Reluctant Witness (55 page)

Barnacle tossed a rock in my direction. It
struck me in the foot and bounced away. Working his hands
frantically, he informed me we were about to have more company, in
the form of another twenty or so recruits of the Jacinta battalion,
Loreno Delgado Cortez’s security force for his drug operations. The
guano was about to hit the fan big time, unless we acted fast and
made our getaway.

On the count of three, Barnacle, Mano and I
each took out three targets in succession. The revolutionaries fell
silently, almost in slow motion, to the ground. The only man left
standing was a very confused Roger Douglas. Seconds later, Fullback
and Jumper swooped in and snatched him up. Not waiting to explain,
Fullback tossed him over his shoulder and scrambled back up the
mountain, with Jumper bringing up the rear. They melted into the
canopy of the rainforest and disappeared. Mano scurried down from
his perch, grabbed Cash, and began the ascent to where the
helicopter would meet us. I stopped for Player, noting his poor
skin color. He was having trouble breathing, no doubt from the
broken ribs he sustained when he was shot out of the tree. His
gunshot wound seemed minor in comparison. I carried him
piggyback-style, head up. Domino was still conscious and he had
already wrapped his head scarf around the wound to his thigh.
Jumper would be his partner in the three-legged race to the top of
the mountain.

The jungle terrain was both a blessing and a
curse. I knew Delgado’s foot soldiers carried machetes to slash at
the thick foliage as they chased us. That slowed them down a bit.
But as we tried to navigate our way back to freedom, we were
constantly hampered by vines that entangled us and creatures that
lurked in bushes. It took us the better part of an hour to make it
to the summit. By then, Player’s eyes were glazed over, as if he
couldn’t bear the pain any longer. As I gently laid him on the rock
slab, tucking a hand under his head, I said a silent prayer to the
man upstairs. Let there be a medic onboard this time, and let the
helicopter arrive in time to save my buddy.

The wop-wop-wop of metal blades in the sky
warned us the extraction was about to begin. We made ourselves
ready, picking up our wounded so we could quickly hop in and be
gone.

The doors were wide open and welcoming when
the Seahawk touched down. Cash was loaded on, followed by the
traumatized Douglas. It was my turn to deliver Player. I lifted him
up to the waiting hands and turned to help with Domino. The second
his injured leg disappeared from view, the rest of us climbed
aboard. The blades began to turn and with a shudder, the Sikorsky
aircraft rose.

We were sixty feet from the top of the
summit when the first of Delgado’s army arrived. One of the men
hoisted his Kalashnikov and depressed the trigger. The AK-47
scattered bullets in our direction, even as Mano took him out with
a single shot. Another of Delgado’s men aimed and fired, and this
time his shot hit the mark. I felt the heat as the hot lead struck,
and a moment later, with a lurch, I fell out of the open door and
into the unwelcoming arms of the jungle.

Even as I fell, my mind raced to find a
solution. The trees were coming at me quickly, so I did the only
thing I could think to do. I flailed my arms, desperate to catch a
tree limb. I needed to slow myself down if I was to minimize the
damage from the impact.

It was a vine that saved me in the end. I
bounced off tree limbs as I broke through the leafy rainforest
canopy, and as one particularly large and unyielding limb caught me
in the back, I felt the vine wrap around my hand like a rope.
Frantically, desperately, I grasped it just before I passed
out.

That’s where Mano found me a minute or two
later, as he carefully descended from the helicopter by rope.
Loading me onto his back, he gave the signal to the crew hovering
above and we took the express elevator back to the Seahawk. It was
a good day for the United States Navy. Good guys saved all eleven
men. Bad guys, four. Hooyah.

What was it about that fall from the
helicopter that bothered me? That the Navy SEAL known as Fin
Manetti landed hard on his back as a tree limb broke his fall to
the ground? Or was it the scars I had seen on Jeff’s back as we
frolicked in the waters of Cinnamon Beach? Maybe they weren’t all
from the many operations he had endured over the years. Could one
of them have been a scar from a gunshot wound?

I assumed that story of Jeff’s fall off a
mountain involved skiing or hiking in the Catskills, or maybe the
Adirondacks. What if it had been thousands of miles away, on a
remote South American mountain, in the middle of a Navy operation
to recover the kidnapped American hostage known in the book as
Roger Douglas? What if Jeff was telling me his hidden story? Had he
really been a Navy SEAL? And if so, why was it still a secret?

