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“Go tell the boss,” one goon said to the other.
“I have others who know I’m here,” Jace told the man who stayed with him.
“Yeah, well, I do too and I’m betting on them,” he said, going through Jace’s pockets. Luckily, he’d taken his ID info out. His passport was still in the plane parked in a rented hangar. Man, he’d really blown this but when he’d seen those pictures of Claire and Markwood—with Lexi—getting married he’d lost his mind, lost control.
The man pulled out the key to the motorbike, the one to his room, American dollars and his cell phone. “We know who you are and where you’re from,” he said. “But I’ll let the boss decide where you’re going.”
Jace’s insides did a nosedive. What if this Clayton Kilcorse-Ames was not only a kidnapper but a killer? Blinded by his passion to save Lexi and help Claire, he had not realized it could come to this. Could they still be on the premises? He figured not or he would have been gagged as well as tied in case he shouted for help.
His guard turned on his cell phone and started to skim through something on it. He stopped a moment to lay the keys and cash on the washing machine and sat down in the other chair to glare at the phone.
“Nice pics you got of the outside of Nightshade from across the street,” the guy said. “Looking to buy multimillion-dollar property here? Coupla good ones of the balcony with the party.”
“Were you at the wedding?” Jace dared to ask.
“Part of the reception. Great coconut shrimp and lobster with hot sauce,” the guy replied as if they were just buddies shooting the breeze. But when he’d been hustled in here, pressed between the two goons, he’d felt both carried pistols under their jackets.
Jace tried to get more out of him, but the guy clammed up. He wasn’t sure how long he waited. He had no idea what time of night it was and couldn’t see his watch. Finally, he heard footsteps in the hall. The door opened. A short, white-haired man stood there in a white terry cloth robe over what looked like black silk pajamas. He motioned for the man guarding Jace to step out in the hall, where he also glimpsed the other man. They closed the door, and Jace faced the man he assumed was Clayton Ames alone.
“Well, the third leg of the triumvirate,” the man—the boss—said. “That is, if we don’t count your little girl, Lexi.”
“Is she all right? Did you let her and Claire go home?”
“And your nemesis Nick Markwood, Claire’s new husband. You see, he’s my nemesis too, so I think you and I might be able to do business, Jason—Jace—Britten. Frankly, I can use a man of your skills and connections. You can call me Mr. Kilcorse as I’m known around here.”
“Yeah, well, Mr. Kilcorse-Ames, I’m previously employed. I’m an international airline pilot, but I suppose you know all that. You’re the one who sent me the photos of Claire and Markwood together when they were in St. Augustine.”
“Brilliant deduction. I see we have your cell phone, so I’ll be sure to send you a few of the wedding pictures.”
“I’ve seen some and that was enough.”
“I’m sure you’d like a few reminders of why you’ll want to work for me. But to answer your first question, Lexi is fine, a little charmer. She will be going back to Naples soon, with her mother and new stepfather. And I need you to leave that alone, for now, at least.”
“Meaning what? And why would I work for you?”
“Ah, let me count the reasons. One, because you like to fly and are a skilled pilot and are likely to be asked to take a leave from your assignment flying to Singapore, which you like so much. By the way, Singapore’s getting to be quite a tax haven, and I’d like to have a man on my payroll who knows his way around there. I might have you fly me there yourself. Much better than those crowded public planes, even in first class.”
“I’m not on that run anymore. I’ve asked for assignments closer to home, so if you don’t know that, you’re slipping.”
“Actually, I think the airline has pegged you as unstable in general.”
Jace just gaped at him. This guy thought he was God, with his all-knowing information—or just the opposite of God, Satan himself.
His captor went on, “You’d be best off flying a second new Learjet I just bought. It seats eight, and for long flights you’d have a copilot, not be one. I’d pay you about four times the salary you’ve been making now with a big bonus up front. You can keep the Lear in Naples until I need it somewhere, keep an eye on your little girl and ex-and-future wife if you play your cards right.”
“Future wife? What the hell are you talking about?”
“By your dangerous presence here, you’ve proved you love your daughter and would risk anything for her, and I believe, despite your frustration and anger, you feel that way about your ex too. You’ll never get Lexi away from Claire or really be a part of their lives unless by eventually marrying her again. Oh, let me tell you, Nick Markwood is a take-charge guy in every way. But who would Claire and Lexi run to if it doesn’t work out with Nick or if something happened to him?”
