The Shop (34 page)

At the same moment, Cyril erupted from the water on the opposite side, pulling Cardamone’s legs out from under him—just as Jolie shot again.

She’d hit Cardamone, but not in the head as she’d expected. Cardamone grabbed at his chest—Kevlar—and he kicked backwards at the same time, catching Cyril in the jaw. Kicked again, connecting hard, Cyril slipping back, sinking into the water, clawing for the boat with the bad arm still wrapped in duct tape. Zoe tried to clamber back to the safety of the dock, but the skiff surged backwards as Cardamone hit reverse. The dock line grew taut, and the boat heeled around in an unexpected shallow turn, the engine revving to a loud mosquito whine.

Cyril climbed up again, hoisting himself over the gunwale, and Cardamone hit him hard across the face with the paddle. Cyril fell backward into the water, and Jolie saw with horror he was too near the boat’s propellers. She couldn’t see, couldn’t tell what was happening in the churning water. But she could hear his yell. Like the teeth of an electric saw, it tore through her and kept her bolted to the ground. Jolie had a clear shot now, but when she squeezed the trigger the magazine was empty.

Cardamone grabbed the dock line and started sawing through it with his knife, one hand on the wheel, pulling the boat in a circle that Jolie didn’t think was entirely planned. She rushed the boat just as it pulled away, the water churning up silt and bark and foam, the engine screaming now. “Zoe!” she yelled. “Jump.”

Zoe struggled in Cardamone’s grip, her face a mask of pain. Blood leaked from her wound. Using her good hand, she pulled herself to a standing position just as the boat pulled the line free and catapulted forward, as if by slingshot. Zoe fell across the gunwale, her broken arm flopping like a ragdoll’s. Jolie could see the protruding bone.

The boat shot out into the bay.

Jolie heard Franklin yelling, turned to look at him.

He was still holding his side, blood blotting through, his face pale. But he sat at the stern of the family’s old skiff, hand on the tiller, ready to pull away from the dock. Jolie got into the boat. “Head them off at an angle,” she shouted, and they took off.

Spray hit Jolie in the face as she tried to see through the rain and her wind-driven tears. They hit the Carolina skiff’s wake, a thumping, punishing washboard, but Franklin’s steering was steady despite his obvious pain.

Wounded himself, Cardamone was having trouble keeping the boat steady, running a zigzag course taking him back in the direction of the island—only fifty yards out.

Then he seemed to straighten out. It looked like he would get past them, but abruptly he veered back in their direction. Jolie saw why—Zoe was fighting him at the console, her good arm fighting for the wheel, and now the boat was right in their path.

Cardamone tried to turn again, but Franklin held steady until the last moment, when he turned slightly—clipping the Carolina skiff a glancing blow. Little more than a kiss, but Cardamone overcorrected, and the boat leaped in midair, coming down hard.

Everything happened in slow motion, as accidents do. Cardamone seemed to fly up like a jack-in-the-box, smashing against the console with a smack before cartwheeling into the water. Zoe was gone.

Franklin heeled the boat in a tight circle.

Jolie scanned the water, straining for any sign of Zoe.

“Anything?” Franklin’s voice carried the thin edge of panic.

Twenty yards away, Zoe resurfaced, clinging to the flotation cushion. “There she is!”

They needed to get as close to her as possible to see if they could pull her into the boat. Jolie needed to be ready to go in.

As their skiff made another tight circle, Jolie pulled off her shoes and stripped down to her underwear. “You okay, Frank?”

“I’m okay,” he said, although he spoke through gritted teeth. “But where’d she go?”

The cushion was there, but Zoe was gone.

Then she heard thrashing. It was Cardamone, holding on to a life preserver at ten o’clock. His face was a bloody mess.

As she watched, he dropped from view.

Pulled under?

She thought she’d seen—later she would come to believe it was just her imagination—something distinctly un-shark-like in the instant before Cardamone disappeared.

Jolie thought she saw an arm, a dull silver arm, wrapped around Cardamone’s neck.

Cardamone’s head bobbed up once more, his mouth wide open as he screamed. He was yanked under the whitecaps in a bloody froth. He did not resurface.

But Cyril was dead; she’d seen him go under the propellers.

Joe scanned the water again. “Frank, I think she’s over there.” She pointed in the direction they’d drifted from.

Then she spotted her—just a glimpse before the waves closed over her head, not twenty yards away.

Frank maneuvered the boat closer. Jolie stepped on the gunwale and launched herself off the boat.

As Jolie hit the water, panic seized her. She thought about the pond outside her house. In that moment, she was plunged into darkness—terrified. But a calm part of her mind instructed:
Kick to the surface.

And yet she froze. For one terrifying moment, she could not move. She sank like a stone. Her mind told her to kick, to push herself up, but instead, she floundered.

And then Jolie heard the commotion nearby. She could barely see Zoe, but knew that the girl would die if she didn’t come to her rescue. Jolie was a certified lifeguard. She had gone through training at the academy. There was no one else between Zoe and death—just her.

This galvanized her. Jolie kicked hard with her legs and used her arms to push to the surface, broke through, and breathed.

