Devil and the Deep (The Deep Six)

by Julie Ann Walker

  “We tried asking nicely, Maddy!” Slick yelled. “But your father is a stubborn man!”

  Bran could hear the dry sound Maddy’s throat made when she swallowed. “What are you talkin’ about, Tony? Why are you doin’ this?”

  Tony darted a quick look over his shoulder, and Bran narrowed his eyes. Something isn’t right.

  “We were fine until OPEC dropped the price of oil!” Tony cried, his face ruddy in the yacht’s running lights. Bran bet if he looked through the scope of his rifle at Tony’s eyes, he’d find them as bloodshot as LT’s uncle’s after he’d smoked some of the herb he grew out back of the Wayfarer Island house. For my glaucoma, the crusty old sailor always claimed, although Bran was pretty sure the man’s eyesight was 20/20.

  As for Gene’s eyes? Bran couldn’t see them. After the man’s initial scan of the bridge house, he’d let his chin drop against his chest, his thinning gray hair falling over his brow and shadowing his face. He’d stopped struggling, stopped trying to pull away from Tony. Now, he stood there docilely, seemingly resigned to be a victim. It struck Bran as strange. From what Bran knew of Maddy’s family, cowardice and surrender didn’t run in the blood.

  “Then the one venture we had up and running wasn’t making enough to fund the expansion of the rest!” Tony continued. “OPEC knew this, knew all the businesses like ours that were finding new ways to extract oil couldn’t bear bargain-basement prices for long. They don’t want us losing our dependence on foreign oil!”

  He certainly was Chatty Cathy all of a sudden. The more he talked, the more the mercury rose inside Bran’s internal trouble thermometer.

  Something isn’t fuckin’ right. He could feel it.

  “They want us reliant on them for our fuel needs!” Tony kept on, talking so fast now that spittle arced from his mouth, catching the lights and glinting on its way overboard. “But we didn’t give up! We just…we just needed a little help, a loan to tide us over until a few more of the new ventures were up and running! But your father refused! He’s forced our hands! He’s forced my hand! I need that money!”

  So what? Bran thought, feeling like he was looking at one of those optical illusions that shifted shape just when you thought you were seeing it correctly. He thought he’d hold Maddy and Gene Powers for ransom to get the funds from Maddy’s dad? How the hell did Tony think he’d get away with that? Surely a man didn’t make it to the position of mid-level executive in a company like BP if he was an idiot.

  Unless, he planned to kill ’em after he got the money, Bran thought. Get rid of the witnesses and act like he received the funds from some other source. With Maddy and Gene dead, there’d be no way to prove otherwise.

  His finger tightened on the trigger, easily lining up a head shot. One pull and this could all be over. But there was something going on here. Something he felt sure he needed to understand. “Just keep him talking,” he told Maddy.

  She turned to him, her cheeks pale as winter’s first snow. But her eyes were hot with determination.

  “But what now, Tony?” she called. “What do you expect—”

  Bran stopped listening because Gene Powers lifted his face then. Wet tracks glistened on his lined cheeks, but his eyes were as dry as a desert wind. Bran’s antenna twanged. He recognized the look on Gene’s face. It was one of crushing regret and…a scary sort of determination. Gene shook his head and did something weird with his shoulders. He sort of shrugged them and moved them around. Bran would’ve said he was trying get comfortable against his restraints, but there was something…off about the movement.

  Gene lifted his eyes back to the bridge house windows, and if Bran wasn’t mistaken, he smiled behind the duct tape. A curl of understanding unwound inside Bran. He sighted down the length of his barrel. Sure as shit, all at once Gene’s hands were untied. They knocked Tony’s pistol away from his temple. A split second later, Gene plowed his shoulder into the younger man and sent them both flying across the yacht’s back deck.

  “Uncle Gene!” Maddy screamed as the two men landed with a harsh-sounding thud, all the while fighting for supremacy and control of the pistol.

  Bran cursed and tightened his finger on his trigger. But he didn’t take a shot. Not yet. He didn’t have a clear line of sight and—

  Bang! Bang!

