Baja Florida (20 page)

When he came down to the cabin he took off her blindfold. He put her backpack on the bed beside her.

“Need to get you into some clean clothes.”

He reached into the backpack, pulled out pan ties, shorts, and a maroon College of Charleston T-shirt. He pulled her from the bed. He untied her hands and feet.

“Get undressed.”

“Do you mind if I go into the head?”

“Do it here. Not like I haven't seen it before.”

She was slipping into the clean clothes when the voice came from outside: “Hallooo. Halllooo. Anyone there?”

A look of panic in his eyes. He pushed her back onto the bed.

“Don't move. Don't do anything. You understand?”

She nodded.

He rushed out of the cabin and climbed the ladder to the deck.

And she immediately ran to the head. She stood on the toilet and strained to look out the vent.

She saw: A wooden fishing boat idling a few yards out, the young man in it holding up a lobster.

The young man called out, “Fresh, mon! Just pulled them this morning…”

She started to scream, but the boat rocked and she slipped from the toilet onto the floor. By the time she crawled back up, he was already waving the fisherman away.

“No, thanks. I'm good…”

“Make you a deal, mon. Ten dollars each.”

“No, I don't want any lobster. Go on now…”

“Fresh, mon. Fresh as can be.”

“Bullshit. It's not lobster season. Get out of here…”

The fisherman scowled and tossed the lobster in an ice chest. He revved his engine and began to pull away.

She got down from the toilet. She reached behind it and found the Leatherman she had hidden there. She fumbled with it, opening first the scissors and then the pliers before finally finding the knife.

It wasn't a big knife, the blade only three inches long. But it would have to do. Now or never.

She heard his footsteps cross the deck, him coming down the ladder. She flattened herself against the wall of the head, watched as he passed by its door and stopped, seeing she was no longer by the bed.

And she sprung out, aiming the knife for a point in his throat she thought might be the jugular.

In that same instant, he spun around, the knife catching him in the collarbone, cutting skin but doing no great harm. He rammed an elbow into her temple, knocking her down. He fell upon her, twisting her arm, grabbing the Leatherman, and throwing it to the other side of the cabin.

He backhanded her across the face, once and then again. He seized her under the chin, raised her head so the two of them were eye to eye, blood dripping from the wound on his chest onto her T-shirt.

“I…will…kill you,” he said. “Don't think that I won't.”

He bound her feet and her hands, tighter than ever before, and left her lying on the floor.

He went up top. She heard him crank the engine and pull the anchor.

That had been more than an hour ago. Since then, the boat had run a steady course.

Now, the engine throttled down a notch and she felt the boat turn.

The boat looked to be a forty-footer or thereabouts, blue hull with a flying bridge. It was about a mile offshore. I could see a figure at the main helm, but the binoculars wouldn't let me make out much in the way of detail.

I lowered the binoculars and looked down at the beach. Torrey Kealing had left the water and was hurrying back toward the lounge chair.

I put the binoculars on the boat again. It approached slowly and when it was about a half mile away it turned sharply and pointed toward the pass at the south end of Lady Cut Cay.

Torrey Kealing was under the umbrella now. She gathered her straw bag from the chair and stood there, watching the boat.

The boat picked up speed as it entered the pass and as it rounded the end of the island it was no longer visible from where Kealing stood on the beach. She watched its wake for a moment, then turned and walked toward the dock.

From my vantage point I could track the boat as it circled the island. It moved closer as it motored along the east side.

I adjusted the lens on the binoculars but the glare off the windows of the main bridge wouldn't let me see who was at the helm.

I followed the boat as it made its way past the rocky bluff and into the pass on the north side of the island.

Torrey Kealing was at the end of the dock now and she was looking to her left and to her right. She spotted the boat as it cleared the pass and set course for the dock.

She waved at the boat.

Behind her, Curtis and Edwin appeared at the foot of the dock. They held back, waiting to see what the boat was going to do, ready to help if they were needed.

