Looking up and down the street and not seeing anyone, she hurried to the door and unlocked it. The sun wasn’t completely up yet, but it was already getting light outside. She hadn’t seen any of the neighbors as she’d walked here, and had heard only one dog bark.
Quickly checking each room of the house, she then went straight to the kitchen. The refrigerator and pantry held little, just bottled water and nonperishable canned food.
It doesn’t matter, she thought. Her plan was to take a quick shower, eat a snack, take a short nap and arrive at the marina at noon.
Opening the door from the kitchen to the garage, she found a nondescript silver Hyundai minivan parked there, the keys to which were hanging on a hook just inside the kitchen door. Sometime later in the day, or early tomorrow, an agent from the CIA would pick up the van and return it to the safe house. They were used to these kinds of things, and Director Stockwell had arranged and planned everything for her disappearance.
Digging through the canned foods in the pantry, she found a fruit cocktail and ate it quickly, straight from the can. The boat, she knew, would be well provisioned, and she’d only need to stop at a grocery store to get some frozen meats, vegetables, and fresh fruit before departing Florida, maybe for the last time.
Going to the large walk-in closet in the master bedroom, Charity found two matching suitcases in a corner, both empty. Against the far wall was a dresser, and on the right, a shoe rack with two pairs of boat shoes and a pair of jungle boots, matching the ones she was wearing. Opening the top drawer of the dresser, she found an assortment of T-shirts and tank tops, all her size. In the second drawer, she found socks, panties, and bras of assorted colors, all name brands and, again, all the right size. Obviously, the director had had a woman do the clothes shopping, judging from the second drawer’s contents. In the third and fourth drawers, she found several pairs of shorts, long-sleeved work shirts like McDermitt always wore, and several pairs of women’s long pants.
It only took her a few minutes to pack, leaving out a pair of khaki shorts, a blue tank top, a bra and panties, placing them on a recliner in the bedroom. Before closing the last case, she placed the target’s file folder on top. Carrying both suitcases to the garage, she put them in the back of the minivan.
Back in the bedroom, she went straight to the bathroom, stripping off her clothes as she went. Below the sink she found a small overnight case, and in the medicine cabinet were a new toothbrush, toothpaste, scent-free deodorant, one pair of latex gloves, and a single bottle of jet-black hair dye.
Standing in just her bra and panties, Charity looked at herself in the mirror. Since Afghanistan, she’d worn her hair cropped very short, no longer desiring the attention. She’d let it grow these last few months, and it was now past her shoulders. Her naturally blond tresses were something she’d been proud of when she was younger. Now, her hair color would be a detriment to the mission.
Reading the directions on the back of the bottle, she put on the gloves and quickly worked the dye into her hair and scalp for several minutes, a towel around her shoulders.
For the next twenty minutes, while she waited for the dye to set, she padded barefoot through the house, inspecting each room more closely and going through the dressers and closets. All the rooms were tastefully furnished, but none of the drawers or closets contained anything at all.
As she passed back through the living room, she looked out the big picture window and saw an old man on the sidewalk. He just stood there, looking at the house. At first, she thought he was some kind of pervert, but then remembered the windows were tinted and she’d been unable to see inside when she’d approached the house.
The man started to walk up the driveway, then seemed to decide against it and turned around. He was nearly back to the sidewalk and stopped again, seeming to look through the tinted window at her.
“Keep going, old man,” Charity mumbled under her breath.
After a moment, the silver-haired man started back up the driveway again.
“Shit!” She’d need to think fast. He’d obviously seen her arrive. Maybe he was a nosy neighbor, or just someone who looked out for everyone in the neighborhood.
The doorbell rang. Charity couldn’t ignore it. He might call the police. She decided to improvise and strode purposefully to the door, tossing the towel on the floor and removing her bra.
