Enduring Charity: A Charity Styles Novel (Caribbean Thriller Series Book 4)

by Wayne Stinnett

  Scrolling through his contact list, Tony stopped and stabbed the screen with the stump of his index finger. Pulling the headphone from his left ear, he wedged the phone under it. “It’s me,” he shouted. “I’m with Charity. Remember that little rock about a mile east of the island you’re heading to? Meet us there in about” — he paused and looked at the GPS and air speed indicator — “two and a half hours.”

  He listened for a moment. “We’re all okay. One of the guys on the boat killed the other guy before we arrived. We watched it go down. When Andrew and I got there, the killer drew a gun. We had no choice but to shoot him.”

  Listening for a bit longer, he finally said. “No, no bodies retrieved. One sank, and the other’s still on the boat. Guns are untraceable, and we wore gloves.”

  Charity glanced back at the woman. She was small enough to pass for a child, but she was obviously an adult. Charity guessed her to be early- to mid-twenties. Her expression was one of passive acceptance, as if being plucked from a boat after seeing two men killed was an everyday occurrence.

  Charity looked over at the black man seated next to her. Tony’s eyes were on his phone as he typed something. Like Jesse, he and Andrew had come to her aide, no questions asked.

  Finally, Tony put his phone away. “Had to let Tasha know I wouldn’t be home tonight.”

  “Tasha?”

  “My wife,” Tony explained. “We got married last July.”

  “Congratulations,” Charity paused for a moment. “Why did you come out here, Tony?”

  “Jesse called Deuce and said you needed some help. Andrew and I weren’t sure what kind of help, so we came prepared for anything. What’d those people do?”

  “Jesse didn’t tell you?”

  Tony looked at her questioningly. “All Deuce said was you were in trouble and needed our help.”

  Charity turned and looked through the windshield again. The moon was well above the horizon, creating sparkling reflections on the water below. The sky was devoid of clouds, and stars competed collectively with the moon for brightness.

  “The woman and one of those men might have been involved in Victor’s murder,” she said.

  “Victor Pitt?” Tony asked, staring at Charity’s profile.

  She nodded, fighting back the tears.

  “I’m really sorry, Charity,” Tony said. The timbre of his voice was one of genuine concern. “You said one of the men was involved. Who was the other guy?”

  “His name was Beaux Chapman,” she replied. “That’s Beaux with an X.” She jerked her head toward the back. “That woman and the other man chartered his boat to take them to Miami.”

  “But you’re not sure if he and the woman were involved?”

  “I’d bet my life on it,” she replied, “especially after seeing that pool ball. Victor was hit by something similar. His cash box is in that suitcase, and they stole his gun. Did you get it?”

  Tony dug into his pocket. “Andrew gave it to me, after I told him that it might be Victor’s.” He quickly dropped the magazine out of the grip, turned the weapon sideways and ejected a cartridge into his lap, before handing it to her.

  Charity took the Kimber and looked at it in the dim red light. It was definitely Victor’s. “Before he died, Vic told me there were five attackers; three men and two women. If these two didn’t actually take part in the murder, they were with those who did.”

  Reaching back, Tony pulled the suitcase forward and examined it. The case was a cheap piece of crap one would use for an overnight bag. He undid the clasps and lifted the lid. Inside, he found a Pelican watertight storage box, which he pulled out and opened.

  Letting out a low whistle, Tony kept his voice low. “That’s a shit-ton of cash.” He lifted a leather folio from the box and opened it. “Yeah, this is pretty damning. An American passport with Victor’s picture, issued to Rene Cook. That’s the name Victor used when I met him last year.”

  “You met him before?”

  “Last July, just before Tasha and I were married. He was living on Andros, working for an old friend of Jesse’s grandfather; a man named Henry Patterson. We accepted a last-minute mission to rescue a woman and her granddaughter from a Jamaican gang on the south end of Cat Island. There were some unusual developments and we brought Chyrel in, when we went to Andros for fuel. She recognized Victor.”

