than an hour later, Chyrel and I met Tony as he was exiting the lounge, and the three of us walked through the automatic doors together. Andrew Bourke was driving a huge Ford van when it pulled up outside the hotel. It was black, with dark smoked windows that revealed nothing of the inside. The roofline was high and the body wide—more like a bus than a van—and the dual rear wheels spoke to its cargo-carrying ability. Deuce had called minutes earlier, telling us to come out to them.
“I pretended to drink for an hour,” Tony said, grinning, as the van’s automatic door opened. “What did you two do to kill time?”
“If you weren’t a SEAL,” I said, thumping his shoulder, “I’d kick your ass.”
He just grinned even more. “If I weren’t a SEAL, you maybe could,” he said, offering Chyrel a hand up into the van.
Tony and I followed, and I clapped Andrew on the shoulder as the door closed. The interior was massive. Way in back I saw two facing bench seats, wide enough for four men each. At the end were identical steel storage closets. Between them was a floor-to-roof door, wide enough for two men to exit at once. It was obvious what the back of the van was for; deploying a well-equipped team in a tactical situation.
Forward of the bench seats was an electronics desk on one side, where Paul Bender was busy on a laptop. Across from that was a bank of monitors, gauges, and switches. Between the electronics and the cab were four swiveling chairs, Deuce sitting in the one next to Paul. The three of us sat in the other seats, as the van started to move. Andrew pulled out of the hotel and started north on South Dixie Highway.
“Head toward the airport,” Deuce said. “And pull into a shopping center or something along the way.”
“Almost finished,” Paul said. He had once been on the Presidential Security Detail of the Secret Service and held a degree in criminal psychology. Andrew Bourke was recently retired from the Coast Guard’s acclaimed Maritime Enforcement. Both men, as well as Tony and Chyrel, had been part of Deuce’s hand-picked team working under Homeland Security.
Andrew turned into a large grocery store parking lot and parked under a tree, leaving the engine running.
“Where’d you get this thing?” I asked Deuce.
“At an upstate auction, last week,” he replied. “Orange County updated their SWAT unit to a big armored Mercedes.”
“Just finished,” Paul said, removing his headphones and typing on a keyboard. “These are just the highlights. The bug in the room didn’t record anything more after the phone call except the sound of the door opening and closing a few seconds after the call ended. So I remotely powered it off. It’ll come back on if there’s noise in the room and the computer will start recording.”
He clicked play, and the six of us leaned toward the computer to listen. The whole recording was only about ten minutes long and Deuce had Paul play it back a second time. Carmichael had called the Hispanic woman Rosana, and from the way they spoke it seemed like the two had known each other a long time.
“Got her,” Chyrel said.
She’d been hunched in her chair since the mention of the woman’s name, working her smart phone. Now she turned it around to show us a still from the surveillance camera in the hall, and a mug shot from Nogales, Arizona. Part of the snake tattoo was clearly visible on the shoulder of the woman in the mug shot.
“Rosana Cruz,” Chyrel continued. “Panamanian, living mostly in Nogales, Arizona. Several arrests; drugs, mostly.”
“That’s her, all right,” I said.
“What do you guys think?” Deuce asked.
“We need to get a permanent bug inside that room,” Tony replied. “There’s a whole lot we don’t know.”
“What they were talking about is just sick,” Chyrel said. “And I get the feeling that they’ve done this before.”
“A few minutes of talking to him would confirm it, but I’d bet that Carmichael suffers from classic narcissistic personality disorder,” Paul said. “And the woman is his perfect counter-part, histrionic personality disorder.”
“I know that first one,” Tony said.
Paul sat forward in his chair. “The narcissist lacks empathy for others. A person with HPD will constantly seek the attention of others. They won’t get that from the narcissist, making them try even harder. It will usually manifest itself in inappropriate seductive behavior.”
“Back home in Mobile,” Chyrel said, “we have a real simple word for that: a slut.”
Andrew looked down at me from where he stood beside the driver’s seat. “What was it that put them on your radar, Gunny?”
I didn’t even have to think about it. I knew and trusted these people like they were my own family. “He stole a chest full of emeralds from the widow of a soldier killed in Ecuador. The soldier had apparently bartered for them, and hid them in a concrete post by the back steps of the house they’re building. Carmichael had served with the dead soldier and learned about the emeralds somehow, then came down here to help her out.”
“We don’t have troops in Ecuador,” Paul said. “At least not that I’m aware of.”
“He was an engineer,” I explained. “Surveying possible locations for a new base in Central or South America.”
“I have to ask,” Deuce said. “Not that we won’t do what needs to be done to stop these whackos, but will there be a payday in this?”
“Probably not,” I said. “But I’ll cover all expenses. The widow’s a Conch, tryin
g to finish a house she and her late husband were building. And she’s about eight months pregnant.”
“I’m in,” Andrew said, his deep baritone voice practically echoing in the van. He’d lost his wife and only son in the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and I knew he had a soft spot where mothers and children were concerned.
“Me too,” Tony and Chyrel said at the same time.
“Whatever it takes,” Paul chimed in.
“Then we’re unanimous,” Deuce added. “How do we want to handle it? If we bring in the police, the widow can kiss the emeralds goodbye. What they’re planning is way past theft.”
“Then we get the emeralds back first,” I said. “The widow’s gonna need a payday. Then we can decide whether or not to bring in the police.”
“You know what this sounds like?” Andrew asked.
Tony nodded his head solemnly. “Merc work.”
“Actually,” the burly Coast Guardsman said, with a laugh, “I was thinking of John D. MacDonald’s first Travis McGee novel, Deep Blue Good-By. The father of a girl from the Keys comes into some emeralds during World War Two, goes to prison after stashing the gems in a concrete mailbox post, and another prisoner finds out and steals them from the girl after the soldier dies in prison. We just need an emotionally injured woman for Jesse to play Mother McDermitt to.”
If you only knew Charity was back on my island, I thought. Though not the fragile, rich lady in MacDonald’s novel, she was emotionally and psychologically injured.
“I need to get back to the island,” I said. “Carl and Charlie are away, and nobody is there.”
Deuce and the others looked at me for a moment. Deuce nodded to Andrew. “Take us to the airport.” Then he looked back at me and said, “If we’re going to pull this off, you’ll need to be here. Maybe you can get someone to watch after things while the Trents are away.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “I just need to secure a few things. I hadn’t planned to be gone past this evening. I’ll be back by late morning, if I can come up with a car. Something Stretch Buchannan would drive, not The Beast.”
Rising Storm: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 11) Page 12