by Ian Bull
“Are you a man fish?” the voice asks. He touches my forehead. My scales hurt.
“We saw the parachute in the water. And then followed the glowing trail of light.”
“What?” I mutter.
“From the little sea animals.”
They saw the bioluminescence trails from my kicking in the water. Little invertebrates lit up the water, creating a shiny blue glow in the darkness.
“We’d never have found you in the daytime. You’re lucky. This is a Nippon Yusen ship from Japan. We’re going to Cedros Island to pick up salt from the Mitsubishi plant to bring back to Asia.”
“More water,” I whisper, and they give me some. I made it. Thank you.
And I have names. I will find you, Tina Swig, and your rich boss, Douglas.
Chapter 59
* * *
Julia Travers
Day 18: Tuesday
Isla de Cedros
“Where did he go?” I ask the hotel owner.
“The other side of the island, to Playa Elefante,” he answers and points. The Hotel Zam-Mar is a family home that’s been converted into an inn, but it’s clean and comfortable and the owner and his son are very gracious.
“Isn’t he supposed to be at the clinic with the doctor?” I ask.
“The doctor is the one who took him. He’s a surfer,” the owner/front desk clerk/bellboy says.
I can’t believe it. Steven survives bullets, torture, a plane crash, and twelve hours at sea, and he’s surfing? And what kind of doctor takes a wounded man surfing? The owner’s son, Juan Pedro, senses my anxiety. He’s about thirty, and wears a shirt decorated with humpback whales. It advertises a whale watching tour, probably his side business.
“Playa Elefante is safe. No big waves. I can drive you.”
“Gracias,” I say.
I just spent two days in La Paz, with Officers Mendoza and Taylor and their Mexican counterparts, and we found out a lot. We found the TV station, and we found the high-speed fiber cable that carried the signal into the States and around the world. We’ve started a search to trace the money—find who paid for the studio. They left hundreds of fingerprints before everyone disappeared, and we have a list of all the boat names in La Paz on Saturday; got it from the harbor master. But it’ll take time to analyze all the names and the fingerprints, and to trace the signals and follow the money. I hope it’s not another endless fiasco like the flash drive from the Bahamas.
Juan Pedro drives me in his jeep along the island’s perimeter road. Isla Cedros feels like a small version of Southern California, but from another era. To our left are huge white clouds over a flat, deep-blue Pacific Ocean. To our right, green and brown hills rise to a mountaintop covered with tall trees. Cedar trees probably, since this is Isla Cedros. It seems empty; the whole island has less than 2,000 people this time of year, all in the towns of Cedros and El Morro.
“That’s the salt station.” Juan Pedro points down at the white dunes of salt at the water’s edge, far below the road. A huge crane lifts salt into the hold of a black and orange cargo ship. “And that’s the Japanese ship that found him.”
Once around the southern edge of the island, civilization disappears. It’s late afternoon at the start of spring, and the sun is an orange ball flashing gold light into our eyes. We follow the curves of the road and reach a long flat stretch of sand.
“That’s Playa Elefante, Elephant Beach.” Juan Pedro points at what looks like gray logs scattered on the sand. “Those are the only elephant seals left. Most have had their pups and gone back to sea.”
They look like logs, but I guess they’re alive.
“There they are.” Juan Pedro points at a truck parked on the beach. There’s a pop-up tent up next to it, with chairs. Two surfers are in the water on longboards. Juan Pedro pulls off the main highway and drives down to the sand. “You would like me to wait?”
“No, we’ll be back at the hotel later. Thank you for driving me,” I say, and get out.
He waves as he drives away.
I trudge through the sand, blocking my hand against the grains blown by the late afternoon wind. The surfers out in the waves whoop it up. As I get close to the truck, I see someone sitting in a folding beach chair. It’s Steven.
“Hey, stranger,” I say.
He turns his head and smiles at me and we both wince. His face is a swollen red balloon of sunburned skin, his forehead and skull are covered with green and black scales, and he’s missing his front left tooth. He looks like a wounded dinosaur.
“Does your face hurt?” I ask, sitting down next to him. “Because it’s killing me.”