  They flew in silence for quite a while. The northern tip of Andros Island passed beneath them. Charity was flying as straight a course as possible to the spot where they would meet Jesse, but was also giving Nassau and any inquisitive air traffic controllers a wide berth.

  The flight lasted a little over two hours. Charity descended to fifteen hundred feet, as they approached Little San Salvador, where the private resort of Half Moon Cay was located. There were no cruise ships anchored off the crescent-shaped bay on the west end, but Tony had said it would still be hours before it arrived. She continued her descent as they flew the length of the island’s desolate north shore.

  Ahead in the distance, Charity saw a light. A moment later, she could easily make out the sleek lines of McDermitt’s sport fisherman Gaspar’s Revenge. Flipping the night vision scope back in front of her eye, she studied the little island.

  “It’s not barren, Tony.”

  “Well, it was last year,” he replied, craning his neck to look down.

  Jesse’s boat lay at anchor on the southwest side of the island, shielded from the easterly rollers by a natural breakwater. It was this rocky promontory that probably created the island behind it, as waves broke on the rocks and wrapped around the ends, forming a sandbar.

  “It’s called Tee Cay,” Tony said. “Not like a Tiki hut, though. It’s spelled T E E, I guess because it’s shaped like a T.”

  Charity studied the island as they got closer. “The beach on the far side looks large enough.”

  Tony consulted his phone again. “Tide’s high. A few hours from now that beach will be bigger than the island. The water’s less than a foot deep.”

  Without a word, Charity turned and made her approach from the water. She turned on the powerful spotlight, which revealed nothing on the beach that could cause a problem, and set the Huey down gently on a beautiful white sand beach, about twenty yards beyond the tiny waves lapping at the shoreline.

  Shutting down the turbine, she went through her post-flight and opened the door. The blades were still spinning as she and Tony stepped down onto the sand. The moon was bright and high in the night sky, lending a tranquil glow to the little island.

  Charity wasn’t very concerned that air traffic control on Nassau might take notice of their descent. These waters were home to some of the best sport fishing in the Caribbean, and anglers were ferried out to the good spots by helicopter all the time.

  Jesse appeared at the top of the dune — if you could call it that. No part of the little island looked to be more than two feet above the high tide mark. He strode down to where Tony and Charity stood in front of the helicopter.

  “She say anything?” Jesse asked, as he approached.

  The three former special operators stepped away from the helicopter and spoke quietly. They didn’t want the woman, still trussed up in the back of the helo, to hear them.

  “Are you a hundred percent sure?” Jesse asked. “She’s definitely the woman who broke into Victor’s boat?”

  Charity nodded. “The guard at the gate where his boat is being worked on pointed them out. They had his keys, and the man had been wearing his hat.”

  “They also had a suitcase onboard,” Tony added. “Andrew found it. Inside was a Pelican box full of cash and two passports; one Canadian and one American. Both were Victor’s.”

  “And this,” Charity said, extending Victor’s Kimber, butt first. “It’s Victor’s, too.”

  Jesse took the handgun, racked the slide slightly to look in the chamber,
then turned it over in his hands. “She’s a thief,” he said quietly, handing the gun back, “but is she a killer?”

  Extending the pool ball, Tony said, “The man she was with killed the boat owner with this, while she distracted him. It was in the toe of a sock, and Charity said that Victor had injuries that could be consistent with being hit like that.”

  “But it wasn’t her that did it.”

  Charity didn’t take exception at his doubtful questions. McDermitt was a professional and had a deep-seated need to see a situation from as many angles as possible before acting.

  If he had the time.

  “Andrew was watching through binoculars,” Tony said, “when the one guy hit the other, probably caving in his skull. Andrew said the woman might have been clapping.”

  Always wary, Jesse’s eyes moved out over the water, scanning all around for approaching danger. Charity knew that his mind was in tactical mode. She’d now made three friends accomplices to murder and kidnapping. At least that was the way the courts would see it.

