Flood Rising

1

Jenna Flood realized two things in the time it took the black numbers on the silver, liquid crystal display to tick between 55 and 54: she was looking at a bomb and she had less than a minute to live.

49…

48…

Jenna took a step back. Her flip-flops slapped against the soles of her feet, the only noise she could hear over the sound of blood roaring in her ears. She wasted the precious seconds wavering in indecision.

Listen to your gut, her father was fond of saying, but make up your own damn mind.

He seemed to always have sage one-liners ready, like some ancient wise man. His first name was actually Nathan, but everyone called him ‘Noah.’ Noah Flood. Despite the funny looks he got when people first heard the name, Jenna thought it actually pleased him to be nicknamed for the world’s most famous mariner. He had been Noah to her since she could talk — not Dad or Daddy.

Jenna’s ability to separate gut instinct from thoughtful rationale was not as finely tuned as Noah’s, which was almost certainly the very point he was trying to make. A visceral gut reaction could alert a person to very real dangers, which was a possibility for an adolescent girl in South Florida. The human body had only two responses to those instinctive warning signals: fight or flight.

Her gut told her to flee. There wasn’t time for any kind of rational approach to this problem. Not for her. But her father…

“Noah!” Her voice sounded shrill in her ears. “Noah! There’s a bomb in here!”

45…

44…

She opened her mouth to shout again, but glimpsed movement on the deck outside. Noah, slid down from the bridge, hands on the rails of the ladder, feet never touching the rungs. He landed on the deck and burst through the cabin door. She waited for him to laugh and admit to a prank, or to chide her for mistaking some harmless piece of equipment for a bomb, but he did neither. Instead, he pushed her aside with a brusqueness she had seen him use only once before, just a week earlier. She had seen a different side of him that day, and it had been so anomalous that she never expected to see it again. Yet, here it was again.

Caught off-balance she started to stumble, but his hand clasped her forearm, steadying her. Then he pulled her behind him, dragging her toward the upper deck’s door.

She craned her head around and caught one last glimpse of the timer counting down—

39…

38…

— before Noah jerked her away. As she followed, she continued the countdown in her head, muttering under her breath. “Thirty-seven alligators, thirty-six alligators…”

What will happen when it gets to zero?

With her mind’s eye, she looked past the numbers on the simple kitchen timer, and saw the rest of it. Several plastic-wrapped blocks of something that looked almost like cheddar cheese, lined the bottom of a sixteen-quart Igloo cooler that someone had left under the table in the small but well-appointed salon. Her gaze had been drawn to it immediately. The lunch-box sized cooler looked completely out of place in the cabin. The galley had not one but two fully functional refrigerators, one of them stocked with a variety of beer and soft-drinks. Clients never brought along coolers, and they certainly never left anything behind.

If she hadn’t been curious about what was inside it, or had just been delayed a minute longer out on the deck… What would have happened?

What was going to happen?

The yellow packets had to be some kind of plastic explosives — C4 or Semtex — that was what they called it in the movies. There were three bricks, each at least as big as a pound of butter. Three pounds of plastique, Jenna wondered, is that a lot?

She thought it must be. Evidently Noah did, too.

“Thirty-four alligators. Thirty-three alligators…”

Her father would know. He had a habit of correcting action movies, commenting on magazine capacities, overpressure waves and how to treat stab wounds. But how did Noah Flood, a fifty-something year old, charter boat operator, know about things like overpressure waves and how many rounds a semi-automatic pistol ought to have?

As Noah opened the door and started through, Jenna heard a sound like a hammer striking the bulkhead above the doorframe. Noah ducked back, uttering a rare profanity, and he peered through the tinted glass windows.

“What’s wrong?”

“Sniper,” Noah said. “Probably up on the roof of the bait shop. He can’t see us in here, but if we try to leave…” He shook his head. “He’ll keep us pinned down here until the bomb takes care of us.”

Thirty alligators. Twenty-nine. “A sniper? What’s going on? Who is doing this?”

Even as she said it, Jenna knew it was a stupid question. Well, maybe not stupid, but definitely the wrong time to ask. Still, it was going to take longer than twenty-seven alligators to wrap her head around the idea that someone was trying to blow them up. That was something so far outside her experience, the only way her fifteen-year old brain — even as sharp and quick as it was — could begin to grasp it all was to begin with why?

Noah had his hands on his hips in that familiar what am I going to do now pose that usually made her smile. He figured out a lot of problems in that pose, and she knew that somehow, he was going to figure this out, too. Of course, it usually took him a little longer than twenty-five seconds.

“Can we just throw it overboard?” she asked.

He usually hated it when she offered suggestions, especially since she was so often right. This time, instead of shushing her, he just shook his head. “Not with that sniper out there. That’s why he’s here. We don’t get to leave and neither does the bomb.”

Twenty-one alligators. Twenty alligators.

Noah darted back to the cooler and peered inside it, cocking his head sideways. “I don’t see a jiggle switch,” he muttered, then looked over his shoulder at her. “Get in the head.”

“What?”

“Sometimes, these things come with an anti-tamper trigger.” Noah’s voice was eerily calm. “If I try to move it, it could explode. The walls of the toilet might shield you enough to survive.”

When she did not move right away, he stopped being calm. “Jenna! Move!”

She jerked into motion and ran to the aft head, sliding the pocket door open just enough to squeeze inside. Despite his warning, she peeked out to watch what he was doing.

Jiggle switch? Anti-tamper trigger? How does he know that? As she thought about this, she realized she’d lost the count. How much time left? Maybe fifteen seconds?

Noah swung the lid of the cooler closed, then moving with excruciating caution, picked it up by the handle. Careful to avoid jarring or tilting it, he turned and headed forward, into the master stateroom. He disappeared inside, then emerged a moment later, moving much more quickly.

Jenna thought he was going to join her, but instead he turned into the galley. When he stepped out again, he carried four 2.5 gallon water jugs, two in each hand. Still moving at a jog, he returned to the stateroom. When he came out again, he was empty-handed and running toward the small toilet compartment. Without saying a word, he pushed inside and pulled her down, covering her with his body.

“Noah,” she whispered, though there was no reason to. “Who is doing this?”

She no longer thought of it as a stupid question. In fact, it was the only thing that mattered now. In about seven seconds, she was probably going to die. There wasn’t anything she or Noah could do about it. All that was left was to answer that one burning question: why?

Who wanted them dead?

Five alligators… four alligators…

Noah didn’t answer. “Cover your head,” he said, much louder than her whisper. “Keep your mouth open.” He opened his mouth in a wide O, and when she tried to emulate him, her ears popped and her jaw hurt.

Two… one…

Zero.

Nothing?

Did I mess up the count? Maybe it’s not—

2

Jenna had been helping Noah run trips on weekends and during breaks from school nearly all her life. They were partners as much as they were family, and often she thought of him more as a mentor than a father. He was not an absentee breadwinner, like the parents of so many of her friends at school. He was always there, including her in everything, teaching and molding her at every opportunity. The Kilimanjaro, Noah’s forty-eight foot Uniflite Yacht Fisherman, was as much a second school for her as it was his place of business, and of course, it was the place they both called home.

The gleaming white fiberglass craft was a comfortable, if not exactly traditional home. The centrally located cabin contained a spacious salon that served as both dining room and galley. In addition to the forward Master Stateroom, which Noah maintained for the use of guests on overnight trips, there were two smaller staterooms, one for him and one for Jenna. When not cruising through the waves, propelled by twin 410 horsepower engines, Jenna often passed idle afternoons on the forward deck, soaking in the sun. There was also plenty of room to hang out and relax on the aft deck, or on the bridge above the cabin, where she often went to watch the picturesque sunsets.

The complete absence of any kind of familial resemblance between her and Noah was also a factor in defining their relationship. Noah was five-ten, average height for a man and solidly built. All his life, so he claimed, people told him that he looked like a young Ernest Hemingway — young being a relative term as Noah was in his early fifties, which seemed positively ancient to Jenna. Perhaps because of the perceived likeness, Noah had chosen to emulate the literary icon by leaving the rest of the world behind and retiring to the Keys to raise his daughter and spend the rest of his life ‘chasing that big fish.’

Jenna on the other hand was tall — she already stood nose to nose with Noah — and willowy. Nature had seen fit to let her skip over the body-awkwardness of early adolescence. With long straight chestnut brown hair that looked black when wet, but in a certain light, glowed almost red, and with dark brown eyes, she was often told that she looked exotic. People sometimes asked ‘What was your mother?’ She understood that they meant nothing offensive by the question, but it was a hard thing to answer.

What was she? Alive. What is she now? Not alive. Jenna didn’t know much more than that. Not her name. Her face. Or something as basic as her nationality.

Noah had no pictures of the woman and almost never spoke of her. When her mother did come up in conversation, she was always ‘your mother.’ It was the one topic of conversation Noah refused to indulge. Jenna never detected a hint of lingering grief in his tone, but she imagined that they must have been deeply in love. There was no other way to explain his refusal to share memories of the woman with her only daughter. Jenna often daydreamed about her mother, but all she really knew was that the woman must have looked a lot like her, because Jenna looked nothing like her father.

Jenna wondered why thoughts of her mother, of family and the familiarity of home, had popped into her head at a moment like this. Maybe it was her version of that old cliché about a person’s life flashing before her eyes before she died.

As the world around her screamed, shook and burned, Jenna wondered if, at long last, she was going to meet her mother.

3

The world moved in slow motion. Jenna’s senses, hyper-acute with adrenaline and anticipation, dissected every excruciating detail. The fiberglass wall bulged inward. A deep soul-crushing thump pushed through her body. The air in the small compartment flashed blast furnace hot.

Is this what it feels like to die?

Then even her heightened awareness could not keep up with the overload of stimuli that followed. Everything went dark. She felt herself turned upside-down. Shocking coolness replaced the intense heat as the Gulf of Mexico poured in around her.

