Killers and Keepers Read online

  Mary reached up and grasped the toe rail. "We going to bring the dinghy aboard?"

  "May as well."

  She nodded and climbed up onto Island Dream's side deck, the dinghy's painter in her hand. I unclamped our little outboard from the transom and lifted it onto the big boat's side deck. Then I climbed aboard with the dinghy's stern line.

  We lifted the inflatable dinghy over the lifelines and set it on the foredeck. Mary opened the air valves and began removing the floorboards while I took the outboard back to the stern rail and clamped it to the bracket where we stored it.

  As I bent over to reach the switch to start the diesel, I saw that the padlock which normally secured the companionway hatch was missing. I remembered locking up before we left. Somebody broke in while we were ashore. Were they still aboard? My question was answered when I heard the lift-out panel in the middle of the cabin sole creak as someone stepped on it.

  Thievery wasn't all that unusual, but a thief wouldn't have put the drop boards back in the companionway and closed the hatch. Somebody was below deck, waiting to ambush us.

  I felt in the pocket of my shorts and pulled out the padlock we used to secure the dinghy when we were ashore. I hooked the lock through the hasp on the companionway hatch. The intruders below deck were locked in, now. I started the diesel and went forward to help Mary stow the dinghy. As we rolled it, squeezing the last of the air out, I leaned toward her and whispered into her ear.

  "Somebody broke in while we were gone. They're waiting below deck; I locked the companionway, just in case. Let's get out of here before we open it."

  She nodded. From the corner of my eye, I saw a man come out from the cuddy cabin of the speedboat off our bow. He stood in the opening, a frown on his face, as he watched us tie the dinghy down in front of our mast. He continued to stare as Mary went back to the helm and we began to retrieve our anchor.

  By the time I brought the anchor aboard and lashed it to the bow roller, we were no more than a few yards from the speedboat. I gave the man a friendly wave as I stood up. He nodded, still frowning.

  "Good morning," I said. "Do you speak English?"

  He nodded again, glaring at me.

  "Did you see who broke into our boat? Were you here then?"

  He shook his head and shrugged, leaving me to wonder whether he understood my question. I waved again and went back to the cockpit to join Mary.

  "You think they came from that boat?" she asked, her voice low.

  "We'll know soon enough."

  "I'm surprised they haven't tried to get out."

  "Yeah, me too. I'm sure they weren't expecting us to leave without going below first. Once we're out in open water, we'll head up into the wind and shut down the diesel like we're about to raise the sails. Then I'll go below and see what's what. You can go up on the bow like you're going to raise the jib. The forward hatch isn't latched. I left it open just a crack for ventilation while we were ashore."

  She nodded her head. "It's still open about a half inch; I noticed that when we were stowing the dinghy."

  "Right. Once you're in position, I'll open the companionway and go below. You drop through the forward hatch, and we'll surround them. They'll expect me, but they won't be looking toward the bow — not if I make a ruckus at the companionway."

  "You think there's more than one?"

  I shrugged. "No sign of how many, but it's safer to assume there are two. That speedboat that was off our bow just retrieved its anchor. Looks to be following us at a distance."

  14

  An hour later, we were three miles south of Îlet du Gosier. Mary and I were both in the cockpit, and we could no longer see the speedboat that followed us out of the anchorage. There were no other boats within a mile of us.

  "Ready to meet our passengers?" I asked, leaning to whisper in Mary's ear.

  She nodded and went up on the foredeck as I turned the bow into the wind. I slowed the engine to idle speed and locked the helm. The thrust of the engine and the wind were balanced; Island Dream was holding her position.

  When I saw Mary grasp the edge of the forward hatch, I unhooked the open padlock from the hasp on the companionway hatch. Whoever was below knew something was about to happen, since we stopped the boat. There was no point in stealth on my part, but we were hoping that Mary's entrance through the forward hatch would be unnoticed.

