Operation Tropical Affair: A Poppy McVie Adventure (Poppy McVie Series Book 1)

by Kimberli Bindschatel

  The back doors of the van flung open. “Looks like Jack’s already got the fire going,” Claudia said.

  “We’ll be out there in a minute,” Noah said as we piled out of the van.

  The sun hung low on the horizon. The surf rolled on the beach, its lapping mixed with the happy sounds of friends gathered near the crackling bonfire.

  Noah took me by the hand and led me down a narrow sandy path, swatting palm leaves out of the way. He came to a halt at a clearing and spread his arms wide. “My humble abode,” he said. Nestled in the branches of a tree was a tree house. An actual tree house. Okay, it was partially supported by poles, but it was the coolest house I’d ever seen.

  Tiny solar powered lanterns lit a spiral staircase leading up to the rail of the balcony where a hammock hung.

  “Nice digs,” I said.

  “Be my guest.” Noah gestured for me to climb the stairs.

  As I reached the top, my mouth dropped open at the view. I leaned on the railing and took it in. An amber glow lined the horizon. Pink clouds streaked across the sky. The bonfire below us sent rosy sparks into the air, soaring skyward.

  Noah came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. “You like?”

  “It’s beautiful,” I said, steadying myself.

  He nuzzled my neck. I held my breath.

  He pressed his lips to my ear. “Your heart’s racing.”

  “Yeah, I just, you know, I’m just a little on edge. It’s not everyday I get shot at.”

  “I know.” He flashed a conspiratorial smile. “Isn’t it invigorating?”

  He gently turned me around to face him. One hand on my hip, he reached up and caressed my cheek, then slipped his hand behind my neck. He paused, inches away, his hungry eyes lingering on my lips. I ran my hand up his arm, across his shoulder to his neck and pulled him toward me. Our lips met. His tongue touched mine and made my insides twinkle.

  “Mmmm, I like your style,” he said with a grin and kissed me again. His hand slid down from the small of my back, sending warm pulses up my spine. I twirled the hair at the base of his neck in my fingers, gently tugging. He pulled me closer and nuzzled my ear, then my neck. His stubble rubbed against my flesh and made me shiver.

  “Where’s the beer?” someone called from below. I backed into the rail. Noah held me, his strong hands keeping me pressed against him.

  “The cooler’s by the shed,” he said. “Should be full.”

  “Right on, bro,” the voice called back.

  I pulled away from his embrace. This was getting too hot, too fast. I had to keep my head straight. “I should get changed,” I said.

  He hesitated as though trying to read my thoughts. “Sure.” He padded across the wood plank floor and soon candles lit the room with a soft glow. To one side, comfy rattan chairs, a coffee table, and a bookshelf stuffed with paperbacks made a cozy living room area. At the edge of the railing stood a bar with two barstools. On the other side, drawers and a wardrobe were built into a solid wall, to the right of that was a wooden door. Beyond, a roped bridge led into the darkness, to another tree house possibly. A ladder reached upward to a tiny loft where I could see the edge of a queen-size mattress. The ceiling was part thatch roof, part plastic sheeting. A single fan slowly turned overhead.

  He took a T-shirt from a drawer and handed it to me. “Bathroom’s there,” he said and pointed to the wooden door.

  “Thanks.” I couldn’t get away fast enough. I splashed cold water on my face. What the hell was I thinking? I quickly changed into the T-shirt, stuffed mine in my backpack, looked in the tiny mirror, and took a deep breath. Keep your act together, McVie.

  I shot a text off to Dalton: Will be late. Don’t worry.

  “Much better,” I said as I emerged from the bathroom and sashayed toward the staircase. I could smell something roasting on the fire. “I’m hungry.”

  “All right then,” Noah said.

  I felt a twinge of regret.

  Noah’s friend Jack had the fire stoked enough to run a steam engine. To the side, atop a huge pile of coals, a makeshift pot, some kind of sawed open half metal barrel, bubbled with boiling water. Jack tended a basket, pulling it out to check the contents, then dunking it in again, each time causing the water to run over, sending up a whoosh of steam. The gang (I counted eight friends plus Noah) was gathered around the fire, watching Jack’s elaborate show. Each time he dunked the basket, they stepped backward for fear they’d singe eyebrows.