There was a grunt of exertion and then light flooded in. Noah had wrestled the sprung door out of the way. With her first glimpse of the aftermath, Jenna wondered if she had been transported to some kind of parallel universe where everything was familiar but nothing was where it ought to be. She lay on a bulkhead, with the deck sloping away beside her and the molded plastic commode somehow protruding out above her head, blue chemically-treated water sloshing out.

We’re sinking.

That was only partly true. As Noah cleared the opening, Jenna saw that the world outside the head had likewise undergone a profound reality shift. Instead of the warm and welcoming wood-paneled salon with tinted windows affording an almost unrestricted view of the marina, there was only torn fiberglass, dangling hoses, wires and dark water.

“Move it!” Noah shouted.

Jenna shook off her sense of dislocation and pulled herself through the surreal three-dimensional maze. It was like trying to escape from a carnival funhouse. Nothing was what it seemed or where she expected it, and the only way to stave off vertigo was to close her eyes and keep moving. She felt Noah’s hand close on her biceps, pulling her the rest of the way through.

Outside, the situation was no less disorienting. Aft, the mostly intact deck was canted upward, like a ramp leading nowhere. Most of the superstructure — the top of the cabin and everything that had extended up above it — was gone, ripped out by the roots. The hulls of the vessels in neighboring slips — the First Attempt and the Martha Ann—rose up on either side, looking none the worse for wear. The sight of the two completely intact boats hit Jenna like a cold slap of reality. The only home she had even known was in ruins all around her, and the rest of the world would just keep going on like nothing had happened.

The forward end of the Kilimanjaro was completely gone past the galley, split apart like a mailbox vandalized by a delinquent with a cherry bomb. What was left of the front end was settling quickly into the harbor. Whatever Noah had done with the bomb in the last few seconds before the timer ran out had focused most of the blast energy out the front end. His quick thinking had saved their lives.

Jenna started to crawl up toward the still dry aft deck, but Noah pulled her back. “Not that way. The sniper is still out there. We have to make him think we’re dead.”

“We’re going to be in about three seconds,” Jenna replied, and in her head, an involuntary countdown started. Three alligators…two…

“We’ll swim out.” He pointed into the dark water below. Jenna didn’t look where he was pointing though. Her gaze was fixed on the enormous gash that stretched across his forehead, streaming blood down into his eyes. “Jenna, focus. You have to follow me. Keep your head down. Don’t let him see you. Do you understand?” He shook her arm. “Jenna, do you understand?”

She nodded.

“If we get separated, for any reason, go to Mercy.”

“Separated?”

“Time to go.” Without further explanation, Noah let go of her arm and half-slid, half-crawled down the tilted deck until he was in the water. She saw how he kept himself pressed flat against the floor, staying low to avoid detection. His movements seemed automatic, like second nature.

Who are you? she thought, but the question felt wrong. She knew who he was, at that moment. Who he’d been for a long time. The real question is, who did you used to be?

Jenna put the mystery out of her thoughts and did her best to imitate him. She splashed into the water beside him, and then, at his signal, she took a deep breath and plunged her head under the surface.

The water stung her eyes. It was full of diesel fuel and battery acid and who knew how many other chemicals leaking from the ruined yacht, but below was the lukewarm salty soup of the Gulf. She saw Noah swimming through the green murk, diving down deep into the shadows beneath the First Attempt’s keel. She twisted her body around, and kicked after him. She looked back just once and saw the remains of the Kilimanjaro, slowly sinking toward the bottom of the harbor.

Noah angled his body upward and surfaced under the wooden pier that ran alongside the First Attempt. Jenna came up right next to him and slowly exhaled. She could hold her breath for two full minutes, so the short swim had hardly been a warm-up.

Rays of sunlight slipped through the gaps between the boards overhead and cast surreal stripes across Noah’s craggy, blood-streaked visage. For a moment Jenna felt as if she was looking at a stranger.

“Stay here,” he said.

He took a deep breath and arched his body in preparation to dive, but Jenna caught hold of his arm before he could slip beneath the water again. “Where are you going?”

“Emergency services are probably on their way. He’ll have to bug out soon.”

He? Noah was talking about the sniper on the roof of the bait shop, but Jenna failed to see how that was any kind of answer. “So let him.”

He offered a smile that was both patient and very, very cold. “Someone just tried to kill us, Jenna girl. I’d like to know who that someone is, wouldn’t you?”

Jenna was surprised to find herself in agreement. For the first time since discovering the bomb, her instincts were telling her that it was time, not to flee, but to fight. When Noah plunged beneath the water once more, she was right behind him.

4

Jenna edged out from under the pier just far enough to peek up at the sloping sheet metal roof of the imposing structure that looked down on the marina. She and Noah had always called it ‘the bait shop,’ but it was several different businesses under one roof: the marina offices, a general store, several tour operators and a few gift shops and restaurants. Movement drew Jenna’s eyes. Someone was on the roof, just beyond the peak. A man wearing a tropical print shirt. She couldn’t make out his features, but she recognized the shirt.

“It’s Ken,” she whispered. Ken Soebel had been one of their clients for the day’s fishing trip.

Noah gave her a dark look. “I told you to stay put.”

She didn’t respond. Her thoughts were occupied with the question of how she’d spent the last eight hours in close-quarters with someone who had been planning to kill them, and had not sensed a threat from the man. Not even a hint. So much for listening to my gut.

“Do you think he’s working for Carlos?” she asked.

Carlos Villegas, a Cuban-American thug who had, along with his brother, come aboard the Kilimanjaro one week before, for a day of SCUBA diving on the reefs near Dry Tortugas. He had in fact been interested in recruiting Noah to smuggle drugs across the Gulf of Mexico. Carlos’s brother, Raul, had been interested in something else: her. The situation had escalated to the point of a violent confrontation, and Jenna had seen a very different side of her father.

Afterward, Noah had told her that they would not speak of it again, but Jenna’s instincts — her gut — told her the brothers would want payback for bruises to both their bodies and their egos. Who else could possibly want to hurt them?

Noah shook his head, but whether it was an answer or from frustration, she couldn’t tell. “What else do you see?”

She looked up again, but there was no sign of Ken. “He’s gone.”

“Damn it.” Without further explanation, Noah broke from the cover of the pier and heaved himself up out of the water and onto the wooden deck. He moved so quickly that Jenna didn’t have time to ask what he was doing. She let out a reflexive gasp as she realized that he was now in the open, exposed to the sniper, but then just as quickly realized that the sniper — Ken — had gone and was not coming back.

Noah must have realized that, too.

Jenna pushed off one of the upright pilings and swam out from under the floating dock. The wooden platform was only about two feet above her, but for a moment, it seemed unreachably high. The section of dock that ran along the mooring slips was lower, closer to the water’s surface, but swimming back would have put her further from her goal, requiring her to waste time she didn’t have. She tried to recall how Noah had surmounted this obstacle. Her father had made it look almost effortless.

She reached up as high as she could and then kicked furiously, like a dolphin trying to launch out of the water. The maneuver got her up high enough to grasp the edge of the dock with her fingertips, but that was as far as she got. She hung there, straining to pull herself up, but at the same time feeling the wood slipping away beneath her fingers.

Jenna kicked again, pulling herself up with all her strength, and before she knew it, she was rising, the dock chest-high. She kept kicking, her feet now merely splashing water, and she wriggled forward until she felt the edge of the platform biting into the exposed skin of her abdomen. Her customary uniform — a bikini with an oversized blue Conch Republic T-shirt, knotted at the waist — was the perfect attire for a day-trip aboard the boat, but for life-and-death struggles and clambering around on creosote treated docks, not so much. Her flip-flops were gone. She had kicked them off during the swim. Now her bare toes could find no purchase on the algae-slick pilings. With a final thrust of her legs, she propelled herself forward and rolled onto the dock.

For a moment, she could only lay there, savoring the small victory, but then she glimpsed Noah, sprinting up the ramp that connected the moorage to the boardwalk in front of the bait shop. Getting out of the water was step one. She still had more steps to take, though she hadn’t really figured out what they were, aside from follow Noah. She sprang to her feet and took off running after him.

A slowly dissipating black cloud hung above the marina, and a foul smell, like burning tires, filled the air. Gawkers lined the docks, gazing in astonishment at the debris-strewn hole in the water where Kilimanjaro had been just a few minutes before. She saw a few people that she recognized — faces only, boat operators and residents that she passed every day but had never exchanged words with — and heard them muttering names: Flood, Kilimanjaro, Jenna.

She didn’t stop. Noah disappeared around the corner of the building. Jenna, sprinting all out, reached the same spot just a few seconds later.

There was a parking area at the northwest end of the structure, but the rest of the space on the leeward side of the bait shop was reserved for long-term parking, storage of trailers and boats undergoing repair. The lot was isolated, with no one to witness what Jenna now beheld.

Noah and Ken were fighting.

It was a close, brutal struggle. It was nothing like the fights in those movies with fists and feet flying, nor even like the sparring she did in the dojo, where she trained religiously, two-hour sessions, three days a week. The two men grappled, at times hardly moving at all, each trying to unbalance the other or find some weakness to exploit. Their movements were sinuous, understated, but then Noah’s opponent, evidently spotting some opening, let go with his left hand and drew back for a punch.

Jenna realized that she had come to a complete standstill, partly in amazement at what she was seeing, and partly because she didn’t know what to do.

She saw a ladder, propped against the side of the tall building, and beside it, a long rectangular case, big enough to hold a guitar. Or a rifle, she realized.

Noah must have surprised the would-be assassin as he descended the ladder. Not the man she knew as her father, but the Noah Flood she didn’t really know at all: the decisive man who had overpowered Carlos and Raul Villegas a week before, and who had just a few minutes ago known how to shield Jenna from a bomb blast…

What was he thinking? What did he hope to accomplish by charging headlong into combat with a killer?

