Fallen Angel: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 9) (17 page)

Sheena clinked hers to mine. “I brought you another one,” she said, passing over the other beer.

“Thanks. Mind if I ask you something?”

“Fire away,” she replied.

“I’m not even planning on being part of this tomorrow. You and Andrew are calling the shots.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So, why do I get the impression that you’re on a stakeout and I’m the subject?” I asked.

“You are direct and to the point, aren’t you?”

“I find it moves things along faster.”

“Okay, me too,” she said. “I’m sort of a by-the-pants kind of girl. I’ve been in on enough of these things to know that no matter how well planned it is, as soon as there’s interaction with the suspect, the playing field changes and you have to change with it. So, all I really need to know is where all the players are to be located when things get started. After that, it’s a crapshoot.”

“What’s that got to do with you going with me to pick him up?” I asked, nodding toward Finn. “And hanging out here now?”

Sheena looked toward the setting sun and said, “Maybe I just like what I see. Ever think of that?”

A
rriving at a sprawling estate outside of Bluffton, South Carolina, the limousine slowed, waiting for the gates to swing open. Nick Cross’s home was large, to say the least. Nearly twenty thousand square feet on ten prime acres along the Colleton River, it had been in his family for years. However, it was Nick’s father who was still the legal owner. Depending on the day, he might or might not remember that fact. Nicholas Cross Senior hadn’t been in the ancestral home since Nick’s election. He’d been living in an upscale assisted living facility for the last two years, suffering Alzheimer’s.

The huge stone structure, with several guest cottages, was originally built by Nick’s second great-grandfather during Reconstruction. It had been remodeled and expanded many times, until it had reached its current palatial state.

Two of the home’s live-in staff were waiting at the massive stone entry, with its castle-like spired roof, as Nick got out of the car. “Good evening, Mister Nick,” the tall butler said as Nick approached.

The maid waiting with him was a new girl, and Nick couldn’t remember her name. “Is there any word from the authorities?” she asked. “We’ve all been so worried.”

“Nothing yet,” Nick replied to the woman before nodding at the butler and saying, “I’m flying down there tomorrow afternoon, Raymond. Please arrange for my baggage. Enough for a week.”

“Very good, sir,” Raymond said. “Shall I have dinner prepared?”

“Brandy in my study for now,” Nick replied, entering the two-story-high foyer, with its wide curved staircase to the second floor. “I’ll have dinner in an hour. Anything fresh.”

“Yes, sir,” Raymond responded, swinging open the large door. “I’ll send William to the fish market right away.”

Cross hurried through the foyer to the spacious main living room, its reddish paneling a throwback to another place and another time. Turning into a hallway to the right, he then entered his study. The rear-facing windows went from floor to ceiling, with French doors that opened onto a terrace overlooking the river on the back of the property. He closed the door behind him and strode to the French doors. Pushing them both open, he stepped out onto the patio and took a deep breath. The crickets and frogs had already begun their symphony, and the smell of the pluff mud told him he was home once more.

Turning, Nick went back inside and placed his briefcase on his desk. He then went to a small closet, where he hung up his coat and slid a panel in the wall to the side. Spinning the dial on the large safe, he opened it, a small light coming on inside.

Nick took several bundles of cash from the safe and went back to his desk, counting them as he placed each neatly inside the briefcase before going back for more. With twenty bundles in the briefcase, he closed and locked it, then put it inside the safe and locked it as well.

There was a knock on the door, and Nick said, “Enter.”

The door swung open and the maid, whose name he still couldn’t remember, entered the study carrying a tray, on which was a single snifter and a bottle of brandy. The maid was a pretty black girl, in her early twenties. She had the high cheekbones, light brown eyes, and smooth caramel complexion typical of many Gullah people who have lived in the area for hundreds of years.

They were descended from slaves brought to the Lowcountry, mostly from Sierra Leone, the first to be freed by Union forces at the onset of the Civil War. The Sea Islands, where most of the Gullah now lived, were rice-growing areas for a time, and many of the slaves brought from West Africa were rice growers.

