It was New Year’s Eve, and Victor was stuck in one of the biggest tourist traps in the Caribbean — Nassau, capital city of the Bahamas. He had a boat arranged for the morning, to take him north to join Charity on Hoffman’s Cay. Then the two of them could sail back to Nassau once the work on Salty Dog was finished. But he was stuck there one more night.
Reaching down, he opened the cooler at his feet and took out his last beer. They’d just reprovisioned two days ago, right here in Nassau, but since they were only planning to be on Hoffman’s Cay for a week, they’d loaded only Charity’s boat with groceries. Her refrigerator worked better than his, so he had most of the dry goods.
The last of the sun disappeared, along with the last of Victor’s beer. Taking the cooler back down to the galley, he cleaned it and put it away. Reclining on the settee, he picked up a paperback from the table, intent on finding out what the Key Largo fly fisherman, Thorn, was up to these days — but after a few minutes of trying to read, he knew it was pointless. As was any chance of getting any sleep until the parties died down.
If you can’t beat ’em, he thought, rising and going to his stateroom at the back of the big Formosa ketch. From his hanging locker, he took a pair of jeans and a clean button-down shirt and changed out of his shorts and tee-shirt. Slipping a pair of worn Topsiders on his feet and his Salty Dog cap over his unruly hair, he went forward to the engine room and opened the hatch. He had to lay on his side next to the engine to be able to feel around under it. Reaching deeper, he felt the panel and moved his hand along the top to find the groove. He pulled the panel out and reached in again. He felt the familiar watertight box and pulled it out. Opening it, he took out two hundred dollars, then put the box back and went back up the ladder, locking the hatch behind him.
Exiting the marina’s storage yard, Victor turned left on Bay Street and followed the sound of celebration. It wasn’t a long walk; just a hundred yards up the street he found a place called Celebrity Status and went inside.
The clientele seemed to be an even mix of locals and cruisers, but tourists outnumbered both. A cruise ship must be at the terminal for the night. Victor took a stool at the end of the bar and ordered a Kalik. The three-piece band wasn’t all that bad. Two black men played steel drums and bongos, and a young white man with dreads played guitar.
After another beer, Victor began to relax. He decided that being in a big city wasn’t really all that bad. With so many tourists around, he melted easily into the background.
Two young women, one blond and one brunette, took seats at the bar next to him. They were dressed for a night on the town, wearing clingy dresses that barely reached their thighs. He guessed they were in their mid-twenties, and pretended to ignore them and their incessant chatter about having the real Bahamian experience.
Yeah, he thought, like you’re really gonna find that in a tourist bar.
“There’s a place on Mackey Street that’s supposed to be authentic,” the blonde said.
“Where’s that?” the brunette asked.
The blonde looked toward the bartender, who had his back turned. “I don’t know,” she said, glancing around. Her eyes fell on Victor. “Excuse me.” She touched his shoulder. “Do you know where Mackey Street is?”
Victor looked at the two women. They were both attractive; the brunette had chocolate-brown eyes that looked almost black, and the blonde’s eyes were a dazzling shade of green. They also seemed to have started their celebration earlier than prudent. Obviously off a cruise ship.
“From Paradise Island,” he replied, “cross the bridge and instead of turning left to get here, stay straight. That’s Mackey.”
“You’ve been to the Jump Up and Shout?” she asked.
“Never heard of it,” he replied, motioning the bartender for another beer. “But you don’t want to go too far up Mackey. Once you’re over the hill, it’s not safe.”
After learning that Victor wasn’t from their cruise ship, the blonde began telling him about the different ports the Delta Star had visited that week. Most of the ports she mentioned had been on his and Charity’s list of places to avoid.
The blonde was the more outgoing of the two and did most of the talking. She ordered three shots of rum and offered one to Victor. The two women tossed the shots down, grimacing, then got up to dance. Victor accepted the shot with a nod, swallowed the rum in one gulp, and ordered another beer.
The brunette seemed the quiet type, following along with whatever the other woman wanted to do. The two danced together, and the band, seeing the pretty tourists, changed to a slower, more seductive beat. The two women had no trouble getting into the groove, dancing even more provocatively.
Victor was starting to feel a bit woozy. He knew that the liquor in these kinds of places wasn’t top shelf and was watered down, so he doubted it was the rum shot. He’d only had four beers, but lately he and Charity hadn’t been drinking much, so maybe his tolerance was lower. At any rate, he was having a hard time focusing on anything but the mesmerizing movements of the bodies of the two women.
Victor learned that the blonde’s name was Rayna. She tried to pull him up to join them. There wasn’t really a dance floor, so the women were just dancing next to their seats at the bar. The song ended, and the women stopped their gyrations — to the obvious disappointment of many of the men in the bar.
Rayna sat next to Victor and turned toward him. She crossed her long legs, letting her calf barely caress Victor’s leg. The brunette, whose name Victor had finally learned was Fiona, stood next to her friend, one arm draped across the back of Victor’s barstool as she leaned against the blonde.
“How dangerous is it?” Fiona asked, leaning in close to Victor, giving him an ample view of her cleavage. “Mackey Street, I mean.”
