The Trust (38 page)

“That guy you mentioned,” replied Ricardo.

“What about him?”

“Her name is Olivia. She runs the AML for the Bahamas Banking Company.”

“You bought her?”

Ricardo cocked his head to the left and smiled. His elbows bent, he raised his right and left palms to the heavens. But he wasn’t praying. He was congratulating himself.

Who isn’t on Ricardo’s payroll?

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

PROVIDENCIALES, TURKS AND CAICOS

I have no history of violence.

Nothing more than a few kickboxing lessons from a coach who says, “Learn to walk away. There’s always somebody bigger, stronger, better trained who can kick tomorrow’s crap out of you.”

I had stayed up all night. Been beaten, bullied, and gagged while two goons probed my tonsils with a can of Great Stuff. My ears were ringing, my head throbbing. But for all the bruises on my face—nose shaped like a pickle and skin tones borrowed from
The Scream
—no permanent damage had been done. Ricardo and I had each been knocked unconscious too soon.

Everything changed in a few seconds.

I erupted, my fury blinding and feral. I was capable of anything. My savagery surprised me then. It haunts me still. And I wonder what vile thing inside pushed me over the line of decency. I had no history of violence.

Now I do.

*   *   *

“Let’s go, ladies.” Ricardo collected the change and cleared the room with his eyes. No cops. Nobody glancing in our direction. He was drawing closer to his payday and could almost smell the sweet bouquet of dollar bills, pounds sterling, or whatever currency he selected.

“Where?” I made no effort to move.

“One asshole is plenty,” he answered. “Get moving before Jake cores you a new one.”

Ricardo’s face had tensed over the past few minutes. His momentary cool had vanished. The careful planning, all the preparation and bribes, were yesterday’s news. Results were all that counted.

His brow creased again. His black eyes filled with an eerie, foreboding glow. Ricardo reminded me of traders with big money on the line, the way they get stiff and jittery and grow old waiting for their bets to pay off.

Or not.

The crowd troubled Ricardo. There had been only a handful of diners before, but now every seat in the house was taken. The patrons were workers, heavyset, with calloused hands, long on perspiration from hours underneath the stinking hot sun. Short on deodorant.

The small concrete-block room was an orgy of eating and drinking. Neon pinks and blues were splashed against the walls, while fourteen-foot ceilings shielded everybody from the midday sun. The room was stained by time and the greasy exhaust from cooking creatures of the sea. It reeked from happy hours that began with Bloody Mary breakfasts and ended when the last sot pitched face-first onto a Formica countertop somewhere.

Waitresses buzzed the tables. Some hoisted huge platters of crab cakes and fish. Others delivered amber glasses of ice-cold beer, their frothy heads jiggling from the motion.

Jake slid out of the booth.

I stayed put.

“Move it,” growled the pilot.

“I’m not going.”

Ricardo nodded toward me. “Take care of our problem child, Jake.”

The pilot slid back in and poked me with his knife. This time he cut a new spot. A fresh stream of blood spurted from the puncture.

I’ve suffered through my share of pain. That’s the thing about distance cycling. You learn to deal with the discomfort and move on, literally, because racing is all about stretching to the physical limit of your legs, your lungs, your head telling you, “This sucks.” Cycling is a sport where you make peace with agony, because every turn of the crank brings the finish line that much closer.

But sweet mother of Jesus, Jake’s knife hurt.

“You ever had your nose broken?” I asked.

“Shut up.” He snarled his words but averted his eyes under my withering stare.

Nobody paid attention to us. The patrons focused on their food and drink. Waitresses scoured for tips. And the hostess took names from the burgeoning crowd.

“Twenty-minute wait,” she announced every so often.

A maroon polka dot was saturating my shirt, the radius of blood six inches at least. Four guys, their skin the color of smoke, were standing near the cash register. They should have seen me and sounded the alarm. But they pointed to our empty booth, focused on who would bus the table and how soon.

The diner aisles were narrow, which was good for Jake and Ricardo. The goons could prod me forward, and Jake could keep his knife hidden. The tight quarters, however, were bad for the harried waitresses. Loaded with trays, they shimmied and limboed their way past us. Which, I suddenly realized, was the break I needed.

