“They’ll have nearly an hour while we’re in the air. It wouldn’t take much for them to figure out we flew to San Juan. Hell, if they play the odds they’ll know we have to fly through here to connect to anywhere else. With just a phone call they can arrange for hired help to greet us in Puerto Rico, even on speculation,” he said.
How lovely. I wondered if they’d make that call for hired help from Mexico or St. Marcos. I remembered Jiménez’s behavior toward our investigation. I was still suspicious he was involved with the cartel.
I was glad Collin warned us, though. He had made a huge difference already. I led them through the revolving glass doors into baggage claim. It was wall-to-wall as usual, humans crowded up to the carousels and all the way out to the plate glass windows facing ground transportation.
I saw Bill immediately. Not because I recognized him from any past description from Nick, but because the sandy-haired Caucasian man held up a poster that said “KATIE KOVACS” in black magic marker. Collin and Kurt saw him, too.
“Uh oh,” I said. If we stopped, we’d give our identity away to anyone looking for us.
“Keep walking,” Collin said.
We strode past him and he didn’t so much as glance in our direction. What I saw next nearly stopped me short.
A Puerto Rican man held up a sign that read “Katie Kovacs.”
Collin muttered under his breath just loud enough for us to hear. “Definitely keep walking now.”
We reached the far end of baggage claim and stopped to discuss.
“Well, looks like we have two greeting committees. One friendly, one unfriendly. Do you know which is which, Katie?” Collin asked.
I bobbed my head up and down. “Bill is Caucasian, not Puerto Rican. The first guy, for sure.”
Kurt said, “I didn’t recognize him. I knew Bill when he was a kid. He and Nick surfed together, and he was a dark-headed boy. I can’t say as I agree with you, Katie. It could be either guy. That second fellow might not be Puerto Rican.”
Collin said, “Oh, this is great.”
“I’ve got Bill’s number. I’ll just call him,” I said.
“Tell him to meet us by the curb,” Collin peered out the windows, “by the taxi stand, in one minute.”
I dialed. It rang and rang. “No answer, not even voicemail. I’ll text him.” I typed our message quickly and hit send. Still, neither man looked down or reached for a phone.
“Shit,” Collin said.
“I have an idea,” I said. “How about one of us walks up to the person next to each of them and asks them if they have seen Bill. Loudly. Whichever one is Bill should react.”
“Sounds good. Only problem is, I’ll bet our follower has seen Bill and his sign. All he has to do now is follow Bill. I’ll go,” Collin said.
He started to walk off, then stopped. “You guys go wait by the taxi stand. Stand apart. Don’t look at each other.”
He barreled his way through the crowd and stopped by the darker of the two men.
“You go first,” I said to Kurt.
And off he went, no words necessary.
Collin appeared to carry out his plan, but the more Puerto-Rican-looking of our two Bill prospects did not react. Collin wheeled around and headed toward the lighter-complected man.
Time for me to leave. I turned away and walked to the taxi stand. I leaned against the wall, twenty feet away from Kurt. A text came in on my iPhone.
Collin. “I have our Bill. He left phone in car. Stay put.”
I forwarded Collin’s text to Kurt. This was nerve-wracking. I checked Nick’s and my email as a way to kill time and keep myself grounded. Nothing there to hold my attention. Five minutes passed. I felt eyes on me. Don’t look up. I wished I had my hat to cover my hair, but even though I wore it to the airport in the DR, I’d stuffed it into my suitcase when we checked in for our flight. How hard would I be to identify in the San Juan airport? “Bring me the tall, pale, late-thirties woman with long red hair and a serious set of saddle bags under her eyes.” Ha, no problem.
A junker Impala pulled up to the curb in front of me. Collin’s voice called from the passenger side, “Get in.”
I got in. The Impala lurched forward. Collin repeated his command, and Kurt sat beside me in the backseat. Again, the Impala lurched forward.
“Guys, this is Bill Thomas. Bill, this is Katie and Kurt,” Collin said. I could barely hear him over Whitesnake advising us to take it down slow and easy. I wondered if Bill was playing it on eight-track.