Whatever the answer, Noah seemed to know what he was doing. Instead of trying to block or dodge the punch, Noah leaned into it, catching the fist on his forehead. There was a spray of blood as Ken’s fist made contact with the still weeping gash above Noah’s eyes. Noah didn’t seem to notice. He let go with both hands and reached up to trap Ken’s wrist. Faster than her eye could follow, he flipped his entire body around and pulled Ken to the ground, trapping his opponent’s arm with both hands and legs. Jenna heard a crack as cartilage and ligaments separated, and Ken’s grunts of exertion became a low howl of agony.

Something moved just beyond the struggling men, and Jenna glimpsed another man running toward them. It took her a moment to recognize him. It was Zack Horne, the other client who had been with Ken during the fishing trip. The friendly expression he’d worn throughout the day was gone, replaced by a hard grim mask. He was looking right at her.

Jenna saw him raise a hand, as if to point in her direction, but instead of an extended fingertip, she saw something dark…and then a tiny flash.

Something cracked against the wall beside her, throwing out a puff of dust and splinters, and Jenna’s mind went into overdrive.

A gun. He’s shooting at me.

She ducked back, behind the corner, removing herself from Zack’s line of sight, but her instincts weren’t telling her to flee.

Listen to your gut, Noah always said, but make up your own damn mind.

Your gut reaction to a threat will be to either run away, as fast as you can, or to blow through it head on, which, he had added with a trace of sarcasm, is probably what you will do because you’re a teenager and you think you’re invincible. But a lot of times, those are the worst choices you could make. You might make a bad situation even worse, or you might miss out on an opportunity.

Opportunity for what?

She couldn’t believe that Noah had been talking about threats like this — or had he? — but she had taken the advice to heart. Her instincts were saying that she should stand her ground and fight these men who seemed intent on killing her. She had to help Noah, but she had to let her mind guide her now, rather than her primal urges.

Zack had a gun, a pistol. She hadn’t heard a report, which meant he had a silencer, which also meant none of the gawkers on the other side of the bait shop would hear the shooting and come running.

It’s not a silencer, damn it, Noah would say whenever someone in a movie called it that. It’s a suppressor. It’s just a fancy muffler, like on a car. Noah would then go on to complain about how pistols weren’t very accurate beyond about twenty-five yards, or how most of the ones the movie stars used didn’t have much stopping power.

That information did not seem particularly helpful right now. Even if it didn’t kill her, she wasn’t keen on letting even one bullet find her. But there was something else Noah always said. Run away from a knife, but run toward a gun.

She had pressed him for an explanation on that one.

A bullet can run faster than you can. If someone is trying to shoot you, the only way to stop them is to take their gun away. You get close to them, move faster than they can track you, and you’ll take away their only advantage.

How do you know these things? she would ask, and he would just smile and wave a dismissive hand.

How did he know those things?

She crouched at the corner, holding her breath and listening. Over the grunts of Noah’s battle with Ken, she heard the thump of footsteps.

Wait for it.

Get close.

Remove the advantage.

Zack appeared, gun extended, looking down the side of the building, as if expecting to see her at the far corner. He realized his mistake and glanced down, the gun moving toward her with a slowness that was merely a trick of her senses.

Jenna exploded out of her crouch. She threw her left arm out in a rising block that kept the muzzle of the weapon from finding her, and drove her right fist up, into his exposed throat. Zack staggered back, the gun falling from his fingers, hands clutching protectively at his throat. Jenna however, was just getting started. She drew both hands to her hips and then planted a front-kick into Zack’s sternum. Despite the fact that he outweighed her by a good hundred pounds, when her heel connected, he flew back and went sprawling. Jenna kept her balance and moved gracefully forward, as if this were nothing more than one of her karate katas.

Zack recovered more quickly than she expected, scrambling to his feet and matching her ready stance, and for a fleeting instant, her resolve faltered. Her many years of martial arts training had, without her even realizing it, accustomed her to the idea that sparring matches ended with such a decisive attack. Even though her body knew what to do, her head had, if only momentarily, let her forget that this was a life-or-death struggle.

A bestial growl interrupted whatever was about to happen, and both Zack and she turned to see Noah give Ken’s head a violent twist. Ken’s struggles ceased and his body went completely limp in Noah’s grasp.

The sound of vertebrae being wrenched apart sent a chill through Jenna. Ken was dead. It was as if she could see the life evaporating out of him. She had never seen a person die before, never seen a person killed.

Killed.

Noah just killed someone.

Zack gaped in disbelief for a moment. As Noah shoved the lifeless body of his partner away, Zack turned and ran.

Jenna stood rooted in place, her impulse to fight replaced by a numb paralysis. Noah was suddenly standing before her, sweeping her into his arms — the same arms that had just broken Ken’s neck…

She heard Noah’s voice, felt his breath on her neck. “Are you okay?”

Am I? “Yes.”

She meant it, too. The initial shock of what she had just witnessed was ebbing, and in its place, was an unexpected swell of pride.

They tried to kill us. We fought back.

We won.

They were still standing there, Jenna enfolded in Noah’s protective embrace, when the first Monroe County sheriff’s deputies arrived.

5

“Let me handle this,” Noah whispered in Jenna’s ear. He relaxed his embrace, but only enough to allow him to turn and face the two men in black uniforms who were striding toward them.

One of the approaching deputies spotted Ken’s motionless corpse and reacted instantly, drawing his service pistol and thrusting it toward them. His partner did the same.

Jenna started — more guns, pointed at her — but Noah held her fast. He raised his hands slowly, and she did the same. She could see the fear and confusion in the deputies’ faces. They had no idea what was going on, but had been trained to meet any perceived threat with open aggression. The news was full of stories about people killed by law enforcement officers who overreacted.

That would be just perfect, she thought. Survive the killers, and then get killed by cops.

“Move away from her,” shouted one of the deputies.

“He’s my dad.” The words were out before she could even think.

“Jenna, it’s okay.” He took a slow step to the side, and raised his hands even higher. “Just do what they say. We didn’t do anything wrong, but they don’t know that.”

“On your knees,” ordered the same officer, while his younger partner yelled, “Face down. Grab the pavement.”

The conflicting orders, sprinkled with a dose of tough cop cliché, would have been comical if not for the guns. Jenna decided face down was better than knees and complied, even though she was pretty sure the command was meant for Noah. In the corner of her eye, she saw him getting down as well.

She looked past the two deputies, past the flashing red and blue lights on their white patrol car, to see more emergency vehicles pulling into the main parking area — a fire truck, an ambulance and Key West police officers. She had been a spectator to such a response before, but had never been at the focal point. It was surreal, but oddly comforting; this was how things got back to normal. The police came, and when they left, you picked up and went on with your lives.

Except she knew that was not going to happen. The boat — their home — had been destroyed. People were trying to kill them, and there was no reason to think they would stop after one attempt.

Zack was still out there, probably only a few blocks away. He was the bad guy, the one that should be face down and grabbing pavement. Jenna wondered if she ought to tell the deputies about him. She rolled her head to the side and was about to whisper that question to Noah when she caught a glimpse of another vehicle rolling up, a black SUV with no lights or identifying marks.

Two men got out. They wore blue windbreakers, and looked enough alike that they might have been brothers. The most obvious differences were cosmetic. One had a military buzz cut while the other had a neatly trimmed if somewhat pedestrian mall-salon hairstyle. They looked exactly like action-movie detectives, and Jenna wasn’t at all surprised when one of them waved a badge case at the deputies. “Federal agents. Stand down.”

What happened next wasn’t exactly what Jenna expected. The deputies did not lower their guns or start grumbling about jurisdiction. Instead, they turned their guns on the new arrivals.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” shouted the senior of the two. He glanced quickly at his partner and added. “Jimmy, secure the suspects. I got this.”

The agents seemed momentarily taken aback by the reception, but did as instructed, raising their hands and doing nothing that might provoke a violent response. Jimmy, the younger deputy, circled around Noah and Jenna, his aim never wavering.

The agent who had flashed his badge seemed to grasp that the deputies weren’t going to simply stand aside. “Deputy, please. We’re all on the same side here, but you need to stand down.”

When the uniformed officer didn’t respond, the agent continued, “Check my credentials if you must, but we have to get these people out of here. They’re in immediate danger.”

These people, thought Jenna. He’s talking about us. But how could he know that we’re in danger, when we only just figured it out ourselves five minutes ago?

The deputy lowered his pistol and waved the agent forward. The man with the buzz cut stepped up and held his badge up again for closer inspection. From where she lay, Jenna could make out the gold shield topped with an eagle.

“FBI,” mused the deputy. He glanced from the identification card to the agent and back again, then took a step back, his posture wary but no longer quite as assertive. “Special Agent Cray, you need to take this up the chain. Our job right now is to secure this scene until the detectives get here, so I suggest you get back in your car and sit tight.”

Agent Cray did not look pleased by the deputy’s reticence, but as he pocketed his badge, he gestured again in Jenna’s direction. “Can we at least get them someplace where they’ll be less exposed?”

The older deputy glanced back, uncertainty giving way to resignation. “Jimmy, pat ‘em down. Make sure they’re not carrying. Then we’ll put them in the patrol car.” He looked back to the agents. “That work for you?”

“I’d prefer my vehicle,” said Cray. “They aren’t suspects, deputy. They’re material witnesses, and I’d like to keep anyone from seeing them.”

Jenna looked back and saw the younger deputy holster his weapon and approach Noah as cautiously as he might a sleeping alligator. “You packing? Got any blades or anything sharp on you?”

It seemed like a ridiculous question to Jenna. Noah was wearing board shorts and a white T-shirt with the Kilimanjaro Expeditions logo, both garments soaked and clinging to his skin. Even if he had owned a weapon — which he did not — there was nowhere for him to hide it on his person.

