by Cap Daniels
“You’re supposed to put it in the corner of your mouth and forget who you are for just a moment.” I nodded my encouragement. “Go ahead. Give it a try. You might be surprised.”
“I’ve tried a cigar before, you know.”
“Not like that one,” I said. “That was grown in a field where tobacco has been grown for five hundred years from seeds that can trace their ancestry back to the days before Columbus ever laid eyes on Hispaniola. And on top of that, that particular cigar has been soaking up the best old-fashioned I’ve ever tasted.”
She tried to suppress a smile, but Penny wasn’t very good at suppressing anything, especially an emotion. She slid the cigar between her lips and closed her eyes. She exhaled a cloud of smoke that danced around her head like a fog rolling in off the ocean.
I reclined back in my seat. “I see what you mean.”
“What?” she said. “What do you see?”
“I see what you mean about that being sexy. I’ve never wanted to be a cigar, but if I could be yours, I might not mind so much.”
“You’re a funny boy.” She seductively played with the cigar before slipping it back into my cocktail. I enjoyed the show and let myself forget about everything else in my world.
I pulled the cigar from the glass and took a long drink. “It’s going to happen again when we get to Charleston.”
She nodded. “It’s going to keep happening, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. I’m afraid so.”
“Whatever you do . . . is it dangerous?”
“Sometimes.”
“I thought so.”
She walked around the table then sat on my lap. She seemed to enjoy nestling herself onto my thighs, and she’d be getting no complaints from me.
“You’re a complicated man, Chase Fulton . . . if that’s really your name.”
I sighed. “That’s really my name, but it doesn’t matter.”
“What do you mean it doesn’t matter? Of course your name matters.”
“It doesn’t matter because I’m the last of us. Both of my parents and my sister are dead. My father had a brother, but he died in Vietnam, and my mother had a sister, but she never had any children. I’m the last remaining Fulton in my family.”
“Do you want children?” she whispered.
I took a long, slow draw from the Cohiba and considered the question.
“I don’t know. Maybe someday. But certainly not now.”
“I do,” she said. “I want a boy and a girl and a black lab.”
I played with her hair and tried to count the tiny freckles on her nose and cheeks.
“Do you kill people?”
Her question hit me like a truck. I was terrified. Yes, no, and I can’t tell you were the only possible answers. Two of those meant yes, and the third was a lie. I chose a fourth option.
“Sometimes.”
“Bad people?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so. That’s where you go, isn’t it? That’s where you go when you stare off into space.”
“Probably,” I admitted.
“Is it hard?”
It should be hard for humans to take the lives of others, but it wasn’t hard for me. It was sometimes troubling afterward, but the act itself wasn’t hard.
Don’t lie to her, I told myself.
“No, it’s not hard. I’ve been well trained, and I believe in what I’m doing.”
She ran her fingers through my hair—a habit she had that I’d come to thoroughly enjoy.
“Are you ever scared?”
“I’m scared right now,” I admitted.
“Why?”
“What I do is necessary and important, but it doesn’t mix well with the two-kids-and-a-dog lifestyle.”
She tilted her head and pressed her lips to mine in a long, tender, exquisite kiss.
“I’m not asking you for two kids and a dog right now. Right now, all I want is to finish our cigar and cocktails, and for you to take me to bed.”
5
Sister?
We sailed into the St. Augustine Inlet and down the Matanzas River without any more uncomfortable conversations. The weather was perfect, and Aegis continued to impress.
Penny looked like a bright-eyed child taking in the Castillo de San Marcos and the sites of Old Town St. Augustine. “Is this where you live?”
“Sometimes,” I said. “I live wherever I drop the anchor, but I like this town. If I had a real home, this is probably where it would be.”
I radioed the Municipal Marina and asked for a slip, hoping number seven was still empty, but no such luck.
“Hey, Chase. Welcome back. There’s a trawler in seven, but you can tie up behind Earl at the end. She scared away the last guy we put behind her.”