I thought about
Vanilla Orchid Magic
,
about the comment to Jeff inside the book. There was talk of
smuggling in that Post-It note, as his mother reminded him of what
he discovered in Port de Basse-Terre. What if Jeff wasn’t just an
author and TV producer? I thought about his latest book,
Pull Up the Covers
. It was
getting rave reviews. Wasn’t that about some military operation in
the Middle East to flush out terrorists?

By the time the plane landed in Honolulu, my
mind was scrambling to put the Cornwall legacy into some semblance
of order. I knew that Dr. Phillip Cornwall had taught history at
Cornell University for most of the last decade, according to
comments his sons made to me. During the school year, he and his
wife lived in Ithaca. The rest of the year they traveled or spent
time at their home on Windham Mountain. I knew, too, that the
Cornwall boys had spent much of their childhood there. Rocky had
said as much. Was that why I assumed Jeff’s accident occurred in
the Catskills?

Lisbeth Causley was a celebrity author of
sorts, a prolific writer of mysteries and romantic suspense, who
often did her own research. And yet, she was hardly your typical
mom, and her boys were not your typical sons. Jackson was a New
York state trooper. Lincoln was an FBI agent. Jeff had seemed like
the odd man out, but was he? It was almost as if there was a piece
of the puzzle missing and I needed it to complete the picture.

What did I really know about Jefferson
Cornwall as a person? The honest answer was not much in terms of
specific facts, but plenty in terms of still being alive to tell
the tale. He had made sure my tormentor was caught in the act and
those dangerous secrets were exposed. He had given me my canine
companion, who filled a void in me I didn’t even know I had. And
most important of all, he had returned to me my identity, the one
stolen from me so long ago. The choice to trust Jeff was mine and
mine alone, and this time around I did not hesitate. I knew I would
be safe on this journey, but I had no idea where it would lead me,
let alone how it would end. I might not know all Jeff’s secrets;
there was still so much to learn about the man of mystery who held
my heart in his hands, but I was eager to get started.

As my plane left Oahu for the short jaunt
over to Kauai, a little snuffling sound alerted me to Cooper moving
around in his crate below my seat. I reached down and touched the
mesh screen as the tiny nose pressed against my hand.

“We’ll be there soon, Coop,” I promised. I
opened my book and returned to Fin’s tale:

When I awoke, I was immobilized in a white
room that flickered and hummed with fluorescent lighting, casting a
ghostly pallor over everything. There were pulleys suspended from
hooks and tubes going in and out of me. The pain was excruciating,
but nothing compared to what was to come.

The Navy surgeon tried to prepare me for the
bad news. It was unlikely I would ever walk again. My spine had
suffered such a traumatic blow as I landed on the tree limb that my
back was broken in three places. As I fought the life sentence he
handed me, determined not to be a victim, his sad eyes were
speaking volumes. “Don’t be a fool, man,” they seemed to say.
“Accept your fate, so you can move on.”

I had spent years listening to my father’s
tale of great men doing great things. The West Point graduate had
commanded a platoon in the jungles of Vietnam, a proud and
honorable man. As a teenager, I had set my sights on the Navy,
graduated from the Naval Academy, and then tried out for the SEALs
in Coronado. I had made it through Hell Week, never ringing the
bell of defeat. I was damned if a broken back was going to end the
dream for me. I was going to serve my country one way or another,
even if I had to crawl to do it. Fin Manetti was going to make a
comeback, come hell or high water. It was just a matter of setting
my mind to the goal and finding a way to make it happen.

By the time we were allowed to leave the
plane in Lihue, poor Cooper was beginning to whimper. The Yorkie
was definitely feeling the effects of his six-hour journey zipped
up in his travel case.

I grabbed my satchel and the dog carrier,
making my way up the aisle and out onto the walkway into the
airport. In the distance, I noticed Clovis and David, huddling by a
pillar as they held hands and nuzzled each other. I passed them on
my way to the waiting area in search of my driver.

“Ma’am?” A short, stocky man in a red Aloha
shirt approached me. He wore a Yankees cap on his head. “Are you by
any chance looking for me?”

