Fallen Honor: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 7) (19 page)

Closing the folder for a moment, I said, “While we’re down there, I’ll be Stretch Buchannan, a medium-level cocaine distributor out of Key Largo. You’re my bodyguard and we’re down there to check out someone nosing into my distribution territory.”

“This GT Bradley?”

I opened the file and continued reading. I hadn’t mentioned Bradley’s first name.
So
, I thought,
he is still tied in with the DHS.
That meant either he’d had someone else monitoring my Internet searches, or Chyrel had reconsidered and told him about it this morning. I had no doubt that my conversation with her was through a hack-proof encryption. She wouldn’t have said anything if there was the slightest chance the communication could have been intercepted.

I handed him the printout of Bradley’s picture. “That’s Bradley on the left and his chauffeur, Erik Lowery. The guy behind them is Chase Conner.”

“You sure? His face is only partly in the picture and a little out of focus.”

“It’s him,” I replied.

“And he’s in Key West, too?”

“No, I don’t think so. But if I can swing it, it’d sure be nice to find out exactly where he is.”

Travis looked straight ahead, glancing at the photo to commit it to memory and thinking while I continued to read the dossier. Chyrel was good. The background included all kinds of made-up details, with just enough truth to make it easy to remember. The physical description was excellent, down to the location and types of tattoos and scars.

Finally, Travis broke the silence. “I still don’t understand why you wanted me along.”

He’d finished stewing, time to just let him have it and gauge his reaction. “My relationship with Deuce goes back a long way. I’ve known the guy since he was a kid. His dad and I were friends.”

Stockwell glanced over at me, holding my gaze. At first his eyes were intense, as if I’d struck a nerve. Then they went calm again. “You’ve totally lost me now, Jesse.”

Yeah, right.

“Deuce was raised by a Marine, and he’s a SEAL. There’s more honor in that man than anyone else I know, Colonel.”

I hadn’t called him that since he’d stepped down from his position with the DHS—if indeed he ever had. It had the desired effect. His jaw muscles contracted as he stared straight ahead.

“What exactly did you and Miss Koshinski talk about last night?”

The bait’s been taken, time to set the hook.

“Her orders were clear,” I replied. “You don’t have to worry, she’s a team player all the way. But I don’t like being lied to, especially by people I consider a friend.”

His voice took on a serious tone, not that of the Travis Stockwell I’d hired as a casual first mate, but that of the former Army Airborne Colonel, assigned to Homeland Security to try to clean up a growing terrorist threat in the Caribbean.

“Above your paygrade, Jesse.”

“Switch seats,” I said as I stood up and put the file in one of the upper cabinets.

He obliged and once I was back at the helm, I slowly pulled back on the throttles, bringing the
Revenge
down to idle speed. We were still inside the reef line, just west of American Shoal, but a good three miles from shore.

Turning to Travis, I studied the side of his face. “Bullshit, Colonel. I haven’t had a paygrade in over eight years now. I don’t give a hairy rat’s ass whose idea it was, but making Deuce lie to his friends goes completely contrary to his sense of honor. You can spout national security all you want, but I know it’s about control, and you’re not the controlling type. However, Deuce would never jeopardize the security of this country, and if he were ordered not to divulge something, he wouldn’t. That forces him to lie, which is so against his nature, he’d alienate himself from his friends, pretty much like he’s doing now. Tell me I’m off base.”

Travis looked starboard, toward the distant shore. “Chyrel’s good. No doubt she picked up some intel she wasn’t supposed to and passed it on to you. That’s not good.”

So, it wasn’t her
, I thought, very much relieved. “Chyrel’s one of the good ones. If it’s even implied that something should be kept secret, she wouldn’t spill. She told me straight up she wasn’t allowed to talk to me about anything job related. Just because I’m a grunt doesn’t mean I can’t add two and two, Colonel. You’ve been lying to me all along. And spying on me. I never mentioned Bradley’s first name.”

He turned back to me quickly and started to say something, but I interrupted him. “Please don’t compound that lie with a lie of denial. There’s no investigation going on into Charity’s disappearance. That means she’s on the company clock. If you even attempt to deny it, you’ll swim to shore from here.”

His hands tightened on the armrests of the chair. Colonel Travis Stockwell wasn’t a man accustomed to being dressed down, and I was uncomfortable doing it.

After a moment, his posture relaxed and he sighed. “It was just a matter of time until you and the other team members put it together.”

“She’s doing wet work for the DHS and you’re her handler?”

“No, not DHS,” he replied vaguely.

“You’re shittin’ me! The CIA?”

“You didn’t hear it from me,” he replied with another sigh.

“And Deuce knows, but was ordered to keep it under his hat?”

Lowering his head, he replied, “Even his wife doesn’t know.”

That would explain a lot
, I thought. And what a strain it must be putting on their new marriage. Carl had once told me the secret to his and Charlie’s happiness was that they kept no secrets from one another. Deuce was in a situation where his duty had to be placed above his honor. Lying just wasn’t in his nature.

I looked out over the calm water as the
Revenge
gently rocked in the small, slow-moving swells. The sun was now high above the eastern horizon and gulls wheeled and cried above the boat, expecting a handout. Pushing the throttles to the stops, the
Revenge
nearly leaped up on plane, sending the gulls careening toward shore.

