26. Caro

Three and a half years had passed since I last had this creepy-crawly feeling under my skin. Then, I'd been tiptoeing around Aiden's home in Malibu, waiting for criminal investigators from the IRS to act. It took them months. Months where I feared every day that he'd find out what I'd done and kill me.

When I started dating him, I'd been in a bad place. My mom had just died, and I was trying to deal with the debt collectors who wanted their pound of flesh as well as earn enough money to survive. The job at AquaLux Yachts had been the answer to my prayers, or so I thought. And when Aiden, the handsome, charismatic COO, started paying me attention, bringing little gifts and staying late to talk, I'd been flattered. He'd offered to assist with the legalities, and I'd been so numb at the time, so overwhelmed by grief, that I'd accepted. He gained access to everything. My mind, my body, all those numbers and pieces of paper that make us who we are.

A year passed before my head cleared enough to understand what he'd done, and by then, it was too late. I was trapped. And I also realised there were shortcomings in the company's accounts. Sales being underreported, expenses being over-claimed. Huge "commission payments" being made to people who didn't exist. Incorrect tax deductions. Weird investments in cryptocurrency that made no commercial sense. I was only a management accountant, but controls were lax, and my login details gave me access to areas of the accounting system I shouldn't have been able to see. As home life became unbearable, I spent more time at work, and a bunch of that time was spent copying evidence to a cloud drive so Aiden couldn't delete it. If there was one plus point, it was that he never thought a woman would be smart enough to bring him down.

And he was right. Two senior finance staff took the hardest fall, and his father went to prison as well, but Aiden managed to wriggle out of the charges by blaming others. The FC had gone rogue. The FD should have had better oversight. His father was the one who'd signed the accounts. A chunk of the money had disappeared offshore, and Aiden was left a free man with access to what I estimated was a million or two in embezzled funds.

Which was why I could never be free.

I'd gone from being trapped in a luxury mansion to being trapped in a turtle sanctuary. At least the people on Valentine Cay were nicer. Franklin was the closest thing to family that I had now, although Knox… Knox. With every day we spent together, I knew it would be harder to say goodbye.

But he'd be out of here as soon as Luna was released. They couldn't stay. Some freak was watching her, and I honestly couldn't blame her for being terrified. I was scared too. Scared of Aiden, scared of the people who kept killing turtles, scared of the ghoul waiting in the darkness.

My phone buzzed.

Vince

Nobody came for the boat. We're going to have to leave this now—there isn't the manpower for an extended surveillance operation.

What was I meant to say? He'd been watching for three full days, and if Knox's theory about a leak was correct, the poachers weren't coming back anyway. I didn't want to believe Vince was the culprit, but we couldn't ask him who else he'd told about our theories in case he was guilty. There hadn't been any more shark sightings either—Jubilee had been keeping watch.

I looked down at Lucky in her pool and sighed. She deserved to live in peace without being hunted by humans at every opportunity.

"What happened?" Knox asked from behind me.

"How do you know anything happened?"

"I can see your reflection in the water, and you look as if someone killed your kitten."

"Vince is calling off the surveillance."

"We were expecting that."

"I know, but it still feels…"

"Disappointing?"

"And frustrating. We have no more leads, and a man I thought of as a friend might have been lying to me for years."

"Actually, we have one more lead."

"We do?"

Knox held up his phone. "Our cyber team found the IP addresses for several of the shark posts."

"Really?" IP addresses were linked to a physical address, weren't they? "You mean we know where they live?"

"Not exactly. These assholes seem to be fond of drinking—most of the messages were posted from two bars on Ilha Grande, and a handful were posted from a third bar on Malavilla."

Most of the bars and restaurants in San Gallicano had free Wi-Fi. Some folks didn't have internet access at home, and tourists didn't want to pay expensive data fees, so the establishments with no Wi-Fi were usually emptier. Those were the ones I favoured on the rare occasions I ate out. It wasn't as if I had friends back home to keep in touch with, and the news just depressed me anyway.

"Which bars?"

"Bar Tropicana and Blue Horizon on Ilha Grande, and Shipwrecked on Malavilla. Maybe one of them will have security cameras."

"Shipwrecked is a dive, so there won't be any cameras there. But Bar Tropicana and Blue Horizon are better. Not great, but they don't water down the drinks, and you probably won't get food poisoning if you eat a burger from their menus."

Knox brought my hand to his lips and kissed my knuckles. "I wanted to take you out somewhere fancy for our second date, but would you settle for a vaguely edible burger? I'll hold your hair back if you need to puke afterward."