“You’re not—not thinking I’d kill him for you?”
“Of course not. You’d be the first one they’d look at. But I am thinking that the third reason you’ll work secretly for me is that if you don’t agree, I’ll have the two gentlemen who brought you here take you out in a boat to Cemetery Reef and feed you to the fish. Now let’s talk business.”
* * *
“I wish my daddy was flying this plane,” Lexi told Nick as their flight took off from Grand Cayman the next morning.
Claire silently wished he was too, that she knew he was all right, at least.
“I’m sure he’s a very good pilot,” Nick said.
Lexi was in the seat between them with Claire next to the window. They had made a few hasty plans during their beach walk earlier this morning and agreed again not to talk about serious strategies until they were home. They’d learned to put nothing past Clayton Ames, including trusting no one on the plane, even if Nick had arranged the tickets.
Claire was grateful he was handling Lexi so well. She sighed and pressed her forehead to the window and watched below as the plane circled to head north. In a stretch of blue-green water, she glimpsed the outline of what might be one of the many wrecked ships that had run aground on the rocks or reefs here over the years.
“Lots of sailboats out today, and new cruise ships are putting in,” she observed.
“I like boats,” Lexi said. “Ones with sails like big wings, lots bigger than Tinker Bell’s wings in Peter Pan.”
“So you like boats?” Nick asked her. “You know, that gives me an idea about where we could live for a while. And it would be lots of fun.”
Claire’s head snapped around. If he meant on a boat, at least that might keep Ames’s lackeys and their eyes and ears away from them.
“But your boat isn’t big,” she said.
“No, but I know someone whose boat is.”
“Mr. Kilcorse doesn’t like boats,” Lexi said, still holding her green stuffed turtle they had checked again for listening devices, though Nick intended to have it x-rayed too. “Just like Daddy, he likes airplanes. I heard him talking on his cell phone, walking back and forth. He was telling someone he had to pay a lot of money to fly into Cubes.”
“Cubes?” Nick asked. “Could he mean Cuba?”
“Maybe. They locked me in a bedroom and said to sleep but I was too scared and peeked and listened under the door. And then he said—”
“Okay, enough for now,” Nick said with a pointed look at Claire. “You and Mommy and I will talk about this later.”
Claire nodded. It was going to be interesting to use her forensic psychologist training to depose her own daughter as a witness. She’d vowed she was all in to help Nick solve his two cases. One, what was Ames up to and how could they expose and stop him? They had to get something on Ames so the FBI or IRS could step in.
And two, she’d told Nick she’d question witnesses or people of interest in the so-called Mangrove Murder case he’d promised to take to defend his friend. So much for her promise to herself that, after surviving the St. Augustine murder/suicide case, her next Clear Path assignment would be for a local department store that wanted her to question office workers about possible embezzlement.
While Lexi had skipped shells into the water this morning, Claire had told him that she’d help. This trip to Grand Cayman had been bad enough but communist, Castro-held Cuba? That sounded more risky than any other offshore hideout Ames could have holed up in.
Since Nick had said that Ames just disappeared sometimes, could it be to Cuba? The place was off-limits for American businesses and visitors, but Claire knew Cuba had tourists from Canada, so an American could surely sneak in, especially one with money and clout. She’d ask Nick if people had to do big business with the Castro brothers to get a foothold there. No one was going to play with people’s lives—forcing them to marry, kidnapping children—not if she could help it. She knew Nick was dedicated to that devil’s demise, and surely Jace was too.
As if Nick had read her thoughts, he leaned over Lexi and said in a quiet voice, “I’ll get Heck on it, since he has Cuban heritage, but I’ve learned to put nothing past ‘Uncle Clay.’”
“I see that now. I understand.”
“Do we have to whisper?” Lexi asked. “I can’t hear good with the sound the jet engines make. And I know we’re not there yet, ’cause Daddy says you can always tell when you’re going down to land. Mr. Nick—I mean, Nick—sometimes Mommy says, don’t keep asking this, but are we there yet?”
“Mommy is absolutely right,” Nick said with a laser beam look at Claire. “We are definitely not there yet but we’re going to be soon, in more ways than one.”
8
“You did what?” Claire’s sister, Darcy, cried. She jumped up to close the kitchen door to the living room where their daughters were playing.
