Secret Assignment (9 page)

Gideon stopped at the bar and bought lemonade from the bored counter clerk. He didn’t bother to try to worm information out of the kid, who looked as if he’d prefer to be anywhere but the arcade. It wasn’t likely the boy had looked up from his own smartphone long enough to notice any comings or goings around the Azimut.

There was a bench just outside the video arcade, sheltered from the late-morning sun by a large red awning. Gideon settled on the bench, sipped his lemonade and pulled his cell phone from his pocket, dialing the Stafford House landline. Lydia Ross answered on the second ring.

“I thought I should check in,” he said, not wanting to get her hopes up or worry her further. “Is Shannon around?”

“Of course.” There was a smile in Mrs. Ross’s voice. Seconds later, Shannon came on the phone.

“Still alive?” she asked in a dry drawl that made him smile.

“So far,” he answered. “I think I’ve found the Zodiac. And the boat it rode in on. But don’t let on to Mrs. Ross. I don’t want her to worry about me while I’m figuring out what to do.”

“Okay,” she said slowly. “What options are on the table?”

“Well, for now, I’m doing a little surveillance. Probably going to be doing that awhile, so I don’t want y’all to worry.”

“Easier said than done.”

“I really do know what I’m doing,” he assured her.

“Okay.”

“You making any headway with the archiving?”

“Just opened a big box of things that look intriguing,” she answered, real excitement in her voice. “Tons of history, right at my fingertips. I know it sounds silly, but it’s like—”

“Like hitting a moving target at five-hundred yards in bad weather?” he asked with a smile.

“I suppose so,” she replied, laughter in her voice. But the amusement faded quickly. “Be careful. Check in often so Lydia doesn’t worry.”

He wondered if she was worried, too. She’d seemed anxious when she walked him out that morning, and when he’d looked back toward the island as the Hatteras cut through the Gulf water, she’d still been standing there, watching him drive away.

Movement on the deck of
Ahab’s Folly
drew his attention back to the issue at hand. “I’ve got to go.”

“What’s happening?”

“I’ll call back soon,” he promised and shut off the phone.

A tall, muscular man in his late twenties came out on the deck of the Azimut and started washing down the suspended Bayrunner, his movements oddly violent for such a mundane task. Judging by the man’s size and exaggerated body movements, he must have been the big guy who’d crashed through the woods last night, earning the censure of his leader.

One down, three to go.

* * *

D
ESPITE THE CARDBOARD
box full of letters, papers and journals sitting in front of her like a treasure trove of history, Shannon’s thoughts kept wandering across the bay to Terrebonne and Gideon Stone’s “surveillance,” as he’d termed it. She couldn’t help wondering—and worrying—about how easily he could be recognized. He was a big man, a distinctive man. After less than a day of knowing him, she was pretty sure she could have spotted him in any crowd.

What made him think the men who’d invaded the island, men who clearly knew enough about him to have tried to avoid storming the island while he was around, wouldn’t recognize him as well?

Focus, Shannon.

She picked up one of the journals, a thick, pocket-size notebook with a hard cover. Inside, instead of the daily diary of activities she’d expected, she found a series of letters that clearly formed words, but no language she’d ever seen before.

Lydia was in the kitchen, elbow deep in chopped lettuce for the Greek salad she was preparing for lunch. Shannon hesitated interrupting her in a task that seemed to give her a great deal of contentment, but her curiosity overcame her reluctance.

She carried the journal to the kitchen. “Lydia, have you ever seen anything like this before?”

Lydia set down her chopping knife and looked at the journal, her brow furrowed. “Quite unreadable, isn’t it?” she asked, sounding puzzled.

“Could it be another language?”

“Edward was fluent in many, as am I, but this is no language I’ve ever come across,” Lydia said firmly. “Perhaps it’s code.”

Shannon had guessed as much. “Did your husband deal in code very often? Maybe in his work?”

“There was a lot about his work that he couldn’t tell me.” Lydia looked apologetic. “Anything to do with any mission was off limits until afterward, and much remained off limits entirely.”

“Preserving mission integrity.”

Lydia smiled. “Loose lips sink ships.”