One of the team members, a former CIA spook and master of disguise, had trained the rest of them on the best ways not to be seen and—if that failed—how not to be remembered. He said that the best way to not be recognized was to draw attention away from the face. That shouldn’t be too hard, dressed only in black panties.
As Charity quickly pulled open the door, she said, “You’re early, stud.”
The old man gasped, his eyes going straight to Charity’s bare breasts and taut, flat belly. She quickly closed the door partway and hid behind it.
“Oh God! I’m so sorry, sir. I thought you were my husband.”
The man turned partly away, holding a hand to the side of his face in embarrassment. “Dear me! I’m very sorry. I saw you go in a bit ago and the house had been empty for quite a while, I was suspicious. I’m terribly sorry!”
“We just b-bought it,” Charity said, pretending to be flustered, still hiding behind the door. “My husband’s a pilot and I’m a flight attendant, Mister...?”
“Jimenez,” the old man said, still shielding his eyes. “Walter Jimenez. I’m the block captain.”
“I’m terribly sorry, Mister Jimenez. I thought I’d be surprising my husband.”
“It is I who should be sorry, ma’am.”
“Gabriela,” Charity said. “My friends call me Gabby. Gabby Fleming. If you’ll give me a second to grab a robe, you may come in.”
“No, no, that’s quite alright, Missus Fleming. Perhaps another time. When your husband is home.”
“If he’s ever home, you mean. Like I said, we both work for American Airlines and see each other more in hotels than anywhere else. In fact, we’ll be allowing coworkers to stay here from time to time.”
“Again, I’m terribly sorry, Missus Fleming. I really must be going now.”
“Very nice to meet you, Mister Jimenez,” Charity said as she closed the door and smiled. Satisfied that the man never saw her face, she locked the door and went quickly to the bathroom, gathering her bra and the wet towel as she went.
Showering and rinsing her hair thoroughly, Charity towel-dried her now jet-black hair. Taking a clean towel from the bathroom closet, she pulled down the new-looking comforter on the bed.
The sheets were obviously brand-new, the creases still visible. As tired as she was, the bed appeared cool and inviting. She folded the towel double and placed it on the pillow, then set the alarm on the nightstand for noon. Finally, she lay down on the big bed, completely nude. She’d been awake, except for the short gas-induced nap, for more than twenty-four hours. With the quiet hum of the air conditioner and steady beat of the ceiling fan, she made a mental note to tell the director about the visitor and her cover story, then was soon fast asleep.
It seemed like only a few minutes later when Charity snapped instantly awake, drenched in a cold sweat. It took a moment for her to recall her surroundings. She was in a big, comfortable king-sized bed in a safe house in Miami, not tied across a table, being sodomized by one of the filthy Taliban fighters who’d captured her in Afghanistan.
The dreams came less frequently now than they used to, but after having one, she’d always smell the stench of the guards’ body odors. The cave they’d kept her in had smelled of rotten garbage, excrement, and urine.
At first, she’d been stretched across a rough wooden table, flat on her belly with her hands and feet tied to the table legs. She’d been kept like that throughout the first night, so some of the smell was her own body odor and waste. During that first night she’d been repeatedly raped, beaten, and sodomized, at least half a dozen times, by several different men.
; Jared had once told her his secret to combating the terrible dreams he’d once had. He’d told her to never let her guard down, always keep pushing at whatever it was you were doing to wear your mind and body out.
Though he was four years younger than Charity, she’d fallen for his rugged, yet innocent independence. Like McDermitt, he was a Marine sniper and a very good one. A powerfully built man, he’d also been incredibly gentle. Their first night together, they’d just drifted on one of McDermitt’s boats, heads propped on life vests, while they lay on their backs, staring up at the night sky.
Jared could name many of the individual stars and planets, and could point out the various constellations, telling the story behind each. She’d told him that she’d simply never been able to discern the shapes early man had seen in the night sky. He’d then told her to close her eyes, and he described how the image looked in every detail. Then he’d told her to open her eyes and pointed to a cluster of stars. She’d seen the picture he’d painted in her mind, with his soft country-boy accent, in every detail then.
