“Maybe he wants you to stop collecting.”
Emma nodded. “That’s the only possible explanation. But what he wants is irrational. If I don’t collect the plants, someone else will. They can’t stop progress forever.” Emma started walking toward the villa, and Carrow walked in step with her.
“Doesn’t sound like rationality is something this guy’s got in abundance, if you know what I mean.”
Carrow’s comment depressed Emma further. Her tropical island vacation was fast turning into a demented circus, and she was beginning to seriously consider abandoning the entire project. She would have, except the cosmetic company had paid her extremely well to embark on this mission. Collecting the plants was only phase one of the job. After that her lab was to formulate test batches of creams for the second phase. The final phase was to conduct clinical trials on the creams’ antiaging effectiveness. Between all three phases her company stood to make millions, and keep her and her employees busy for the next four years. She hated to walk away from such an interesting and lucrative project because of a madman.
“I need a shower,” she said. Carrow ran a hand through his hair.
“Can you help me search for the mandrake?” he asked. “I asked the landscaping crew, but while they don’t know what it looks like, they insist that they do know every plant around my villa and it’s not there. That doesn’t mean it’s not somewhere else on the island, though.”
Emma paused. With everything going wrong, the last thing she needed was another plant to acquire. She was behind schedule before the midnight visitors, but now she would have to harvest ten more plants. It had taken her three days to locate the first batch, but she hoped to cut that time in half. Still, she needed to use every waking moment to complete what she was sent to Terra Cay to do. But something in Carrow’s eyes made her reconsider. Behind his smiles and flirting with Johnson last night, there seemed to reside a fear. As if something was happening that he hadn’t yet revealed. He caught her hesitation and put his hands up, palms out.
“No drugs or selling our souls to the devil, I promise.”
Emma smiled. “You misunderstand. I’m only hesitating because last night’s destruction and today’s interruption has put me behind schedule. I’ll have to head back to the mangrove and collect again no matter what the crazy man wants from me. Then I need to dive into the blue holes and scrape the walls for minerals.”
“I promised to go with you, and I will, but I really would like you to look at Layton and find the mandrake garden first.”
“So you don’t believe the stories about the blue holes?”
He shook his head. “Not at all. But something strange is happening on this island. I don’t like it.”
“When does Layton get airlifted out?”
“Three hours.”
“Then let’s go now. Give me a chance to shower. Would you like some coffee while you wait?” Emma noticed that Carrow looked relieved.
“Love some.”
They headed into the villa, passing through the kitchen. Johnson was there, cutting up a large fish. She smiled at Carrow.
“Why Mr. Richard, how nice to see you,” she said.
“I’m here to drink some of your heavenly coffee.” Carrow’s smile and flirtatious manner was back. No one would believe that a few minutes ago he’d looked so grim.
“Right away.”
Emma guided him out to a gazebo at the edge of the infinity pool. He settled onto a small love seat. A scorpion made its way from under the nearby cocktail table, scurrying through the grass and disappearing in the flower garden.
Johnson brought a wooden tray that held a coffee press and two cups. Carrow added cream to his, along with two heaping teaspoons of sugar, and took a sip. “Ms. Johnson, you’ve outdone yourself this time,” he said. She smiled and walked away.
“I’ll be right back,” Emma said.
Twenty minutes later she was showered, dressed, and though her hair was still wet, the rest of her was at least presentable. She lowered herself into Carrow’s Aston Martin and strapped on the seat belt. Once again he whizzed around Deadman’s Curve back to his house. The sports car, though, took the bend in stride, hugging the road and cornering without slipping out from behind, as the Jeep had. The engine roared as he accelerated, and Emma felt every bump in the road from the combination of the tight suspension and the performance wheels.
A short time later he pulled into the driveway on West Hill that led to his house and parked the car in an area beneath an overhang. He turned off the engine and Emma soaked in the silence. He was looking at her, but it was clear that his mind was miles away.