  “We’ll take her aboard the Revenge,” he told Charity. “Then you fly to the airfield on Cat Island; you gotta be low on fuel.”

  “Where will you be?” she asked.

  “The airport is just half a mile from shore,” Jesse replied. “There’s a public pier where I can pick you up; just follow the road west from the little terminal building. The facilities won’t be open until morning, so we’ll have the rest of the night to get some answers, sleep, and figure out what to do with her. The cruise ship won’t get here until early morning, and the launches won’t start ferrying people ashore until zero-eight-hundred.”

  “We need to find out who her friends are,” Charity said. “For all we know, they could already have their sights on another victim. A policeman in Nassau told me there had been a rash of murders of tourists and cruisers throughout the Caribbean, all with similar MOs and injuries. They were chalking it up to gang activity.”

  “We’ll find out,” Jesse whispered. He pointed a thick finger at Tony. “She needs to become a little worried first. You’re the bad guy, and I’m the good guy. You think it was Rene Cook who you shot. You were after him and his Cuban girlfriend. Got it?”

  Tony nodded his understanding, then said through a grin, “Why am I always the bad guy?”

  Jesse smiled back at him. “Because you’re good at it.” Then he raised his voice. “That’s not a lot of proof, Malcolm. She and Cook might have just found it.”

  Tony’s rebuttal sounded adamant. “Not enough for the courts, no. But damned sure enough for Mister Livingston. Besides, the guard at the boathouse IDed them.”

  “Eyewitnesses make mistakes,” Jesse said. “We should at least question her first.”

  “No,” Tony replied quite forcefully. “My orders were clear. Kill them both.”

  As Tony turned to walk toward the back of the helicopter, Jesse pushed him, knocking him to the ground.

  “Not on my watch!” Jesse growled. “Not until I know for certain. I don’t care what Livingston says.”

  Charity stood off to the side, watching the exchange. She’d seen the two of them work like this before. In fact, all the members of her former team had learned to improvise from a stage actress who was also the team’s armorer, making things up as they went along. In this case, Charity was playing the role of the indifferent transporter.

  Tony stood and brushed the sand off. “Okay, Stretch,” he growled, with just a touch of a southeastern accent. “We’ll do it your way. This time. But if things go south, it’s your ass in the sling.”

  “Good,” Jesse said, opening the side door to the cargo area. The woman stared at him blankly. Jesse turned to Charity. “Take the bird and get refueled. We’ll meet you there in an hour.”

  Reaching inside, Jesse unbuckled the harness holding the woman in place, then roughly took her arm and dragged her from the helicopter. Standing next to the tall man, the woman looked even smaller, though her figure was that of a grown woman and her eyes showed some age.

  He started marching the woman toward the dune, half-dragging and half-pushing at times. “Bring the suitcase,” he said over his shoulder.

  Tony stuffed the Pelican box back into the case and closed it, hurrying after Jesse.

  Producing a bright flashlight, Charity did a quick walk around, then climbed into the cockpit and went through her check list as she watched the two men cross the narrow spit of land.

  After a moment, the rotor slowly spun up. She watched Jesse lift the woman to his shoulder like she was no more than a laundry bag. He sloshed into the water, with Tony alongside him. She knew that they’d still be in character, arguing over the merits of questioning her or doing as the mysterious Mister Livingston had ordered.

  The turbine fired, and Charity closed the door. The fuel gauge was way lower than she was comfortable with, especially flying over water. But the warning light wasn’t on, so she knew there was at least thirty minutes of reserve left in the tanks. It wouldn’t take her half that time to reach nearby Cat Island.

  As she lifted off the beach and turned, she saw Tony climbing onto the swim platform of Jesse’s boat. Jesse himself was standing in water up to his chest and the woman was squirming to keep her face out of the water.

  Turning toward the east-northeast, Charity climbed to just a thousand feet. Within minutes, she could see Cat Island in the moonlight. She circled to the north of the airfield and, even though she knew that there wouldn’t be anyone around to hear her, used the little airstrip’s Unicom frequency to declare her intention to land.