“It’s no secret. Lexi knows, and she’s happy with it,” Claire insisted, crossing her arms over her chest. “We just got back last night, and I didn’t want to tell you over the phone. I’m surprised Lexi didn’t blurt it out. It was all rather rushed, but—yes, Nick and I got married in Grand Cayman at the house of a—a friend of his.”
Her blue eyes wide in her freckled face, Darcy collapsed in her seat across the kitchen table and raked her fingers through her spiky blond hair. “Claire, you eloped once before but you were young and crazy. And look what happened to you and Jace—”
“That’s way in the past. I wanted you to know about this.”
“How thoughtful, after the fact, after all we’ve been through together. So you won’t be an almost neighbor to us anymore. How can I watch Lexi for you, how can the girls stick together—how can we?” Her voice rose to a shrill pitch and tears clumped her eyelashes together.
“I’m so sorry I let you down—all of you, Steve and Drew too. But it was—it happened and it was necessary, and you’ll just have to trust me on th—”
“Necessary! You’re pregnant?” she gasped. Finally, Darcy leaned across the table and reached for Claire’s clenched hands when her body language before had been stern and standoffish. One of Claire’s skills was reading body language and Darcy was hurt as well as mad.
“No, not that kind of necessary,” Claire assured her.
“I guess not, now that I think of it.” Darcy sat back again. “You’ve barely known the man three weeks. You could be pregnant, but you wouldn’t know this fast. Don’t tell me you married him for his money. For financial security? You said you were going to build your consulting company. But it looks to me like you can’t even walk a straight line right now, let alone a clear path. You’ve been bound and determined to be self-sufficient. I get it that the guy is Nick Markwood, eligible bachelor, great-looking, well-off and all that but—I—I just wish I’d been there.”
Blinking back her own tears, Claire got up and went around the table. She was almost afraid to touch Darcy at first, but she leaned close and put a hand on her shoulder. She’d always leaned on Darcy. Right now Claire hadn’t exactly lied, but she could hardly tell her the truth. She prayed she wasn’t endangering Darcy, her husband, Steve, and two kids by sharing even this much. But word would get out, and her family—what was left of it—had to know.
Worse, wait until Jace heard. Once he’d arrived back in US airspace, he texted her from the plane that he’d heard they were headed home with Lexi so he was coming back too. But he’d go absolutely ballistic when he heard his daughter had a new stepfather. He’d feel so betrayed if she couldn’t explain it to him—and could she?
“M-m-maybe,” Darcy said through sniffles, “I’m more like our mother than I wanted to admit—like, I mean, maybe I’ve had my head in the sand, like she always had hers in a book.”
“No, it isn’t that. I—I just didn’t level with you about Nick. This is all on me.”
“And here, I was psyching you out that you still cared for Jace and vice versa, but then you’re the psych major, not me.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. Please don’t cry. You’ve been so great to me, always. As the older sister, I should have been the strong one, but it’s been you, and I’m trying to catch up on that.”
“Stop talking in the past tense, like we’re over! Like we won’t see each other, or someone’s dead. But I guess things have changed.”
“Not my feelings for you, for Jilly, Steve and Drew. Darcy, I know I’ve made a mess of things, and my narcolepsy and cataplexy have been a burden, but—”
The kitchen door banged open, and Darcy’s daughter, blonde Jilly, Lexi’s age, rushed in sobbing, sucking in huge breaths. “Mom!” she cried and circled around Claire to cling to Darcy on her other side. “Aunt Claire got married, and Lexi was a flower girl, and we weren’t invited!”
Darcy shrugged off Claire’s touch and held Jilly tight. Lexi came in, hands on hips and tears on her cheeks. “She’s not happy for us, Mommy! She’s mad at me and you too!”
All four of them sat at the table and cried. Claire hated Clayton Ames even more right now. She made her vow to herself again: she’d do everything she could to help Nick ruin Clayton Ames, if they could find a way—and a way to stay alive.
* * *
Jace was glad to see his flying bud, Alex “Ace” Rutherford waiting for him when he taxied Ace’s Cirrus SR22 into a back lot hanger at the Naples Municipal Airport. Ace had married money and also had a cabin cruiser and a house in Grey Oaks, a ritzy, gated clubhouse community in Naples. He worked in stocks and bonds for his father-in-law, though he always said he’d rather be fishing.
