Deadly Echoes (6 page)

He clicked on the flashlight and continued deeper into the ship. The metal deck was dirty and faded, rust eating away at the edges. He searched several rooms, finding the sleeping quarters, a mess hall, a couple of mechanical rooms, and, finally, he threw open the hatch for the engine room. The noise from the two diesels was deafening, but he needed to search for anyone left alive and for any water coming in through a breach in the hull. Donovan found no water, no sign that the hull had been compromised. More than anything, he yearned to be back up in the sunshine.

He burst out onto the main deck and hurried up the stairs toward the bridge. The ship had put more distance from the beach. Glen was orbiting overhead, and in the distance, he spotted a second helicopter off the stern and coming fast.

Donovan returned to the bridge and looked around the cluttered compartment. An ashtray overflowing with filterless cigarette butts was affixed to the edge of the captain's chair. The chart table was strewn with papers. The windows were filthy, spotted, and streaked with salt spray on the outside and years of cigarette smoke on the inside. Everything looked tired and weathered, but Donovan's eye caught something that seemed out of place. Near the top of the console was a single photograph thumbtacked to the faded wooden trim, a girl. As Donovan leaned in, he realized she wasn't Asian, but Caucasian. He pulled the photograph from under the tack to get a closer look. After several seconds, the reality of
the image clicked into place, and when it did, he closed his eyes as memories of Meredith began to pound at his internal armor. In the photograph, Meredith couldn't have been much older than eighteen, her first year in college. The long, auburn hair and impossibly green eyes were the same as he remembered, as was her smile. She had more freckles in this picture than when he'd met her years later. An immense sadness began to well up from inside. Any rekindled memory of her was always the same, the flashbacks always ended the same. They were both in a muddy field in Costa Rica. He was alive and she wasn't. Her pale, broken body splayed on the ground, her sightless eyes pleading at him to save her, but the bullet hole in her forehead clear evidence that he'd been too late.

Donovan's thoughts were broken by the sound of a helicopter. He closed himself down and the image dissolved, but he knew he would pay later for indulging in the memory. He carefully slid the photo into his pocket and moved closer to the window. Looking up, he saw the second helicopter hovering overhead, a red-and-white Coast Guard HH-65. A crewman was being lowered to the deck. Donovan confirmed that the ship was still on a course for the open ocean and then left the bridge. He'd been in such a rush to get to the bridge when he'd first arrived, he didn't notice the details, the main working deck with wood deeply stained from years of fishing and exposed to the elements. Turning, he looked up at the bridge, then out at the ocean. He realized he was standing in the exact place where the man's arms were severed in the video. Upon closer inspection, Donovan spotted dozens of spent shell casings scattered amongst the equipment. He hoped for the crew's sake they were shot before being cut apart.

“Are you injured?” The Coast Guard crewman yelled as he came closer.

“No, I'm fine.” Donovan said.

“Sir, follow me. Let's get you off this boat.”

The Coast Guard helicopter gently touched down near the
da Vinci
at the Lihue airport. Donovan was relieved to see that the media horde and protesters were gone. The Eco-Watch Gulfstream was buttoned up and under guard. Buck was waiting for him. The chartered helicopter was nowhere in sight, which meant William was already at the hotel.

Donovan shook hands with the flight crew, then stepped out and moved clear. The pilot lifted back up into the sky, tilting east toward their base on Oahu.

Buck held the passenger door open for Donovan. “Welcome back,” he said before wrinkling his nose and powering down his side window. “What's that smell?”

“You don't want to know.”

“William filled me in on today's events. You are not trained to be part of a boarding party. What in the hell were you thinking?”

“Thinking about saving evidence.” Donovan knew Buck was angry, as he should be, but what happened couldn't be undone. “We also know the
Triton's
helicopter is missing.”

“I've already spoken with Special Agent Hudson about John's helicopter. They're searching. What kind of range does his chopper have?” Buck asked.