  “Nooooo!” Maddy shrieked, jumping to her feet.

  “Damnit!” Bran cursed, taking his eye away from his target just long enough to yank her back down.

  They watched breathlessly as Gene kicked away Tony’s body and staggered to a stand. Blood stained the front of his pearl-snap shirt, but it wasn’t his. It was Tony’s. Gene raised his face to the bridge house’s windows again, his expression still one of regret and determination. Ripping off the duct tape, he flung it aside, and his throat sounded like it’d been scoured by steel wool when he yelled, “I’m so sorry, Maddy!”

  “It’s not your fault, Uncle Gene!” she called back.

  “It’s like they say,” Gene said, his voice dropping to a more conversational level, making them strain to hear him. “When you choose the lesser of two evils, you’re still choosin’ evil. But I swear to you…” He raised his voice, pain and regret flowing like twin rivers through his words. “I swear it, Maddy! No one was supposed to get hurt!”

  Maddy sucked in a wheezy breath, one that was filled with the horror of dawning understanding. “Are…are you tellin’ me you—” she began, but Gene cut her off.

  “Tony’s guys were supposed to grab you and the girls and call in a ransom to Gerry!” Bran knew they were talking about Maddy’s father, Gerald R. Powers. “Once the money was paid, they’d have set you free, no worse for wear! But then everything went wrong and Tony wouldn’t stop! He wouldn’t stop, Maddy!” Her uncle’s voice broke on a hard edge.

  “How could you?” The fear, the betrayal in Maddy’s eyes cut into Bran’s heart like a ragged piece of metal. “How could you do this to Daddy? To me?”

  “It was for the greater good!” Gene swore. “Once we got the business up and runnin’, all U.S. oil companies would profit, includin’ Powers Petroleum. They’d stop havin’ to sign foreign contracts. They’d stop havin’ to kowtow to OPEC. He just didn’t see and I couldn’t make him!”

  Maddy choked on a sob, and Bran wanted nothing more than to make this all go away. He’d barter his own sorry soul if he could somehow make this all go away.

  Gene must’ve heard her, even through the narrow opening of the window, because he dropped his head, his shoulders shaking, and said something that didn’t travel up to the bridge house. Bran could feel Maddy start to stand, and he reached out and grabbed her wrist, shaking his head. “Don’t, Maddy. You can’t go out there.”

  “But—”

  “I wasn’t a perfect man, Maddy,” Gene said, lifting his head. Tears flowed freely down his lined face. “But before this night…” He looked around at the bodies splayed across the decks of both boats and shook his head, his shoulders sagging. “Before this I was a good man. I don’t know how to live any other way. I can’t live any other way. Tell Gerry I’m sorry.”

  Bran knew what Gene was up to a split second before he did it. “Don’t do—”

  But that was all he managed before Gene lifted the pistol and put a bullet through his right temple.

  “No! No! No!” Maddy screamed, and Bran had to throw one arm around her shoulders to keep her from bolting.

  He turned her away from the sight of her uncle collapsing onto the yacht’s deck, head open like a melon, mouth wide in one last soundless scream. And then something on the horizon caught his eye and forced him to let her go so he could swing his scope in that direction. Moonlight caught the white water kicked up by the trawler beelining for them, making it glisten. Good thing, or Bran would have missed it in the dark.

  “Get these engines running,” he barked at Captain Webber. “Now!”

  �
��What?” The captain glanced over at him, eyes wide with shock. “I can’t leave without my men’s bodies, and—”

  “Normally, I would agree with you,” Bran said. “But that fishing trawler you saw on the radar is coming our way fast. And I don’t get the impression they’re responding to your Mayday.”

  “What?” The captain peered over the console in the direction of the approaching boat.

  “That’s why Mr. Slick…uh…Tony was being so chatty. He was stalling. Buying time and waiting on backup.”

  I shoulda known. I shoulda—

  “How can you be sure?” Webber asked.