“Hey, my man,” Ace called out as soon as Jace popped the door, “at least you brought my baby back in one piece.”
At least, Jace’s thoughts echoed, Claire and Nick had brought my baby back in one piece. Ames had assured him they had taken off from Grand Cayman just this morning. When he’d texted Claire, she’d texted back to say they were okay and not much else except to say thanks for the backup help and stay safe. That’s a joke, he thought. He’d nearly gotten himself killed.
“Hope you didn’t doubt me,” Jace told his friend, but he doubted himself. Not that he’d had a choice, but he’d agreed to work for the man who had ordered his daughter abducted, who had evidently set it up for Nick and Claire to get hitched. And if Lexi hadn’t been kidnapped, he wouldn’t be so sure that they weren’t in on that.
“Doubt you? No way,” Ace said. “Not after we were such a success with ‘The Ace and Jace Show’ that bombed the hell out of the Taliban. No problems down or back?” he asked, clapping him on the shoulder after Jace climbed down onto the concrete hangar floor. “You look like you haven’t slept. You okay, guy?”
“Sure, sure. Your new toy handled great. Hey, I got a new gig from a high roller I met down in the Caymans. Going to fly his new Learjet that will be delivered here in a couple of days. The damn thing’s worth about sixty-five million.”
“Sweet! He got a company here? Would I or ‘Daddy Dearest’ know him?”
“He’s an expat, lives down there but needs people flown around from here sometimes.”
Ace cocked his head and squinted at him. “No lie? Thought you loved the international airline gigs and were set on making pilot’s chair.”
“I’ll be more my own boss this way,” he told Ace as they watched the mechanic who oversaw private planes walk in to check out the Cirrus.
But, Jace thought, as Ace went over to talk to the guy, that was a lie. He’d put himself under Kilcorse-Ames’s very tight thumb to save himself. There were perks to the job, but sky-high risk too with very little leeway about taking orders from the top. He’d be flying Ames High, Inc.’s staff here and there on call as well as keeping a close eye on the murder case Ames said Nick would be taking. And he’d sworn to keep an eye on Claire and Nick—which galled him to no end, especially since that’s exactly what he wanted to do.
Though he had the perfect excuse to drop in on them to see Lexi, he hated being another of K-A’s spies. Still, Claire had betrayed him, maybe not to marry Markwood if she was forced to in order to save Lexi, but to get involved in the first place with that too-clever criminal lawyer. Jace wasn’t even sure he’d take Claire back if Markwood dumped her, or, as K-A had hinted, if something bad happened to him. The fact that Markwood took on the man’s murder case provided at least temporary life insurance for him.
But what K-A didn’t figure on was that Jace was big on paybacks.
* * *
“Your eyes are red,” Nick observed when he picked Claire up at Darcy’s in yet another rented car, this time a Jeep Cherokee. “Did your sister take it hard?”
“Very. Her little girl, just Lexi’s age, did too.”
“But she said she’d keep Lexi for a little while?”
“We all cried, then made a tenuous truce. Nick,” she said as she closed the car door, “I knew it would really hurt her that I more or less eloped. But what Ames is planning to do is dangerous to know, so I couldn’t tell her any of that. So where are we going that Lexi couldn’t come along? To meet with your endangered species friend Haze?”
“I’ll take you to meet him as soon as I can figure out a battle plan. Time’s a-wasting since the police may arrest him soon. But first, I wanted you to see a place I think we can live. I didn’t want Lexi falling in love with it first, so you can hear me out and decide. You said Jace borrowed his wealthy friend’s jet to come down to Grand Cayman. Well, this is a yacht that belongs to a friend of mine who has been after me to return a favor I did for him. That, and Lexi saying she loves boats, made me think of it.”
“A yacht? He must owe you a big favor.”
“I saved his life—or life without parole—by proving he didn’t murder a woman on this boat. A woman who wasn’t his wife. I established she was trying to shake him down, that he wasn’t having an affair with her and that someone else came on board and killed her before he even got there.”
“I remember that in the papers, and on Nancy Grace’s TV show too. She always digs up sensational stuff like that—screwed-up lifestyles of the rich and famous. So you’re going to show me a yacht where a murder took place?”
“True, but once you see it, you’ll forget about that. He hasn’t used it much since. He and his wife are still barely speaking. It’s a beautiful boat with six cabins and a small back deck pool, no less. It’s been just sitting at a marina in Naples Bay.”