“If tourists go over the hill after dark,” Victor said, beginning to slur his words, “they’re pretty much gonna get robbed.”
“He’s right, Miss,” the bartender said, leaning over the bar. “Far be it fuh me to say someting bad bout me own island, but crime be almost certain on di udduh side of di hill.”
“Besides,” Victor said, feeling even more light-headed, “this isn’t the real Bahamas.” He swept his arm toward the street and the bay beyond it, nearly falling off his stool. “That’s out there.”
Rayna and Fiona both leaned in close to Victor, each placing a hand on one of his thighs. Fiona pulled his shoulder and head around, practically burying his face in their abundant bosoms.
The touch of their hands through his Dockers sent a jolt of electricity through Victor’s nervous system. Rayna put her hand on his head and slowly pulled his cheek to her chest, igniting a fire and waking every cell of his libido. As their hands slowly massaged their way up his thighs, Victor no longer cared what their names were.
Rayna’s words tickled his ear. “Maybe you could walk a couple of girls back to the ship?”
Together, the three of them left the bar and went up Bay Street toward the bridge. A small part of Victor’s mind knew that what he was doing was wrong. Hell, it was insanity. A flicker of consciousness told him that he’d been drugged. But whatever it was that Blondie had slipped in his rum shot was making him feel far too excited to do anything about it. Nor even want to.
They walked down the street with Victor sandwiched between them. The women had their arms around his waist and his arms over their shoulders, helping him walk. To further drive him over the edge, both women held his wrists so that his open hands were held firmly against their breasts.
The two women turned Victor into an alley and suddenly there were three young men standing in front of them. They stopped. Victor was only vaguely aware that anyone else was around and continued to fondle the women’s breasts through and under their satiny dresses. He decided he liked the brunette best; she had actually encouraged him to go for second base, pushing his hand under the top of her skimpy dress as they w
alked.
The sound of a small outboard woke Charity. A shaft of sunlight from a porthole fell on the bulkhead at her feet, the angle telling her it was just past dawn. Sitting up in her bunk, fully aware of her surroundings, she quickly retrieved the Colt from the shelf next to the bunk where she’d left it. She came up onto her knees, pushing the overhead hatch completely open. Rising to a low crouch, she lifted her head through the opening to peek out over the starboard deck. The upper half of the other boat was in view on the other side of the spit. The classic lines of the trawler looked familiar, but she couldn’t place it.
Charity rose higher, bringing her shoulders and arms up through the hatch, ready for a fight even if she was clad only in blue bikini panties. Looking all around, she saw that there weren’t any other boats in sight.
The outboard sound was approaching the point and a moment later, a dinghy came into view. Charity crouched, watching with just her head above the deck. There were two people aboard; a woman and a girl.
The dinghy turned and headed toward Wind Dancer. The woman on the tiller slowed the engine and the little boat settled into the water as it grew nearer. Charity smiled. The woman driving the boat lifted a hand from the gunwale and waved. Charity waved back and motioned her to come over.
Withdrawing from the hatch, Charity opened a drawer at the foot of the bunk. She stripped off her panties and put on a bikini, then pulled a tank top and shorts on over it. She felt the inflatable dinghy bump the side of her boat, as she exited the stateroom.
“Ahoy, Wind Dancer,” a woman’s voice called out, as Charity hurried aft and opened the main hatch.
Climbing quickly to the cockpit, Charity smiled down at the mother and daughter. “Savannah Richmond, right?”
“You have a good memory, Gabby. We didn’t expect to find anyone else here this time of year, especially someone we knew.”
“Would you like to come aboard?” Charity asked. “I just woke up and don’t have coffee on yet, but I can make some.”
Savannah lifted a large thermos. “I have plenty, thanks. Plus a few sausage biscuits and a big bowl of sliced mango. We’re going to the blue hole. Want to join us?”
“Let me grab a few things,” Charity said. “I’ll meet you at the beach.”
Savannah pushed off and yanked on the starter cord. The little outboard started instantly and she turned the boat toward shore, bringing it up on plane in seconds.
Charity went below and put a few things in a small beach bag, which she called her excursion bag. Besides a change of clothes, it had everything necessary to survive a day ashore on an island that might not be very hospitable. She shoved her Colt into the bottom, it being a usual accessory for the excursion bags. Just as she was about to leave, she stopped at the navigation desk and switched on the radar. It took a moment to warm up, but with the radar antenna mounted high on the mast, it could look over the surrounding low islands. No echoes appeared within eight miles other than the islands themselves.
Though there wasn’t anyone around, she locked the hatch anyway. That was an unbendable rule. The boat was never left unsecured for any length of time. Untying the line to the dinghy, she pulled it up alongside Wind Dancer, tied it off to the rail, and stepped down into it. The outboard started with just two pulls and she waited a moment to make sure it was running smoothly before untying and shoving off. In seconds, the small dinghy was skimming across the surface toward the little horseshoe-shaped beach.
Savannah and her daughter were waiting on the sandy shore by their boat. Charity stopped the engine in the shallows, raised it out of the water, and waited for the bottom to touch the sand. She stepped out into calf-deep water and pulled her dinghy up onto the sand alongside Savannah’s.