“Great car,” she said finally. His eyes focused and he smiled.
“Wonderful car. Growing up I dreamed of owning one.” He shrugged. “It was so far beyond my imagination that I would try to stop myself from even thinking about it. But the vision kept coming back, over and over. And now,” his smile broadened, “here it is.”
He swung the door open and Emma joined him, the two of them walking to the house. The only sounds were the chattering of birds, the wind blowing through the leaves, and her shoes crunching on the gravel drive.
Carrow opened the carved door. The inside of the house was in chaos. Wailing came from a room in the back, and Warner, fully dressed in jeans and a nautical striped tee shirt, her feet bare, came running down the hall and straight into Carrow’s arms.
“He’s going to die!” she sobbed. He put one arm around her and gave Emma a shocked look.
“Who?” he said.
“Layton!” Warner’s body shook with fear. Her panic seemed to fill the space, and Emma felt her own skin crawl, both at the image of the shaking Warner and the unearthly wailing in the house.
“Where’s his room?” she asked.
“Down the hall, opposite Martin’s.” Carrow moved Warner to the side. She clung to him and he kept his arm around her neck as he started toward the open door and where the wailing seemed to be emanating. Emma stepped in behind them and saw a man, fully clothed, on all fours on the bed. His muscles jerked and he catapulted up three feet before landing again. His face held a terrified expression, his mouth was open, and he wailed in a long, wavering, panicked warble. His body jerked again and up he went into the air, landing on the bed.
Rory, the medium, stood on one side of the mattress, swaying and intoning a singsong chant. She wore a tee shirt and jeans and her feet were bare. Around her neck was a large wooden crucifix on a leather string. The song was a mixture of strange words sung in a minor key, almost like a Gregorian chant. Layton kept jumping, not noticing them though they walked into the room and stood at the foot of the bed.
“What the hell is going on here?” Carrow said. His voice was harsh. Rory stopped singing. Layton gave another piercing wail and his limbs jerked.
“He’s possessed by evil spirits,” Rory said. “Can’t you see? I’m chanting to make them leave his body and return to the depths, where they belong.”
“Did you call the doctor?” Carrow asked.
“Why would I? No doctor can help him,” Rory replied.
“I did,” Warner said. “Ten minutes ago.”
The scene would have been unbelievable to Emma if it wasn’t for the obvious terror on Layton Nalen’s face. His muscles jerked again, as if he had no control over his limbs, the bedsprings creaking when he landed. His breath came in gasps and sweat glowed on his face. Emma took a step forward.
“Don’t get near him!” Rory said. “Can’t you see that he is inhabited by something evil? You both should put on a cross, immediately! You are vulnerable to demonic possession if you don’t.”
Emma couldn’t help it; she snorted, both in anger and disbelief. Anger that Rory would simply stand and sing while Nalen fought his spasming body, and disbelief that she hadn’t called an ambulance. Rory’s face flushed red.
“This is nothing to laugh at. Can’t you see he’s fighting the demon inside?”
Nalen made a terrifie
d, groaning sound as he jerked and jumped into the air, rising and falling on all fours again.
“I can see he’s in distress,” Emma said, “but I don’t see a demon and I don’t think you can assume anything. You should have called the doctor.”
“You’re wrong, he is possessed,” Rory said. “Layton was in here calling out evil.” She waved a hand in the direction of the bathroom. For the first time, Emma looked in that direction. Through the door she saw a red pentagram painted on the bathroom’s white tile floor. It appeared to have been drawn in a streaky, red substance that, if it wasn’t blood, certainly looked like it. At each point on the pentacle there was a black, votive candle. The flames glowed.
“He and the rest of the band play at devil worship,” Rory said. She leaned in closer to Emma. “But evil is nothing to play with. He got what he conjured. Now we have to get it out of him somehow.”
Emma didn’t respond. She agreed that evil wasn’t anything to play with, but whatever was in Nalen, she doubted it was a demon. She suspected he was experiencing a side effect from the cocktail of the many drugs Carrow had said the man took on a regular basis. She moved closer to the bed.