The boat slowed down, gliding now toward the end of the dock. Kealing saying something to the person at the helm.

Curtis and Edwin headed out on the dock, but Kealing waved them back.

And then the boat was at the end of the dock, pulling up alongside it, barely stopping as Kealing tossed her bag aboard it and then hopped over its gunwale and onto the deck.

Only then did I get a good look at the figure at the helm. Shirtless, dark curly hair, tall and well muscled, a thin beard—the same guy I'd met in the bar at Mariner's Inn. The guy who claimed to be Will Moody. The guy who, I was pretty sure now, must be Justin Hatchitt.

He nudged the boat away from the dock and pointed it out, engine running slow.

“We need to get out of here,” she said. “Now.”

“What are you talking about? I thought he fell for the daughter thing.”

“Oh, he fell for it. He fell for it big time. But there were these guys here yesterday…”

“What guys?”

“One of them was the guy in the bar, the night you did that detective.”

“Chasteen?”

“And two of his friends. Chasteen knows something is going on. He was asking all kinds of questions. He kept telling Ryser I wasn't his daughter. But Ryser wouldn't listen to him. He told Chasteen and his friends to leave.”

“So what's the problem?”

“It's not going to work like we planned. I'm not going to be able to stay here, pretending to be his daughter, waiting until he dies. It's not going to work. Chasteen has probably already gone to the cops…”

“I don't think so.”

“What do you mean?”

“I caught some news this morning, something about how the police are still looking for him. They don't know where he is.”

“I don't care. I don't like it. It's fucked up. It's not going to work. We need to get out of here. We need to…”

“Hold on, hold on.”

“What do you mean hold on? Hurry up and get us out of here, Justin.”

He nodded down below.

“We've still got her.”

“Yeah, so what? Get rid of her, ditch her. I don't care. Let's just go.”

“We didn't do all this to wind up with nothing.”

“We got a few thousand. We get into George Town maybe we can find a bank, get more from her account and fly south, lay low. But we have to go. We have to…”

“What about Ryser?”

“What about him?”

“Guy like that, sitting here on this island, waiting to die. You don't think he has some money?”

Torrey Kealing getting on the boat, I hadn't expected that. The boat maybe fifty yards off the end of the dock now, not far from
Radiance,
pointing out to the channel, throttled down, still going slow.

I could see Kealing and Justin Hatchitt through the binoculars. On the main bridge, arguing it looked like.

I scanned out to the channel. No other boats heading this way. And no sign of Charlie Callahan's seaplane.

I looked at the boat. It had moved past
Radiance,
into open water, still on its slow course toward the channel. Torrey Kealing stepping away from the main bridge now, going below.

I lowered the binoculars. I grabbed the jug of water and took a long drink from it. My shirt hung from a tree limb. I shook it out and put it on. I rolled up the towel and stuck it in the waterproof bag.

Thinking:
OK, they're leaving. Game over. Let the police catch up with them. Not my job anymore. Get up to the house, tell Mickey what's going on. Then get on the radio and call Lynfield Pederson. Check in with Charlie and Boggy. Find out where they are.

But when I looked at the boat again, it had turned around and was motoring toward the dock. Hatchitt worked the helm. I couldn't see Torrey Kealing. She was still down below.

Curtis and Edward headed toward the end of the dock as the boat pulled alongside. Hatchitt stepped away from the helm and had the boat tied off before they could get there.

And now Hatchitt was hopping onto the dock, holding something at his side. A boat hook, to fend off from the pilings? But why would he need that if the boat was already…

A shotgun.

Curtis and Edwin froze as they saw it, then both turned and ran the other way.

Hatchitt fired and Curtis went down, grabbing his leg. Edwin stopped, hands above his head.

Hatchitt kept the shotgun trained on them as two figures appeared on the boat. Torrey Kealing, shoving another young woman forward onto the dock, the second one wearing a maroon T-shirt, arms bound behind her.