Earl at the end was a sixty-something, Oompa-Loompa-looking woman who was the best diesel mechanic in St. Augustine. She and I had become friends while I’d been a resident of the Municipal Marina, and it had become our custom to flirt incessantly with each other at every opportunity.
Penny deployed the fenders, and I laid Aegis alongside the dock, just behind Earl’s boat. Penny leapt to the dock and began tying up just as Earl came waddling toward us. She stopped a few feet away from Penny, eyeing her up and down. “Oh, you’re new.”
Earl crawled aboard Aegis and grabbed me in one of her famous bear hugs. “I knew you’d be back, stud muffin. You just couldn’t stay away from momma, could you?”
“Hey, Earl. You know I can’t resist you. I just had to come back.”
Penny was standing on deck, laughing. I had intentionally left out any warning about Earl. I thought it would be fun to see her reaction, and I was right.
“I knew it!” said Penny, feigning anger. “I knew you were too good to be true. She’s your wife, isn’t she?”
I shrugged and tried to play innocent.
“Oh no, honey,” said Earl. “He ain’t my husband. He’s my boy toy. I don’t mind sharing him, just as long as you keep your hands off them diesels. I’ll kick your ass over them engines.”
Penny couldn’t hold back her laughter. “I’m Penny.”
“Nice to meet you, Penny. I’m Earline, but you can call me Earl. Everybody does. I’m the resident fix-it-when-it’s-broke girl and part-time supermodel. It’s good work if you can get it.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Earl, and I promise to keep my hands off the diesels, but I can’t make the same promise when it comes to Chase.”
“Oh, don’t you worry about stud muffin here. He’s plenty enough man for both of us.”
“Don’t I know it?” said Penny.
Earl laughed. “Are you back to stay, baby boy?”
“No, unfortunately, it’s just a temporary stop. I have a new assignment. I’m just here for a meeting to get the details.”
“Assignment . . . piffle,” Earl huffed as she waddled away.
Penny chuckled. “Well, that was interesting.”
“Yeah, interesting is an excellent word for Earl,” I said.
Penny watched the overweight, under-tall, sixty-something woman. “You didn’t really . . . with her. Did you?”
In my best Vanna White Wheel of Fortune pose, I pointed at Earl. “Come on. Look at her. How could I resist?”
Penny playfully jabbed at me until her mock attack ended with her arms hugging my neck. “Thank you for bringing me here. I can’t wait to check out the city.”
“I didn’t bring you here. You brought me. I was just along for the ride, but you’re going to love St. Augustine. We’ll get cleaned up and go to dinner if you’d like. Do you salsa?”
She stepped back, put on her best Cuban seductress face, and danced around the cockpit.
“Okay, clearly the answer is yes, you salsa. There’s a great club just a couple blocks away. I’m a terrible dancer, but we’re going to have some fun, you little Havana hottie.”
We showered, changed and headed up the ramp to Avenida Menendez, the riverfront street in Old St. Augustine. It
was bustling with tourists wearing ridiculous hats and sporting sunburns galore.
We walked north toward the Castillo de San Marcos before turning left on Cuna Street. I wanted Penny to see the old fort while the sun was still up.
“That’s gorgeous!” Her eyes were wide, and she was grinning like a kid staring through a candy store window.
“Yeah, it’s pretty impressive. The Spanish built that in the late sixteen hundreds. I think it was started in sixteen seventy-two and finally finished around sixteen ninety-five, but I’m not certain. We can do the tour tomorrow if you’d like.”
“I’d love that,” she said, unable to take her eyes off the three-century-old stone fort.
Winding our way through the narrow streets of Old St. Augustine, we came to the parking lot for the Columbia, my favorite restaurant in the city.
“What’s going on over there?” Penny said, pointing through the trees lining the eastern edge of the parking lot.
I peered through the trees and saw a man shoving a young woman against the wooden fence. The woman was cowering and begging the man to leave her alone.