“You’re new, aren’t you?” Nick asked the woman as she poured his brandy.

“I worked here a yeah, Mister Nick,” the woman replied bashfully. “My name is Rebekah.”

Nick studied her closely, her back to him. Tall and athletically built, she had a slim waist, wide hips, and long tapered legs. His mind drifted to the dungeon he was planning to build for Mistress Chela and he imagined this woman manacled there.

Keep your wits
, Nick said to himself.
This isn’t the time for frivolity
.

“Will there be anything else, sir?” Rebekah asked, turning around and catching her employer looking at her ass.

“That’s all, Rebekah,” Nick replied. “I have some things to do. Please see that I’m not disturbed until dinner.”

Once the maid left, Nick sat down at his desk and picked up the phone, tapping in a number he knew from memory. When the man answered, Nick said, “Swimp, this is Nick. Are you busy? Can I meet with you tonight? I may have some work for you.”

He listened a moment and glanced at the tide clock on his desk. “Okay, low tide’s about midnight. Meet me at the sandbar.”

He hung up the phone, then picked up the receiver again and dialed another number. When the connection was made, he said, “Have the boat ready, I’m going out tonight before midnight.”

His request wasn’t unusual. Growing up here, Cross was intimately familiar with the local waters that wound and twisted around the many Sea Islands. As a younger man, he’d spent many days, and nearly as many nights, cruising up and down the Colleton, Broad, Beaufort, and Coosaw Rivers. Not to mention the many shallow creeks that drain the hundreds of square miles of salt marsh into Port Royal Sound with each falling tide.

After eating a grilled seatrout sandwich, which Cross failed to even taste, his mind being occupied by other things, he went back to the closet, where he removed his tie and hung it on a rack. He then opened the safe and removed one more bundle of hundred-dollar bills, stuffing it in the pocket of his trousers. Looking into the safe, Cross eyed the now-smaller stack of cash.

Still over a million dollars
, he thought.
Enough to live like a king in many parts of the world.
His offshore accounts would double that. Then he imagined the safe stuffed with ten times that amount.

I should have used Swimp to start with
, Cross thought as he closed the safe and spun the dial.

Rafe “Swimp” Ross was bigger than most men and had little in the way of moral convictions. His family had settled on Parris Island in the late 1700s, as British expansion in the area took hold. Nearly a hundred years and several generations later, the descendants of those early colonists had already become known up and down the coast for their rum distilling. When the military arrived at the beginning of the War Between the States, they met little opposition and soon occupied many of the homes in Beaufort, which kept them from being torched by the Union soldiers. Later, the Marines built a training facility on the island, and the Ross family, not wanting to continue their illegal rum manufacturing so close to a military fort, sold their land cheap and bought a larger parcel on nearby Saint Helena Island.

As a child, Rafe Ross was much smaller than the other kids on the surrounding islands where he grew up. The other kids poked fun at him and called him Swimp, which was the Gullah word for shrimp. As the small child grew into a large man, Swimp kept the nickname.

An hour before his scheduled meeting time, Cross put on his jacket against the chilly night air on the water and went out the back of the house and down to the dock. One of the staff, a burly dark-skinned black man with a bald head and crooked nose, was there waiting to help him with the dock lines.

“We’re all real worried about Miss Chrissy,” Jacob said as Cross approached. “Some salty night air will do you good before you go over there, sir. Help calm and focus your mind.”

“Thanks, Jacob,” Cross said and stepped over the gunwale into the cockpit of his custom-built thirty-four-foot fishing boat. Its powerful twin outboards idled at a low burble. “The night air always gets my thoughts straight. I’ll only be out an hour or two. Don’t bother waiting up, I’ll secure everything when I return.”

Unlike many docks in the Port Royal Sound area, some of which stretched the length of a football field or more to reach deep water, the Cross dock was quite short. The property was on a bend in the Colleton River, and the twice-daily rise and fall of the tides carved the outside of the curve deeper. It was on this bluff that the Cross home sat.