“Welcome to San Juan,” Bill said. He careened around a slower vehicle. “Let’s go get Nick.”
I tried not to gape. My quick glimpse of Bill in baggage claim had not done him justice. At nearly forty years of age, he had wavy shoulder-length hair, scraggly and sun-bleached. He was Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the twenty-year reunion version. I had trouble picturing my husband hanging out with Bill, but reminded myself it was years ago. The surfers’ bond and all that.
“Hi, Bill,” I said.
“Hi, yourself. So you’re Nick’s hot wife. Wow. Now I know why he hitched a ride with me through a hurricane to get to you.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I chose silence, which Kurt filled, thank goodness.
Kurt said, “I’m Nick’s father. We’ve met.”
“Yes sir, we have, and don’t hold it against me. I’ve grown up a lot since then. Not completely, but a lot.”
He almost clipped the bumper of a car as he pulled in front of it, and the driver blared his horn. It was lost on Bill.
“We have to assume the bad guys are on to us. But I have a plan.”
Bill momentarily took his eyes from the road to watch Collin. His hand started tapping on the steering wheel, beating out a crazy rhythm and occasionally crashing an imaginary cymbal to his right. The bad guys wouldn’t need to worry about us if Bill killed us off in San Juan traffic. Eyes on road, both hands on wheel.
Collin continued. “Bill said it will take us about five hours to cruise around the coast and stage ourselves nearest Mona. He wants to make our final approach in daylight, because the waters are a little treacherous out there, due to the reefs and all. It’s ten p.m. now. So let’s go check into a hotel on the beach near the marina. Make it look to any followers like we’ve tucked in for the night. Bill knows just the place.”
“Yeah, there’s a Holiday Inn Express about a half mile from the San Juan Bay Marina, which is where the Kate is,” Bill said.
“We’ll get a ground floor room with beach access, slip out the beach side at about midnight, and walk to the marina. If we’re followed and anyone is watching in the lobby, they’ll never see us.”
Kurt said, “What if they’re out back?”
Collin said, “Then we get the joy of changing the plan. Because flexibility is the key to air power.”
I jumped into the conversation. “I like it. To make it look authentic, we should get two rooms.” And I could shower and change in one. Thank God.
Bill gave us directions from the hotel to the Wild Irish Kate. “I’m going to sleep until you guys get there, so just come on the boat and in through the back door. Yell for me. I’ll wake up. She’s fueled and ready to go.”
He brought the Impala to a quick stop that whipped my head forward and then back. “Well, look at that, I got you here safe and sound,” he said.
God help us, this was the man we were trusting to get us to Nick.
Hang on, Nick. We’re getting closer.
At least, I hoped we were.
Chapter Twenty-two
Collin insisted on paying for the rooms.
“Don’t worry, sis, you can pay me back later. In fact, I’ll even take a personal check.”
I punched his arm. My brother’s humor and confidence were a lifesaver. If you focused on my helpers—Kurt and Collin—and not my missing husband or the problems back at Annalise, I was pretty darn lucky.
When we got to our musty beachside rooms, Collin and
Kurt napped in theirs while I showered in mine. I worried about thugs breaking in the entire time and wished I’d barricaded the door, but blessedly no thugs showed up and the hot water made up for the dank smell. After I got out, I saw a request from Julie to Skype.
We established a connection. I heard the beautiful strains of “What I Did for Love” playing softly in the background before the video showed an image. Julie had taught music all her life until she moved to St. Marcos. I identified the big, emotional Broadway numbers with her.
“Hey,” I said.
Julie was not alone. Rashidi’s friendly face glowed in my LCD screen beside her. “Hey,” they both said.
Julie spoke quickly. “We want to hear everything you have time to tell us, but we also have to let you know what happened here today.”
That sounded bad, and her face looked worse. “More than crazy Tim carrying off Taylor? What’s up?” I asked. “The kids? Tutein?”
“Sort of Tutein. Not really. Good news on that front, though. Rashidi was out with Ava, Laura, and Rob earlier. They found your slave graveyard.”
