Going Dark (Thorn Mysteries) (21 page)

“Jesus, Thorn,” Flynn said. “I thought you were good at this.”

Pauly looked Thorn’s way, his mouth widening a fraction. A cramped smile. “Nice try, hotshot.”

“It was the wind,” Flynn said.

“Sure it was,” said Pauly. “The wind.”

Hand over hand Thorn was dragging in the net when a flats boat idled into view from the opening of Pumpkin Creek, then with a roar, it rose up on plane and in a handful of seconds was veering alongside him, its wake rocking Thorn’s kayak so hard he had to grip the sides to keep from capsizing.

Wearing a broad-brimmed sunhat, Leslie Levine stood at the wheel of her Whipray. The bow of Thorn’s kayak scraped hard against its sleek white hull. She throttled back and maneuvered the boat out of range.

On her face was the kind of unruffled look you’d expect from some forgiving kindergarten teacher who dealt every hour of every working day with the shortcomings of her wayward charges.

“Any luck?” she said.

Wally opened his mouth to rat Thorn out, but Pauly cut a stony look his way and he halted.

“We’re just getting started,” Thorn said.

“There’s plenty of bait around,” said Flynn. “Looks promising.”

“So there’s no trouble, Pauly?”

Pauly looked at her and grunted. Nothing he couldn’t handle.

“I’ll get the grill ready,” she said. “We’ll have a cookout.”

Wally was staring at each of them in turn, trying to decipher the meaning of this moment. Not sure what he was missing. Thorn was just as mystified. Pauly was giving him a pass. A simple word from him and Thorn was done.

“You need me to stick around, make sure everything goes smoothly?”

“Got it covered,” Pauly said.

As Leslie moved her hand to the throttle, out in the western sky, breaking through the thickening clouds, a single-engine Cessna headed toward them, swooping low, thundering only a few hundred feet overhead, then continuing a mile or so out over the Atlantic and circling back for another pass over the island before it headed back in the direction it had come.

Leslie watched it disappear, then took another look at the four of them and kicked the skiff up on plane and roared off.

In the next twenty minutes, as the tide was coming in, Thorn nabbed a dozen glassy minnows and two stray ballyhoo. He handed out the bait and they fished until twilight.

Slow at first, until they found a rocky patch with a hungry school of gray snappers and some white grunts and a good-size spotted sea trout. Before they were done, even Wally caught a lane snapper. A dozen fish in all.

Paddling back in the gathering darkness, Thorn drew alongside Pauly.

Around them, in the thickening dusk, the bay glowed bluish silver as if the water were hoarding the last seconds of daylight within its depths.

“So this was a test,” Thorn said. “See if I’d try to make a run for it.”

“She wants to trust you,” Pauly said. “She thinks you’re hot shit.”

“Why’d you give me a pass?”

“We need six people to make this work. Don’t want it to fall apart.”

Pauly drew his paddle out of the water, looking Thorn in the eyes as they coasted side by side.

“Plus I’m sick of those turkey subs.”

They stroked in unison for a while.

“Good thing we caught fish then,” Thorn said.

Not looking over, Pauly said, “Must be your lucky day.”

TWENTY-FIVE

SOMETHING WAS MISSING WITH THE
sex. Like that Chinese-food thing, gulping down a five-course meal, ten minutes later he was famished. His body yearning for nourishment.

Or maybe Nicole had just revved up Sheffield’s appetite so high, now he was hungry all the time. He couldn’t tell. And sure as hell didn’t want to believe anything was wrong. Didn’t want to analyze and overthink the whole thing and destroy it.

Probably it was just his own free-floating doubt, not sure what a smart, attractive lady such as her found so appealing about a man nearly twice her age, a man who had just huffed toward the finish line of yet another romp.

Lolling side by side in the mangled sheets, they stared up at the ceiling.

It was Saturday, early afternoon. The beach in full weekend roar. Fifty yards away on the wide stretch of white sand, competing music blared. Rap, rock, salsa. Laughter, the rolling crash of surf. Out his window he could see some idiot throwing bread up into a screaming cyclone of gulls.

“You need to paint something up there.” Nicole pointed at the white plaster. “Clouds or stars or the moon.”

“On the ceiling?”

“Or maybe a mirror.”

“You find my ceiling boring?”

“I wouldn’t say that. But it wouldn’t hurt to jazz it up.”