  As she crossed the nearly desolate beach north of Arthur’s Town, she banked right and reduced power to line up with the runway. That was when the low fuel warning light came on. Ignoring it, she brought the chopper in low over the apron, bleeding off speed as she neared the small terminal building.

  The airport had only the one building — small, squat, and concrete, like most buildings in the Bahamas. Next to the tarmac sat a decrepit-looking DC-3, pushed way back onto the grass, its tail section practically obscured by the trees that had grown up around it. Parked on the tarmac next to the hangar was a fairly new Citation. She felt relieved. The jet used the same fuel her Huey did.

  Picking a spot opposite the derelict transport plane, she brought the Huey in low and turned it, so she was facing toward town. With the warning light flashing, she set the bird on the ground and shut down the turbine.

  After going through her post flight, she went to the cargo area and opened the secret hiding spot in the belly. There she stashed her guns and ammo. She never liked being unarmed in an unfamiliar place, but she didn’t want to be stopped by some airport security guy who lived nearby as she walked toward town.

  Writing a quick note saying she’d return in the morning for fuel, Charity taped it to the inside of the window, then locked up the Huey. She shouldered her two bags and looked around the area.

  Aside from the ticking noise the turbine made as it cooled, there wasn’t a sound. She didn’t see any lights — or anything moving, either — so she started toward the road that led west.

  Arthur’s Town was small, even as small towns went. Charity moved quietly down the dark road. Occasionally she heard a bird, or maybe an iguana moving through the brush next to the road. The road’s shoulder was almost nonexistent. Fragments of ancient coral and limestone, used as the road base, extended a foot beyond the pavement, then dropped down into tangled underbrush. Here and there, pools of standing, brackish water with new growth mangrove came right up to the edge of the road.

  After ten minutes, she sensed that she was nearing the shore. There was light ahead, at a crossroads, where she passed the shells of a couple of houses. In typical island fashion, they looked like they’d been under construction for quite a few years.

  In the distance, she could hear the rumble of powerful engines slowing down.
Staying close to the last of the vacant block structures, she looked carefully up and down the two-lane cross-street. The light was coming from a lamp post a couple hundred yards to the south. Directly across the road was a walkway to a pier, illuminated only by the silvery moon. Beyond the pier, she could see the hulking apparition of Jesse’s boat’s dark hull slowly slicing through the water toward the dock.

  Staying low, Charity sprinted across the street, then continued down the walkway, toward the beach. The pier extended fifty or more yards beyond the water’s edge. She reached the end only a moment before the big boat stopped, twenty feet from the end of the pier.

  All the way out to the boat, Tony continued to harass Jesse. “I’m telling ya, Stretch,” he said, as they neared the large vessel, “quick and simple. That’s what Mister Livingston said. Remember?”

  The woman Jesse was carrying was in danger of drowning if she wasn’t careful. She’d been compliant when he’d reached over and scooped her up onto his shoulder, but as soon as they’d started walking out into the water, she began to struggle.

  The water was up to Tony’s chest when they reached the swim platform. He climbed the short boarding ladder and stepped up into the cockpit.

  “Here,” Jesse said, “grab her.”

  “The hell with that,” Tony said, water dripping from his clothes onto the deck. “Just drop her and hold her under for a minute. The sooner we get done with this, the sooner we can part company.”

  Jesse heaved the woman sideways onto the platform, then climbed the ladder. “I told you, man. We’re not killing anyone until I’m sure.”

  “Sure?” Tony said, flailing his arms. “How much more proof do you need? She was with Cook. They had the money on them. Good enough for me, man. So we shot Cook, and now she’s gotta die, too.”

  “His name wasn’t Cook,” the woman spat out.

  “Ah, she does speak,” Jesse said, grabbing the woman, and lifting her to her feet. Her shirt was wet and clung to her tiny frame, accentuating the curves of a grown woman. He squared her shoulders in front of him, nearly lifting her off the platform as he lowered his face to hers. “But do me a favor. Shut up for now.”