“Good one,” he says. We stare at the perfect line of waves marching toward the beach. As the waves crest, the setting sun shines through them, turning them from blue to foamy green.
“Three weeks ago tonight I was getting ready to host the Tech Oscars.”
“And now you’re on a beach on an island off the coast of Baja.”
“Give yourself a week to heal before you go surfing, okay?”
“Can we spend it here together?”
“Yes, we can.”
He reaches into a small cooler and pulls out two Mexican beers and pops them. He hands me one and I take a sip.
“We won’t be alone, though.” Steven points down the beach. A man and a woman are holding hands and walking. From half a mile away, I can tell that it’s Carl Webb and Trishelle Hobbs. I feel a calm sweep over me.
“I can’t believe Trishelle is outside, strolling on the beach.”
“Carl convinced her to come. He can be both charming and persuasive,” Steven says.
Their brief attraction in the Bahamas is blossoming. Nice.
“Think I should forgive him?” Steven asks.
“I think we all have to forgive each other.”
He holds my hand. “I’d kiss you, but my face hurts too much.”
“We’ll have time for that.” I squeeze his hand and he squeezes back. “You remember your promise?” I ask.
“I remember my promise.” He holds up his bottle.
I wish I could include Carl in that promise; I know he’s now involved in the search for the men responsible, otherwise he wouldn’t be here. But I don’t want to push my luck.
“To another attempt at a normal life,” I say, and we clink.
“Together,” he says, and we smile and lean back and hold hands. A week here with him will be perfect. We’ll enjoy beautiful beaches and quiet dinners and no drama.
A throbbing noise breaks the calm. The surfers stop and look up. A helicopter flies overhead, and then circles back. It descends to two hundred feet above the beach and hovers, sending up spray and a gritty wind. A photographer leans out and snaps our picture.
THE END
To the Readers
* * *
Thank you for reading my story. Please take a moment to review this book on www.amazon.com. Reviews are important to a book’s visibility and to the writing process, and your impression is important to me.
Acknowledgments
* * *
I wish to thank Robin Berlin, Jeanne Epstein, Joe Weiss, Toni Gallagher, Deni Siedschlag, Patrick McCall, Douglas Gorney, Lisa Cerasoli, Dr. Ken Atchity, and Derek Murphy.
The Picture Kills
* * *
A picture is worth a thousand words...but what if the words are lies?
Steven Quintana was once a top Army Ranger reconnaissance photographer until he made a fatal mistake on a mission. A boy was killed, and Steven’s military career was cut short—all because of a photo he took.
Now he works as a paparazzo in Hollywood where his photos can’t hurt anybody, the money is easy and he can forget the past.
But when actress Julia Travers is kidnapped, Steven discovers they used photos that he took of her to cover up the crime. Realizing that he’s still harming people with his camera, he swears to fix his mistake.
However, the last person Julia wants to see coming to her rescue is
the paparazzo whose photos got her into trouble in the first place.
THE PICTURE KILLS is a fast-paced thriller that starts in celebrity obsessed Hollywood and climaxes in the remote cays of the Bahamas.
* * *
“This page-turner sucks you in and doesn't spit you out until the very end!”
—Andrea Pilat, TV Producer
“Cool locales, a good villain and great payoffs at the end!”
—Toni Gallagher, TV Producer
“A fun thriller with great insight into the entertainment industry.”
—Lorena David, Movie Producer and Director
The Picture Kills
Ian Bull
Chapter 1
Steven
Day 1: Thursday Morning
Whenever I sleep I have the same dream. I look through my camera lens and the people move through the frame and freeze as the shutter clicks. The rebel soldiers gather around the village fire—click. A frightened mother holds a baby—click. The German tourist lies in the dirt, a rifle to his neck—click.
But the rebel leader stays in the shadows. I want his face in my lens, and I need the boy from the pigpen to help me draw the leader toward the light of the fire, but the boy stands by his mother, hiding in her skirts.
The rebel leader notices the boy and calls him over. The boy is the only remaining male from the village.
“¿Dónde están los otros hombres?” he asks the boy. Where are the other men?