It took me a moment to recognize him, so
surprised was I to see him in Kauai. Rocky gave me a big grin and
took Cooper’s carrier in his beefy hand. I shook my head and
laughed. “I am.”

“Let’s collect your baggage.”

“Seems like old times,” I told him. “Remember
Atlanta? The dog park?”

“Hard to forget.”

“Well, little Cooper needs a quick walk,
sooner rather than later. Let’s make sure nobody tries to snatch
him.”

“No problem.”

This time, we went straight to the parking
garage and got into Rocky’s SUV. I let the tiny terrier out of his
carrier, rewarded by frantic kisses and lots of fanny wiggles.

“Who’s a good boy? Hold on just a little
longer, buddy.”

Ten minutes later, Rocky pulled onto a quiet
little road off the Kapule Highway, much to Cooper’s relief. I
walked him back and forth along the gravel edge of the pavement for
a few minutes and then we got back into the Escape.

“What happens next?” I asked Rocky,
curious.

“You get yourself settled in your condo and
prepare for a great adventure.”

“That’s all you’re going to tell me?”

“That’s it...Chrisanth.”

“It’s okay to call me Chris, Rocky.”

“Nice to finally drop that silly alias. Chris
fits you better than Marigold.”

“It does,” I smiled. Looking out the window,
I watched the Hawaiian coast fly by as we drove north. It was such
a different world from Florida, and yet I was delighted to be by
the sea once more.

Once I saw the sign for Kapa’a, I suspected
we were close to our destination, and this was confirmed when Rocky
pulled up to the front entrance to the Waipouli Beach Resort and
turned off the engine. “This is it, kid. Time for you to hop out
and pretend we’ve never met.”

“Right,” I smiled. “Will I see you again in
Hawaii?”

“Count on it. It’s school vacation week. I’ve
got the family with me in a unit down the hall from you, and I’ll
warn you, we’re a noisy bunch.”

Chapter Forty
Nine

The pleasant young woman at the front desk
asked my name and when I gave it, she pulled out an envelope and a
map of the resort.

“
You’re in this building
here,” she told me, pointing to a rectangle on the glossy paper,
“on the fourth floor. I’ll have Jan drive you over
there.”

A minute later, a young man with a long
blond ponytail and a vibrant tropical print shirt escorted me to a
golf cart out front. He tossed my suitcase into the back and slid
onto the seat. “Hop aboard, miss.”

Cooper sat on my lap and sniffed the sea
air, very aware that his circumstances had changed. Our escort
drove the golf cart through the parking lot and a moment later,
pulled up to a building by the beach.

“
Here we are,” he
announced, hopping out of the cart and reaching into the back
compartment for my luggage. He led me inside, holding the door for
me as he ran down a list of resort amenities available to guests.
Stepping into the elevator, we rode it to the top floor and a
moment later, he opened the door to paradise.

I followed him as he led me around the
condo, room by room. The living room was spacious and bright, with
a comfortable-looking sofa and pair of club chairs. Hibiscus drapes
hung from decorative wooden rods, adding a nice tropical touch. A
pair of framed paintings above the sofa captured the drama of
Hawaii, with waves crashing on the shore and the magnificence of a
volcano erupting in the background. But it was really the view that
was the draw of the room. Open glass doors allowed the gentle
breeze to come into the room and I could smell the salt air as it
wafted through. I stepped out onto a narrow balcony that overlooked
the sparkling ocean below. People were at the beach, bobbing in the
waves. I couldn’t wait to join them. Paradise beckoned.

Through another glass door, I saw the
attached lanai had a table and chairs for open-air dining. I could
already imagine myself sitting there in the morning, lingering over
a cup of coffee.

“
The smaller of the two
bedrooms is through here.” Jan opened the door on the left side of
the living room.

“
Lovely,” I nodded, pleased
with the furnishings. On the bed was a traditional Hawaiian quilt
with a blue fern appliqué. It looked handmade. The artwork on the
walls consisted of a series of beautiful framed nature prints of
turtles and tropical fish. Blue drapes, in a vibrant and colorful
tropical pattern, gently flapped in the breeze. They framed the
sliding glass door that led out to the lanai.