  Bran looked away from his sights to pin his stare on the captain. “’Cause I got a sixth sense when it comes to this shit.” He didn’t have to say Remember what happened the last time I got this feeling? It was there in his eyes. And the evidence that his sixth sense was on the money was scattered all over the decks of the two ships or floating around them in the sea.

  Captain Webber nodded. “Right.”

  Bran turned to find Maddy down on her knees, crying into her hands. He wanted to hold her more than anything else in the world, but there was still work to be done. He crouch-ran to the opposite wall of windows and threw open the nearest one. “Mason!” he yelled down. “Cut us loose while I cover you!”

  He scrambled back across the bridge and scanned the deck of the yacht as Mason appeared below, knife in hand, ready to saw through the nylon cords tethering the two ships together.

  “Captain!” he yelled. “We hafta get the hell outta—”

  He didn’t need to finish his sentence because the engines rumbled to life. He saw Mason cut through the last rope and hollered down, “Mason! Hold tight!” To the captain, he roared, “Punch it!”

  The cutter was a fine piece of American-made machinery. It exploded away from the yacht, cutting across the tops of the waves and picking up speed with every second. Through his scope, Bran watched the trawler turn to give chase. His attention settled not on the man he could see on deck, but on the long shiny tube that caught the starlight above and glimmered.

  As the incomparable Yogi Berra had once said, It’s déjà vu all over again. The last time he’d faced down a rocket launcher was three month ago, when Maddy’s father’s yacht had been hijacked. He didn’t hear the thump of the weapon discharging its load, but he saw the flash of fire and the explosion of smoke.

  “Hard to starboard!” he yelled at the captain. “Now, now, now!”

  The captain didn’t hesitate, cutting the ship to the right. Bran grabbed onto the windowsill to steady himself, and looked up in time to see the rocket whiz by them, hit the ocean some twenty feet from the vessel, and send up an explosive plume of water on impact.

  Lifting his weapon, he looked through his scope and was dismayed to see a second man appear beside the first one, another rocket launcher at the ready.

  “Again!” he yelled when the second weapon belched up its projectile. “This time hard to port!”

  The cutter sliced through the ocean like the war machine it was, easily parting the waves as its big engines roared with happiness. The second rocket missed by nearly twenty yards, and Bran steadied himself against the new list of the ship. He sighted through his scope, pleased to see the fishing boat was no match for the Coast Guard’s ship.

  When he assured himself they were outpacing their pursuers and the reach of their rocket launchers, he dropped his M4. The next instant, he pulled Maddy into his lap.

  Chapter 26

  9:48 a.m.…

  “Coffee?” Maddy glanced up to see a Styrofoam cup steaming in front of her face.

  “Bless you,” she told Rick, curling her frozen fingers around his offering. For some reason, she couldn’t get warm. It was probably eighty degrees outside, but she was freezing. Feared maybe all the coldness was coming from her heart. From deep in her soul.

  “I can’t vouch for the quality,” Rick warned. “But it’s hot. And if the muddy color is any indication, it’s strong as hell.”

  “I need strong as hell right now. I feel like I’ve been awake for a decade.”

  They were in the bowels of the Coast Guard station on Key West in some sort of utilitarian-looking conference room with no windows. So when she glanced at the clock loudly tick-tocking on the wall, she couldn’t be sure if it was morning or night. She just knew she wanted sleep. Days of sleep. Weeks of sleep. As her grandma Bettie would’ve said, she was too pooped to pop.

  Taking a sip of coffee, she closed her eyes and welcomed the burn. It made her feel something besides the cold of the AC units and the crushing despair of her uncle’s last minutes. Rick was right; it was strong enough to raise a blood blister on a boot. Just what I need.

  When she blinked her eyes open, she smiled her thanks and indicated the metal chair next to her.

  “I think I’ll just keep standing, if you don’t mind.” Rick blew across the top of his cup. “I was sitting in that chair in the interrogation room for so long I think I may have permanently flattened my ass.”

  “Do we still call it an interrogation room if we’re not criminals?” Maddy asked, taking another sip. Come on, caffeine. Keep workin’ your magic.

  “I felt like I was being interrogated,” Rick said.