But instead of answering in the negative, Noah spoke in a low voice, barely loud enough for Jenna to hear. “Deputy, listen to me. Those men are not federal agents. You absolutely must not let them put my daughter in their vehicle.”

“Right,” replied Jimmy, making no effort to conceal the exchange. “They’re not feds. I’ll just take your word for that.”

Not federal agents? Jenna was still trying to make sense of Noah’s claim when she saw the older deputy glance back at them, his face creased with concern and indecision. There was nothing indecisive, however, about Cray’s reaction. With startling swiftness, he brushed back his windbreaker, drew a pistol from a holster clipped to his belt, and fired at point blank range into the deputy’s chest.

A gun appeared in the hands of the second agent, even as the report from Cray’s weapon reached Jenna’s ears. Jimmy, in the act of kneeling to frisk Noah, was caught off balance and stumbled as the second agent fired in his direction. Noah rolled sideways, getting closer to Jenna, and shouted something. Jimmy recovered from his fall, and from a kneeling position, tried to unholster his pistol. More shots sounded — Cray and the other agent firing together. Jimmy fell again.

A hand clapped down on Jenna’s shoulder. It was Noah, his face just inches from hers. “Run!”

Jenna felt stuck in place, caught in the flypaper of too many things happening all at once, but Noah broke her from the inertia with a shove that rolled her onto her side. She saw him lift up on hands and knees, his back to the agents, his body in between her and their weapons.

“Run!” he shouted again.

Something warm and wet sprayed across Jenna’s face. She blinked and twitched her head involuntarily, and when she opened her eyes she saw…

“No!”

The scream came unbidden. Noah’s T-shirt, just below the silk-screened silhouette of the Kilimanjaro, was stained bright red.

Noah was grimacing, but his eyes never left her. “Run,” he repeated, but this time it was only a whisper.

Behind him, the agents had stopped shooting and were moving forward, guns still out. The one named Cray locked stares with her. “We’re not going to hurt you,” he promised. “But you have to come with us.”

Jenna ran.

6

Flight.

It wasn’t what her gut was telling her to do, not with Noah’s blood drying on her face.

As she sprinted along the side of the bait shop, Jenna heard Cray shouting after her, repeating his assertion that he intended no harm to her. She had no reason to believe him, but if he was telling the truth, she might be able to get close enough to fight.

But Noah had told her to run.

Not federal agents…must not let them put my daughter in their vehicle.

The realization almost stopped her in her tracks. She could almost get her head wrapped around the idea that Carlos Villegas was trying to kill them, but how did the rest of it fit?

She was missing something, something that Noah had figured out before he…

Jenna refused to let herself finish that thought. Noah had told her to run, and that’s what she was going to do. She rounded the corner and kept running.

The boardwalk that connected the marina to the bait shop was crowded with firefighters, deputies and curious spectators. She considered running to one of the deputies, or trying to lose herself in the crowd, but she rejected the idea. The bogus agents had not hesitated to use violence against law enforcement officials, and she didn’t think they’d let the danger to innocent bystanders stop them either. Noah had told her to run, but he hadn’t told her where.

Yes he did.

If we get separated, for any reason, go to Mercy.

Jenna veered away from the ramp leading down to the dock and vaulted onto the handrail that ran the length of the boardwalk. It was about twenty feet to the water below, which did not seem very far, until she was looking down at it. Her momentum overcame any uncertainty, and as the oily surface rushed up, she straightened her body and brought her hands together ahead of her. She felt a warm slap, and then the murky green enfolded her.

She turned her palms out and arched her back, leveling out, swimming parallel to the surface without rising. As the water absorbed the initial energy of the dive, she continued propelling herself forward in a graceful underwater breaststroke until she reached the shadows beneath the nearest pier.

There was no sign of pursuit, but she stayed where she was, peering up at the blurry outline of the bait shop and the barely visible figures moving in front of it. The water felt soothing against her skin, and the simple act of holding her breath forced her to remain calm, when she felt like screaming.

Go to Mercy.

She turned and swam deeper into the darkness below the moorage. A splash warbled through the water, and her gaze was drawn to the shattered remains of the Kilimanjaro resting on the harbor floor more than thirty feet below her. Figures were moving through the water above the wreck: a pair of rescue divers checking for survivors inside.

With their masks, the divers would have no trouble spotting her if she got too close. She thought about the two deputies and the two men who had claimed to be agents, and decided it was better to avoid being seen.

She had to get out of the marina unnoticed, and the only way to do that was to stay in the water, swim out of the marina and make for one of the island’s beaches. It would be a long swim, but the real challenge would be avoiding detection. She would have to swim near the surface to breathe, and that would put her in view of anyone watching from the bait shop, including the killers who knew that she was in the water.

I could swim underwater, she thought. The SCUBA equipment in the Kilimanjaro’s aft locker had probably survived the explosion, but with rescue divers crawling all over the wreck, there was no way to reach it.

Then it occurred to her that there were other places to get diving gear.

The idea of stealing from one of her neighbors was so foreign to Jenna that, for a few seconds, she could almost believe that a little cartoon devil on her shoulder had whispered it into her head.

I could never do that. Noah would kill me for even considering…

The thought slipped away, not because of the grief that it might unleash, but because she knew she had it completely wrong. Stealing someone’s dive gear to get out of this mess was exactly the kind of thing Noah would want her to do — not the Noah she thought she knew, but the man who seemed to know all about how to survive a bomb blast and how to kill a man with his bare hands. The Noah who could sense danger, told her to run and gave his life to make sure she got away.

A spasm in her chest reminded her why she needed a self-contained underwater breathing apparatus, and she slowly rose to the surface to fill her lungs, staying close to the hull of one of the parked boats and well out of anyone’s line of sight. Just as quickly, she dove back down, staying beneath the dock where no one would see her.

At least half of the boats in the marina had dive gear, but even with the distraction, Jenna didn’t think she could make it aboard any of them unnoticed. She had a different destination in mind.

She swam the length of the pier, coming up for air twice. When she reached the end of the long dock, she swam down until she felt the urge to pop her ears, deep enough she reckoned, for the water to hide her from surface view. She leap-frogged to the next row of boats. From the end of the second pier, she could make out a converted houseboat at the far edge of the harbor, and the weathered, hand-painted sign with the familiar red and white ‘diver down’ flag. It had yellow letters that read: Dive ‘n’ Moore SCUBA Shop.

John Moore’s dive shop was a regular stop for Noah and many of the other charter operators on their way out into the Gulf. It was a last chance to rent equipment and a place to pick up tourists eager to put their freshly minted PADI certifications to real world use. There would be plenty of gear in John’s storeroom, and with the attention of nearly everyone else in the marina fixed on the emergency response, the odds were good that she could slip in and out without attracting any notice.

She made the crossing to the pier where the dive shop was permanently moored. She lingered just below the houseboat’s deck for a moment, checking to ensure that no one could see her, then pulled herself up and out of the water, before crawling close to the exterior wall.

So far, so good.

The main entrance to the dive shop was situated on the side that faced out toward the marina, but there was a second, private door that opened closer to the pier. From the corner of the structure, Jenna could see the door and the long dock that led back toward the bait shop. There were a dozen people scattered along the dock, all staring across the harbor at the unfolding drama. To reach the door, she would have to risk being spotted, but given the distance, it was doubtful that any of them would recognize her, much less realize what she was doing.

She took a calming breath and stepped out into the open, taking confident but measured steps to avoid looking conspicuous. She stopped at the door, cast a sidelong glance in the direction of the spectators, and then grasped the doorknob.

Unlocked.

She let her breath out in a sigh of relief, then eased the door open a few inches and looked inside. It occurred to her, too late to do anything about it, that the door might be equipped with an electronic signal or even something as low-tech as a bell, but the only sound she heard was the faint rasp of the door’s weatherstrip brushing the threshold.

The back door let open to a small sales floor adorned with racks of sundry dive accessories, wet-suits, T-shirts and other souvenirs. She had an unrestricted view of the interior, all the way through to the open front entrance. Off to one side was a counter, and behind it, an open door that led, she assumed, to the storeroom where the more valuable equipment was kept. The shop appeared deserted. John was probably just outside, watching, along with everyone else.

She pulled the door shut and darted to the end of the counter, crouching behind it. She crouch-walked until she was at the door to the back room. She edged around the doorpost, saw that the coast was clear, and then slipped through.

During her swim, she had compiled a mental shopping list, the bare minimum of equipment she would need to swim out of the marina and reach her next destination: mask, snorkel, fins, buoyancy compensator, twenty-pound belt, regulator and a filled gas cylinder. She wouldn’t be swimming very deep, no need to worry about decompression sickness. A twelve-liter bottle would more than suffice.

The back room was well organized, and she was quickly able to locate the first few items on her list. She stuffed her selections into a nylon mesh carrying bag, and then moved to a row of bright yellow tanks, lined up with near-military precision. Each one had a paper tag wired to the K-valve fitting, which noted the date it had been filled and the internal pressure measured in bars. She took the closest one and cradled it in her arms.

The squeak of a loose floorboard caused her to look up, but the warning came too late. Her eyes met the weathered visage of John Moore, the dive shop proprietor. He stood warily in the doorway, and then, overcoming his initial surprise, he started toward her.

7

“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Jenna froze. It was an instinctive response, and in the back of her mind, she heard Noah chastising her for not being more aware of her surroundings, not being in control of her reactions.

Freezing, she knew, was just another way of fleeing a situation, mentally at least, and hoping that things would get better. Usually, they didn’t. Freezing up was a way of surrendering control, letting luck and circumstances guide the outcome rather than a conscious decision.

Your gut reaction to a threat will be to either run away, Noah had told her, or to blow through it head on, which is what you would do because you’re a teenager and you think you’re invincible.

Run away?

John was between her and the exit. Nowhere to go.

Blow through?

Yes, she could do that. She could swing the SCUBA bottle at him, knock him down and then run… No, that would defeat the purpose of coming here.