“Sometimes, Colonel, a man’s honor has to be placed above his duty. Maybe not with everyone. There are plenty out there whose sense of duty easily outweighs their sense of honor. Not with a man like Deuce, though. This has to be tearing at the very fabric of his being.”

“You have to keep what you know to yourself, Jesse.”

Turning in my seat, I stared hard into his eyes. “Like hell I do,
Director
. Don’t worry, I won’t be shouting it from the rooftops, but there are people in the man’s life that have a right to know. People in Charity’s life too. Their friends and family. Deuce can’t function at a hundred percent with a lie to his wife hanging over his head.”

“This is why you brought me along? So you could threaten to feed me to the sharks if I didn’t divulge a matter of national security? What Charity’s doing down there is important and she’s good at it.”

Down there? In the Caribbean or South America?

My mind drifted back to Deuce and Julie’s wedding and the explosion that had killed Jared Williams. In the short time they’d known one another, Jared and Charity had become close. A few weeks after his funeral, Charity and I had crisscrossed the Caribbean, tracking the man responsible for Jared’s death. Jason Smith, the former deputy director.

“I’ve no doubt she is. I’ve seen her work up close. With your predecessor.” I relaxed after a moment and pulled back on the throttles to forty knots. “Truth is, I do need you, Travis. These guys in Key West are dangerous.”

Stockwell knows the kind of man I am and I hoped he knew that he could trust my judgement. He grinned. “Then let’s go see the fortuneteller. We can figure the other problem out later, alright?”

That was as good as I was going to get for now and I knew it.

E
rik arrived back at GT’s hotel room early, as he’d promised. It hadn’t been easy to tear himself away from Karly and he was dragging from the physical abuse she’d put him through. He found his boss waiting. The little man was still there, sitting in a corner of the room. Byers had quite a few bruises on his face and his left eye was swollen nearly shut.

“Our friend Byers had another little tidbit of information that he finally gave up. He’s going back to Pittsburgh with us after we find Grabowski. I fucking saw him twice last night and didn’t even know it.”

Erik pulled out a chair across from his boss and sat down. “Coming back to Pittsburgh with us?”

GT looked at the man slumped in the corner. “Yeah, I offered him a job and he accepted it. I always wanted to have my own ferret.”

“What’d he tell you?”

“Grabowski was with a woman last night, right here in Key West. A local, from the sound of it. Short and pretty, with blond dreadlocks.”

“If she’s a local, we should be able to find her easy enough.”

Nodding his head toward Byers, GT said, “He saw the two of them coming out of a place called
Irish Kevin’s
yesterday evening. We’ll start there. I saw her and him out on the pier at sunset and again later, just before we ran into this guy. Guess the little blond bitch distracted me.”

Looking over at the troll-looking heap in the corner, Erik just knew they wouldn’t be able to remain inconspicuous with him tagging along. “What are we gonna do with him while we go look for Grabowski and the girl?”

“He’ll only draw attention we don’t want,” GT replied. “I told him he’s free to go and to keep his eyes open.” Then GT looked at Byers and laughed. “Well, one eye anyway. He’ll meet us back here this afternoon. Give him your key card.”

Digging the card from his pocket, Erik flung it at the guy, hitting him in the leg. “You sure he can be trusted?”

“Course not. But he knows I can find him again. Let’s go.”

A short five-minute drive later, GT and Erik arrived at
Irish Kevin’s
bar
,
but it wasn’t open. The sun was barely up and it was already past ninety degrees. The sign on the door of the bar said they didn’t open until eleven.

“Head back to that restaurant,” GT said, already feeling irritable from the heat. “When I saw Grabowski and the girl there, they were crossing the street into a neighborhood.”

As the Escalade approached the Half Shell Raw Bar, GT pointed to a side street. “Turn down there. That’s where they were going when I saw them. You have any trouble finding a place to stay last night?”

Erik grinned at his boss. “Remember that waitress? I stayed with her.”

The big SUV idled slowly down Margaret Street, both men looking out the windows at the rows of old Conch houses shaded by tall trees, people going about their morning routine in the heat of the day.

Not seeing Grabowski or the blonde, and it being a crapshoot at best finding them on the many narrow streets of Old Town, GT told Erik to just keep circling through the neighborhood. There was little else they could do.

Eventually, the big car turned onto Eaton Street and they made their way east. It was nearing eleven o’clock and GT wanted to be at the bar when it opened.

Waiting to turn right at the corner of Duval Street, GT looked ahead, down the next block of Eaton. “There they are! Grabowski and the blonde in the green dress.”

Leaning forward in his seat, GT looked both ways on Duval Street, instinctively looking for cops. When he looked back, Grabowski and the blonde were gone. “Damn! Where’d they go?”

“They went into a place on the right, boss. I got my eye on it.”

Finally, the light on the pole across the street changed and the big SUV roared through the intersection. “Which place did they go into?” GT smelled blood in the water.

Slowing the car, Erik pointed. “They went in there.
Madam Dawn’s Psychic Readings.
Think Madam Dawn’s gonna be able to tell them two what’s about to happen to them, boss?”

“Pull over to the curb, a little past it.”

Just as GT was about to get out, Erik put a hand on his arm while looking in the mirror. “Wait, boss.”

GT looked in the side mirror and behind them, a black Ford sedan had come to a stop in front of the psychic’s shop. “Is it a fucking cop?”