“Do you mind if I take a crack at this later? I took a code-breaking class in college and who knows?” She waggled her eyebrows at Lydia. “Maybe I’ll discover a state secret.”

“Just don’t tell me,” Lydia laughed.

“Because then I’d have to kill you?”

“Exactly!” With a smile, Lydia turned back to her salad making. “Did Gideon say whether he’d be back for lunch?”

“I believe he plans to grab a bite on the mainland,” Shannon replied, crossing back to the low coffee table where she’d left the box of papers. “Why don’t we have lunch out on the front veranda? It’s not too hot in the shade, and you really can’t beat the view.”

Lydia readily agreed, and they ended up outside an hour later, enjoying the salad Lydia had prepared and talking about their ordeal the night before.

“I’m tempted to go back to the lighthouse, now that it’s daylight, and see if I can find the penlight I dropped,” Shannon said. The ground beneath the lighthouse was soft and sandy, so there was a chance that the light hadn’t been damaged by the fall.

“I’m not sure it’s a good idea to go out on your own with Gideon not here,” Lydia protested. “Even in daylight. I’m afraid I won’t feel safe until we know exactly what those men wanted last night.”

“You don’t think it could simply be your husband’s memorabilia?”

Lydia shook her head. “The items Edward brought home are extremely valuable to me, and some may be historically valuable to some museum or even West Point, but they’re not items one could easily sell on the black market. Or the open market, either.”

“What about your own personal valuables?”

Lydia smiled. “Most of my money is here in this house, in this property. I was never one for diamonds or jewels.” She showed Shannon a blue cameo locket on a gold chain around her neck. “Edward gave me this locket for our fortieth anniversary. He’d wanted to replace the engagement ring he’d given me when we were both young and starting out, but he saw this locket in an antique store and knew I’d love it, so he bought it instead. Less expensive than a diamond, but so much more valuable to me.” Her eyes grew misty with memory. “My parents were appalled that I’d put my money on a young soldier from Wetumpka, but Edward was all I really wanted or needed.”

Shannon wondered if her parents had felt that way at one time. Her mother, putting herself through college but falling for a man who was as married to the town he loved, the town he served as a sheriff’s deputy, as he was to her. Such a bad choice for both of them, lives so radically different that it could never have worked.

And it hadn’t.

“How did you know General Ross was the right one?” she asked.

Lydia laughed. “Every young woman your age I’ve ever met has asked that question. Did you know that?”

Shannon blushed, feeling like an idiot. “I’m sorry. Stupid question.”

“Not stupid,” Lydia disagreed. “Just universal. To tell you the truth, I don’t know that I knew he was the right one until long after we were married. I think love is more than just the right set of circumstances. It’s also about making good choices, choices with each other in mind instead of just yourself. When you’re both making the right choices, ones that keep you together rather than drive you apart—that’s a relationship that will last.”

Her parents had made the wrong choices, she thought. Dug their heels in and refused to budge for each other. Megan swore their parents still really loved each other, and Shannon supposed her sister could be right. They’d never divorced, neither showing any desire to marry anyone else. Her parents did seem to enjoy each other’s company when her mother came to town, and her mother usually stayed at the family home when she was there.

Megan seemed certain their parents still slept together when their mother Jean visited. Shannon hadn’t screwed up the courage to ask her how she’d come to that conclusion.

Out in the Gulf, a fishing boat drew within a hundred yards of the shoreline. The boat’s horn honked several times, some long, some short.

Lydia smiled. “Arthur Logan. Dear man. He drops by now and then and leaves us some lovely bonito and flounder for the freezer.”

“You seem to know all the fishing guides,” Shannon said. Every hour so far, one of the local fishermen had come by and sounded a signal, different each time. Lydia had explained they were signaling their initials in Morse code.

“All those fishermen know Morse code?” Shannon had asked.