“Mr. Nalen, can you hear me?” she said. Nalen neither looked her way nor responded to her question. He just crouched on the mattress and panted, as if waiting for the next spasm. Sweat beads covered his forehead. Emma reached out to touch his arm.
“Don’t touch him! The demon will transfer to you!” Rory said. Warner groaned again and Carrow stepped closer, dragging Warner, who still clung to him.
“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Emma snapped. Rory took a step toward her, and for a moment Emma thought the woman would hit her. Instead she slapped her hands together.
“I wash my hands of it. You deserve what you get. Don’t come to me when you no longer can control the demon inside.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Emma replied. Carrow firmly placed the clinging Warner off to the side and stepped closer to Layton.
“Not you, too,” Rory said. “Don’t put yourself at risk.”
Carrow ignored her. “Layton, you hear me? Can you tell me what’s going on?”
Nalen’s body leapt again. He let out a high-pitched wail that ended on a whistle. It was clear to Emma that he was exhausted and in pain. He wouldn’t be able to sustain the jerking action of his muscles much longer. The phone rang and she started in surprise. Carrow went to the bedside table, answered it, and after a brief conversation slammed it back down.
“That was the doctor. He says that he’s on another matter that’s serious and can’t get here. He’ll call in a prescription for a tranquilizer to the Acute Care Center. He said we need to sedate him, to get Layton’s muscles to stop jerking.”
“How far is the Acute Care Center?” Emma asked. “I’ll go pick up the pills.”
“Twenty minutes.”
Forty minutes round-trip. Too long, she thought, but wondered if Nalen’s heart would hold out. He was pale, shaking and sweating. He howled again and his panting increased.
“Anyone have tranquilizers?” Carrow asked. He looked at Warner. “Do you know where Layton kept his stash?”
Warner shook her head. “He told me last night that he was out.” Nalen howled again.
“What about the mandrake?” Carrow said to Emma. “You mentioned last night that it was a narcotic. Will that work?”
She nodded. “It will, but it’s risky. I have no idea how to administer it.”
“I’ll administer it,” Carrow said. “We don’t have the time to go to the clinic and back.” He spun around and grabbed Warner’s hand, pulling her with him toward the door.
It wasn’t long before he returned with the mandrake powder in a small bowl. He held it in one hand, a glass of water in the other. Warner, who followed him into the room, held a set of measuring spoons.
“How much?” Carrow asked Emma. Layton wailed again, this time with an earsplitting shriek.
“Hurry!” Warner said. “He’s getting worse.”
“One tablespoon in the glass.” Emma was guessing. Mandrake was so rare and so rarely used that the amounts needed to induce somnolence would be outside the normal dosing information available to her. She doubted even a Google search would produce any credible dosing instructions.
Carrow held the bowl out to Warner, who measured the amount and dumped it into the water. He swirled the liquid to mix it, handed Warner the bowl, and approached the jerking man on the bed. He waited until Nalen was once again between seizures and then put the glass to his lips.
“Drink,” he said. Nalen’s eyes didn’t move but he must have understood because he drank. Carrow held the glass and tipped it slowly, making sure that Nalen had time to swallow it all. Nalen jumped again, but this time the wailing didn’t come.
Emma watched him and kept note of the time. After three minutes he stopped jumping. In five his muscles’ violent twitching seemed to ease. After ten minutes his eyes began to droop and his arms collapsed. Carrow helped move him into a resting position on the bed. Five minutes later Nalen fell asleep.
The room was quiet. Warner quietly cried and Rory frowned. Carrow moved over to the bathroom and gazed at the pentagram, then returned to stand at the side of the bed.
“What fools we are,” he said.