She had no swim goggles to see underwater, and the rain was coming down hard. But she had to get to Zoe.

Zoe was farther away—thirty yards?—gasping as she tried to stay above the waves. Jolie’s training took over. She swam toward Zoe, amazed and heartened by the way her body cleaved the waves, her stroke as economical as a thresher.

Her fear of water gone.

When she reached Zoe, the girl grabbed hold of her neck and shoulders and pushed her downwards, her panic-driven strength amazing. She was a fear machine, desperate to stay above the water, to breathe, and would use any leverage she could to do it. Jolie managed to slip out of her grasp and propel herself downward, coming up to grab the girl from behind. This time she had her in the crook of her elbow, forearm pressed against Zoe’s throat. She scissor-kicked, pulling Zoe in the direction of the boat.

The boat was now only yards away. Careful to keep Zoe faceup out of the water, Jolie fought her way through the swells.

But Zoe still seemed determined to sink them both. Wounded as she was, useless as one of her arms was, she had the strength of a determined wrestler.

Gulping salty water, Jolie spoke in a stern, strong voice. “Hold on to the flotation cushion. We’re going to get you into the boat.” That seemed to shock Zoe out of her battle mode. Her good arm grabbed harder to the cushion.

Frank bent forward and hauled Zoe into the boat. Jolie clung to the gunwale until Frank could bring her up, too.

She was too tired to do it herself.

All her energy was gone. Her arms started to shake.

Jolie watched Frank cover Zoe with his own jacket, and she said a prayer of thanks.

Landry drifted. In the downpour, he was in no danger of being seen. Rain splashed into his face and eyes from above and wavelets washed over him from below. He saw Franklin and Jolie circle around, pick up the girl, and return to the dock.

He let himself drift, because he was drifting in the right direction.

He took stock of his injuries. His right arm was still useable in the water, although he had limited movement. The duct tape helped. His back still felt wrong from the shot he’d taken in the tunnel. The vest had saved his life, but that whole section above his kidney throbbed, and he wondered if there had been a hairline crack in the bone and maybe some internal damage. Nothing he could do about that, so he took inventory of his other injuries. His nose was broken, and he bled profusely from a gash in his scalp. The propeller had nicked him close to his eye. Scalp wounds bled a lot. He managed to rip off his shirt, wrap it around his head, and put pressure on the wound, keeping his hand clamped hard against it. There were other, lesser injuries. He wouldn’t worry about them now. He bobbed up and down in the water as he’d been trained to do at Coronado, his good arm keeping the shirt pressed hard against his head. Up, down, like a cork. Using his legs to kick up, then sinking back down beneath the surface, lower and lower, holding his breath, before kicking back up. He was drifting east, in the direction of the road leading to the peninsula.

A long way to go, but that didn’t bother him. He had been trained for this. He kept up the rhythm. Down, up. Down, up. When he felt the wound had coagulated, he left the shirt tied around his head and treaded water with his arms.

Hours. The rain came down harder. It got darker. Sirens, lights. Cop cars racing down the strand, converging on the island. They were followed by a cavalcade of black SUVs—swift, dark, and silent. A police helicopter flew over, its light just barely missing him, and landed at the compound. He could barely see through the waves and the rain and the dark, but the lights blinked along with the pulsing pain.

He’d drifted too far to the north. The closest shore was due east. In the dark he looked at his watch, at the lighted numbers of the GPS. Changed his trajectory slightly, keeping the dark mass of land in his vision. Knew he could go all day, all night if he had to.

More sirens. More lights. More SUVs. Paramedic trucks, their lights and sirens off. But he was encapsulated in his own little cocoon of self-preservation. Just keep the direction…

When he made landfall, he crawled on his belly into the reeds. He did not move. He would not move until the early hours of the morning.

When three a.m. came and went, he followed the road north. The convenience store he’d spotted on his way to and from the compound was locked up for the night, dark—the only structure on the road. The store dated from the seventies, which was good news for him. An old place like that might have a pay phone on the wall outside.

And it did.

His brother answered on the first ring.

Landry said, “How’s Ocala?”

“It’s great, bro. Beautiful! Seen a couple of yearlings I like. Thanks for the trip.”

“Good.” Landry took a breath. Fatigue was beginning to set in. “Sorry, but you’re gonna have to cut your vacation short,” he said. “I need you to come and get me.”

Jolie Burke walked past banks of television monitors on her way to gate ten. She didn’t have to watch the screen to know what was on. The cable networks were following the story. The former attorney general of the United States had been indicted by a grand jury for his role in the cover-up of the death of Nathan Dial by the vice president of the United States.

Jolie had been a witness for the prosecution.

She’d been warned by the prosecutor that while there had been enough to seek an indictment by the grand jury, there was little direct evidence of the crime. Nathan Dial’s body had never been recovered. While there was enough for a trial, he said, it was unlikely that anyone involved in the events on Indigo Island would spend a day in jail.

