Bitter End (Seychelle Sullivan #3)

by Kling, Christine

  I looked down at the shadowy form of the sleeping boy, and I thought about that other child, the only one I had saved, Solange. She and her mother, Celeste, were now set up in a small apartment of their own, not far from Jeannie’s in Sailboat Bend. The little Haitian girl had started fifth grade and she was catching up fast. One out of five. Not much of a record. And now there were two more on my tally sheet. Molly and Zale. Onto which list would they fall?

  I felt the sour taste of poisonous despair crawling up my throat, and I wanted to wail and tear at my hair and curl up in a ball and wait to die. That was what was going to happen to us, after all. It didn’t matter who these people were, what language they spoke, or what they wanted. They had us, bound up, locked up, powerless, and they wouldn’t do that unless they didn’t think we were ever going to get away.

  I’d faced it before. Just a few months earlier I had been stranded, dog-paddling in the middle of the Gulf Stream for a day and night, and I thought I was going to die for certain. I remembered both the terror and the peace that had come over me at some point when I had given myself up to it.

  But this was different. This time I was not alone. Zale was just a kid. An amazing, great kid. This was a kid who knew how to pole a dugout canoe and sail a Laser. A kid who drove a mean ATV and who wanted a dog just like Abaco. This was Molly’s kid.

  And it wasn’t like me to give up. It was time to stop whining and moaning and get serious about our situation. With my bound hands, I reached behind me and touched the fringe of hair that fell across the boy’s forehead. I watched the way his lips moved as he breathed in through his open mouth. The cabin was growing lighter, and I saw the strip of light at the bottom of the door. Daylight had arrived, but there would be no cavalry. I’d been mad at B. J.—for what, I don’t even really know, so I had sent him off, preferring not to tell him that Zale and I had other plans. Why did I keep making the same mistakes over and over? Why couldn’t I learn to just let things go? Now, no one knew where we were.

  First of all, I needed to figure out who and what we were up against. Were these the same guys I had seen out at Gramma Josie’s? Both were outfitted in black right down to their ski masks, but it wasn’t as though that was a terribly unique fashion statement for bad guys. I had assumed that those guys out at Big Cypress were Seminoles, but it didn’t make any sense to imagine them following us back into town and driving off with the Mykonos. And what good would it do the Seminoles to kill Zale? That would probably leave Molly and Janet in court fighting for years over ownership of Pontus Enterprises. I couldn’t see what they stood to gain. On the other hand, maybe all they’d wanted to do was scare the kid.

  I was still trying to make all the different pieces fit into a coherent story when I heard people moving around out on the deck above us. Within the last hour or so, I had noticed that the chop slapping against the outer hull had increased. And we were doing a bit more dancing around on the hook. The front they’d predicted last night was likely passing over us, and that would make the wind swing around to the west. If the yahoos running this boat didn’t know what they were doing, we’d likely wind up dragging anchor and running aground.

  XXIV

  When the door finally did open, I had dozed off again into a sort of half-awake, half-asleep state. I had finally concluded that everything pointed to the Russians having killed Nick—because of his discovering their slots scam or trying to take the cruise line back or any of a million other reasons, that was the only thing that made sense. But I couldn’t see what the Russians would stand to gain by killing Zale. I couldn’t see any logical reason why they would follow the kid out into the Everglades and try to shoot him. Besides, if the will that Janet had produced turned out to be the one that stood up in court, Zale wasn’t even slated to become full owner of the company.

  So when the door opened and this tall, good-looking blond guy was standing out there holding a pistol in his hand and telling us to get up, I just assumed he was a member of the Russian mob.

  You can never really understand how hard it is to get around with your hands tied behind your back if you haven’t done it. He told us to get up, but it wasn’t that easy. First of all, we were both waking up out of a doze, and then we had to roll off the bunk because it wasn’t really possible to just sit up and climb out the way you normally would. Blondie was losing patience with how long it was taking us, but I did my best to ignore him.

  Once Zale got to his feet, he looked at me with sleepy eyes and whispered, “Do you think they’ll let us use the head?”