  My throat started to tighten with the familiar anxiety. “What’s for dinner?” I asked, trying to get myself prepared. I have this thing about mystery food.

  “Wisconsin fish boil,” Jack said. “Sans the fish, of course.” He yanked the basket upward again, poked at a potato with a stick, and nodded with satisfaction.

  He carried the basket to a picnic table that had been covered in newspaper and flipped it upside down. Potatoes, corn cobs, onions, and what looked like chunks of squash tumbled onto the surface. “Grub’s up!”

  Noah handed me a plate, then whistled. Everyone turned their attention to him. He pointed to me. “This is Brittany.” He made a vague gesture and said, “The gang.” I smiled. Some nodded, smiled. That was that. I was accepted. Either Noah was their indisputable leader or they were a pretty easy-going group.

  I waited my turn to take a helping of the vegan fish boil, then as everyone settled into places around the fire, their plates balanced on their knees, bottles of Cerveza Imperial propped up in the sand, I tried my best to chitchat. Not my specialty. But I wanted to have a good sense of who these people were.

  Claudia and her fiancé, Matt, guided rafting tours on the Grand Canyon in the summers and spent about three months a year in Costa Rica. “It’s affordable and gorgeous. What more could a couple of river rats want?” Matt said.

  Dan and Sierra guided kayakers in Alaska for four months, then helped run a zip-line tour here in the winter.

  Doug was an actor/part-time bartender. “Between jobs,” he grumbled.

  Amanda and Colette were a lesbian couple who sold hand-crafted jewelry in the summer art show circuit. Amanda did freelance computer work, so they would travel with an RV chock full of jewelry, then park it at her parents’ place in Silver Springs, Florida to take two months off in Costa Rica every year.

  Jack cleaned windows on skyscrapers in New York City and made enough cash to hang the rest of the year “surfin’ the CR, livin’ the pura vida.”

  “What’s your story?” Jack asked, then promptly shoved an entire red potato into his mouth.

  “I’m kinda between semesters,” I said. “Trying to find my way, you know.”

  This brought a lot of sympathetic nodding around the fire.

  From the darkness, a monkey came scampering across the sand, leaped onto the table, grabbed a potato, and ran off, chittering with glee, the potato tucked under his arm like he’d been trained by the Green Bay Packers offensive coach.

  “Clyde!” someone yelled.

  “Hey Isabella,” Noah called. Coming up the path was the waitress from the palapa bar. Crap. What was she doing here? What was their connection?

  “Hola de nuevo,” she said and went right for a plate. Clyde followed on her heels. She plopped down, cross-legged in the sand next to the fire and stabbed an onion with her fork. Clyde cowered behind her. Apparently he wasn’t fond of fire.

  “C’mon.” Sierra slapped her thighs and Clyde leaped into her lap. She stroked his head and he cuddled against her.

  Isabella swallowed her onion and looked at Claudia. “Did you get anything?”

  Claudia glanced at me and shook her head.

  Isabella looked at me and in a moment, recognition showed in her eyes. I had a choice. Claim a coincidence and hope they weren’t too skeptical, or hit the thing head on, making them believe I’m one of them. Easy enough, but I had to have an explanation for being at the shed. A good one. Now.

  “You must be wondering why I’m here. Hell, I’m wondering why I am
here.” I turned to Noah. “I wasn’t birding today.” I clenched my teeth together in a please-don’t-be-mad-at me grin. “I was snooping. I think something illegal is going on up at that coffee shed.” I turned to Isabella. “And I think your boss has something to do with it.”

  Next to me, Noah set down his fork. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I was out birding, a few weeks ago, and I saw these men. They had a bunch of animals in cages. Not chickens, but monkeys and other birds.” I shook my head. “That’s not right. So, I know it was a fool-hardy thing to do but—” I shrugged “—I found out who owns the property and that he also owns The Toucan. I’m not sure what I thought I was going to do when I found out the truth. I just couldn’t stand to see animals being hurt like that, you know.” I leaned forward and raised my eyebrows to show how scared I’d been. “I wasn’t expecting to get shot at!”