Jacob cast off the lines, flinging each expertly onto the deck, fore and aft, before shoving the big boat away from the floating dock. Once clear, the boat became caught up in the current of the falling tide, and Cross pushed the two throttles forward. The boat slowly idled away from shore, slipping quietly into the darkness. There were only a handful of homes on this part of the mainland, which wrapped around Spring Island on the other side of the river. There, also, waterfront homes were few.

At the mouth of the river, where the waters of the Colleton drained into Broad River, lay the uninhabited Daws Island. Mostly submerged at high tide, there were a couple of places with ground high enough for trees to grow. Cross steered south into the much wider and deeper Broad River, pushing the throttles forward. The big three-hundred-and-fifty-horsepower outboards lifted the boat up on plane with ease, and Cross navigated the treacherous channels and shoals by memory.

Crossing Broad River at an angle, Nick steered the boat southeast, toward the southern tip of Parris Island. He swung wide to avoid the shallows that stretched a couple hundred yards into the confluence of the two rivers. Proceeding northeast into Beaufort River, Nick angled toward the far shore on Saint Helena Island, pointing the bow toward where he knew the sandbar was located. It was just a little north of Fort Fremont, the old Spanish-American War outpost. Boat traffic on the sound and rivers wasn’t unusual late at night. In the summer, weekend nights could be very busy. On those nights, the sandbar would be crowded with boats, some fishing the creek beyond and some just partying on the sand.

The moon was bright and high overhead as Cross passed the old fort and slowed down. Ahead, lights could be seen. Two boats were beached on the sandbar itself, a fire lighting several people sitting and standing around it. A third boat lay at anchor a hundred feet out. Cross angled toward the boat at anchor.

At an idle, he slowly approached the other boat, which he soon recognized as Swimp’s salvage scow. An ugly thirty-footer to start with, it was a heavy boat, and Swimp had added a large cage of steel beams, with a hoist mounted to the aft cross members, making it even uglier and heavier. Stepping away from the helm as his boat slowly approached the workboat, Cross tossed over a pair of fenders, hoping the rust and decay of the monstrosity wouldn’t infect his polished fiberglass, teak, and mahogany.

Swimp stood at the gunwale, ready to catch a line, as Nick reversed the starboard engine and slowly spun his boat sideways before shifting to neutral and killing both engines ten feet away from Swimp’s anchored workboat.

“That tub’s an eyesore,” Cross said in a low voice as he tossed a coil of dock line. Both men knew that sound carried further over water, and Nick didn’t want anyone on shore to hear them.

Swimp raised a long, beefy arm and the line fell across it like a hangman’s noose over an oak branch. Taking the line in his hands, Swimp slowly pulled Cross’s boat toward him.

“Didn’t know you were back,” Swimp said, his voice having an almost childlike sound. He deftly tied the line off to a rusty cleat on the gunwale. “I’da run the vacuum.”

Reaching out, Cross took the man’s offered hand. “Good to see you, Swimp. I have some business here tomorrow. Business that’ll cost me a fortune if I don’t get out ahead of it. A smaller fortune if I do.”

A slow grin spread across the big man’s face. He’d been on the receiving end of a number of Nick Cross’s costly business deals, providing muscle and intimidation to smooth the way whenever it was needed.

The two men had met on this very sandbar while both were still in high school. Not friends, as they ran in completely different social circles and were a year apart at two different schools, but they did know and respect one another. By then, Swimp had far outgrown his nickname and was known to be an easy brawler. Years later, when Nick had gone off to college, he’d contacted Swimp about eliminating a college rival who was dating the girl Nick wanted. He’d only meant for Swimp to hurt the man, maybe a lengthy hospital stay, and then disappear. Instead, the college man himself had disappeared. A week later, his decomposing corpse was found floating on a mud bank on the Ogeechee River, down below Savannah. That had only cost Nick a thousand dollars, but in the end he’d tired of the girl and broken it off. Swimp’s prices had gone up since then.