Throw the tank at him, and then when he’s distracted, go on the attack, just as she had with Zack. A couple of punches to the jaw… Maybe hit the sweet spot and knock him out on the first try…or a kick to the solar plexus.

I can take him.

The very idea of attacking this man, not a killer with a gun but one of her neighbors, kept her rooted in place.

But a lot of times, Noah had continued, those are the worst choices you could make. You might make a bad situation even worse, or you might miss out on a real opportunity.

Most people are an open book. Watch a stranger for a few minutes and you’ll know everything there is to know about them — their body language, the way they move their eyes when they talk.

Jenna had exchanged pleasantries with the shop’s grizzled namesake, but not much more. He was the epitome of a crusty old beach bum: mid-sixties, a full head of white hair, skin bronzed and eyes faintly yellowed from too many years of staring at the sun-dazzled water. She didn’t know if he recognized her. The only thing she saw in his eyes was the fear of what might happen next.

Opportunity.

She shifted her posture, trying to mimic his alert stance, then slowly, visibly relaxed. Her spine straightened, her neck stretched, making her appear taller, more confident. She smiled.

“John!” She said his name like he was an old friend she hadn’t seen in years.

Uncertainty flashed across his face. She saw his eyes flicker upward, ever so slightly, as he searched his memory, trying to find the right connection to her.

“Hi, John,” she said again, repeating his name, reinforcing the familiarity. “Where do you want me to put this stuff?”

“What?” His eyes were moving wildly now, the biological equivalent of a computer hard-drive spinning to access data scattered across dozens of file locations.

Shape his perceptions, she told herself, control the finished product. When Noah had first taught her these techniques, she had been doubtful regarding their effectiveness. It seemed like something right out of the Jedi Knights’ handbook. Surely, real people couldn’t be that malleable. But thereafter, she had become acutely aware of how often people were easily tricked.

“For the trip out to the reef, John. Remember?”

“Ummm…”

I’m losing him, she thought. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.

She mimicked his pose again, narrowed her eyelids, and used the small muscles of her eyes to change her focus and dilate her pupils without releasing his stare. It was a hypnotist’s trick, but she had no idea if she was doing it right, much less if it even worked at all.

“John, did he forget to tell you?” Her voice was lower now, almost seductively soft, but full of sympathy and commiseration. She made a conscious effort to avoid using any other name but his own. If she mentioned Noah, it might trigger a memory cascade that would connect her to the destroyed boat, and the spell would be broken.

“Do you want me to call him, John? I’ll bet he can get this cleared up in a jiffy.” Jiffy was a good friendly word. “Or we can take care of it when we get back? That’s probably what we should do.”

A smile, confused but nonetheless friendly, finally split his craggy face. “Ah, sure. That’ll be fine.”

“Thank you, so much.”

He nodded, but then the uncertainty started to creep back into his expression. Don’t let him think about it. “I could use a hand getting this stuff outside.”

“What?” John seemed to snap back into the moment. “Oh, sure thing, Miss…?”

She took a quick step forward and let the cylinder roll toward him. His reflexes took over and his arms came up to catch it. She scooped up the mesh bag containing the rest of the equipment she had gathered, then stepped around him, moving slowly to hold his gaze as he turned. She stayed close, backing toward the rear door. She made small talk about his wares, asked vague technical questions about diving to keep his mind occupied, and step-by-glacial step, got him to the back door.

She set the bag down and reached out for the filled tank. “I’ve got that one. Can you get the other one?”

“The other?”

“Yep. Thanks. Oh, I guess I’ll need a manifold, too.”

“Oh, sure thing.” He seemed almost reluctant to turn away, to let go of her stare. Truth be told, she was a little worried about that, too. How long would the spell last?

“I’ll be right here,” she said, with as much innocence as she could muster. “Just grab another bottle and a manifold.”

With an audible sigh, John ducked back through the door. As soon as he was gone, Jenna pitched the cylinder over the side, and then, with the mesh bag in hand, she jumped in after it.

8

Jenna stared at the notice, mounted just to the right of the weather-beaten wooden door. Just below it was another sign that declared: NO SHOES, NO SHIRT, NO SERVICE.

At least I’ve got a shirt, she thought, as she gave the door a push and went inside. The space beyond was dark, or seemed that way after fifteen minutes of walking into the setting sun. She waited until her eyes adjusted.

She had exited the harbor, underwater and undetected, and headed north, staying in the channel that ran along the eastern side of the island until her tank was about half-empty. Then she ditched everything but the mask, snorkel and fins, and paddled up onto shore. With dry land underfoot, she had discarded the rest of the gear and headed west across the island.

A teen-aged girl walking barefoot down the street was not that unusual a sight — not in a place like Key Weird anyway. Once she got her bearings, she had stayed off the main thoroughfares, weaving down cross streets and through neighborhoods of trailer homes. Although she had lived on the island all her life, she had found herself experiencing it from a completely new perspective. Everything seemed different at a walking pace, familiar but at the same time foreign. The strangeness of her surroundings compounded the mental and physical exhaustion she now felt.

She didn’t want to run anymore. She was tired of running. Noah was dead. She hadn’t completely processed what that meant. She knew that eventually she would feel pain and loss, but right now she felt only anger: anger at the men who had blown up their boat and shot Noah, and anger at herself for running when what she really wanted was to fight. And since she couldn’t do that, she just felt tired.

The stuffy air inside the bar smelled of bleach and fry oil, undercut with a hint of stale beer. Country music drifted through the air, but it wasn’t loud enough to drown out the audio from two different television sets mounted to a wall behind the bar, one displaying a baseball game, the other tuned to an all-news network. Jenna studied the latter for a moment, curious to see if the events at the marina had made the news, but the commentators were discussing an international crisis — something about a bio-terrorism attack in China…or had it come from China? On any other day, Jenna would have been fascinated by the subject. While other girls she knew wanted to be famous singers or sports stars — or to just marry rich husbands, she hoped to become an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Today, she scarcely noticed the bio-attack story.

The sunspots in her vision continued to recede, and after a few more seconds, she could make out human shapes. Two men stood over the pool table that dominated one end of the establishment. It took a moment longer for her to realize that they were looking at her. She turned away from their watchful stares, and moved toward the bar. Two of the stools were occupied, the patrons hunched over their drinks, their backs to Jenna.

“Jenna, honey, what are you doing here?”

Jenna felt the last of her weariness slip away at the sound of the voice. “Mercy!”

Thirty-six year old Mercedes Reyes was the sole proprietor of Ex Isle, a not-quite disreputable, out of the way, dive bar, frequented by local regulars and ignored by the island’s transient vacationing population. She was also Noah Flood’s girlfriend, or at least Jenna assumed she was.

The exact nature of the relationship between her father and Mercy was difficult to pin down. They didn’t live together and their very independent lives meant that they didn’t spend much time with each other. Mercy was almost twenty years younger than Noah, making him literally old enough to be her father. She was also more than twenty years Jenna’s senior, old enough to be Jenna’s mother. Given the striking resemblance between them, a similarity which only seemed to increase as Jenna approached maturity, the question of whether they were actually related had come up more than once. Both Noah and Mercy insisted that they met for the first time when Jenna was three years old. The obvious explanation, that Noah was attracted to Mercy for the very reason that she resembled Jenna’s mother, would have made sense if not for the somewhat cool nature of their relationship. They were certainly friends, but they seemed to be in no great hurry to have a more intimate connection. Either that, or they were just very discreet about what they did have.

Jenna had always been of two minds about that. Because he was the most important person in her life, she felt both jealous and protective of her father. Sometimes she wanted him all for herself, and sometimes she wanted him to find someone to make him happy. Jenna thought of Mercy as both mother and big sister, and that, too, was problematic. There was no sense in upsetting the status quo with romance.

Now, all those considerations were moot.

“Mercy, I… Noah…” The words refused to form. If she said it out loud, that would make it all true. She had put her grief into a box and buried it deep. Her sole focus had been getting away, running, reaching Mercy, just like Noah told her to do.

Mercy’s face creased with concern. “Jenna, honey, what’s wrong?”

She tried again. The words didn’t come. The tears did.

Mercy, unbidden, folded her arms around Jenna, hugging her tight.

Stop it!

The thought was so sudden, so violent, that Jenna jerked away from Mercy’s embrace. She blinked furiously at the tears, embarrassed at the display of weakness, but that was not why she had pulled back.

Noah’s instructions to seek out Mercy had been specific: if we get separated… Mercy’s bar was to have been a place to rendezvous, not a refuge. But how was Mercy going to help? She would call 911—what else could she do? — and that would almost certainly bring Cray and his partner right to her doorstep.

She couldn’t put Mercy in danger. She couldn’t let herself be put in danger.

So what am I supposed to do?

What would Noah do?

That was a question she no longer felt she knew the answer to, but she knew one thing: He wouldn’t put Mercy in danger.

“I’m sorry,” she said, blinking away the tears. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

9

As she crossed the parking lot, Jenna quickened her pace, moving with a determined stride that none-too-subtly telegraphed the message: Leave me alone. Mercy, standing at the entrance, called out to her but didn’t follow.

Jenna felt a profound, but short-lived sense of relief. She had protected Mercy and probably herself as well, but in so doing, had wiped clean the slate of options. She was on her own now, and the men who had tried to kill her were still out there. There was nowhere else she could go, no one she could trust to save her…

You’ve got to stop thinking that way, she told herself. Noah didn’t raise you to let other people solve your problems.

“So I’m just supposed to take on these killers myself?” she muttered.

If it comes to that. Flight or fight. You either run away, or you take the fight to them. You stood up to Zack, and he had a gun. You are not powerless. Trust your gut, but make up your own damn mind.

Her gut told her to fight, but who was she supposed to be fighting?

“Who wants me dead?”

She had thought that perhaps the bomb attack was the work of the Villegas brothers, wanting revenge for what had happened a week before.