  “No whispering,” the gunman said. He was trying very hard to sound mean and gruff, but the fact was, he looked entirely too preppy to be that scary. There was even something vaguely familiar about him that gave me a sort of friendly feeling. Okay, the gun in his hand? That was scary, but the guy was wearing new jeans, a Polo sweater with the little insignia over his breast, and very clean boat shoes.

  “The kid says he needs to use the head,” I told him. “I do, too. And it won’t exactly be easy with our hands tied.” I probably wouldn’t have been that glib with him if he hadn’t looked like a South Beach model.

  He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a pocketknife. After he’d slit the ropes on Zale’s wrists, he pointed to the bathroom. “You first,” he told him.

  I’d been aware of a heavenly smell since the cabin door first opened, but it was only now really starting to register in my foggy brain. “I smell coffee,” I said.

  He ignored me.

  “Not even just a half a cup?”

  He twitched a little, and I think I was supposed to take that for a shake of the head.

  “Oh, man. That’s cruel.”

  When we’d both finished with the head, he didn’t bother tying us up again. He pointed the gun to indicate that we should go up the steps into the main salon. Then he gestured for us to continue out through the sliding door aft.

  It only took me a few seconds of examining the horizon to figure out where we were. Off the boat’s starboard beam, I could make out the hazy skyline of the city of Miami, the tall buildings seeming to touch the low gray clouds. The wind was blowing at a good fifteen to twenty out of the west-southwest, churning up wind chop across the wide bay that separated us from the mainland. I could see the brown scrub of an island off our port side and stern. I figured we were anchored in the cove off Sand Key at the north end of Elliot. Somewhere out in the waters off our stern were the remaining structures out in Stiltsville, the colony of houses that had existed out there in Biscayne Bay since the 1930s when old Crawfish Eddie Walker had built his first fishing shack. And beyond that? The lighthouse at Cape Florida on Key Biscayne.

  If they were looking for an out-of-the-way place where they could do whatever they wanted, they’d certainly found it. On a warm spring day, Elliot Key would be crawling with boats and sunbathers, but in February weather like this, not a sane soul would venture out to this island.

  Blondie grunted again and pointed with the gun at the stainless ladder that led up to the bridge deck. I looked over at Zale and I realized that he was thinking the same thing I was. That was where Nick, his father, had died. Neither of us stepped up to the ladder.

  “Move it,” Blondie said. He poked me in the arm with his gun.

  As I pulled myself up onto the bridge deck, I saw two people sitting in the twin helmsman’s seats on the bridge. Even with their backs to me, I recognized them, and it was not anybody I expected.

  When Zale’s face appeared over the ledge of that deck, he recognized that head of hair just as I had. Richard Hunter slowly swiveled around in his chair to face us.

  “Good morning,” he said. He held his guitar across his lap and he strummed a few chords. The woman sitting in the chair next to him glanced over her shoulder at us. Her long black hair disappeared down the crevice between her back and the chair, and though the upper bridge was encased on three sides with a plastic enclosure, the force of the wind swirling in from the back was making her hai
r fly around her face like a swarm of angry insects. Richard pointed to the bench seat that ran along the starboard side of the bridge. “Have a seat,” he said.

  I motioned for Zale to slide onto the seat ahead of me. Once we were both seated, we looked at him and waited for him to say something. Richard Hunter was dressed from head to foot in brown camouflage military clothes. He was even wearing the black lace-up boots. A web belt circled his waist with a whole array of paraphernalia, from gun to baton. A knife in a black sheath was strapped to the outside of his right leg. He spread his arms, elbows in, palms upward, and said, “Well?”

  “Well, what?” I asked.

  He snapped at me “Shut up.” He spoke way too loud, and that’s when I figured out that he was already drunk at whatever hour of the morning it was.

  “Where is it?”

  Zale turned to me with a look of total puzzlement on his face. “What’s he talking about?” The kid was good.