The boy shakes his head like he doesn’t understand…then steps closer to the fire. The leader repeats the question. The boy shakes his head again and takes another step closer to the flames. The rebel leader strides into the light and grabs the boy’s arm. Something falls from the boy’s pocket—the coffee candy from the MRE ration I gave him. The leader grabs it from the ground and shakes it in the boy’s face.
“Americanos? Dónde están?” he asks. Where are they?
The other rebels hear him, grab their guns and aim in four different directions.
The kid glances at us, lying in the mud in the dark, then lifts his finger and points at us in the pigpen. The leader looks toward me, and for an instant I have his face in the frame. He’s tall, dark, with a Roman nose and a streak of premature white in his long black curly hair—click. I finally get the perfect close up of his bearded face. El Sádico. The Sadist.
People have wanted a photo of him for years, and I got it.
Then he shoots the boy in the chest. The boy falls to the ground, dead.
The other rifles swing toward us and spit fire—
I bolt awake.
Same dream, every night, for five years.
My shoulder aches and my sheets are twisted and damp. Sleep won’t come again, so I climb out of my sofa bed, open the glass sliding door and step out on the patio overlooking Tivoli Cove in Malibu, California. I touch the scar behind my right shoulder and rub the ache out of habit.
It’s predawn, but there’s enough light to surf. My damp wetsuit smells like seaweed as I pull it on. I grab my board and dart down the wooden steps and across the cold sand to the Pacific Ocean.
I paddle out. Tivoli Cove has a dozen houses on a sheltered beach that curves away from the coast road, ending at a rocky point that creates a slow wave that breaks left back to shore. I’m the only surfer out there at dawn in the middle of the week, which I like. There’s no jockeying for the wave, and no small talk to endure. Catching my first wave, I crouch low on my board and trail my fingers in the moving wall of glassy water.
After ten waves, I rest on my board and watch a pelican hovering above the swells. She tucks in her wings and dive bombs down into the water and comes up ten feet from me with a flopping fish in her oversized beak. It makes me grin. The Malibu morning show is better than any movie. The ocean is my only friend, and her vastness dilutes any memories that the night throws my way.
The twinge of pain in my shoulder is my signal to stop. I catch my last wave of the morning—a three-footer that pushes me into shore right in front of the wooden stairs to my patio. I take off my ankle leash, gather my board and climb back up, then rinse off the salt water with the hose.
The stabbing pain returns as I tug the wet suit down. All that shoulder rotation grinds down the bone in its socket. I shouldn’t surf, but I want to feel the pain. It’s a penance I give myself, like when I was ten years old in San Francisco and doing my catechism at St. Cecilia’s.
I step inside, close up the sofa bed, pull on jeans and a sweatshirt, then step into the kitchenette and flip the switch on the coffee maker. Four steps total, wall to wall. Home is a bachelor apartment in the bottom of an empty decaying beach house, and the walls are covered with wine and beer stains from years of Pepperdine undergrad parties that previous renters hosted before me. My neighbors loved it when I moved in—the quiet vet with his cameras. I thought my stay in LA would be temporary, so I never painted. That was five years ago.
I grab my Nikon and step back onto the patio, which is bigger than the inside, and the reason I live here. I snap a photo of a low flying seagull riding an air current just ahead of a foamy green wave, backlit by morning light.
My cellphone rings: Offices of Celebrity Exposed.
“This is Quinn,” I answer.
“It’s Larry. How’s my favorite shutterbug?”
“Do you have a job for me?” I ask.
“Julia Travers is going to a movie premiere. Be here by nine,” he says, and hangs up.
I down my coffee, pull on my leather jacket, grab my camera and dart up my staircase to the street level. I start my Kawasaki and I slide into morning rush hour traffic on Pacific Coast Highway, headed into Los Angeles.
The Picture Kills and Six Passengers, Five Parachutes are the first two books in The Quintana Adventures. Danger Room is coming in 2018.
Ian Bull is also the author of the romantic thriller Liars in Love, set in San Francisco in the 1980s, and he writes the weekly blog California Bull.
If you want more of Ian Bull’s writing, visit the link below for choices for a free download, or email him at: [email protected]
www.IanBullAuthor.com