“I’m pretty jazzed up as it is. I think I just topped my personal best.”

“You keep records on your sexual exploits?”

“Don’t you?”

“Oh, great. Are we about to have the sexual-history conversation? Compare our lifetime totals?”

“You mean I’m not your first?”

“What matters, Frank, is being the last.”

He liked that. Something to shoot for. The one that didn’t get away.

More staring at the ceiling.

“A mirror would be nice,” he said. “I could see all your angles at once.”

“I like to think I’ve got more angles than that.”

“Oh, really? Angles I haven’t seen?”

“Angles nobody’s seen.”

“You going to show me? Or they off-limits?”

“This is why I don’t like postcoital conversations.”

“All our conversations are postcoital.”

Droning overhead, one of those slow-moving planes hauling a banner.

“A mirror up there, I’d always be worried it’d come crashing down.”

“You worry about things like that, Frank? You have anxiety issues I should know about?”

“I’ve made a pretty good career out of worrying.”

“Maybe we should just lie here and be quiet.”

“What’d you mean about the angles?”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about. Frank-the-interrogator, can’t shut it off, got to keep digging. We should just shut up till the rush subsides and we’re normal again. Right now we’re too naked. We shouldn’t talk.”

Can you be too naked? Frank wanted to say, but didn’t.

He was silent, staring at the white ceiling. Wondering what they’d just been talking about. How it had turned testy so fast. Trying to run it back, hear it again, tease out the hidden messages. But he was too fuzzy-headed, too mellow. But still, something was off. Something he couldn’t name, didn’t want to name. If he could only shut down that part of his brain, the part that was always itching to go one layer deeper, peel the onion all the way to the pearl, he’d be a happier guy. A different guy, too. Dumber, but happier.

They napped for a while. Frank woke and watched her sleeping. Then lay back and went away for half an hour. A lazy Saturday.

When he woke again, she was in the tiny living room watching tennis on his TV. Wearing one of his T-shirts, an old, paint-spattered one he’d picked up in Cabo San Lucas years ago.

He stood in the doorway and watched. It was some tennis match. Two blond banshees screaming when they hammered the ball, two different shrieks. One a two-part who-hoo and the other more like an orgasmic wail.

He went back into the bedroom, pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. The bureau drawer was still open from Nicole’s helping herself. She hadn’t asked where he kept his T-shirts. She must’ve looked through his drawers till she found the one she was wearing. Making herself right at home at the Silver Sands, room 106. Which Frank didn’t mind at all.

“You a tennis fan?”

“It’s the channel that was on.”

“Play any sports?”

“StairMaster. Is that a sport?”

“If it makes you sweat, I think it qualifies.”

“Well, if that’s all it takes, then August in Miami, standing around in the shade, that’s an Olympic event.”

She looked back at him and gave him a smile.

“Something I wanted to show you,” he said.

“Oh, good. I was afraid I’d seen everything you have.”

Frank retrieved his briefcase from the bedroom, laid it on the coffee table, and dug out a manila folder.

“Couldn’t get NSA to cooperate with satellite imagery, and Miami PD wanted too much for their drone. Anyway, that fricking thing is so loud they’d hear it coming a mile away. So one of my guys, Sanford, he’s got his own Cessna, he did a flyover yesterday. Slid these under the door this morning while we were otherwise engaged.”

Frank laid the stack of photos out on the console seat, dealt the top one.

Four black kayaks trailed a white fishing skiff, Prince Key’s eastern coastline visible at the edge of the shot.

“Four guys and someone in a floppy hat driving the flats boat.”

“So?”

Frank put that one on the bottom of the stack and held up the next.

The island itself from about two or three hundred feet.

“Sanford came in lower than I wanted. Not far over the trees.”

“It’s out of focus.”

“The other ones are better.”

They looked through the rest of the shots. One small tent was on the island, and a much larger one, a single solar panel, and other structures.

“Looks like an obstacle course,” Frank said. “Like they’re training for something. A wall, a balance beam, old tires for agility drills.”

She was silent.

“And the kayaks, that’s interesting.”

“What about them?”

“You ever seen a black kayak?”

“Why? Is that unusual?”

“I’d say so,” he said. “Normally they’re bright red, yellow, orange, colors you can see from a distance, so you don’t get run down by speedboats. Black is rare. It suggests to me they may have done a custom paint job, picked black so they can disappear in the dusk or at night.”