Rashidi said, “We gonna fix things, Katie. There’s a grave dug up within the last few days, but hard to say. Very suspicious. Anyway, don’t worry, we got it in hand.”
I sure hoped he was right. “You guys are awesome. Even thinking about this right now is more than I can handle. Thank you so much.”
He ducked his head, letting an avalanche of beads and dreadlocks fall forward, and he smiled.
Julie spoke again. “We had a little more excitement here, as well. While Rashidi was out at the graveyard, Ruth and I were here with the kids, feeding them dinner. This was maybe two hours ago, after I talked to you. It had just gotten dark. We both felt this vibration, then the dishes started shaking, and the pictures were rattling on their hooks against the walls, and books were falling off shelves. I thought we were having an earthquake.”
Earthquakes were not uncommon on St. Marcos, so this was a reasonable explanation, unless you lived up at Annalise. I knew what was coming next.
“Of course it wasn’t an earthquake, it was Annalise. We grabbed the kids. The dogs outside started barking like mad, and Oso went crazy, running around all of us like he was herding sheep. And then I heard a screaming noise from outside.”
My hand flew to my throat.
“The noise was a voice, and it became clear it was a man. He was carrying on like a banshee. We looked out the kitchen windows. We saw two local men with their hands in the air, and we saw Dan-Dan with a machete, swinging it around their heads. Dan-Dan was the one screaming.”
“Oh my God, Julie! Are you guys OK?”
“Oh honey, we’re fine, thanks to Dan-Dan and the dogs. Ruth and I called out to Dan-Dan to see if he needed help, and he told us that these two men were no match for the likes of him, or as he said, ‘These anti-mans ain’t no match for me a’tall’.” She made a passable attempt at a local accent. “The dogs knew Dan-Dan was their ally, and they circled around the other two men. Want to guess who they were?”
“My money is on Pumpy and loony Tim. Again.”
“And your money wins,” she said.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Ruth and I decided it would do no good to call the police. So we told Dan-Dan to take care of them. Last we saw, he had marched them off into the night with all the dogs except Oso with him. Rashidi got here about ten minutes after it happened, and he didn’t see any sign of them.”
“Unreal,” I said. And it was. I pictured Pumpy and the old wacko tied up next to a bonfire way back in the bush with Dan-Dan dancing around them in full war paint. I liked it.
“Taylor worships Dan-Dan even more now. He has out that wooden pig he gave him, and he’s playing Dan-Dan the hero games.”
“As well he should,” I said. My sweet boy.
Rashidi added, “Annalise was ready to help, but Dan-Dan took care of things before they got close enough to feel her wrath.”
Pumpy had seen Annalise’s wrath before, but now he was showing up again anyway. The man was not a fast learner.
“Way to go, Annalise,” I said, raising my voice. I laughed at myself inside; it wasn’t like Annalise was hard of hearing.
Rashidi spoke again. “So Katie, we gotta take care of this thing with DPNR. It can’t wait for you and Nick to get back. We meeting with Attorney Vince Robinson tomorrow. He coming out here so Julie can be in the meeting, too.”
I loved his absolute faith in Nick’s well-being and return, and I fought back a tear. “Yeah, I agree. Thank you, guys.”
“No problem. Now update us on Nick,” Julie said. “And why you left the DR.”
As bad as it was for me to be missing Nick and scared to death, it was worse for Julie. Nick was her son, and she’d lost her daughter not so long ago. Plus, I had the satisfaction of action, of searching. I was in the know on every bit of information we could find. Julie was stuck at home, powerless and outside the loop. Not to mention facing down Tutein alone. Yet she remained composed, at least on the surface.
So I filled them in, sparing no detail, including my crazy dreams and our harrowing time with the men following us. And with Bill’s driving.
Rashidi said, “You, Nick, and Annalise just made for each other. And from what I hear, you got a message from him this morning, so that mean he still fine, then.”
Julie’s mouth was so tight from holding back tears that she had the wrinkles of a lifelong smoker, even though she was a true Sandra Dee and had never touched a single one. “He’s going to be all right, Katie. I know he is.”