  Grabbing a filet knife from the sheath fastened to the steering pedestal, I pushed the sliding hatch cover open and lifted out the drop boards. At a glance, I didn't see anybody below. The door into the forward cabin was open. By bending over, I could see that no one was in there, nor was anyone visible in the main cabin. That meant they were hiding against the aft bulkhead, standing on the sides of the companionway ladder.

  I turned around and backed down the ladder, facing the direction from which I expected their attack. I wasn't surprised when the one on my left charged at me, knocking me down. He followed through, pinning my right hand, the one holding my knife. The other one stepped around the two of us as we struggled for control of the knife. Once he was past us, he knelt and put a pistol to my head. I relaxed my grip on the knife, letting it fall to the cabin sole.

  "Tell the bitch to come below," the one with the pistol said, just as Mary cracked him over the head with a bronze winch handle.

  She snatched his pistol as he fell. The man on top of me was reaching for the knife I dropped when she shot him in his shoulder. I rolled out from under him and got to my feet.

  "Freeze," Mary ordered.

  He stopped moving, and I dragged the unconscious one to the side.

  "Want to question them, or just kill them and get it over with?" she asked.

  I shrugged. "There's still the one in the boat." I nudged the man she shot with my foot. "You got a way to call him?"

  He glared at me and didn't say anything. Mary handed me the pistol.

  "Cover me," she said, bending to pick up the knife. "You speak English?"

  She rested the flat of the blade on his cheek, sliding the point up until it was digging into the fold of his lower eyelid. "Answer me."

  "Yeah, I speak English."

  "Good. You want me to cut you up, or will you answer a few questions?"

  "I don't know nothing. The man in the boat, he gonna kill you. Better you let me go, or you die screamin' after we finish wit' you."

  "You're scaring me," Mary said. "That makes me want to hurt you. You like having two eyes?" She put a little pressure on the knife, and a trickle of blood flowed from his eyelid.

  "Whatever you do to me, we gonna do to you, only worse."

  "I don't think so. You're wasting my time." She jerked her hand, and he screamed. She slapped him hard on the side of the head as blood poured from his slashed cheek. "Shut up."

  She waited until he stopped whimpering. "That's just a little cut to let you know I'm serious. If we let you live, the scar will make you look like a tough guy."

  She put the blade's tip back under his eyelid. "Next time, I will take the eye. That usually works, so I guess it must be really painful. But there's always a second eye, in case the first one doesn't do the trick. I'll count to three. One, two — "

  "Okay, okay. What do you want to know?"

  "Who sent you?"

  "Randall Travis."

  "Tell me why Randall Travis sent you."

  "We s'posed to find the boat and them girls. Travis say you take the girls. Peter an' Joseph say — "

  "Who are Peter and Joseph?"

  "They run Seaduction for Travis. They tell him you take the girls while they eatin' dinner, an' he tell them to kill you an' get the girls back. Las' t'ing he hear from them, they about to go on this boat, Island Dream. He don' know where they are, so he tell all the men look for this boat. They see you go in by Îlet à Cochons, and Travis sent us to get you."

  "How do you talk to Travis?"

  The man gestured at his unconscious companion. "He got the sat phone."

  "Once you capture us
, what are you supposed to do with us?"

  "Make you tell us who you workin' for, an' where Seaduction is. We s'posed to get the girls back, then we kill you."

  "Tell me about the man in the speedboat."

  "He gon' pick us up when we call."

  "On the sat phone?"

  "Yeah."

  "And where is Randall Travis?"

  "St. Lucia."

  "That's a big island. Where in St. Lucia?"

  "The Sundowner Club, down by the freighter docks in Castries. He own it, got him a place to live upstairs."

  Mary looked over at me. "Can you think of anything else?"

  "Let me check out the sat phone," I said.

  "Give me their pistol first."

  I handed it to her, wondering what she planned. Still holding the point of the knife in the fold of her victim's lower eyelid, she stuck the pistol in her waist band.

  "Okay," she said. "Now get the phone."

  I patted down the unconscious man and found the phone in one of the pockets of his cargo shorts. Turning it on, I waited for it to boot up. While it was searching for a satellite, I scrolled to the directory. There were three numbers.