Milky sunlight came through the windows as Jolie approached the sitting area near her gate. The televisions continued to blare from every wall. She saw herself, dressed in a good suit, walking down the steps of the U.S. District Court in DC, a forest of microphones held up to her face. Her lawyer pushed their way through the crowd, shielding Jolie, saying, “My client has no comment at this time.” That particular segment had been on cable news for the better part of an hour.

The worst moment for Jolie had come immediately after the indictment had been handed down and the grand jury was dismissed. She’d been ushered unceremoniously through a little-used corridor and had come face-to-face with Kay, Zoe, and Riley.

Kay, who had been crying, saw Jolie. She broke away from the group and walked up to Jolie.

“Why did you have to drag us through all this
now
? Why?”

Zoe came to stand by her mother. She looked mortified. “Mom, she—”

“Saved your life,” Kay said, not taking her eyes from Jolie’s face. “I know. And I thank you for that.” She sounded anything but thankful. “But what’s going to happen to Riley’s
father
? Did you think about that?”

Jolie had no answer.

Kay turned away. Zoe stayed where she was for a moment, torn. Then she followed her mother down the corridor.

The trial would be many months away, but for Jolie, it was over in so many ways. She’d lost her cousin and best friend. She’d lost her livelihood—Skeet had finally found a way to lay her off. And she was a pariah in a county where Haddox money had always greased the wheels and kept businesses, large and small, going.

And what did they have to show for it?
Conspiracy to cover up a crime
. That was the only repercussion from a government-sanctioned killing spree that took the lives of Brienne Cross and so many others.

But there was little to no proof of these crimes.

The two white supremacists who had been charged in the deaths of Brienne Cross and the
Soul Mate
reality show contestants were released due to lack of evidence. Donny Lee Odell claimed he was at the Evergreen Tavern in Salida, Colorado, almost four hours away by car from Aspen, at the time of the murders. Two people had recently come forward to confirm his alibi. Jolie thought it was interesting that they had come forward
now.

The tests of the blood found on the knife at Odell’s home proved inconclusive.

Mike Cardamone’s body was never found. The dead men on Indigo and the dead men in the house on Sea Oats Lane remained unidentified except for the FBI agent, Eric Salter, and a private investigator named Ted Bakus. The three other men in the house might have never existed at all. Their fingerprints were not on record. A raid on Cardamone’s office provided nothing. Everything about the business was legitimate. There were no assassination teams. No names in the databases, no payment records.

Every byte of computer data they could find had been analyzed by an outside consultant.

There was nothing. The computers had been wiped clean, magnetized, and destroyed. Sanitized.

Whitbread Associates owned two jets. The manifests did show that they had been to Panama City and Tallahassee on the day of the firefight on Indigo. Their serial numbers had been recorded.

The FBI would look into it.

Meanwhile, the images of the dead men had been released to the media. But no one came forward.

Media requests to law enforcement on every level were met with disinterest.

Pretty soon a picture emerged. A rival Congolese megachurch used rioters to burn Reverend Wembi’s church, which had been under investigation for money laundering. Experts posited that the megachurch also ordered a hit on Grace’s family on Indigo.

No one came forward to refute this story. Not the FBI, not the state police, not any of the jurisdictions in between. Certainly not the Palm County Sheriff’s Office, which forwarded all inquiries to the FDLE.

The narrative became a juggernaut. It was ridiculous on its face, a pack of lies and half-truths, but if there was an investigative reporter out there who saw the cover-up of the cover-up, Jolie didn’t know about it. She knew there was no point in fighting it. At least she had managed to get justice of sorts for Nathan Dial. It was easier to pin a single crime on a dead man.

The announcement came on the loudspeaker. “Continental flight Five-forty-two, with service to Chicago and Albuquerque, will begin boarding in ten minutes.”

Albuquerque was Jolie’s final destination. She would go back to New Mexico, where she had spent the first ten years of her life. There was still family there on her father’s side. She would go back home.

As she bent to grab the handle of her roll-on suitcase, something made her look up. Jolie only saw the man from the back, but she could swear it was the rogue operative she’d known as “Cyril.” He moved efficiently through the crowd—mid to late forties, khaki trousers, knit shirt, expensive-looking carry-on bag. The same light brown hair, military cut. Big. She recognized the way he carried himself—a soldier. Not just any soldier, but one of the elite.

But Cyril was dead. She’d seen him go under the propellers.

Jolie checked her watch—there was time. She threaded her way through the crowd, not sure what she would do. Didn’t know why she wanted to make sure. There was no point. Why not just forget about the whole thing?

Maybe it was because his body hadn’t been found. There were plenty of solid reasons for that. A night hammered by a subtropical storm, plenty of sharks and fish to feed on his body. But it was one of the few questions that remained. Her life had been turned upside down, one phase ending and another beginning, and it would be good to know for sure.

“Cyril!” she called, just as a crowd of high school kids in matching shirts funneled onto the concourse from another direction. She kept pace with the group of passengers she was with, but she began to lose track of him.

And then, way up, there he was. Moving effortlessly through the crowd ahead.

“Cyril!” she called again.

He kept moving, but turned his head briefly.

Their eyes met.

He smiled.

And then he was gone.

THE END