“Stay here,” I said, “and get ready to call the police if I can’t get this guy calmed down.”
“Chase, don’t get involved. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Just get ready to call the cops if it becomes necessary. I’ll be fine.”
I waded through the banyan trees, keeping my approach slightly behind the man to keep as much tactical advantage as possible.
I glanced back to see Penny frowning and standing at the edge of the pavement with her cell phone in her hand. As I turned back to face the quarreling couple, the woman let out an abbreviated gasping scream as the man drew a switchblade knife from his pocket and thrust it toward her throat.
Great, a knife fight. That’s what I need.
I picked up a heavy stick about the size and shape of a baseball bat and quickened my approach. I couldn’t let the man cut the terrified woman.
She let out another choppy scream when she caught a glimpse of me approaching with the stick raised over my head. Instinctually, she yanked away from the man and staggered backward, ultimately falling to the ground, flat on her back.
I came down hard with the stick, landing the blow an inch above the attacker’s hand, breaking his wrist, and sending the switchblade tumbling to the ground. The man reeled in surprise from being blindsided, and he grunted an agonizing groan from the pain of the broken wrist. He raised his left hand in front of his face and assumed a fighting stance.
I’d already won the fight the instant I made contact with his wrist. There was no chance of the guy maintaining his will to fight with pain bombarding his brain. No normal nervous system can ignore that degree of discomfort. I’d known that pain all too well following the injury that ended my baseball career.
What I hadn’t considered immediately became apparent the moment I looked into the man’s eyes. He was stoned out of his mind. His pupils were wide and fixed, and he wasn’t backing down. There was nothing normal about his nervous system at that moment.
“If you want to hit somebody, hit me,” I said, daring the man to advance.
“This ain’t none of your business, man. That bitch—”
I didn’t let him finish the absurd statement perched on the tip of his tongue. I stepped toward him with my right foot, pivoted on my left, and grabbed his broken wrist. Continuing toward him, I twisted his hand and arm across my body as I stepped forward with my left foot and drove him to the ground. I felt what was left of the bones in his wrist crumble under the pressure of my grip.
With a thud, he landed facedown on the mulch, and I thrust my left knee between his shoulder blades, securely pinning him to the ground.
Quickly checking my environment, I locked eyes with the young woman who’d climbed back to her feet and was watching in awe at the scene unfolding in front of her.
“Get out of here,” I said sternly.
She didn’t flinch. “Kill that son of a bitch. He’s a pedophile!”
Anyone who would intentionally hurt a little kid, especially by exploiting their innocence, didn’t deserve to live. But as Clark was so fond of reminding me, we were not in the punishment business. Sometimes, though, regardless of the business we’re in, right is right, and the innocent deserve retribution.
Penny had been creeping ever closer. She was still holding the cell phone like a shield in front of her, but she wasn’t dialing yet.
Turning back to the coked-up lowlife beneath my knee, I pressed a little harder on his spine. “Is that true, Zoro? Before you came out here waving your knife around and threatening that woman, were you messing with little kids?”
With a mouthful of mulch, he mumbled something that rhymed with duck-cue, and I took that as an acknowledgment of guilt. I lifted my knee from his back, grabbed a handful of his hair, and yanked him to his feet. In one fluid motion, I spun him around and introduced his face to the rough-cut lumber of the rugged fence. His lips and nose opened up, and blood trickled down the splintered wood slats.
With my right knee in the back of his left thigh, and my elbow planted solidly beneath his skull, I pinned his body to the fence.
I turned to the woman. “What’s your name?”
“Mary,” she said through clenched teeth. “Sister Mary Robicheaux.”
“Make the call,” I said to Penny, motioning toward the cellphone with my chin. “Tell them there’s an unconscious man behind the Columbia who attacked and tried to kill a young woman.”
“But he’s not unconscious.”