  "Which number is for Travis?" I asked.

  "The firs' one Travis. The secon' one the sat phone on the speedboat, for pick us up. The las' one for the Sundowner Club."

  "Have you got a signal down here, or do we need to go on deck?" Mary asked.

  "We've got a signal, right through the fiberglass. Nice phone; works better than ours."

  "Good. Maybe we should get one like it. Is that guy I hit still alive?"

  "Yes. Why?"

  "Curious, that's all," she asked, giving the knife a little twitch.

  "What do you think?" I asked. "Time for these boys to go home?"

  She nodded. "Here's what's going to happen." She put her face down close to the man on the cabin sole. "My friend will call the man in the boat and hold the phone so you can talk to him. It will be on the speaker, so you better hope your friend in the boat doesn't say the wrong thing, okay? If the number is wrong, or if you say anything stupid, we'll mute the phone and I'll take your eye. Then we'll try again after you stop screaming. You understand?"

  "Yeah."

  "When he answers, tell him to come alongside and tie his boat to ours. Invite him to come on down below so he can have a turn with the bitch when you and your friend are finished with her. Tell him the man talked, and you'll need his help to throw both of us over the side once you've all had your fun with me. Got it?"

  "Yeah."

  "You sure? You know what will happen if you mess up."

  "Yeah. I got it."

  "Sure you don't have any questions?"

  "What happens to us once he's here?"

  "Depends on whether the three of you can satisfy me. We'll tie this old fart up and let him watch. If you boys are any good, we'll waste him and I'll go home with you. You ready for that?"

  "Yeah."

  "Place the call, old fart, and don't forget who's got the pistol." Mary patted the Glock in her waistband. "Behave yourself, and you might get lucky. I've got my doubts about whether these three are up to my standards, but who knows?"

  The call went as planned. I opened the portlights along the sides of the cabin and took the pistol from Mary's waistband. Two minutes later, the speedboat came alongside with a bump. After a few seconds, the engines went silent.

  The man on the cabin sole in front of Mary said, "But — "

  "One more word and you're blind," she said.

  I waited until the man from the speedboat was about to climb aboard Island Dream. When both of his hands gripped the top lifeline, I shot him.

  "Stand up," Mary said, twitching the knife once before she pulled it away from the man's face. She backed away as he got to his feet, giving me a clear shot at him.

  "Okay," I said. "Get back in your speedboat. Try anything, and I'll blow out your other shoulder."

  He turned and climbed up the companionway ladder. When he reached the cockpit, I spoke.

  "Freeze."

  He stopped in mid-stride.

  "Face away from me and take one step toward the helm."

  He complied, and I climbed into the cockpit. "When I tell you, go get in the speedboat. No fast moves. Understand?"

  "Yeah. What about Henri?" he asked, nodding toward the unconscious man below.

  "He's next. You get in the boat now. Stay away from the controls, or I'll shoot you. Understand?"

  "Yeah." He climbed down into the boat, watching me the whole time.

  Mary was in the cockpit with me by the time he was in the speedboat.

  "Can you take a message back to Travis?" she asked.

  "Yeah. What's the message?"

  She took the pistol from my hand and shot him between the eyes. "I'll give you a hand with the last one," she said.

  The two of us dragged the unconscious man up into the cockpit. We paused for a few seconds to catch our breath and then dragged him onto the side deck and rolled him into the speed boat.

  "Does he look suicidal?" Mary asked.

  "He does to me," I said.

  "That's what I thought," she said, climbing down into the speedboat.

  She wrestled the unconscious man to a sitting position against the side of the speedboat. She wiped the pistol with the tail of his shirt and then put it in his limp right hand.

  Wrapping her own right hand over his, she grabbed a handful of his hair with her left hand. Pulling his head back, she put the pistol under his chin and pulled the trigger.

  Untangling her fingers from the pistol, she looked up at me. "What do you think?"