“ELF is going to attack the nuke plant at night? That’s what you’re suggesting? Converge in kayaks.”

“I’m just thinking out loud, brainstorming. What’s wrong? This is your operation. You don’t seem very engaged.”

“It
was
my operation. Now I’m not sure.”

“You think I’m running off with it.”

“You had a plane do a flyover and didn’t tell me. You talked to some croc expert, you interviewed Killibrew about the Levine case, and the other detective assigned to Bendell’s murder. Is there anything else you haven’t told me about my case?”

“These photos,” Frank said. “It looks to me like they might be doing some kind of maneuver. Training exercises.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Sheffield looked at the tennis players, whooping at every shot. “There’s an agent from NCIS coming in tonight. We’ll be meeting at the downtown Four Seasons, eight o’clock. My SWAT guys will be there, and this agent is bringing his guys. He wants to hit Prince Key tomorrow night.”

“Jesus, Frank. You’re just dropping this on me. This fait accompli. No discussion, nothing. What the hell is going on?”

“The ante has just gone up.”

“Quit playing with me, Frank. What’s this about?”

“You ever hear of a chemical compound called HpNC?”

She stared at him, her lips pressed into a flat line as if she were holding back a spew of curses.

“It’s an experimental high explosive,” Frank said. “Makes dynamite and TNT, C-4, Semtex, look like firecrackers.”

Nicole pushed the hair from her face and stared at Frank.

“This NCIS guy is going to fill us in tonight. Now you’re up-to-date.”

She said thanks, but it didn’t sound as if her heart was in it.

*   *   *

Six calls, no pickups. Claude was sitting at the bar at his favorite strip club, Stir Crazy, staring up at the skinny girl with angel wings tattooed on her shoulder blades, watching her hump a silver pole.

He dialed Leslie’s number again, and again got nothing. Straight to voice mail. He clicked off. He’d already left three messages. He tried another text, sending the phone number Nicole had given him, the traitor working with the FBI. Then typing
Call this #. This guy’s a spy. Off him.

While he was typing, another hoochie mama came up to Claude and pressed her bare boobs against his arm.

“Nice look,” she said. Reaching out, toying with the tips of his bolo tie.

“My fashion statement.”

“Yeah? What’s it say about you?”

“I’m not your average cowboy.”

“You look lonely, hun. You want a private dance?”

Claude leaned back and checked her out. Tight body, gym rat. Not more than twenty-five. Pretty brown eyes, kinky black hair gelled smooth.

Claude pressed
SEND
and heard the text whoosh away.

“Three dances,” Claude said. “Twenty bucks.”

“Dream on, sweetie.”

“Twenty-five.”

“That’ll get you one.”

“It’s a long time till payday, sweet cheeks. I’m living on PB and J as it is.”

“Time’s are tough all over,” the stripper said.

“How ’bout two for thirty?”

The girl frowned and her eyes strayed down the bar to the next chump.

“Thirty for two, and I’ll give you a tip up front,” Claude said.

“Yeah? What kind of tip?”

“Floss every day, and you won’t be spitting out all those stupid gold teeth when you turn thirty.”

Claude slid off the stool, walked toward the exit, the stripper shouting at him that he smelled like a bucket of shit.

He stood in the parking lot next to Dixie Highway, thinking about Sheffield and Nicole. Thinking about them together last night and today. Then he bent his head to the side and sniffed the shoulder of his checked shirt.

Hell, the stripper was right. He did smell pretty ripe. Maybe it was only his imagination but he believed he detected a lingering trace of Marcus Bendell, the human smoke bomb.

Which gave him an idea.

TWENTY-SIX

AT EIGHT ON SATURDAY EVENING,
Magnuson and his men were waiting for Sheffield in the sixth-floor conference room of the downtown Four Seasons. Paneled walls, halogen lighting turned high, four long tables squared up in the center, covered with white tablecloths, each place setting with a bottle of Evian water, a leatherbound notebook, and a laptop computer.

Special Agent Magnuson was about Sheffield’s height but ran twenty pounds lighter and maybe ten years younger. As gaunt and sturdy as a Tour de France bike racer. He had white-blond hair and his pale blue eyes were probing and stern. Lips so thin, his mouth resembled a knife slit.