In the hours before dawn, they’d made love while drifting beneath that blanket of stars. She’d been the one to initiate it, and he’d been her first, since Afghanistan. In her mind, she could still see his face and hear his voice.
Two days after that night, Jared had been killed in an explosion meant to kill them all, sacrificing his own life, pushing at what it was he did best. Protecting others.
Several days after Jared’s funeral, in the middle of the night, Charity had left with McDermitt on his boat. It had taken them nearly two weeks, crisscrossing the Caribbean, but they’d finally found the man responsible, and she’d killed him herself. Paralyzed him first with a powerful roundhouse kick to the base of the skull and then, with her bare hands, as he lay helpless on the ground, she’d snapped his neck, like a dry twig.
During the return to Florida, Charity had had the dream again and woken, screaming in the guest cabin. McDermitt had found her sobbing, knees curled up to her chest. The two of them had sat on the bridge of the big boat the rest of that night, drinking his strong coffee, as the boat sliced through the water toward home. She’d told him about her feelings for Jared and how she’d thought killing the man responsible for his death would give her closure, but it hadn’t.
McDermitt had told her a little about his own background, but mostly he’d just listened. The man was a very good listener. The kind of person who could elicit more information from you with no more than an arch of his eyebrow.
Rising from the bed, Charity had a sudden pang of guilt for leaving the way she had. She still didn’t know if McDermitt and the other members of her team were safe. She knew he was still alive. He’d struck her as an extremely resilient man, one that would take an awful lot of effort to kill.
She turned off the alarm, noting that it would be going off in just minutes. She went straight to the shower, turned on the cold water and stepped quickly under it. Gasping, she placed her hands on the wall, leaning toward it and letting the cold water cascade over the back of her head and down her body, washing away the filth she imagined there.
Stepping out minutes later, she dried quickly, went to the recliner in the corner of the bedroom and got dressed. It took her ten minutes to go through the whole house, wiping everything she’d touched with the wet towel. In the kitchen, she washed out the empty can she’d eaten from and put it in her purse, to discard later. She wiped the faucet handles, took the keys from the hook and opened the door with the towel.
A minute later, Charity put on her dark wraparound sunglasses and backed the minivan out of the garage, clicking the remote for the garage door mounted on the visor when the car was clear. Driving south for ten blocks, she didn’t see many people. It was a working-class neighborhood, and the only sign of life was a two-man yard crew at work near the end of the street. They didn’t seem to notice the nondescript minivan as it rolled slowly down the street.
Turning left onto Old Cutler Road, Charity kept the car at the speed limit for almost a mile before turning right onto 112th Avenue. A few blocks later, she turned into a Publix supermarket to get the perishable provisions she’d need for the next week. She was relieved to see the grocery store parking lot wasn’t crowded. She deposited the empty can and the towels she’d used to dry off and wipe the down the house into a trash can before going into the store.
She moved quickly to the produce section, loading fruits and vegetables in her cart. They wouldn’t keep long, but she planned to eat fresh food for the first few days of her journey and only resort to the canned stuff she knew to be on the boat as a last resort. In the meat market, she picked out several packages of frozen chicken breasts and pork chops. Moving to the hair care section, she picked out both black and blond hair dye, along with black root touchup. Minutes later, she loaded the groceries into the back of the car and drove off.
When Charity arrived at Black Point Marina, she chose a parking spot away from the marina office, shaded from the afternoon sun by a royal poinciana tree. The marina was large, the biggest in Miami, in fact. It being a weekday, the parking lot, with its long drive-through spaces for trucks pulling boat trailers, was nearly empty.
Her home and transportation was in a slip near the end of the furthest pier, with no other slips occupied for half the length of the dock. Carrying the groceries, she stepped down into the boat’s cockpit, enjoying for a moment the familiar solid feel and elegant lines of the old sailboat. Her uncle on her father’s side had a boat just like this.