Noah was very careful about which clients he would let her interact with, especially now that his little girl was becoming a very attractive young woman, but he would always introduce her to clients as a way of testing her people-reading skills. When he introduced Carlos and Raul Villegas, a pair of young Cuban-American entrepreneurs who, if their claims were to be believed, operated a successful night club in Key West, her keen senses went on high alert.

She could tell, at a glance, that Raul was the younger brother. He looked younger, with an athletic physique, a clear unlined face and a full head of jet black hair, but it was the less obvious clues that spoke to Jenna. Raul was cocky, with a strutting attention-seeking demeanor that was textbook younger sibling behavior. She noted his clandestine glances to see if older brother Carlos was watching him, but she couldn’t tell whether Raul was looking for his older brother’s approval, or trying to assert his independence. She also caught him looking at her, not leering openly, but letting his eyes flick up and down her body.

His attention had made her uncomfortable enough to loosen the knot in her T-shirt hem and tug it down to her thighs.

Carlos was very different. Handsome but not in a youthful way. He had a fake but practiced smile and eyes that never seemed to move. He made her wary. Noah had warned her about people like this, men who were well-versed in the art of manipulating others to get what they wanted — hucksters and pick-up artists who used their charisma to exploit people. Carlos hadn’t even looked at her.

She had retreated to the Kilimanjaro’s bridge and later, when Noah had joined her and asked for her impressions of them, she had expressed her opinion in the most succinct terms. “They’re both creeps.”

“It’s actually much worse than that,” Noah told her. “Carlos Villegas has been making the rounds of charter operators, looking for someone to run errands for him.”

Jenna was intelligent enough to know what that meant. The Villegas brothers were small-time drug traffickers who were looking to find new ways to bring product across the Gulf. “You knew that, and you still let them come on board?”

“Today, they are just clients, out for a dive. Their money is as good as anyone else’s. Don’t worry. I’m not going to become a smuggler.”

Only now did she recall that his answer, and his evident willingness to even associate with men like the Villegas brothers, had bothered her. Subsequent events had caused her to forget all about that.

It had happened just as they were preparing to weigh anchor and head back to port. Carlos had approached Noah and tried to strike up what he must have thought would be a casual conversation as a way to make his pitch. Jenna had been eavesdropping from the relative isolation of the bridge, curious to hear how Noah would shoot him down, when to her astonishment, Raul had appeared on the ladder.

“Is this where you’ve been hiding, chica?” Without waiting for an invitation, he climbed up onto the elevated deck and then leaned back against the control console as if he had every right to be there.

Jenna had felt herself go cold. It was, she realized now, the first time she had ever truly felt the fight or flight response. She wanted to scream for help, to run down to the lower deck and take shelter behind Noah, but she had resisted the urge. This was one of those opportunities Noah had talked about, a chance to put what she had learned to use in real life. And besides, other than sneaking up on her, what bad thing had Raul done? Nothing. Yet.

His smile had been genuine, but his eyes had betrayed him. Jenna noticed how he had kept glancing to his left, mentally constructing the fiction he would use to win her over. “You should come down and party with us.”

“I don’t think my father would like that.”

She had stressed the word ‘father’ hoping that would be enough to discourage him, and almost immediately saw that it would not. He had smiled like they were old friends who skirted parental rules on a regular basis. Co-conspirators. “You always do what daddy says?”

“It’s a small boat.”

He had licked his lips and eased forward. “Aww, c’mon baby. Don’t play hard to get.”

He wants me to call for help, to be scared. What will shut him down?

She had forced herself to relax, leaned against the console beside him, mimicking his posture, and had looked him in the eye. “Raul, I’m not playing hard to get.”

There was a glimmer of triumph in his eyes, and she had wondered for a moment if she had misjudged him. Desperately, she had searched her repertoire of techniques. “Do you have a sister, Raul? Or is Carlos your only family?”

The triumphant look had faded. He had looked away, and she’d known that she had found the right pressure point, perhaps more than one.

“No. No sister. I have a younger brother in Cuba.”

“Oh? What’s his name? How old is he?”

She had sensed a shift in his demeanor. His narcissism was ebbing. He no longer felt compelled to conquer her, to possess her. His lust was gradually changing into something more like the protective love of a brother for a sister.

Suddenly, Noah had charged up the ladder. “What the hell is going on here?”

Before Jenna had been able to answer, Noah had slammed a fist into Raul’s abdomen. Raul had curled around the blow like a worm on a fishhook. Noah had grabbed him by the neck and propelled him away from Jenna, pitching him off the elevated platform. Raul had thudded, senseless, onto the deck below.

Noah had turned to Jenna, and in a voice that still chilled her, said simply. “Stay here.”

Jenna had complied, but her insatiable curiosity had driven her once more to spy on what was happening below. She saw Noah pull Carlos close and whisper something in his ear. A moment later, both of the Villegas brothers had gone into the water, willingly it seemed, and had begun swimming toward nearby Long Key.

When Noah had joined her on the bridge, he’d said, “We won’t speak of this.”

And they didn’t.

To the best of her knowledge, no complaints were registered with local law enforcement or maritime authorities. If they had wanted to, the Villegas brothers could have sued Noah or tried to get his charter privileges revoked, but doing so would have exposed them to further investigation that might have revealed their illegal activities. Yet, they had not seemed the sort to simply let it go.

Somehow though, the idea that the Villegas brothers were behind the bomb attack just didn’t fit. It was too complex, too sophisticated. They were small-time thugs, more likely to lie in wait with a baseball bat. If she had read them correctly, they were the sort of men who preferred to deal with their enemies personally.

There were other pieces that didn’t fit. Who were the men posing as FBI agents? Why had they been interested in her?

Suddenly, she saw what she had been missing, the one thread woven throughout all of the unconnected dots, the one thing that was constant in every instance. It still made no sense to her, but the connection was there.

The sound of a vehicle approaching from behind drew Jenna out of her musings. She moved to the edge of the street to give it room to pass, and then turned to make sure that she was clear. Her heart fell as she recognized the weather-beaten Ford F-150 pickup that pulled up beside her.

Mercedes Reyes leaned across the seat and spoke to her through the open passenger window. “Jenna, get in.”

There was an unusual gravity to her tone, and despite her reservations, Jenna found herself opening the door and climbing into the cab. She settled into the seat but refused to meet Mercy’s stare. There was a long uncomfortable silence, filled only by the gentle chug of the idling engine.

“Are you just going to sit here?” Jenna finally asked.

“I tried to call Noah,” Mercy said. “No answer. So I called the marina. They wouldn’t pick up either.” She laid a hand on Jenna’s forearm. “What’s going on?”

Jenna felt her resistance eroding. Mercy’s touch seemed to uncork the bottle into which she had placed her weariness and grief. Mercy had the uncanny ability to read her like a book, sometimes even better than her own father.

“I don’t know.” Don’t tell her. You’ll only put her in danger. She met Mercy’s gaze. “What are you doing here? You need to get back to the bar.”

“We’re closed for the rest of the day. I would have been here sooner, but it took a couple of minutes to roust everyone.”

“You didn’t need to do that.”

Mercy squeezed her arm. “Talk to me. I can tell something is seriously wrong. Let me help.”

“You really want to help?” Jenna drew in a breath. “Then tell me this. Who in the hell is my father?”

10

Mercy stared at Jenna for a few seconds then turned her eyes forward and let off the brake. “I’m not going to insult your intelligence,” she said, with a low controlled tone, “by acting like I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“So it’s true. Noah has some kind of secret life?”

Mercy pursed her lips together. “Jenna, please tell me what’s happened. Is Noah all right?”

“Noah’s dead.” It was like ripping off a Band-Aid. She braced herself for a tide of emotion but it didn’t arrive. Perhaps it was too soon, the event too fresh in her mind to truly be perceived as a loss, but Jenna thought it might also have something to do with the sudden realization that her father seemed more like a stranger to her now.

“How?”

Jenna stared at Mercy, surprised at the coolness of her reaction. This isn’t a surprise to her at all. “Somebody blew up the boat. We got away, but afterward, two FBI guys showed up. Only Noah said they weren’t really FBI. One of them shot him. I ran.”

“Are you all right? Were you hurt?”

“I’m fine.”

“Tell me everything. Start at the beginning.”

Jenna did, only realizing after she started recounting the events of the last hour that Mercy had deftly avoided answering her question. As she described the arrival of the bogus FBI agents — or rather allegedly bogus, since she had only Noah’s say-so — she seized the opportunity to shift the conversation back. “Noah told the deputy that they weren’t really federal agents. How would he know that?”

Mercy just shook her head and kept driving. Jenna recognized their surroundings. They had circled around and were in the neighborhood where Mercy lived, just a couple of blocks from the bar.

“What happened then?”

“Then? Then they shot him, and I ran like hell.” She curtailed the story there and tried again. “He told the deputy not to let them put me in their car. Me. Somehow, he knew they were there for me. How did he know that? What is going on?”

Mercy pulled off the street and parked in front of her single-wide mobile home. Jenna thought of the trailer as her own second home. During the school year, when Noah was out on the water, she would come here after school to await his return. She had spent endless hours here, watching television, playing games, doing homework. Now that the boat was in ruins, it was the only home she had left, and that thought filled her with dread. Right now, she didn’t need the false comfort of the familiar. She needed to know why her life had been thrown into chaos.

“What are we doing here?”

“I don’t have all the answers. But I might know where to start looking. But first, you need some clothes. And I have to get a couple things.”

She got out, and Jenna followed her up the steps. Mercy waited until they were both inside, the door firmly closed behind them, to start talking. “Noah never talked much about his past. I take it he never told you much, either?”

Jenna had never thought about it, but it was true. Noah had always been accessible, always teaching her, eager to listen and advise, yet he had never really told her much about his life before her. He had retired to the Keys, but retired from what?

“You can always spot the phonies,” Mercy went on. “They talk big, especially after a couple of beers. The real ones never talk at all.”