A slim waitress, her thick black hair a tangle of dreadlocks, hoisted a tray full of beers and shots of Jack. She edged down our lane toward a table of gardeners who looked like commercial fishermen. It was the middle of the day, though, and I decided that anglers would be at sea working their nets.

When the woman squeezed past Jake, he lost his concentration. “You need a management team for your hair, toots.”

I grabbed one of the beers.

“Put it back!” she bellowed, wedging into Ricardo. Her loud, angry voice filled every corner, every crevice of the room.

Two quick moves. I rammed the mug into Jake’s nose. Beer sprayed everywhere, his flesh and cartilage cracking from my 100 mph thrust, blood spurting across several nearby plates.

Jake’s hands shot up. Too little. Too late. I caught him with an elbow to the Adam’s apple. The pilot clutched his neck. The waitress’s platter blasted from her grasp, amber waves of imported beer splashing the gardeners behind.

Ricardo slapped my right hand. The mug landed three tables over, seated diners bailing from their booth. Everyone in the restaurant craned to see what was happening, too surprised to move, as pain shot up my fingers through my arm.

“Hey!” screamed the waitress.

Ricardo flung the woman onto the table behind him. The gardeners, already doused by the suds, looked up to see a human bowling ball of jeans and elbows and long black dreadlocks blasting into the middle of their booth.

My hand shot forward.

Lucky strike or intentional, I’ll never know. My thumb gouged into Ricardo’s eye socket. I squeezed with all my might. I gripped and grasped, as though reaching for viscera through his eye socket. Every slide from the Palmetto Foundation, all those kids, exploded through my head in a lightning flash of bloodlust.

Something popped inside Ricardo. Something I was holding. My thumb felt sticky, but I yanked forward, pulling him by the skull.

“Oh my fucking eyeball.” Though hurt, he never went down.

Ricardo backhanded the side of my face. I saw stars. He lunged toward me, blood streaming from his gore. The ooze was thick, too thick for me to tell the extent of his injury. I was lost, not thinking, just reacting, breaking away.

The patrons emptied from their tables. They were thick men with thick hands, who worked like mules. Some scrambled out the front door, eager to avoid the ruckus. Others gawked, angry from getting doused with beer.

It was chaos.

The diners were unsure what was happening. Or who had started the brawl. Most watched, their jaws hanging slack. One threw a punch and caught me in the gut, good but not good enough. I stayed on my feet.

Somebody grabbed me, pulled me around. I saw a blur of motion and slipped right.

“What the fuck.” A gangly kid with gangly arms threw a long punch. I ducked and pushed past the hostess and out of the restaurant. An angry horde chased me into the street, liquored-up guys furious over a lunch gone bad.

Not one cop on the scene.

Jake lurched through the front door of the diner, Ricardo right behind him. He was holding the sleeve of his shirt against the bad eye.

Somebody pointed at me. “Get him!” another yelled. The crowd lunged forward, united in beer and anger.

No time to explain. No time to turn the crowd against Ricardo and Jake. I spun around, kicked off my loaner sandals, and hit the gas.

Running, running, running. I sprinted past a bank of stucco buildings, bolting between cars on the street. I knocked over a businessman, who landed on his butt. His eyes flared wide from surprise as the wind grunted from my lungs.

I glanced over my shoulder, a classic cycling technique when you’re leading the pack. The crowd, mostly men, a few women, stormed after me. Somebody threw a mug that bounced off my shoulder and kicked from my heel.

Damn, it hurt. My head was spinning. Still no police in sight. Pedestrians were parting in the streets, turning their heads to watch all the commotion. They gave me a wide berth. They stepped aside for the people chasing a few lengths back.

Double glass doors, the same ones I had seen before.

I raced forward—focusing, trying to find a cop, no longer daring to look back—and pushed inside the lobby of the Bahamas Banking Company.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

CHARLESTON MARINA

“Where can we find
Bounder
?”

The cop with salt-and-pepper hair had twenty years on his partner. He wore starched blues and shiny black shoes with rubber soles. He walked with a slight crook in his back, the legacy of a long-ago run-in with a cheap punk on upper King Street.

“Berthed out back.” The dockmaster pointed toward the outer docks. “Make a right, walk to the end, then a left and another left.”