Curtis sat up now, holding his leg, in real pain. Edwin pulled off his shirt and tied it around the wound. He helped Curtis to his feet and Hatchitt kept the shotgun on the two of them as he followed them off the dock, the two women bringing up the rear.

And I could see now that Torrey Kealing held a pistol at the back of the other woman's head.

Jen Ryser. It had to be Jen Ryser.

Her long blond hair tumbled around her shoulders. She shook it back to keep it out of her face. Barefoot, unsteady. Stooping over just a little with the pressure of the pistol at her head.

The three-seater golf cart sat at the foot of the dock. Hatchitt pointed Curtis and Edwin into the middle seat. He stood on the rear platform, one hand on the roof of the golf cart, the other keeping the shotgun on Curtis and Edwin.

Kealing sat Jen Ryser down on the passenger side, then slid behind the wheel. The golf cart lurched away, up the rutted road toward the house, disappearing behind the trees.

From where I stood, the house was almost a mile away. Down the hill, the dirt path winding through the swampy lowlands and around the brackish pond, before hitting the long grade that led up to the house.

Impossible to beat them there. But I started running anyway.

When I reached the edge of the clearing that circled the house, the golf cart was parked at the back door. No sign of anyone. They were all inside.

I hung back behind thatch palms and tall brush, scoping out the property, trying to figure out the best way to approach the house without being seen.

What to do, Chasteen, what to do?

Try sneaking into the house, getting the drop on them somehow?

A big somehow. More like a no way. They had guns. And I'm not the stealthiest guy on the planet. Things could get ugly quick.

Still, I needed to get an idea of what they were up to in there before I could figure out a plan of attack.

The clearing was wide—about forty yards on every side of the house. A forty-yard dash. My best time ever just shy of five seconds. More than twenty years ago at the NFL trials, right before the Dolphins drafted me. I flattered myself to think I could make it in seven or eight seconds now. Plenty of time for someone to look out a window and see me.

Where in the house were they?

They had entered through the back door. Figure they found Miss Rose in the kitchen. Maybe Octavia was in there, too. They had hustled them along at gunpoint with the others, looking for Mickey Ryser.

Edwin telling me earlier:
Mr. Mickey, he's in his office doing work.

Had he still been there when they arrived? And having found him there were they all now in the office?

As good a guess as any. Go with it. No time to sift through all the options.

Mickey's office sat on the first floor of the house, the side with a view of the dock and the beach. I moved through the trees and brush until I reached the opposite side of the house, the ocean and rocky bluff at my back. From there, I could see across the broad deck and into the living room. No sign of movement in there. All the doors and windows closed, the AC compressors droning.

I studied the best way to cross the clearing—a straight shot to the deck. The deck sat on low four-by-four posts, maybe two feet of elevation. Enough for me to squeeze under the deck and crawl through to the other side. I'd see how things looked on the other side when I got there.

I took off across the clearing, crouching as low as I could while still hitting stride. Five yards out from the house and I dove, landing in the sand by the deck, next to a bougainvillea bush. I lay there for a long moment, hearing nothing but the AC compressors.

I flattened out, slithered my way under the deck, peeked out to the other side of the house. Mickey's office had a big ceiling-to-floor window that offered a magnificent view to the west. The sun was high and there was a glare off the window, but not so much that I couldn't see inside.

Mickey on the far side of the room, sitting behind his desk, both hands on the desktop, facing the window. Justin Hatchitt on the other side of the desk, shotgun cradled in an arm now. He was doing all the talking. Jen Ryser sat on the floor at his feet, arms still tied behind her.

Torrey Kealing sat on a corner of the desk, back to Mickey, her pistol pointing across the room. I couldn't see the others, but I remembered the layout of Mickey's office. A couch, two chairs around a coffee table. That's where the four of them—Curtis, Edwin, Octavia, and Miss Rose—were sitting.

I strained to hear what they were saying inside, but the compressors drowned out everything.