My hero. I had to laugh, even though I was worried about leaving the island. "Will it be safe?"

"I'll keep you safe, baby, I promise."

"What about Luna? Don't you need to stay here?"

"I'll speak with Ryder. He'll be okay on his own for a few hours, but you're right—we're thin on the ground. I talked with our boss earlier, and she's agreed to send another guy to help as soon as he finishes with his current job. We just need to hold out until then."

"Another bodyguard?"

"Technically, he's more of a sniper, but he has a broad skillset."

"I'm not sure he'll get a permit for a sniper gun. Don't quote me, but I think they're banned here."

"We'll work within the rules." Knox kissed my forehead. He did that often now, almost as if he couldn't help it. "If we take Bar Tropicana, do you think Stacey would go to Blue Horizon?"

"We should go to Blue Horizon, not Stacey. The bartender there is a real creep."

"If he makes any lewd comments, I can't be held responsible for my actions."

"I can look after myself. The last time I went there, he might have accidentally-on-purpose groped my ass, so I might have accidentally-on-purpose slammed a glass down on his fingers."

Vince had been buying the drinks that night, and when the bartender began yelling about assault, Vince had been left in an awkward position. We hadn't been back there since.

"Good work," Knox said.

"Thanks."

Damn, I really, really liked this man. If I'd met him right after I finished college, if he'd been the one to help me in the wake of my mom's death, how different would my life be now? My eyes prickled at the thought of what might have been, but I blinked the tears away.

The past was the past, and all I had left was the future.

* * *

"I take you to the best places, baby."

Blue Horizon—which sounded more like a consultancy firm than a bar—was even worse than I remembered. The clientele was eighty percent men, and I suspected the women perched on tall stools by the bar were hoping to be paid for their services. Ryder hadn't wanted us to come, and we'd nearly stayed at the sanctuary, but after a long discussion with Knox, he'd relented as long as we were back by nine o'clock. There would be no swimming in the sea for Ryder and Luna tonight.

Reggae music pumped out of hidden speakers, there was a stoned guy passed out in a chair in one corner, and judging by the shards of glass on the table next to us, there had been at least one accident this evening. Or maybe a fight. That was also possible.

"I'm a huge fan of sticky floors," I told Knox.

"And I'm a huge fan of security cameras. Guess they have trouble in this place."

"There are cameras?"

I hadn't seen any, but we'd been here for less than a minute, and I'd been too busy wondering how the woman in the red dress could walk in those shoes. I'd break an ankle if I tried, and I was used to wearing heels. Or at least, I had been in my former life. Tonight, I'd put on sneakers, just in case I needed to run, and I was the only woman in the place wearing jeans.

"Three cameras. Above the bar, by the bathrooms, and on a pole to the left of the entrance. Is that the bartender whose fingers you damaged?"

No, thank goodness. "He must be new."

Knox bought us both drinks—non-alcoholic—and ordered the house special, fat burgers with meat of unknown origin served alongside limp salad and greasy fries. He dug in with gusto while I pushed my food around the plate.

"You're actually going to eat that?" I asked.

"Sure. I've eaten a lot worse."

"Oh, really?"

"When the boss sent us on a survival exercise in Belize, I spent a week eating roasted grubs."

"That's gross."

"If you put enough chilli on them, you honestly can't tell." He lifted the bun off the burger and cut through the middle of the patty. "It's cooked all the way through."

"I think I'll stick with the fries."

As we ate, Knox watched the bartender. He seemed to be in charge, and the two waitresses working with him couldn't have been more than eighteen. One of the girls kept getting molested by the customers, and I wanted to help, but when I moved to get up, Knox put a hand on my arm.

"Time and a place, baby."

"But they're acting so sleazy."

"Not our job tonight." He gave a tiny nod toward the bartender. "It's his."

"I doubt he was employed for his sense of civic duty."

"I'm not so sure about that." Knox lowered his voice. "There's something off about him. And by ‘off,' I mean he's not your typical bartender. Watch carefully. He's either an ex-cop or ex-forces."

"How do you know that?"

"From the way he moves. Originally, I planned to offer an employee a few bucks to get a look at the camera footage, but I'm not sure that'll fly now."

"Because if he was a cop, we can't risk alerting whoever's leaking from the police department?"

"Exactly. I'll take some pictures, and we'll try to find out who he is."

"How will you take photos without him noticing?"

"Smile for the camera, baby."