  It was subtle, but I could see nods around the group. They were accepting me. Noah finally said, “You’re right. Something is going on. Those men are poachers. The worse kind. They capture live animals, snatch ‘em right out of the forest, enslave ‘em and sell ‘em like plastic toys.”

  “No way,” I said. “I knew it. That’s awful.” Interesting.

  “It’s big money. Right under our eyes, wildlife is being plundered and sold on the black market.”

  “How do you know all this? You said you aren’t cops.”

  “No. We actually make a difference.”

  “So you’re like some animal justice vigilantes?”

  He laughed. “Yeah, something like that.”

  I smiled at him with eyes that said, that’s sexy, which it was. “Cool.”

  That was it. I was part of the gang.

  Isabella turned back to Claudia. “So how’d it go?”

  “We’re going to need a better camera. It’s just too dark in there.” She frowned at Noah. “I’m sorry. You did a great job distracting them. I had plenty of time.”

  So that’s what they’d been up to. In the U.S., it’s not uncommon for activists to try to expose cruelty and wrongdoing via videotaping. PETA has been quite successful with that approach, bringing some lawsuits or government action against the perpetrators. But in those instances, animals were being held legally. The video tapes revealed cruelty and abuse. Carlos’s activity was obviously illegal, so I wondered what exactly this group was planning and what they thought they’d accomplish.

  I nibbled on my cob of corn, trying to act interested, but not too much in the details.

  “We’ll get the footage,” said Noah. “We just need to be patient.”

  “We should storm the place, set ‘em all free, and burn it to the ground,” said Matt, the river guide.

  “Yea-ah!” said Jack. “Bring it on, baby!”

  Colette shook her head. “It’s a holocaust that’s never going to stop.”

  “They sell a product like any other business,” said Noah. “It’s all about the money. We hit ‘em in the pocketbook and they’ll take notice.”

  “Yeah, but how do we do that?” Amanda put her arm around her girlfriend. “Meanwhile, innocent lives are at stake.”

  “I know. I know,” Noah said. “We’ve talked about this. To beat them, we have to think like them. Find their weakness. Wildlife trafficking is big business, but it’s got to be volatile.”

  Claudia piped up. “You mean supply and demand. But every time we set some animals free, they just go back into the forest and trap more. Demand is the problem.”

  They nodded in shared frustration. Claudia frowned. Amanda hugged Colette tighter. Jack and Matt took chugs of their beers. I feared the conversation was fizzling. “So why the video?” I asked.

  “Sun Tzu,” Noah said with a grin. “Know thy enemy.”

  “So you’re surveilling the buncher, trying to find a way to destroy his business, that it?” I said.

  Noah looked at me and smiled. “That’s the plan.”

  “But what might you learn from the video?”

  “Schedules. When they have inventory of what. To sustain a business with live inventory, they must be hedging somehow, probably selling futures, but that involves its own kind of risk. If they can’t deliver, they’ll lose their clients.”

  Interesting approach. I wanted to ask more about it, but it didn’t feel quite right to push any more than I already had right now. One thing was sure, Noah wasn’t a typical activist. He had significant intel and would be a valuable asset. There was more to him than I had first thought.

  “We could use someone like you on the team,” he said with a wink as he rose to his feet and brushed sand from his shorts. “Hey, throw me another beer,” he said to Doug, the actor, who was at the table getting seconds.

  Sierra spoke up. “As long as you agree, wildlife belongs in the wild.”

  I secretly thanked her. She had given me another opening to drive home that I’m one of them. “You say that, but what about Clyde?”

  Isabella answered. “He can no go back now. He never survive.”

  “But isn’t he your pet?”

  “No me.” She seemed insulted. “Carlos. He don care nothing bout him. I take care him.”

  “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean anything.”

  “You should meet him.” She gave Clyde a hand command and he leaped off Sierra’s lap and scampered over to me. “Go ahead, pick him up.”