I spun the man around, clasped his broken wrist in my left hand, and forced it across his chest and over his left shoulder. Then I delivered a punishing knee strike to his crotch, causing blood and spittle to spray from his mouth. I finished with a battery of punches right out of Clark’s Krav Maga classes, leaving the man slumped against the fence, broken, beaten, and most thoroughly unconscious.
Penny was dialing.
“Sister,” I said. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m okay. Thank you. I don’t know what would’ve happened if you hadn’t come along.”
“I’m glad you’re okay. The police will be here soon, and this’ll all be over. Why did you say this man is a pedophile?”
The woman looked down with disgust at the man’s limp form. She was pretty in the way that strong, confident women are when they know they’re on the right side of an issue—not arrogant, but determined and self-assured. The fear I’d initially seen on her face had been replaced with a look of satisfied vengeance.
“I’m a teacher at Saint Francis, and that animal. . . .” Her eyes glistened.
“It’s okay now, Sister Robicheaux. Look, there’s the police now.”
A black-and-white St. Augustine Police cruiser pulled up, and two of the biggest humans I’d ever seen poured out.
“What’s going on here?” the larger of the two cops asked while placing his hat on his clean-shaven head.
I read the nameplate attached to the flap of the right breast pocket on his starched, pristine uniform: K. O’Malley.
I’ll bet the K stands for Kevin, I thought. That’s a good Irish Catholic name for a defensive lineman turned police officer.
“I’m Sister Mary Robicheaux, and that man attacked me with that knife.” She pointed toward the switchblade sticking in the ground near the unconscious lump of a man.
“Are you okay, Sister?” the policeman asked with sincere concern in his tone.
“Yes, officer. I’m fine, thanks to this man.”
The woman hugged me as if I had saved her life. I didn’t think I’d done anything special. I couldn’t imagine anyone not intervening. It just seemed like the right thing to do.
O’Malley looked at me and then back at the attacker.
“I just happened along and couldn’t let him hurt Sister Robicheaux. When he pulled the knife, I had to step in.”
I produced the set of Secret Service credentia
ls given to me after I completed my training at The Ranch. Covert operatives aren’t supposed to show up in police reports and local newspaper articles, and I had been instructed to avoid these situations.
“I’m on vacation and just heading to dinner,” I told the officer. “I’d rather not get involved deeper in this thing if that’s okay with you. I’m sure you understand. Escaping the job is hard enough as it is.”
O’Malley folded my credentials and handed them back to me. “Yeah, I know how it is. Enjoy your dinner, Mr. Unnamed Good Samaritan. I think we can handle it from here.”
I nodded in appreciation to O’Malley, retuned Sister Robicheaux’s hug, and took Penny’s hand. We continued toward the Columbia. I didn’t look back, but Penny couldn’t help herself.
She put her arm around my waist and stealthily slipped her fingertips into my back pocket, retrieving the credentials I’d shown O’Malley. I tried to stop her, but she was quick and leapt away backward as she opened the small leather wallet.
“So that’s it,” she said, staring into the wallet. “You’re a fed.” She folded the wallet and tossed it back to me.
“Not exactly.” I still wasn’t ready to come clean.
“Yeah, not exactly is right,” she said. “Feds can’t afford boats like yours, but at least now I know you’re really one of the good guys.”
I returned the credentials to my pocket and held the door for her. “Chivalry is alive and well, my lady.”
I asked to be seated in Liz’s section, and the hostess led us upstairs to a small table in the corner. Liz had been our waitress the night I’d been abducted by Colonel Tornovich’s goons. She’d been a bright, bubbly personality with just enough spunk to make her interesting and entertaining. She was my favorite waitress in my favorite restaurant in all of Florida.
“Hey, I remember you!” said Liz as she came bouncing up to the table with a brilliant, sincere smile on her face.
“Hey yourself. How’ve you been?” I asked.
“Good. Just running food and pouring drinks. It’s good to see you again. Who’s your friend?”
Before I could make introductions, Penny said, “Hey there. I’m Penny. But I’m not his friend. I’m actually his parole officer, and this is his mandatory monthly report.”