“You liked it here so much, you never went back?” Savannah asked.
Charity looked at her, puzzled.
“You were picking up friends in Key Biscayne when we met,” Savannah reminded her. “You said you were going to cruise the Bahamas for a few weeks.”
Savannah started picking things up from her dinghy and Charity took the cooler from her. “Oh, yes. No, I’ve been back to Florida since then. And a lot of other places.”
“Flo,” Savannah said to her daughter, “do you remember Miss Gabby?”
The young girl extended her hand. She’d grown since Charity had first met her. Her sparkling blue eyes were filled with the wisdom of an old soul. When Charity took the girl’s hand, she got that same déjà vu feeling she had the first time they’d met. It seemed as if she knew the girl from somewhere else. Maybe another life.
“Very nice to see you again,” Flo said.
Charity smiled at the girl. “Likewise, I’m sure.”
“How long’s it been?” Savannah asked. “Two years?”
“I don’t think that long,” Charity replied, though she knew exactly what the date was. “It was summer before last, wasn’t it?”
Charity had met Savannah and her daughter on the first night after leaving her former co-workers and departing on her first mission to Mexico. The date was indelibly stamped in her mind.
“You’re right.” Savannah followed Flo toward the little path that led the way to the blue hole. “You’ve been here before?”
“No, this is my first time,” Charity replied. “I arrived yesterday and spent most of the day diving in the hole.”
“You scuba dive?”
“Yes,” she replied. “My boyfriend has a compressor on his boat, but he’s stuck in Nassau for repairs, and I’ve already used the three tanks I have on board.”
“I have a compressor,” Savannah said, “and four full tanks. It takes a while for it to fill a tank, but if you like, I can fill yours when we get back and the three of us can dive this afternoon, using mine.”
“Your daughter dives? How old is she?”
Savannah laughed, as they trudged along the sandy trail. “Flo’s only eight, but her first shoes were fins. I don’t let her go past ten feet yet, though.”
The trail wound through a thicket of dense candlewood, banyan trees, and yellow elder, the latter covered with bright yellow flowers. The trail opened onto higher ground, where the constant easterly breeze bent invasive Australian pine trees, so they grew to look like great, breaking waves frozen in time with gnarled roots and trunks for foam. The hole soon opened ahead of them; the chalky, white limestone cliffs surrounding the water measured a couple of football fields across, with the water some twenty feet below.
“Can I jump, Mom?”
“Look first,” Savannah warned, as she lowered the basket and blanket to the ground in a rocky clearing near the edge of the cliff.
To Charity’s amazement, the girl barely hesitated. She glanced over the edge then leapt into the abyss, shrieking with a child’s abandon.
“She’s fine,” Savannah said, appearing to read Charity’s anxious look. “We’ve spent weeks here on many occasions. It’s Flo’s favorite place. She’s jumped off that cliff at least a thousand times. So, how’ve you been? You mentioned a boyfriend.”
“I’ve been well, thank you.” Charity helped Savannah spread a large blanket over the rock and sand. “His name is Rene,” she said, using Victor’s alias. “Rene Cook. He works on boats and we’ve been traveling together for a few months. How have you two been?”
Savannah’s eyes drifted away for a moment. “Oh, we’re getting by just fine.”
As the two women sat down on the blanket, Flo came scrambling up a trail in the cliff face to their right. Charity had been up and down it several times, carrying her scuba gear, and thought that a mountain goat would look twice before scaling it.
“You mentioned coffee,” Charity said, sitting down next to Savannah, as Flo threw herself off the cliff again. Her shrieks, echoing off the surrounding cliff, were punctuated by a large splash.
“Oh, yes.” Savannah dragged the basket close
r and handed Charity a plastic mug from inside. She took out another and filled them both from a large thermos.
Charity sipped the coffee. “Mmm,” she said. “This is very good.”
“Thanks,” Savannah said. “It’s from a little farm in Costa Rica. A friend in the Keys gave me some a few weeks ago. I’m afraid this is the last, then it’s back to whatever the next marina has in stock.”
“You’re a full-time cruiser?”
“We’ll take a slip now and then,” Savannah replied, “but not for very long. We prefer anchoring in out of the way places like this. You said you’d been traveling with your boyfriend for several months. Are you and he full-time? Cruisers, I mean.”
“Pretty much,” Charity replied, as Flo came scrambling up the trail again. “On both counts.”
“Mom, look what I found!” The girl approached, carrying a dark brown bottle in her hand.
“Is there a note inside?” Savannah asked, as Flo knelt in front of her and handed her the bottle.
“I don’t think so. I held it up to the sun; it looks empty.”
Savannah turned the bottle over and inspected the bottom. “It’s old, maybe the sixteenth century. Probably a rum bottle left by a pirate. It’ll make a fine addition to your collection.”
The girl beamed as she rose. “I knew it was a pirate’s.”
“Where did you find it?” Charity asked.
Flo stopped at the edge of the cliff. “Near the top of the trail. It was stuck in the side of the wall. Only the tip was sticking out.”
Enduring Charity: A Charity Styles Novel (Caribbean Thriller Series Book 4) Page 2