  I reached down and picked him up like a toddler. He snuggled into my lap. I couldn’t help myself. He was adorable. I scratched his ears and, he snuggled closer. Cute little bugger.

  Noah grinned at me. “Clyde’s kinda our mascot. He’s one of the gang.” He chuckled. “He’s even helped with the cause.”

  Balled up napkins started flying Noah’s way. One walloped him on the side of the head.

  “What’s this about?” I asked.

  Noah pointed at Jack. “See, Jack had this brilliant idea—”

  “Hey, it was brilliant. It worked.”

  “Right,” he said through a chuckle. “He rigged up Clyde with a GoPro camera, strapped it right to his chest.”

  “Monkey-cam!” roared Jack.

  “Hear, hear,” shouted Doug, raising his beer.

  “Hear, hear,” everyone responded and tipped their bottles.

  “We were up there at dawn. Clyde was all fired up. We’d been working with him on drills, commands, you name it.”

  Clyde stirred in my lap. He knew they were talking about him. He buried his head under his arms.

  “Hey, you’re embarrassing him,” said Dan.

  Noah continued. “They only had one guard at the time. He was sound asleep. We sent Clyde in.”

  “So, what, Clyde was supposed to walk through the barn with the camera running?” I asked.

  “That was the plan.” Noah threw his head back and roared with laughter.

  Jack plopped down in the sand, resigned. “The little shit. He ran straight to the first cage with a female, flipped the latch, and went at her like a dog in heat.”

  “Yeah, chicka-baum-baum,” said Doug, grinding his hips. “Making his own monkey porno.” He put out his hand, palm up. “Gimme five.”

  Clyde pounced from my lap, climbed up Doug’s leg, and slapped him on the hand.

  “Sure, you’ve got that mastered,” Jack said.

  Matt nudged Jack. “Hey, a guy’s got his needs, man.”

  Claudia elbowed him in the gut. “Exactly. We should have sent a girl monkey.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Colette, raising her bottle of beer.

  “Hear, hear,” chanted everyone.

  More beers were passed around. Claudia got up and headed for the tree house.

  I told Noah I needed to use the bathroom and followed her. A little girl talk was in order.

  When she came out of the bathroom, I plowed forward, head on. “I really like Noah.” I managed a blush. It was true. “What’s his story, anyway?”

  “We all love him. Great guy, but—” Claudia shrugged “—he’s a bit of a my
stery. Trust funder maybe.” She grinned. “He’s single though. But one thing I know for sure, you’ll need a bull whip and a prod to tame that boy.”

  When I got back down to the fire, Noah had a guitar balanced on his knee and he was entertaining the group with a Woody Guthrie tune. A joint was passed around. I faked a drag. Noah covered Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and even some John Denver while the others lazily sang along.

  Soon, couples started retreating into the darkness and Noah and I were left alone at the fire.

  “I like your friends,” I said. If only the circumstances were different. “I feel comfortable here.”

  “Yeah, they’re a good bunch.”

  “How’d you meet them?”

  “Oh, you know. We share interests.”

  I wanted to know more about them, about him, about the smugglers, but I couldn’t figure out a way to ask right now without being obvious. I stared into the smoldering coals.

  “You’re welcome to stay,” he said. “I promise to keep my hands to myself.”

  “Now, why would I want you to do that?” I crawled toward him across the sand and hit him with a kiss that made his toes curl.

  “Mmm, exactly,” he moaned.

  I pulled back. “But I really have to go.” My mom always said, leave ‘em wanting.

  I caught a taxi, found my moped where I’d left it, and hurried back to the resort.

  I didn’t want to wake Dalton, so I slid the door open and quietly stepped into the dark. A flashlight beam blasted me in the face. My hand flew up to cover my eyes. “What the hell?”

  “What the hell is right? Where have you been?”

  “Following a lead.”

  “A lead? A lead!” Dalton flicked on the lamp and stood with his arms crossed. “What did I tell you?”

  “Didn’t you get my text? I did what you told me. I went to the butterfly gardens. Absolutely amazing what they’re doing over there, by the way. You should stop in. They have an insectarium and four gardens, each dedicated to—”

  “What’s your point?”