Well, she thought, not exactly like this one.
Placing the bags on the deck near the hatch, Charity knelt and opened a small recessed panel in the low bulkhead of the cabin roof. Punching in the four-digit code, she watched the light change from red to green and heard a solid thunk as the deadbolts on either side of the roof hatch released.
The hatch cover slid back easily, and to her surprise, the lower panel, part of the aft bulkhead, slid down into a recess. Charity looked around and, seeing no one, she picked up the grocery bags and stepped quickly down the ladder into the salon. The temperature below deck was quite a bit cooler, being that most of the heavy boat was beneath the water line.
The interior layout was much like her uncle’s Alden. A small navigation desk to starboard and a tiny galley to port, with an L-shaped countertop which extended amidships, and below which was the propulsion engine. To the rear of the galley and nav station, two small quarter berths extended, each beneath the bench seats of the cockpit.
The quarter berth aft the galley had a thick door installed, as it had been converted to a small generator compartment and dry goods storage. The gen-set powered the electrical system, including air conditioning, and kept the batteries charged while under sail. Accessing it would mean pulling everything off the shelves and folding them up out of the way, as it was located below the cockpit deck.
Aft the nav station, the smaller quarter berth had been converted into a built-in refrigerator and freezer forward, with room enough for two weeks of frozen food. The aft part of the berth had been converted to a storage locker, accessed by raising the top of the starboard bench seat in the cockpit. Being familiar with the layout, she could picture the many hiding places throughout the boat which the director had told her about.
She booted up the laptop on the desk of the nav station and inserted the thumb drive that was on the car’s key ring. It held more detailed files, which she’d download to the computer so she could later study all the refit items the boat had undergone.
Forward of the galley and nav station was the salon, which looked nearly identical to her uncle’s. Matching couches faced one another, port and starboard. Beneath these she knew there would be fuel, water, and holding tanks. Attached to the massive wooden mast, which extended up through the cabin roof and down through the sole to the keel, a narrow table separated the couches with folding sides. When raised, the table reached from one couch to the other.
On the port side of the mast,
the bulkhead held a flat-screen TV, and below that were cabinets for storing DVDs and CDs. Behind the racks of recorded entertainment, she knew there was a long hidden compartment. It extended the width of the head on the other side of the bulkhead, with the marine toilet raised slightly above it. There she knew she’d find the gun case, holding the very Barrett sniper rifle she’d been training with for three months.
Charity quickly put the meat into the freezer drawer aft the nav station. The boat was connected to shore power to maintain the batteries, and the freezer was humming quietly and already very cold. The vegetables went into the tiny crisper in the refrigerator drawer just above it. The fruit she stored in several hanging nets around the galley, easy to get to for a quick snack.
Back at the nav station, she inserted the ignition key and started the brand-new Yanmar diesel engine to allow it time to warm up. The engine ran so quiet, it was barely heard above the hum of the reefer. Glancing at the gauges, she satisfied herself that everything was functioning as it should and climbed back up the ladder to retrieve her luggage.
“Ahoy,” came a man’s voice from the dock, startling her. Instinctively, her right hand went behind her, for the pistol tucked in her shorts at the small of her back.
Regaining her composure, she looked up at a man who looked to be in his early twenties. He was tall, dark-tanned, and fit, wearing white shorts, a blue golf shirt with the marina logo on the left breast and dark sunglasses.
“Hello,” Charity said with a slight, but fake, Cuban accent.
“I saw you arrive. Are you heading out?”
For a moment, she wondered if the director had missed something, forgotten to pay some fee, perhaps.
“Yes,” she replied cheerfully, studying the younger man from behind her dark sunglasses. “I am meeting friends on Key Biscayne, and we’re cruising the Bahamas for a few weeks.”
Merciless Charity: A Charity Styles Novel (Caribbean Thriller Series Book 1) Page 4