“He is, Julie,” I said. My mouth felt pretty tight, too. “He is.” I slowed down and a yawn overtook me. “I know the kids must be long since asleep?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, honey,” Julie said.
“Please kiss them all over their faces for me and tell them I love them. And see if Ruth will let you hug her.”
“Absolutely,” Julie replied. “Giving that a try should be quite entertaining.”
Rashidi said, “Ava say she love you. She working hard on this. She got Rob and Laura whipped into a frenzy. Not a minute go by we not praying for you, thinking of you and Nick. And Ava say to tell you she not gonna let you down this time, not ever again.”
I had maintained rigid control until this point. How had Ava snuck up on my blindside? My tears pooled and I wiped my eyes.
“Well, I’ll pray for all of you, too. Please keep my babies safe. I’m afraid I have to go roust the men now. Time for us to catch a ride on the Wild Irish Kate.”
I straightened up and popped my neck to each side, readying myself for the return to action. We said our goodbyes. I stared at the screen as the speaker made the call-ending noise that always made me think of Sylvester the Cat collapsing in a heap after Tweety Bird pelted him over the head. I sat up straighter. I would not collapse.
I stared past the hunter green drapes that were pulled back to reveal the black night and ocean through the glass door. We were about to get on a boat with a stranger and race at top speed through unfamiliar waters in the dead of night. I tested myself for fear and found none. None except the fear that we were too late or looking in the wrong place.
But I couldn’t think those thoughts. I had to believe. I had to be the one. Nick was counting on me. I drew in a deep breath and closed my eyes, picturing Nick’s face. I opened them, grabbed my bag, and headed next door.
Here I come, baby.
Chapter Twenty-three
The Wild Irish Kate rocked back and forth at her mooring, a spirited racehorse in the starting gate ready for the Kentucky Derby. My God, she was huge. She was a luxurious sixty-foot Hatteras motor yacht, and she looked practically brand new. I felt like I was stepping into a cracked-out episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.
Kurt rubbed his hand along her side as we climbed aboard. Collin let out an appreciative wolf whistle. The girl had sex appeal, for sure.
We entered the back door to the cabin an
d found Bill awake. And mixing a cocktail in the galley, on Corian countertops, no less. The salon between him and us was filled with white leather furniture on almond-colored Berber carpet. I checked for dirt on my shoes and hands before entering.
“Greetings, passengers. Welcome to Kate,” he said, raising his glass in salute. I’d forgotten Nick had said Bill spent his life trying to fill his hollow leg. “We’re at sea in five minutes. I need a first mate to help me navigate out of the marina, and then you’re all free to find a sleeping berth or anything else you want. Food, drink, shower, movies. Kate has it all.”
How had Spicoli landed a sweet gig like this? Had the owner actually met him? I would have hired someone more like Felix from TheOdd Couple. I also would have thrown slipcovers over the furniture and plastic sheeting over the carpet. But Nick trusted Bill, and if I could trust my dreams, Nick had all but told me to use Bill and Kate for his rescue.
Kurt signed up for the first mate job, quite a step down for the former chief pilot. I suspected he did it for his own safety. He was eyeing Bill’s sloshing glass as if he could vaporize it with his glare.
Kurt finished quickly with the lines and we pushed off. As we slipped through the water between cruise ships, multi-masted sailboats, giant sport fishers, and motor yachts like the Kate, Collin and I stood on the foredeck with the wind in our faces. Nothing in the world felt as good on my skin as the velvety Caribbean air. Nothing except Nick’s skin on mine.
The lights of Old San Juan cut the darkness around us and made it seem like dawn, but there was no mistaking this party town. At fifteen minutes past midnight, San Juan Bay Marina and Old San Juan were rocking. Shakira’s promise that her hips don’t lie warped slightly as it poured out of a brightly lit party boat. Partiers shrieked with laughter. The smell of alcohol, overripe dinners, and sour vomit undercut the scent of salt water and fish. Decadence. I only ever had this sense of the world dying slowly at the witching hour, as I remembered my own brittle attempts to drink away my pain and mortality.
Finding Harmony (Katie & Annalise Book 3) Page 17