Hoping that the phone would not wake David, she snatched it up and thumbed the button to talk. “This had better be good, General.”
“Hello, Alena,” Wagner replied. “And you know it isn’t. For something ‘good,’ I’d let you sleep. I only wake you up when it’s something ugly.”
David woke to a banging on his bedroom door. His eyes snapped open and he stumbled out of bed with the sheet wrapped modestly around him, barely awake but filled with panic. As he oriented himself, he wondered what had happened. Fire? An intruder?
“Up and at ’em, David!” his grandmother called from the hallway. “Come on. Get your ass out of bed.”
The bedroom door stood half-open and as he stumbled toward it he saw Alena hurry by, then abruptly reverse course as though she’d forgotten something.
“What is it?” he asked. “What’s happened?”
She paused in the hall to look in at him, and it struck him that she had been up for quite some time. His grandmother had showered and dressed in black trousers and a white tailored blouse. She’d done her makeup and hair. But the shoes were a dead giveaway, flat and practical, perfect for traveling.
“Pack a bag,” she said, then wrinkled her nose. “And take a shower. Your room reeks of man-smell. But hurry.”
Before he could argue — or ask what else men should smell like — she set off again, vanishing beyond the narrow view his half-open door provided. David knew Alena did not exaggerate, that if she wanted him to hurry there must be a reason, but he’d just been roughly woken from too-brief slumber and he wanted to know what the hell was going on.
He pulled the door open and went into the hall, dragging the sheet around and behind him like the train of a wedding dress. When he didn’t see Alena in the hall he blinked, then realized that she had gone into his office. The door hung open and she had turned on a light to brighten up the gloomy morning.
He started to ask what she was up to, but the moment he saw her bent over the table, peering at his ocean charts, he knew. His first instinct brought a rush of triumph, but then his stomach gave a sick twist and he shivered as nightmare images sprang up in the back of his head — memories that had haunted him both awake and asleep for years.
“Someone found another island,” he said, approaching his grandmother from behind. “Who found it? And where?”
She did not turn to face him. “Gun smugglers, believe it or not. Followed quickly by FBI and Coast Guard. And in the Caribbean.”
“Jesus.” David came up beside her and stared down at the chart, at the tiny red X she had made. Over the past few months, comparing reports of missing pleasure craft, fishing boats, and other ships, he had been creating an incident map on the chart, trying to pinpoint a probability triangle, an area where those events indicated such a habitat would likely be found. Alena’s X fell within his probability triangle.
“I was on the right track,” he said, but the realization did not feel like a victory. He wondered how many people had already died.
Alena turned to him, rose on her toes, and kissed his temple. “You were. Now get in the shower. There’s a plane waiting, and the car will be here to fetch us in twenty minutes.”
She left the room, and a moment later he heard her soft tread as she descended the stairs. David glanced over at the wall where he had posted dozens of newspaper articles about missing ships, as well as case notes about the two previously discovered habitats. A strange feeling spread through him, and he hefted the chunk of glassy black stone in his hand as he tried to identify the unfamiliar tremor inside him. Staring at the smiling faces of a fiftyish couple who had vanished on their sailboat, David blinked in surprise.
He wasn’t used to fear.
62
When the men and women in their Coast Guard uniforms had helped Gabe Rio out of the lifeboat and he’d seen the two grim bastards in FBI jackets waiting for him, he had felt something go out of him. At first it had felt like will, or purpose, or some reason to go on. Only later did he realize that the weight that had been lifted from him was responsibility. Whatever happened next would be out of his hands, and it shocked him how grateful that made him feel.
In those first moments, hustled on board the Coast Guard ship, he had been tempted to spill every detail he could remember about the crimes he had committed for Viscaya. With Miguel dead, he had no one left to protect. He could turn state’s evidence, testify against Esper and the others, do a little time and then start a new life somewhere.
Then he had seen the smug look on the face of the grim, square-jawed FBI man — obviously the boss — and that made the decision for him. The FBI could go fuck themselves. The only two people Gabe really loved had betrayed him. His marriage lay in ruin and those things—don’t think about them—had killed his brother. He’d lost his ship and most of his crew was dead. What more could they do to him than that?
Maybe twelve hours had passed since the Coast Guard ship had found them on the lifeboat the night before. Gabe had asked after the others — Angie and Tori and even Josh — but no one would give him any answers. The Coast Guard officers stationed outside his door would not speak to him. His only contact had been with the FBI, who had questioned him last night, allowed him four or five hours’ sleep, and then questioned him again this morning. Now they were back for round three, only with a twist.
A female twist. A new face. As though that would make some kind of difference.
“Let’s try this again, Mr. Rio.” The words came from Special Agent O’Connell. Thinning silver hair, fiftyish, salt-and-pepper mustache. They had spent too many hours together already, and Gabe had tired of his voice.
“Captain Rio,” Gabe corrected.
O’Connell sighed and exchanged a glance and a theatrical head-shake with his superior officer, Supervisory Special Agent Ed Turcotte. Gabe loved that the assholes introduced themselves like that, as if he gave a shit what brand of agent they might be.
“Are you kidding?”
This question came from the attractive blond woman who had appeared in the room with Turcotte and O’Connell this morning, as though she had been there all along. Of course she hadn’t. Gabe had been exhausted and grieving — he still was — but he could never have encountered Rachael Voss and forgotten her. Not with that small, lithe body and the way she almost flaunted the pistol holstered at her waist. Not with the fire in her eyes and the tension in her every motion, and certainly not with the way she prowled the room side to side like a lioness about to pounce. The woman had smiled at him, introduced herself by name instead of title, but Gabe took one look at her and knew that, in her eyes, he was prey. Ed Turcotte might be running this show, and O’Connell might be his attack dog interrogator, but Rachael Voss had been the one hunting him, which meant that Josh Hart came from her team. Turcotte had already said he was Counter-Terrorism, but the dynamic in the room made it obvious that Voss didn’t work for him.
“Excuse me?” Gabe said.
Voss leaned against the door frame and crossed her arms, trying to act aloof and failing. “I said you must be kidding with this ‘captain’ shit. I’m pretty sure your days as captain of anything but your cell block are over.”
Gabe leaned back and shrugged. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, Agent Voss. I mean, I’ve heard all these accusations, but I haven’t seen any evidence. I told you what happened to my ship—”
“You’ve told us shit,” O’Connell interjected. “Wake up, Gabriel. You were just doing a job, man, and look what it cost you. Your brother, your crew, and you can bet your ass it’s going to get you some jail time. The question is, how much? Do you really want to take this hit alone? Give us Viscaya, and we can help you.”