“With full tanks it could easily fly three hundred miles.”

“So if they waited until they were, say, fifty miles off the coast of Kauai, they could have flown off of the
Triton
and made it to any one of the islands.”

“Yeah,” Donovan said. “And land anywhere. What have I missed at this end?”

“So far there haven't been any direct threats phoned into Eco-Watch. The FBI is trying to trace who actually posted the video, and they're also running any of the online comments that seem even remotely suspicious. All of our assets are in full defensive posture, but besides some name calling, we're fine.”

Donovan nodded. “Where are we staying?”

“The Kauai Beach Resort. It's only a few miles north of the airport. Nice place, full of honeymooners, makes it hard for anyone trying to harm us to blend in. The head of security is an old Navy guy out of Pearl Harbor. He's giving us whatever we need, which right now is access to a freight elevator so we can get you up to your room. I suggest burning those clothes.”

They drove into the lush surroundings and parked near a loading dock. Buck walked Donovan onto the elevator, and they went up to the fifth floor. After checking the hallway, Buck escorted him to his room at the end of the hall.

Donovan closed the door and welcomed the silence. He emptied his pockets, being especially careful with the photograph. He set it facedown on the table then stripped off his clothes and stuffed everything but his shoes and belt into a plastic laundry bag before wrapping them in a trash bag and tying off the opening. Buck was right—his clothes were history. While the water in the shower heated up, Donovan ripped the paper off all the soaps he could find and put them in the shower stall. He stood in front of the mirror, recognizing the signs of fatigue on his face, the lines around his eyes looked deeper, the circles underneath darker, more pronounced. His short-cropped brown hair was dashed with a bit of gray, as was the hair on his chest, but that was from being forty-nine years old. With all of the reconstructive facial surgery he'd undergone, he didn't look his age. His eyes were still the same vivid blue they'd been when he was a kid, but everything else was different. He wondered what he'd look like if he was still Robert Huntington, and the answer was usually the same—Robert Huntington wasn't on a path that promised any kind of longevity and probably would have died years ago.

The math told him he was pushing fifty, but he still imagined he could do everything he could do in his thirties, though his body was telling him otherwise. He'd lost weight since Lauren had left and was leaner than he'd been in a decade, but his body had taken a beating in the last year. The eight-inch scar on his thigh was crimson red and throbbing from today's activities, as was the almost identical wound on the inside of his right wrist. A small round scar near his left clavicle marked the entry wound from a nine-millimeter round. Less noticeable was a purplish puncture wound on the back of his right hand. It was round, about the diameter of a pencil with an identical scar on his palm where the screwdriver had passed all the way through. A friend had told him once he was the most scarred man she'd ever met—and she wasn't talking about the visible ones. It was an honest comment and the truth in the words had stuck with him.

Twenty minutes later and an entire bottle of shampoo and three bars of soap, a stench-free Donovan emerged from the bathroom with a towel secured around his waist. He opened the minibar fridge and pulled out a cold beer. He pressed it to his forehead for a moment, extracting its coolness, then found the opener, popped the cap, and took a long pull. He walked to where he'd set his phone and called William.

William picked up immediately.

“I found something today.”

“What is it?”

“A picture of Meredith, when she was younger, it was tacked up in the bridge of the fishing boat.”

“Any idea what the message is?”

“No, not beyond the obvious. My guess is the picture is a message aimed at me. They want to rattle me, for me to know that they're serious.”

“I think the events aboard the fishing boat put a strong emphasis on how serious they are.”

“How many views are there now on the video?”

“Last I checked there were 2.8 million and climbing.”

“I was afraid of that. Not the kind of publicity I wanted.”

“You sound tired. You should get some rest. Remember, you don't have to do this alone. I'll see you at breakfast.”