“It would give us freedom to move around and keep strangers out, at least until you—we—work on this so-called Mangrove Murder. Lexi doesn’t start preschool until the New Year. Maybe she’d see it as a vacation.”
“We’ll tell her it’s an extended honeymoon. However hard we have to buckle down,” he said, reaching out to take her hand from her lap, “maybe it can be that.”
* * *
As Claire stood on the dock, she thought the Sylph looked like a floating palace. Sleek lines, pale gray-and-white hull. It had a Jacuzzi as well as a small pool. She could see that much from where they stood on the dock, so what must it be like inside? She could tell that its owner Dylan Carnahan was excited to have Nick use it for a while, at least. But it had stunned her to hear the man call the yacht his “twenty-million-dollar baby.”
Dylan was about Nick’s age and almost as tall. He had much lighter hair and seemed to have a—well, a jumpy, nervous persona.
“I owe you everything, pal,” Dylan told Nick after they were all introduced where he greeted them on the dock. The man was very talkative. Sometimes that meant a person was hiding something, but this man actually seemed lonely. “I’m happy to hear you have a ready-made family, and the Sylph’s all yours for a while,” he went on. “I’m gonna probably sell it, but not yet. Despite everything, it’s hard to let her go. I’ll get you a crew too, as it only has a captain and cook right now. I’d love to have her go out again. She doesn’t deserve her bum rap. You know what a ‘sylph’ is, Claire?”
“Some kind of water nymph?”
“It’s a slender, graceful woman. In short, Nick,” he said, bumping Nick’s upper arm with his fist, “an appropriate ship for your new bride and first mate.”
“Fated to be mated—Claire and me and the ship?” Nick countered.
“You got that right. Sorry, Claire,” Dylan said, “about the bad publicity here, but Nick saved my hide—not that I was guilty. I know you’ll do the same for that guy on Goodland too, pal.”
Nick’s head snapped around. “How do you know about that?”
“In the paper this morning, made you sound like the attorney from heaven. Don’t ask me how they got the word you’re defending Hazelton if you didn’t tell them. You know, the victim got let go from the staff of the Naples newspaper, but now they sound like they’re really into this story, fellow journalist and all that. I saw something on CNN’s Headline News about it too. I sympathize with the guy, ’cause I know how it feels to have the media mavens on your tail, even if you’re innocent.”
Nick and Claire looked at each other. The master in distant Grand Cayman was pulling strings again, using the fact Nick was well-known and respected here to set this all up. Local newspaper articles were one thing, but a national TV cable network?
“So, hey, let me show you newlyweds around,” Dylan said with a sweep of his arm toward the gangway. Claire almost felt she was boarding one of those Grand Cayman cruise ships.
She tried not to gawk at the opulence of the Sylph’s layout and decor. Lexi would absolutely flip out. The wall and fabric color scheme was stark black-and-white with touches of gold throughout. Chrome gleamed everywhere she looked, except in the stainless steel galley, where, Dylan said, the cook would be happy to not just be cooking for himself and the captain.
Everything was so modern, sharp and clean. Two suites and four bedrooms—though Dylan corrected her to use words like staterooms and cabins; to say heads for the four stunning bathrooms; and passageways for hallways. It was another world but it would provide privacy and safety.
While the two men huddled at the dining room table over details, Claire stood at the point of the prow, remembering Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in the movie Titanic shouting, “I’m the king of the world!” What a love story but a tragic one.
She had not been able to say yes, she’d marry Nick, because he hadn’t asked, and it had been out of her control. But she’d said yes to living here, despite the fact the lounge had been the scene of a murder. At least this would work until Lexi started school and for the time it took them to clear Hazelton and tout Ames’s Youth products.
But what if Hazelton wasn’t innocent? She’d have to help Nick find out the truth. As for keeping Lexi safe, they planned to hire an au pair, a sort of nanny, a Hispanic woman related to Heck Munez. They would be docked here, but possibly move to different island ports, or maybe even go to sea.
She went back in and wandered to the master suite again. She’d insist that Nick take this stateroom, and she’d stay in the slightly smaller one next door. They could put Lexi next to hers and each have a cabin to use as an office, when they were here and not onshore at Goodland and beyond, working on the murder case. There would still be a guest bedroom here for Darcy and her family—if they would visit.