29. Jezebel

CHAPTER 29

JEZEBEL

“ I ’m calling for an update,” I told Ari.

Another day, another pile of stuff to chop. I’d served fruit salad for breakfast, and I was grateful Marcel was far, far away because he’d laugh his ass off if he saw me playing waitress. Right now, I was stretched out on the sundeck—yes, I was wearing sunscreen—bored out of my mind.

The first day had been okay—I’d taken a quick look through our guests’ luggage and found little of interest; assembled my gun and duct-taped it to the roof of the vanity in the bathroom, under the sink; and toured the boat to work out its weak spots. The swim platform at the rear was vulnerable to boarding, Cole didn’t bother to lock the door to the engine room, and there were no anti-piracy deterrents. Not so long ago, Priest had told us about a friend’s new yacht. The Black Diamond —yes, the same guy owned the hotel and clearly had no originality—came equipped with a multi-fin stabilisation system to keep the deck level, an armoured pilothouse and engine room, anti-missile defences, lasers, and enough weapons to mount a coup in a small country. Cybersecurity was another risk area on yachts these days, but when I’d innocently asked Cole about that, he’d just looked at me, puzzled.

Anyhow, that was yesterday. Today, I had time to kill and no good target.

“Uh, so things are going good,” Ari said.

“And yet you sound hesitant?”

“We’ve made some progress.”

“What kind of progress?”

“Here’s the thing. I’m not allowed to tell you.”

“Are you kidding me? I’m paying the bills. What happened to regular reports?”

“So, you’re in San Gallicano. Sin or Alexa would be terrifying enough on their own, but they’re both breathing down my neck. Dusk too.”

“Alexa’s there?”

“Not in person, but she checks up on me every couple of hours.”

“What about me? Am I not terrifying?”

“Yes, but you’re almost four thousand miles away.”

“Are you trying to make me fire you?”

“They thought of that, and if you fire me, they’re going to hire me.”

“This is ridiculous.”

“I understand why you might feel that way. But as I said, we’re making progress. You’re on vacation, and relaxation should be your number-one priority for now.”

“Don’t make me fuck with your life. Believe it or not, I like you.”

“Sorry, but I have my orders. Please don’t fly back and torture me.”

“You’re in luck—I’m in the middle of the sea with Cole, a scientist, and a bunch of fish. Just solve the damn case.”

I hung up and tossed my satellite phone onto the cushion beside me. Nobody else knew it was a satellite phone because it looked like a regular phone. There were some advantages to working for Uncle Sam—we got the best gadgets. Honestly, I loved my job—not the death and destruction parts, obviously, but the satisfaction of making a positive difference to more lives than I took. I also loved my team. I just didn’t like them very much at the moment.

And I couldn’t fly home to deal with them either. Not when I’d promised to help Cole on this trip. Apparently, Delroy had needed seventeen stitches, so fuck knew what he’d been trying to do to my leg. He’d practically sawed his palm in half.

Damn, I was bored. So freaking bored. On the plus side, my leg felt pretty good this afternoon, but on the minus side, I was stuck on this boat for another five days. First thing this morning, before we left for survey spot number two, I’d swum across to Penguin Rock to explore, which had taken roughly five minutes, and then I’d gotten chased by a platoon of pigs. Did you know pigs could swim? Neither did I until today.

Anyhow, I was sequestered on the Crosswind . Cole was sitting on the swim platform, waiting for Jon and Witt to come up from a dive, so I meandered down to the saloon, where there was a shelf full of books. But I got distracted by a map laid out on the table. It showed the islands of San Gallicano, even the tiny ones like Penguin Rock. The key was written in Dr. Blaylock’s hand, which figured. The boys were using laptops. Blaylock was old school.

The route for past survey areas was dotted in red, and new locations this year were in blue. Cole said the charter was a week longer this year as the project had been extended. The red line curved from Emerald Shores to Starlight Reef, then on to Spice Island, Malavilla, Valentine Cay, and Treasure Atoll, wiggling past minor islands on the way. Finally, the line turned blue and headed for the area around Skeleton Cay.

Last night at dinner, Dr. Blaylock had told me a little about the changes along the way, how some areas had turtles and some didn’t, how there was a strange dead spot near Sarita that nobody had yet been able to explain. Five years ago, the coral had bleached and the fish moved on.

This year, seven new stops had been added, one at Dreadhaven and the rest at smaller land masses. If I recalled correctly, Dreadhaven’s northernmost beach was home to a sunken pirate ship that reappeared every so often when a storm shifted the sands. How did they decide which islands to survey? Dr. Blaylock had given me copies of several of his research papers after dessert last night—printed and bound—so maybe I’d try reading them.

There was a notebook beside the map, handwritten in cursive. Dr. Blaylock’s? There was a drawing of a conch shell on one page, then a few notes.