“Real what?”

Mercy shrugged. “Soldiers. Spies. Special Forces guys. I’m not sure which Noah is.”

Jenna felt an impulsive urge to deny the suggestion but stopped herself. It made too much sense not to be true.

Mercy didn’t elaborate, but instead went to a pile of unfolded clothes on the living room couch. She pulled out a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and tossed them to Jenna, then she headed into the bedroom.

As Jenna pulled the jeans on over her still-damp swimsuit, she mulled over Mercy’s speculative comment, and was astonished at how perfectly it filled in all the little gaps and answered the niggling but easily dismissed questions. How better to explain Noah’s knowledge of weapons, his quick reaction to the bomb, his ability to recognize the FBI agents as impostors, his lethal hand-to-hand combat skills?

“If you’re right,” she called out, “then is this some kind of…” She searched for the right word, and she found it in the jargon of movie spies. “Blowback? Some old enemy from Noah’s past coming after him?”

Mercy reappeared, carrying a pair of beat-up deck shoes and a large brown string-tie envelope. She dropped the shoes on the floor beside Jenna then began unwinding the thread that secured the envelope. Jenna did not fail to notice one other object Mercy had retrieved from the bedroom.

“You have a gun?” She was surprised by the fact that this didn’t surprise her. After everything that had happened and Mercy’s revelation about Noah’s history, the fact that one of her closest friends owned a firearm was merely a curiosity.

Mercy’s hand momentarily fell to the butt of the weapon, a matte-black semi-automatic pistol in a holster clipped to the waistband of her jeans. “Yeah.”

“Cool.” Jenna stripped off her sodden T-shirt and replaced it with the dry one Mercy had given her, then sat to tie the shoes. “What’s in the envelope?”

“I don’t know. Noah gave it to me for safekeeping years ago. I assumed it was important papers: the title for the boat, insurance policies, stuff like that. Things that he would need if the boat was ever…” She trailed off, and then dumped the contents onto the coffee table. “Maybe there’s something in here that will tell us a little more about him.”

There were several smaller envelopes, each marked with bold black letters drawn in Noah’s familiar all-capital, block-print style. Jenna’s gaze was drawn to one that had just three numbers. Nine-one-one. “In case of emergency?”

Mercy nodded. “I think this qualifies.”

Jenna tore it open. Inside was a strip of paper with a string of numbers.

She took a moment to absorb the digits, letting her abnormal memory file them away for later with perfect clarity. Like people with eidetic memories, she could recall images, sounds and objects with high precision. The difference was that normal eidetic memories faded after a few minutes. Any information Jenna focused on stayed with her forever. She also learned quickly, intuiting things that usually required instruction or training, recalling bits and pieces of casually remembered details suddenly made relevant by a new challenge.

“Great,” Mercy muttered. “In case of emergency, do math.”

Jenna shook her head. “These are navigational coordinates. At least the first two sets of numbers are. Twenty-five north latitude, eighty west longitude. That’s in the Glades, somewhere south of Miami.”

“I’m impressed.”

“I live on a boat.” She winced even as the words were uttered—Not anymore, I don’t—but she shrugged it off. “I better know how to read map coordinates.”

Mercy dug out her phone and began swiping the virtual buttons on the screen, and Jenna found herself craning her head around for a look. Although the Kilimanjaro had been outfitted with a variety of electronic devices, some necessary for navigation, others for the comfort of passengers, Noah had never upgraded to the latest generation of smart phones. When Jenna had asked him for one, he had mumbled something about becoming too dependent on technology. Noah himself avoided technology, and refused to even own a personal computer. The administrative side of his charter service had been handled by an outside agency, freeing him of the need to own a computer or maintain any kind of personal presence in the digital world. At the time, she had written it off as a lame excuse, but now it occurred to her that his anti-technology tendencies might have been motivated by a desire to reduce his exposure to potential enemies.

But they found him anyway.

Before Jenna could put these concerns into words, Mercy said, “You’re right. It’s just outside Homestead. Looks like the middle of nowhere.” She tapped the screen again. “Why would—”

“We should go there,” Jenna said, rising and tucking the strip of paper into a pocket. “Now.”

Mercy stared back at her, lips moving as if to form a question or perhaps an excuse, but then she nodded. “Okay. It’ll be midnight before we can get there, but we can grab a hotel room and head there first thing in the morning.”

Jenna was grateful that Mercy seemed to understand her urgency. She turned for the door, threw it open and nearly collided with the man that was ascending the steps.

It was Zack, and in the frozen instant that followed, Jenna saw that he had found a new gun.

11

Jenna leaped back through the doorway and slammed the door closed behind her. She reached out for the deadbolt knob, but before she could twist it, the aluminum door shuddered, struck from the outside. For a fleeting moment, Jenna thought Zack was pounding on it with his fists, but that didn’t explain the holes, each as big around as her index finger, that were suddenly erupting with tufts of fiberglass insulation. Then she felt something burning along her left biceps.

She threw herself flat as bullets continued to punch through the door, passing right through the space where she had been a moment before.

Mercy overcame her astonishment and dragged her pistol from its holster. She seemed to be moving with exaggerated slowness, but Jenna knew this was merely a trick of her own heightened awareness. Mercy got the pistol up, holding it, Jenna saw, in what Noah had once told her was a Weaver’s stance. One leg was behind the other, body turned sideways, lined up directly behind the gun, right hand pushing the weapon out, left hand cupped around it and pulling back for stability.

Fire jetted from the muzzle of the pistol. The report was painfully loud in the enclosed confines of the trailer, and Jenna felt the heat of the round passing through the air above her. Mercy yelled something. Jenna’s ears rang, and she couldn’t make out the words, but the accompanying nod in the direction of the back door was easily enough understood. Let’s go!

“Not that way,” Jenna shouted. If Zack had managed to replace his lost gun, maybe he had replaced his dead partner. Someone might be covering the back, or worse, the door might be wired with explosives, just as the boat had been. She headed for the bedroom. “This way.”

As she swept into Mercy’s bedroom — the room where she most often had hung out, laying on Mercy’s bed, with its dark green comforter, watching Mercy’s forty-two inch, plasma-screen television — it occurred to Jenna that the people trying to kill her had now taken away her only remaining home. True, Mercy’s trailer had not been physically destroyed — not yet, anyway — but its sanctity had been breached. It would never again be that place of refuge. They had taken that from her forever.

That realization made it easier to wrap her arms around the television set and heave it through the enormous bay window that looked out from the end of the trailer. Pain throbbed in her arm, a reminder that she’d been struck by something when Zack had shot through the door. She glanced down to inspect the injury site. She did not think she had been hit by a bullet, but something had scraped across the outside of her arm. It hurt, but appeared superficial: a stripe of raw flesh, slowly oozing sweat-like beads of blood.

Mercy came in just as the glass exploded outward. If the destruction bothered her, she gave no indication. Her attention, and the business end of her gun, were both fixed on the front door as she backed into the bedroom.

Jenna scooped up the plush comforter and threw it over the windowsill, knocking jagged shards of broken glass out of the way. “Come on!”

Once again, she didn’t wait to see if Mercy would follow, but clambered over the windowsill and lowered herself down. Twilight had fallen over the island, turning the surrounding homes into surreal, shadowy blocks silhouetted against a purple sky. She looked back up and saw Mercy peering down.

“Come on!” she urged again.

There was a loud bang behind Mercy as the front door burst inward. The impact that had forced it open shook the whole trailer and gave Mercy the impetus she needed to make the leap. Jenna put out a hand to steady her as she landed, and then both of them were running for the truck. There was no sign of Zack or anyone else, but Jenna didn’t doubt he would soon discover their escape route and move to cut them off. She headed straight to the passenger door, got in, then locked it and hunched down out of direct view. Mercy slid in behind the wheel and fumbled with the key.

“Give me the gun,” Jenna whispered.

“What?”

“You can’t drive and shoot at the same time.”

Mercy’s face, barely visible in the darkness, drew into a frown. “Do you know how to use it?”

“I’m a quick learner.”

Mercy gave a weary sigh then handed it over, careful to keep the business end pointed away from either of them. As Jenna curled her hand around the gun, which was much heavier than she expected, Mercy said, “Do not touch the trigger, or do anything else unless I tell you to, okay?”

Jenna nodded. Mercy slotted the key into the ignition. The engine roared to life after just a second, and then she threw the truck into reverse and stomped on the gas pedal. There was a roar of spinning wheels, and a scattering of loose gravel shot out ahead of the pickup as it lurched backward into the street. Mercy hit the brake.

Jenna heard the mechanical thump of the transmission shifting into ‘drive,’ but her attention was fixed on a dark shape about fifty yards behind them. It was a parked car that definitely had not been there when they had arrived only a few minutes earlier. As if to confirm her suspicions, the car’s headlights flared.

Zack had brought some friends along.

Mercy accelerated a little less dramatically, but in a few seconds the truck was cruising down the street well in excess of the posted residential speed limit. The twin headlights behind them halted their advance right in front of Mercy’s trailer, stopping only long enough for Zack to climb inside. Mercy turned a corner, and the car was lost from view. Just a few seconds later, Jenna saw the sweep of its headlights again, and she knew the pursuit was only just beginning.

She felt the truck slowing, and she whipped her head around to see what was happening in front of them. Mercy hit the brakes, slowing as she approached an empty intersection. “What are you doing?” Her voice was more frantic than she intended.

“Stop sign,” replied Mercy, but even as she said it, she seemed to grasp the foolishness of the automatic reaction, and accelerated again. “Sorry. This is a new experience for me.”

“Me too.” Jenna wondered if the same could be said for the men in the car. Probably not. In a situation like this, experience would count for a lot. She searched her memory, trying to recall all of Noah’s little critiques of the action movies they had watched together. “Turn off your lights.”

“What?”