  I did, of course, have an inkling as to what it was, but I wasn’t about to let on. I raised my shoulders. “Beats me.”

  Honestly, I hadn’t thought any more about the silver case we’d found in the safe. Once we were bound up and thrown into that stateroom, it seemed like the least of my worries. If I’d had to guess, I would have assumed that it was now in our captors’ possession. Apparently, I would have guessed wrong.

  “Don’t you mess with me,” he shouted, pointing his finger at Zale’s face. He turned to me. “I’ve got no time for this. I’ve been chasing you all over the Everglades and back. You know what I’m talking about. Nick told Quinn that the kid knew where it was.”

  Anna reached over and put a hand on his thigh. “It’s okay, baby.”

  “Where what was?” I asked.

  “If you think for a minute that I’m gonna let that kid get all that money—no way. Not after all my sister’s been through.”

  Was that it then? The case was full of money? Why didn’t they have it already? Or was it that they just didn’t know they had it?

  “I wouldn’t say your sister’s exactly had a hard life as Mrs. Nick Pontus.”

  He exploded. “You shut up about my sister! You don’t know nothin’ about her life or what she went through as a kid.”

  Anna reached over from the other helmsman’s chair and patted him on the arm, trying to calm him down. “Sshhh. Richie, baby, it’s okay.”

  He jerked his arm into the air, away from her touch, and glared through the plastic windows at the deserted island off our bow.

  The wind was picking up as the day grew lighter. The big Hatteras, with all her windage, was sailing around on her anchor line. At times, when we’d sail up on the anchor, then turn sideways to the wind just as a gust hit, the boat would heel over at about a twenty-degree angle. And because I could see the black clouds and curtains of rain of at least two squalls on the horizon, I hoped the anchor was well set.

  I wondered about the way Richard reacted to comments about his sister. He was definitely close to the edge there. I figured Anna for a pretty sensible person, and now that I thought about it, the preppy-looking guy down in the main salon was the guy who had wanded me and Mike before we’d boarded the TropiCruz IV. Those two seemed to have thrown their lots in with Richard, but maybe if they realized he was a total nutcase, which seemed obvious enough to me, I could inspire a little mutiny here.

  “So, Richard, I don’t get it. If the kid’s the only one who knows where it is, why’d you try to shoot him out at the Big Cypress yesterday? That was you, right?”

  “I didn’t try to shoot him.”

  “So that wasn’t you out at Big Cypress last night? Sure it was.” I turned to the woman, remembering the smaller figure in black. “You were there, too.”

  She turned away from me and sucked her teeth, as though she couldn’t believe I was so stupid I hadn’t figured all this out yet. But I hadn’t.

  “We weren’t trying to kill him,” Richard said. “I’d wanted him dead, he’d be dead. I don’t miss. We were trying to grab him.”

  “Why? Anna, did you know this guy was getting you involved in this? Kidnapping, at the very least. Something tells me he doesn’t really plan to let us go, either. So that’s murder. Did he tell you that’s what he was planning?”

  She wouldn’t look at me. She’d pulled her long hair into her hands and was twisting it in a coil so the wind wouldn’t whip it into knots.

  Richard sighed and plucked a little riff on the guitar. “I told you. Leon says the kid knows where Nick hid it. Janet asked me to find out. You tell us that and you can go.”

  So, Jeannie and I both were so very wrong about Janet. Molly had known all along. And she’d tried to tell us. And now we were on this boat with this lunatic.

  Anna had to see that he was planning to kill us and perhaps she wouldn’t be willing to go that far.

  “Okay, but then why out here? Why take us all the way down here to deserted Elliot Key just to ask us some questions? You could have done this back at the dock.”

  “That’s enough. You don’t ask the questions. I decide when or where I want to go or stay. I am the captain.” Anna rubbed her fingers along the side of his head. He ignored her and continued to fiddle with the strings of the guitar, tuning the instrument, trying out chords.

  “Did you know gambling’s a sin?” he asked without looking up from the instrument.

  “No, I’m not real up on religious stuff.”