“No, but I do,” Lydia had explained, “and Gideon gave them the signals so I’d be reassured.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to pack up everything and head for the mainland tonight?” Shannon asked as she helped Lydia carry their lunch dishes back into the house. “We could take everything straight up to Cooper Security and sort it out there. We can put you up in a hotel—”

“I refuse to be run out of my house one minute earlier than I intended,” Lydia said with conviction. “I do appreciate the offer, but I’ve already lost my husband and my son. I will not lose my dignity to a small group of larcenous thugs.”

Shannon could appreciate Lydia’s sentiment, even if she wasn’t sure the woman was making a wise decision. Running away from trouble wasn’t exactly a Cooper family trait, either.

She spent the rest of the afternoon going through two more boxes of the general’s belongings, sorting out the mishmash of documents into separate boxes. Personal correspondence in one, official correspondence in another. The general’s work-related writings in another still. She held out the coded journal to play around with later.

Gideon called once that afternoon, around two, telling her he might not be back for supper. “I have a bead on two of the four men,” he told her. “Two still unaccounted for.”

“What are you planning to do? Confront them?” Worry sat like a block of concrete in the pit of her belly.

“Not yet,” he said cryptically. “Gotta go.” He hung up before she could ask anything else.

Around four, she finished going through the first set of boxes Lydia had provided and offered to help Lydia with whatever she had planned for dinner. “I’m not a great cook, but I can cut vegetables or toast bread.”

“Duly noted,” Lydia said with a smile, “but I thought you wanted to take a look at that coded journal.”

“I don’t have to get to it right away.”

“But you want to. I can see it in your bright brown eyes.” Lydia laid her hand on Shannon’s arm, squeezing gently. “Go ahead. I believe I know how to boil shrimp and bake potatoes without any help.”

Shannon took the journal out to the front porch and sat in the wooden rocker, flipping through the pages slowly, looking for any obvious letters. Vowels should have been easy to pick out, but an hour’s worth of playing around with the words left Shannon more confused than before.

There might be a second and even third layer of cryptography involved, she knew. Simple codes were too easily broken, so most people who really wanted their information to remain secret applied multiple codes to their documents.

Back home, she had some cryptography books in her collection. Maybe she could call Megan and ask her to stop by her place, grab the books and overnight them to her.

Suppertime came and went without any other word from Gideon. Lydia was trying to pretend she wasn’t worried, but Shannon could see the concern in her eyes. As the sun began to drop over the western Gulf of Mexico, Shannon found herself worrying as well.

Why hadn’t Gideon called?

* * *

T
EN MINUTES AFTER
he saw four men leave
Ahab’s Folly,
heading toward the boardwalk, Gideon had boarded the yacht to take a quick look around. What he found there, however, kept him occupied longer than he’d intended.

From the outside, the boat looked like an ordinary, high-end Azimut yacht. At first flush, the inside looked typical as well, although the furnishings had a distinctly masculine, utilitarian feel to them.

But once he went past the three staterooms and entered what looked to be the crew’s quarters, it was as if he’d stepped into an entirely different boat. The crew’s quarters had been stripped of beds, the space filled instead with rows of equipment, maps, charts and even a large stash of weapons in a locked glass-front cabinet at one end.

This was a war room. And all the maps and charts seemed to indicate one prime target: Nightshade Island.

He spent longer inside the boat than he’d planned, searching for any sort of identification for the boat’s crew, but the only thing he came across that might be any help were papers that indicated
Ahab’s Folly
was registered to an entity called AfterAssets, LLC.

He took as many photos as he dared with his cell phone and, with the creeping sensation of time passing far too quickly, scanned the quarters to make sure he hadn’t left anything out of place.

Darting a brief look outside to make sure the boat’s occupants hadn’t returned, Gideon left the yacht and headed up the pier toward the marina exit.

As he bent his head to check the time, he sensed a rush of movement in the twilight gloom. Something slammed into the back of his neck, sending pain jolting all the way down his spine. Staggering around to confront his attacker, he caught a glimpse of the man’s face, narrow-featured and twisted with seething resentment. He felt a shock of recognition.

Then something hit him again from behind and he went down, the world going silent and black.

Chapter Seven

“Gideon?”

Gideon opened his eyes, squinting at the beam of light that drove straight into his brain like a knife. He didn’t know where he was or why his head was pounding with agony.