Donovan ended the call, but William's words lingered. Lauren had accused him of operating alone and leaving her on the periphery, and at some level, they were both right, but he wasn't ready to address those issues. He retrieved another beer, and then against his better judgment picked up the picture of Meredith. He sipped his beer and stared into her innocent, yet expectant, eyes. So young and idealistic, with no idea that she was truly going to change the world. She hadn't yet written her wildly bestselling book
One Earth.
She hadn't traveled the world producing and starring in her documentary nature film series. She hadn't become the global ambassador to save our planet, had no idea how loved and famous she was going to be, that her receptions across the globe would rival that of leaders of state, and she'd have the ear of politicians and kings alike.

His cell phone rang and as he picked it up he saw that the area code was 808, which meant the Hawaiian Islands.

“Nash,” Donovan answered, expecting it to be the FBI or the Coast Guard.

“Hello, Robert. I'm happy to see you were so quick to arrive in Hawaii.”

Donovan stiffened at the raspy voice. Wide awake this time, he caught the faintest hint of an accent. “You have my full attention. You don't need to kill any more people. What is it you want?”

“Oh, I'm just getting started.”

“I found the picture you left. Is that how you and I are connected? Through Meredith?”

“You were never connected to her. You used her so you could silence her.”

“I didn't kill her.”

“That's a lie, and I'm here to punish you for your crimes. It's payback time, Robert. I just sent you an e-mail. You'll find a video I made. It's just between us. I believe the person is important to
both you and your friend William. Take note that he died exactly like Meredith. Good-bye, Robert.”

The line went dead and Donovan closed his eyes. This call confirmed that Meredith was the common link with this man. Donovan yanked his laptop out of his briefcase and fired it up. He sat down and logged on to the hotel's wireless signal, opened his browser, thumbed through his e-mails, and found the latest message. He opened it and then clicked on an attachment. He was immediately assaulted with the image of a tortured John Stratton. His friend was blindfolded, tied to a chair on the teak deck of the
Triton.
It looked as if the skin on parts of his face had been burned. There didn't seem to be any sound. Then, without warning, a gun went off and a round hole appeared in John's forehead. His head sagged forward and he was still. Moments afterward, the image went black.

Donovan closed his computer.
He died exactly as Meredith had.
Donovan looked at the picture of her as an eighteen-year-old, and all he could think about was the singular event that ended her life. She didn't know that she was going to meet and fall in love with Robert Huntington, the heir to the Huntington Oil Fortune, the man she wanted to marry. She didn't know that despite all of her hopes and plans, the wedding wasn't ever going to take place. She didn't know that when she was twenty-eight years old, she would be kidnapped and murdered.

The phone woke Donovan. He groaned as he pulled his stiff and sore body up from the chair, noting that it was light outside. Reaching for the phone, he saw it was five forty-five in the morning.

“Nash,” he said as he rubbed his eyes.

“Mr. Nash. It's Agent Hudson. We found the helicopter.”

“Where?” Donovan snapped fully awake.

“In a hangar at Honolulu International airport. Island Aviation is the name of the facility. They're a Bell Helicopter service center.”

“When did it arrive? There should be plenty of surveillance of these guys as they passed through an airport facility. Hell, there's probably footage of them going through security at the main terminal. I mean, why else fly to an airport if you're not catching a flight out?”

“We talked to the service manager, and he remembers the pilot. The guy was in a hurry, had passengers, but gave the manager a list of things to do to the helicopter and then used a Stratton Partners credit card to open the work order. The service manager thought nothing of it because a Stratton Partners Falcon 900 was waiting on the ramp. Everyone got aboard, and the plane departed for Orange County.”

“Oh, no, not Beverly's plane.”

“I'm sorry. She was found in her car at the parking lot at the Orange County airport, the flight crew as well. They're all dead. The people who murdered them are on the loose in California, and they've got a twelve-hour head start.”

“You're telling me the bad guys somehow convinced Beverly
to fly from Kauai to Honolulu so they could board there? What kind of leverage did they have that she would leave the company of the FBI, then fly to Honolulu and pick up the people who murdered her husband and fly to the mainland?”