  “Preacher says so. I can’t find the place in the Bible where it says so, but I’ll keep looking. The scripture does say ‘Thou shalt not covet,’ and I figure gambling’s coveting. All them Russians, they’re going to hell. And now that Janet’s gonna get her money, I’m done with them. I figured it was time to get out of that sinful business.”

  “So were you the one who was running the slots scam? Stealing from the Russians? That wasn’t too smart.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “You know about that, too? How does everybody know about that all of a sudden? Jesus Christ.” He glanced heavenward, then said, “Forgive me, Lord.”

  A bigger-than-average gust heeled the boat over, and when we hit the end of the anchor rode, I could feel the rumble of the chain over the anchor bed through the deck.

  “Jason!” he yelled. “Jason, go let out some more scope,” he yelled. The younger man ran up onto the foredeck and went forward to the windlass. In order to walk, he had to bend his body into the wind. I figured we probably had almost thirty knots sustained, and if one of those squalls hit us, it was going to get much worse.

  He strummed a chord and sang, “I walk through this valley on my knees, and I pray till I feel Him close to me.” He stopped and put his hand across the strings to quiet the instrument. “Were you lying when you said you thought I had talent?”

  “No. I like your voice. And, while I’m no expert, your guitar-picking sounds pretty good to me.”

  “I picked that up overseas. We didn’t have much else to do most of the time. Buddy who taught me? He drove over a mine a week before he was due to ship back home.” He threw back his head and shouted, “The Lord works in mysterious ways!”

  “Richard, why is your sister making you do all the dirty work? She’s the one who’s coveting this money, not you.”

  He jumped to his feet, handed Anna the guitar, and pulled the knife from the sheath on his leg. He grabbed my ponytail and held the knife under my chin. “I told you not to talk about her. I came back from Kuwait sick as a dog, coughing up all that black shit from the stinkin’ oil well fires, and my baby sister took care of me. She held me through all the night tremors. You have no idea what that baby angel did for me. You don’t even say her name, you hear me?”

  He pulled my head so far back, all I could see was the white canvas of the overhead. I felt the tip of the knife pressing hard against my throat. I opened my mouth and tried to speak, but my chin shook with spasms. I knew he was crazy enough to kill me, and all I could see was an image of the knife slicing through the
skin of my throat. I couldn’t speak. Even if I had been able to dredge up the courage or could figure out what to say at that moment, I physically could not speak.

  “Uncle Richard,” Zale said. “Please, Uncle Richard, don’t hurt her.”

  The pressure against my throat eased, and I rasped air into my lungs.

  He let go of my hair, slid the knife back into the sheath, and flopped back down into the helmsman’s seat. I stared down at my knees, tears streaming from my eyes, not wanting him to see how frightened I was.

  “Kid, I’m gonna write a song about my life someday. ’Bout how I found Jesus. It wasn’t easy. None of it. You have no idea what it’s like to grow up with an old lady who’s a whore. We had to find our own food, get our own selves to school. She made us get her cigarettes, cook her food, change her filthy sheets with the cum and condoms from all them johns. Soon as I turned eighteen, I got out. Joined the Marines. Baby sister was only eight, but she was already good at steering clear of the old lady and stealing enough food and money to stay alive.”

  He pointed his finger in my face. “Don’t you say she’s coveting something that ain’t hers. She deserves every penny after all she’s been through. All those dirty hands on her—coveting her body. God wants her to have the peace all that money can buy.” He looked at Anna. “And if she wants to put up the dough for me to cut a CD, then it was the least I could do for her, right, baby?” He laughed.

  Zale was staring at his clenched hands, and I could feel the tension in every muscle of his body. I knew we were both thinking it, and one of us was going to have to say it aloud. It was too much to ask of the boy.

  “It was you, wasn’t it?” I said. “You shot Nick.”

  He pantomimed holding a rifle, closing one eye, and sighting through the scope, and then he made these popping sounds with his lips and jerked with the imaginary recoil, “Powp, powp, powp.” Then he threw back that big head and laughed again.