Chapter 12
Carol Stromeyer piloted the boat across the water toward the small island of Anguilla. A slice of moon threw a glow onto the waves, and the air was warm as it blew across the skin on her arms. She still wore the balaclava over her face, even though Sumner had correctly guessed her identity earlier. She kept her focus on the GPS display for the boat and did her best not to dwell on the man she had just killed. Stromeyer was former military and had killed before, but that was a while ago and in battle. This was the first time since then, and she was doing her best to remind herself that he would have surely killed Sumner had she not shot first. She turned her mind to the problem of who had paid the two men to attack Sumner. Between the bombing and the shooting, it appeared that he was a target. She glanced his way. He wasn’t looking at her, and she took advantage of that fact to take his measure.
Stromeyer had spoken to Sumner many times on the telephone, but had never met him in person. The first thing that struck her about him was his height. He stood over six feet two inches and had a straight but relaxed posture. She knew that he was a reticent man, and he lived up to that reputation now. He sat on a bench against the port side and remained quiet while staring out at the ocean. In fact he hadn’t said much since the revelation at the dock, and she left him alone with his thoughts.
Stromeyer had been handling a volatile assignment in St. Martin for several months now, and felt no closer to her goal. The lack of progress had been frustrating until tonight. When she’d heard the man claim that he was paid to take out Sumner and Caldridge, a big piece of the puzzle fell into place. There had been rumors for over a year that large shipments of both guns and a new, highly dangerous weapon was soon to pass from South America through the Caribbean and on to the U.S. mainland. If someone wanted both Caldridge and Sumner dead, it was likely that the players in the sale would be from some past event where both were involved. Sumner had met Caldridge in the jungles of Colombia when an organization was arranging an arms trade, and again in Somalia when another group tried to steal a pharmaceutical drug that could be used as a weapon. Stromeyer would review both events again in search of a link between those scenarios and the present shipment.
Darkview had been hired by the Department of Defense to discover whether the rumors were true, and to stop the transfer. Edward Banner, her business partner and the president of Darkview, had accepted a contract with the understanding that the DOD wanted not only to halt the flow of weapons, but to obtain solid evidence of the money laundering and offshore transactions funding the sales. As a private company, Darkview was not subject to the same restrictions as the U.S. military operating in a foreign arena. Where a military action would be
seen as a breach of international law, even an act of war against the island nations, a private company could act in any way it saw fit. But cracking the local banks and their money gathering operations was a lot tougher than it appeared. Several of the small nations in which the weapons were to pass refused to provide any assistance to Darkview’s investigation.
“I thought we were going to St. Barths, but it’s there,” Sumner pointed to starboard, “and we’re headed straight. What’s your actual destination?”
“Anguilla,” Stromeyer said. “British West Indies. It’s less populated than St. Barths, and someone you know is there.”
“Who?” Sumner asked.
“Edward Banner.” Stromeyer saw the flash of Sumner’s white teeth as he smiled.
“Your business partner.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Stromeyer said. She heard Sumner snort.
“Okay,” he said.
Stromeyer navigated the boat past the tip of the island, where the island’s only yacht club sat. In all the days that she’d been on assignment in the Caribbean, she’d never seen an actual yacht docked at the club. For that reason, it was the perfect place to both dock the boat and be left alone. Darkview had paid well to ensure that any employees would turn a blind eye to their comings and goings. At night it was deserted.
“Help me moor it?” she said.
Sumner got up and tossed the bumpers over the boat’s wall. He gripped a rope that had been coiled on deck and when they were close enough leapt lightly onto the dock. Stromeyer reversed and drove forward in small movements until the boat was properly positioned. Sumner tied it down, wrapping the rope around the metal cleat on the dock, then did the same with a second rope at the stern.
“You’ve done that before,” Stromeyer said after he was finished.
Sumner nodded. “I grew up in Minnesota and my family had a cottage on one of the lakes where I would go fishing and hunting.”
“Were they hunters, too?” she asked. Sumner was a skilled sharpshooter. His talent seemed both natural and born of years of familiarity with guns. He smiled and nodded.
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