Today was the first day since the hurricane that I returned. The island stood eerily silent, as if the creatures who survived nature’s fury were still taking in their fate. Palm trees lay on the sand, ripped out by the roots, a dead hawksbill beside them. A young adult, four or five years old. Beneath the surface, the conchs at the breeding ground were fewer in number, but the winds brought a new gift—the Spanish Dancer.

Poor turtle. A Spanish Dancer was a frilly sea slug, I knew that much. A nudibranch. I’d seen one years ago when I took a vacation to Egypt with Bastian, and sea slugs were a hell of a lot prettier than their terrestrial counterparts.

She was shallower than I would have expected, and I caught just a brief glimpse of her, but there was no doubting her beauty. The seagrass rippled in?—

“Hey.”

I turned to see Witt dripping in the doorway. “Hi.”

“What’re you doing?” His tone was suspicious. Accusatory.

“Trying to see where we’re going next. How did you pick the places we’re stopping at?”

“Don’t ask me,” he said with a shrug. “Clint and Jon came up with the plan. I’m just the muscle.” Witt laughed and flexed, and okay, he did have biceps. Then he tried drying his hands on his wet shorts—didn’t work—and strode past me to pick up the journal. “Jon was looking for this earlier. Guess I should give it to him.”

“Careful, don’t show too much enthusiasm. You’re just here for the free vacation?”

“Yeah, but don’t tell Dr. Blaylock. You?”

“Same. Don’t tell Cole.”

He laughed again, this time conspiratorially, but there was something bugging me. Something not quite right.

“I heard you went to school with Clint?”

“Right, since we were kids.”

“And Jon?”

“Didn’t meet him until last year. They went to college; I went into the US Navy.”

The way he said it, he meant for me to be impressed, so I figured I’d play along .

“Cool. So were you, like, on a boat? Did you go to many places? I remember a guy came to my school to talk about careers, and he said it was a great way to see the world.”

“Yeah, I travelled all over. Guam, Hawaii, Japan, Russia, Korea.”

Wait, Cole told me that Witt was in the Navy for three years. Where had he heard that? Five deployments was unusual in such a short time period.

“That’s amazing. Was it dangerous?”

“Yeah, sometimes. One time, we had to rescue this hostage from North Korea and—” He paused and glanced behind him. “Forget I said that. It was real hush-hush.”

And real bullshit.

There had only been two hostage situations in DPRK in the past several years. I knew that because Priest had been called to consult, and in the end, they’d both been resolved by diplomatic means. Plus there was no way a regular enlisted would be involved in an op as complex as a hostage rescue in hostile territory. That was the SEALs’ domain, and this kid was no SEAL.

Oh, but wait…

“After that, they wanted me for the SEALs, but I turned them down.”

Nah, dude, that wasn’t how the SEALs worked. They didn’t headhunt you. Okay, so I was special ops and I’d been recruited in a slightly unorthodox manner, but that was different. There was no standard path to the point teams the way there was to the SEALs. Next, he was gonna tell me he’d been offered a place in DEVGRU.

“Why would you turn them down?” I asked. “Aren’t the SEALs, like, the best of the best?”

“Yeah, but they don’t get paid shit.”

This guy was a real dick. Didn’t he understand there were more important things in life than money? Yes, I had a healthy bank account and enough disposable income to pay for luxuries like Marcel and my money pit of a Porsche, but I could earn ten times more if I went freelance.

“I suppose that’s a reason. So, what do you do now?”

“I invest.”

“Invest? In what?”

“Projects that have potential.” He gave a smarmy little smile. This idiot was insufferable. “I’ve been trading crypto for a while.”

Come back, Delroy, all is forgiven.

“And it’s going well?”

“Yeah, I’m making plenty.”

More bullshit. If he were making more than a Navy SEAL, he’d be relaxing in an overwater bungalow in Bora Bora, not tagging along with Dr. Blaylock. And he wouldn’t be living in a pool house either. Sure, some money-conscious folks might do that to save cash, but a man like Witt with his braggadocio and his knockoff Tommy Hilfiger shorts—and I knew they were knockoff because the Hilfiger part was spelled with two Gs—was unlikely to be frugal.

“Good for you.”

I squeezed past him out of the saloon and headed for the cabin I shared with Cole. It was the smallest double on the boat—Dr. Blaylock was in the master stateroom at the bow, Clint had the cabin beside it, while Jon and Witt each had two bunk beds in their rooms. Delroy’s single berth was empty, awaiting his arrival in five days’ time.

In our cabin, Cole had left a folder with the paperwork, including the manifest and photocopies of everyone’s passports. I snapped a picture of Witt Andrew Haviland’s, then added Clint Vermont Baker’s and Jon Robert Marston’s documents too. I sent the whole lot to Ari with a note.

If you won’t update me on the Ace investigation, could you at least run background checks on these three? I’m stuck on the boat with them, and I’m curious.

J

Then I flopped onto the bed, closed my eyes, and counted imaginary bullet holes until I fell asleep.