  "It's good enough. Let's fire up their engines and send them out offshore. The longer it is before they're found, the less likely anybody will be to notice discrepancies in the forensics."

  Mary turned the keys, cranking the twin outboards. Locking the helm straight ahead, she shifted the outboards into forward and bumped the throttles up enough to move both boats into the wind at a few knots.

  She scrambled back aboard Island Dream and said, "Use our helm to get both boats on whatever course you want. Let me know when you're happy with it, and I'll cut them loose."

  Two minutes later, we were raising our sails as we watched the speed boat making five or six knots to the east-southeast. We trimmed the sails for a broad reach on the port tack, laying a course that would take us just north of Les Saintes and south of Basse Terre.

  15

  I was sitting on the leeward cockpit seat, leaning back and steering with my left foot on the rim of the helm. Mary was below deck; she wanted to make sure our visitors didn't leave any trace evidence. Nobody was nearby when we sent them on their final voyage, so it was unlikely that they would be connected with us. Even so, it was better to err on the side of caution, just in case.

  There was still the loose end of the man who was watching us while we were ashore this morning. Travis would call him when he couldn't connect with the three goons he sent to deal with us. We cost him five people, plus the two girls and the boat. He would surely come after us again, if he could find us.

  I was surprised that a crook from St. Lucia was able to field troops in Guadeloupe. The French islands weren't crime-free, but as I mentioned to Mary, they had their own crime syndicate — the Unione Corse, from mainland France — that didn't encourage outsiders to operate on their turf. Travis must be running a big operation if he managed to work with the Unione Corse.

  On a different topic, I realized Mary and I weren't doing a very good job of lying low. Things were quiet as far as Phorcys was concerned, but my former employer was out to kill me. On top of that, there was the puzzle of who hacked the email drop Mary used to communicate with her broker — and why they did it.

  So much for losing ourselves down island now that Travis was breathing down our necks. I was contemplating places off the beaten path where we might hide for a while when Mary joined me in the cockpit.

  "How're you d
oing?" she asked, handing me a steaming mug of coffee.

  "Not bad for an old fart, I guess. Thanks for the coffee."

  She grinned. "You're welcome. You're not really an old fart. I was just messing with that jerk, trying to keep him off balance."

  "Glad to hear you say that." I took a sip of the coffee. "You had me worried for a minute."

  "Oh, stop it, Finn. You knew what I was doing. You played right along."

  "That's so," I said. "We've been working as a team long enough to pick up cues from each other."

  "Speaking of working as a team, let's call Aaron. I want to see if he'll pretend to be me and check the email drop like we talked about. We've still got cell service." She held out the burner phone to me, and I made the call.

  "Finn?"

  "Yes. Good morning."

  "Morning. Mary with you?"

  "I'm here, Aaron."

  "Good. Anything new on your end? I have a little information on Michael Kent unless you have something else, first."

  "A couple of things," I said. "First, we've had another run-in with the traffickers."

  "Okay. Tell me about it."

  We filled him in on our morning.

  "So, whoever this Randall Travis is, he must have a connection with the Unione Corse," I said, wrapping up that story.

  "Sounds that way," Aaron said. "That should make it easier for me to find out about him. Like you said, he's probably not going away. Anything else?"

  "Can we talk about the hacker and the blind drop?" Mary asked.

  "Sure. I don't have anything new on that, but go ahead."

  "I checked in with the broker while we were ashore. Her IT person struck out on tracing the hacker."

  "Yeah, no surprise there. Did she have any further thoughts?"

  "She's puzzled about why anybody would do this; she can't come up with a motive that makes any sense to her, unless it's to flush me out, somehow."

  "I agree with her," Aaron said. "I think we're at a dead end, unless one of you makes a move."

  "That's what I want to talk about. The broker thinks engaging with the hacker would be dangerous."

  Aaron laughed. "Everything you two do is dangerous. But she's right. On the other hand, I can't see him just letting it drop. Damned if you do; damned if you don't. You have any fresh ideas on how to deal with him?"