“Thanks,” replied the younger cop, a surprising blend of testosterone and detail orientation. He hated “drive-by directions,” the hazy and inexact information that made it easy to miss destinations.

“Can’t miss
Bounder
.” The dockmaster spoke in the warm, reverent tones that boat people reserve for vessels. “She’s got the prettiest lines in the harbor. Just like her owner.”

“You know Mrs. Kincaid?” Salt-and-pepper made a mental note to question him later.

“Oh yeah.”

“Have you seen her today?”

“Maybe. Maybe not,” the dockmaster replied. “I haven’t been looking.”

“Call me if you see her.” Salt-and-pepper handed the dockmaster his card. “We’re checking
Bounder
now.”

“Not in those shoes?”

“Why not?” asked the younger cop.

“You’ll leave marks all over the deck.”

“Somehow,” said salt-and-pepper, “I don’t think Mrs. Kincaid will care.”

Five minutes later, the two officers found the boat. The door to the cabin was open, Roy Orbison wailing “You Got It” from the inside. The unmistakable scent of cigarettes wafted into the windless afternoon.

“Charleston police,” called the younger cop through the cabin doors.

“Coming aboard,” added salt-and-pepper.

Holly barked furiously as the two men poked their heads inside. The rich wood interior was varnished teak. The patterned inlays alternated between chocolate brown and the golden color of country biscuits.

The younger man’s eyes hurried from ornate woodwork to brass fittings to galley stove.
It’s all so tidy,
he thought.

A woman sprawled on a deck chair, teak with royal blue canvas. She wore large dark sunglasses inside the cabin. Purplish bruises peeked from behind the frames and surrounded her crow’s-feet.

Salt-and-pepper had seen it all during his twenty-plus years on the force. Battered women always raised lumps in his throat. His eyes traced JoJo’s bruises, her bandaged hand. “You okay?”

“How’d you find me?” JoJo reined back her tears. Holly stopped barking and hopped on her lap. The dachshund licked her face and trembled defiantly at the two men in dark uniforms.

He nodded at her bandages. “You’ve seen a doctor?”

“I’m fine. Is Grove O’Rourke okay?”

“Ma’am, we don’t know, ma’am,” replied the younger cop, serving the ma’am sandwich of Southern respect.

“We need you to come with us,” said salt-and-pepper.

“And Holly?”

“Bring her too.”

JoJo put down her glass and dabbed out a cigarette on her coffee saucer. She took one last look at the teak interior. “Let me get my things.”

Outside on the gangplank, the older cop dialed his captain. The chief listened intently and said, “Bring her in.”

Then the captain dialed Agent Torres, who answered on the first ring. “Yes?”

“We got her.”

Torres said, “Call the hospital and tell them we have Mrs. Kincaid’s finger. I’ll meet your guys there.”

That’s when Claire interrupted the phone conversation. “I just heard from my bank.”

“And?” The agent’s pupils turned into black BBs.

“The money arrived in Turks and Caicos.”

“Any word on Grove?” Biscuit stood, walked to the window, and stared across Broad Street, steeling himself for her answer.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

BAHAMAS BANKING COMPANY

The bank’s lobby looked like any other. The ferns were fussy, the stainless-steel fixtures, too. The faux marble floors glistened with a high, slippery sheen. And customers stood in line, waiting to deposit money into an institution that might not lend it back. There were few hints of the Caribbean paradise outside. The room’s air was heavy with the torpid inertia of retail banking, nobody moving and nobody giving the day a second thought.

“Everybody freeze!”

My two words changed everything. Customers and staff snapped to attention. Hands over their mouths and faces ridged with fear, they combed the room for a bandit. They waited for the staccato report of automatic weapons—the here and now of a heist going down.

“You’re being robbed,” I yelled at the top of my lungs as the posse of diners pushed into the lobby behind me.

Somebody gasped. A woman shrieked. I stretched both hands way over my head to discourage trigger-happy cops hiding in the shadows. Several depositors darted out the door. They were petrified even as I was surrendering.

“What’s the meaning of this?” One of the bankers marched in my direction. He was bald, save for close-cropped hair on the sides and cactus fuzz on top.