  When they’d arrived at the Coast Guard station, they’d been met by a swarm of FBI agents. Apparently, crimes in national parks and in U.S. territorial waters fell under the purview of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  “I think I answered more questions this morning,” Rick continued, “than I have in my whole life up to this point. How about you?”

  “Mmm,” she hummed noncommittally. The FBI questioning had been intense. No doubt. But the CIA’s questioning after the hijacking of her father’s yacht had been worse. Of course, she couldn’t tell Rick that.

  “Everybody else still being raked over the coals?” Rick asked, looking around the empty room.

  “I don’t know about Bran or Mason,” she told him. “But according to Agent—” She blinked and shook her head. She’d spent hours in a little room with the FBI agent and she couldn’t remember his name. Her brain was mush. Her heart was pretty much the same consistency. “I’m totally blankin’ on the guy’s name,” she admitted. “Thomas or Thomson or Tomlinson. It’s somethin’ like that. Anyway, he told me they’d taken the girls to grab some food and make calls home to their parents. He’s supposed to bring them here in a bit so we can board the private plane my father sent to take us h—”

  Her throat caught. Thoughts of her father inevitably conjured up thoughts of her uncle. If she lived to be a thousand years old, she’d never forget the awful look on Gene’s face right before he pulled the trigger.

  “Hey.” Rick slid out the chair beside her, plopping down and throwing an arm around her shoulders. The weight of it felt immense. Everything felt immense. All the violence. All the death. All the loss.

  “And for what?” she whispered, searching Rick’s youthful face for answers.

  “What?” He blinked his confusion.

  “This night,” she said, setting her coffee on the table so she could wrap her arms around herself to try to keep the pieces of her heart from flying out of her chest. “All of it. All the awful things that happened were done for oil. Oil. Smelly, black sludge that spews out of the earth. It doesn’t make sense.”

  Rick’s lips twisted into a grimace. “Since the invention of the internal combustion engine, oil has been the altar that power, corruption, and greed pray at. So it makes perfect sense to me.”

  The noisy clock on the wall kept track of the half-dozen seconds she sat there looking at him, really seeing him. “You’re pretty smart for someone so young, you know that?”

  “I’m not that young,” he insisted, and all she could do was smile. After tonight, she might agree. She felt like she’d aged ten years. No doubt he did too.<
br />
  “It’s all so ugly. So…unnecessary.” She shook her head. “He was a good man,” she insisted. “My uncle, he just…”

  “Got himself into an untenable situation,” Rick finished for her. “And then he couldn’t live with the guilt of it, the shame of it.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. “My father is wrecked.” Her lips were quivering. “And the sounds he made when I called and told him what happened…” She shook her head.

  “I’m so sorry.” Rick gave her another squeeze. “I know those words don’t count for much, but—”

  “They count for a lot, actually.” She blinked away the burning wetness threatening in her eyes. She wouldn’t cry. Not in front of him. Not in front of the girls once they arrived. She still needed to be strong, project courage. Once she was home alone, then she’d let herself fall apart. When the shakes come. When the nightmares come…

  She shivered at the inevitability of it all. Then convinced herself she’d beaten back the horror before, and she’d do it again. With the help of Bran.

  Bran…

  Could she really go on as if nothing had changed between them?

  You promised you would, her conscience reminded her. You made a deal with God. And He’s not the kind of guy you renege on.

  “I haven’t had the chance to say thank you for all you did tonight,” she told Rick. “You were great.”

  Rick’s answering grin made his dimples deepen. “Thanks. I’d say it was my pleasure, but…” He let the sentence dangle and widened his smile. That look was back on his face. The look.

  Oh no. She opened her mouth to try to prevent him from saying anything. But before she could, he blurted, “You know, if you ever need anyone to talk to, I could give you my number and we could—”

  “Rick,” she said, cutting him off, “you are a sweet, adorable man.” She almost said kid, but she reckoned maybe there was no more kid left in him. “Somewhere out there is a sweet, adorable woman who’s goin’ to give you everything you deserve.”