“It will be harder for them to spot us if they can’t see our tail lights.”

“And harder for us to see where we’re going.”

Nevertheless, Mercy reached down and turned a switch. The dashboard went black. The road ahead of them was much harder to see, but the overhead streetlights cast enough illumination for Mercy to stay on the paved surface.

They passed dozens of trailer homes and a few other, more permanent-looking structures, and Jenna recognized where they were. “Take the next right.”

Mercy looked at Jenna, her expression unreadable in the darkness, then steered in the indicated direction. “Where are we headed?”

“For the moment, I just want to lose these guys.” It was such an absurd thing to say that Jenna had to suppress an urge to laugh aloud.

“And then what?”

“Homestead. That’s where Noah wanted us to go.”

“So we need to get to the highway without them realizing that’s where we’re going.” Mercy looked back to the road ahead. “Okay, I think I can manage that.”

Encouraged, Jenna craned her head around. She saw the pursuing car’s lights come into view at the intersection, about a hundred yards behind them. Mercy took another turn, back into the maze of neighborhood streets. She sped up, the engine revving as she pushed the gas pedal too hard, but then just as quickly, she slowed and took another turn. Jenna, who had never experienced the least bit of seasickness, felt her stomach begin to churn with the rapid maneuvers. She faced straight ahead, closing her eyes until the sensation passed.

When she opened them again, she recognized where they were. She saw familiar buildings: the boatworks, a Baptist church, a Tom Thumb convenience store. Mercy had her headlights on again, and maintained a steady thirty to forty mile-per-hour pace. In a few more blocks, they would reach the Overseas Highway that linked the Keys to the mainland. She risked a glance back, but instead of seeing just one set of headlights, she saw several, as well as the receding taillights of vehicles moving in the opposite direction. It was impossible to distinguish makes and models, but Jenna knew their pursuers would be facing a similar challenge.

Mercy pulled up to the stoplight at the highway intersection and made a rolling stop before taking the turn. She accelerated quickly, though evidently not quickly enough. An eastbound car traveling in the same lane caught up to them, let out a long irritated honk and swerved around them as if they were standing still. Mercy’s only reaction was to keep driving, and soon they were just a few car lengths behind the irate motorist, cruising down the tree-lined causeway toward Boca Chica Key.

“Were those the men that killed Noah?” Mercy asked, breaking the long silence.

“I’m not sure. I recognized one of them, Zack, one of the guys who put the bomb on the boat. So, I guess he would have to be, right? Unless all of Noah’s old enemies picked today to show up and settle…” She turned to face Mercy again. “This doesn’t make any sense. If this was just about getting revenge on Noah, why come after me…us?”

“Us?”

“They went to your place. They didn’t follow me there, so they must have been looking for you.”

Mercy shook her head but didn’t take her eyes off the road. “I’m listed as Noah’s primary emergency contact. They might have assumed that you would come to me.”

Jenna processed that with a frown. “Well, even if that’s true, it doesn’t explain why they are coming after me. They already got Noah.” She paused, recalling again her father’s reaction to the men posing as federal agents. I’m still missing something.

“This guy’s coming up fast.” Mercy said, squinting into the rear-view mirror.

Jenna looked back again and saw the headlights of a car, coming up fast in the inside lane. In a matter of seconds, it pulled alongside the pickup and then, at least from Jenna’s perspective vanished.

“Where did he go?”

“He’s pacing me.” Mercy tapped the brakes a little and the car pulled ahead for a moment. Jenna leaned forward, trying to get a look in through the car’s passenger side window, but all she could see was the reflection of the pickup’s headlights on the glass. The car was a mid-sized sedan, a newer Dodge model, with a conspicuous sticker on the bumper from a car rental agency. Zack and Ken had claimed to be tourists, on vacation. They might have had a rental. Jenna hadn’t been able to see the car that had been waiting outside Mercy’s trailer, so there was no way to know if this was it…but it could be.

The Dodge abruptly fell back, disappearing once more into Jenna’s blind spot. She leaned closer to Mercy, trying to follow its movements, and saw it easing back further still, its front end almost perfectly even with the truck’s rear tires.

Jenna saw what was about to happen like a premonition. “Brakes. Now!”

Mercy reacted without question, but in the fraction of a second it took her to translate Jenna’s cry into action, the sedan made its move. Just as Mercy was tapping the brake pedal, the sedan swerved sharply to the right and its front bumper crunched into the pickup.

The rear end of the pickup slewed wildly as, first the impact knocked it off course, and then as Mercy frantically compensated by trying to steer away. The Ford was too heavy to be shoved off the road by the smaller sedan, but the suddenness of the attack and the reflexive nature of Mercy’s response sent the vehicle careening toward the edge of the road. She managed to straighten it, but not before the right side struck the guardrail. The truck slid along its length with a shriek of tearing metal and a shower of sparks. The sedan rebounded away, weaving back and forth across both lanes ahead of the pickup, as its driver likewise fought to restore control. Mercy wrestled the truck back onto the road, but seemed uncertain about what to do next.

“Go!” Jenna shouted.

Mercy hesitated. “What about them?”

“They won’t try that again,” Jenna replied, unsure of how to explain what had just happened. “They’re outmatched and they know it.”

The driver of the sedan had attempted to do what Noah had once called a ‘pin.’ He would always complain about the way car chases were presented in movies, where the driver of the pursuing vehicle would ram their prey from behind. He would then explain that the way to force a car to stop was by pulling alongside and turning into its back tires. If done correctly, the impact would spin the fleeing vehicle around, stalling its engine as the sudden change in direction and the car’s own momentum created reverse compression in the motor. Jenna had recognized, almost too late, that the driver of the sedan was attempting exactly that. If Mercy had not started to brake when she did, they would have been dead on the road.

The sedan straightened out and then pulled away, but Jenna’s fleeting hopes that they might be leaving the scene were dashed when she saw their brake lights flash. A figure leaned out the passenger side window and looked back, one hand extended. It was Zack.

“Gun!” Mercy shouted.

Jenna felt the pickup decelerating again. “No. Charge them!”

Mercy was incredulous. “What?”

“Run them off the road.”

A small flash appeared at the end of Zack’s extended hand and something cracked loudly against the windshield. Jenna ducked, but the glass remained intact. A quarter-sized divot had been gouged in the windshield, almost perfectly in line with Mercy’s head.

Jenna was thrown forward as Mercy stomped on the brakes.

“No,” she protested. “You can’t stop.”

“They’re shooting at us,” Mercy challenged, her normally cool tone replaced by strident hysteria.

“And you’re going to make it impossible for them to miss.” Jenna fought to keep her own voice calm. “The only way to survive this is to take them out. Keep your head down, but don’t back off.”

Mercy held her gaze for a moment, eyes squinted. “You sure you don’t have a secret life you want to tell me about, too?”

There was another crack, another round striking the windshield, closer to center this time. A ragged crack appeared, connecting the two impact sites. Jenna knew she hadn’t convinced Mercy. If she wasn’t going to go on the offensive, the only option was to make a U-turn and flee back to Stock Island. Before she could articulate this alternative however, Mercy punched the accelerator, and they lurched forward.

“Maybe you should give them something else to think about,” Mercy said, her body bent forward so that she appeared to be peeking over the steering wheel.

Jenna blinked uncomprehending. Mercy glanced at her with a wry smile, her emotions back under control. “Shoot them.”

Jenna looked down at the pistol, all but forgotten, in her hand. She had never fired a gun in her life, and she wondered now why she had bothered to ask Mercy for it. With a shake of her head, she steeled her nerve and then rolled down the window.

The pickup closed the gap, but as they got to within fifty yards, the sedan’s brake lights went out and the car started pulling away. Mercy jiggled the wheel back and forth, causing the pickup to veer from one side of the road to the other.

“Better use both hands,” Mercy advised. “Don’t drop it, and for God’s sake, don’t fall out.”

Or get shot, Jenna added silently.

She leaned against the doorframe, both arms extended, with the pistol braced in her hands the way she’d seen Mercy do back at the trailer. A blast of air hit her full in the face as she looked down the length of her arms, not sure exactly how to sight the weapon. She slid a finger into the trigger guard.

“Is there a safety?” she yelled. It seemed like the right question.

“No safety. Just point and shoot.”

Jenna tried to imagine an invisible line traveling down her arm, past the gun and ending where she wanted the bullet to go — not at Zack who was still hanging out of the sedan’s window, trying to line up a shot of his own, but at a target that she felt sure she could hit: the sedan’s back window.

She pulled the trigger and felt something move under her fingertip. A piece of plastic protruded from the metal lever like a secondary trigger, but at her touch, it slid back into a recess, flush with the trigger itself. Then the trigger itself started to move, but slowly, as if resisting her. She applied more pressure and suddenly felt the pistol jerk, like a firecracker going off in her hands.

Jenna gave a yelp of surprise, and despite Mercy’s warning, almost let her grip relax. So that’s what it feels like, she thought. Okay, I can do this.

The sedan swerved as her bullet smacked into the rear window, the tempered glass instantly turning opaque with countless fractures. She saw Zack pull back inside, and for a moment she dared to hope that her bullet had been enough to send their attackers packing.

Abruptly, two fist-sized holes appeared in the sedan’s glazed rear window, broadening out as the car’s occupants began clearing away the glass fragments. Jenna saw two men framed in the opening, and just as she was starting to line up for another shot, she saw them thrust their own guns out through the opening.

She squeezed the trigger, but at the same instant the two gunmen fired. A hailstorm of bullets slammed into the pickup, and Jenna’s world transformed into chaos.

12

The windshield exploded inward. Splinters of glass, driven by the wind, stabbed into Jenna. She barely noticed, because in that same moment, the truck yawed, veering to the right, but also tilting like an out of control carnival ride. She tried to find Mercy, but her body refused to cooperate. She felt herself being pushed and pulled in different directions, shaken like a captured gazelle in the mouth of a lion. She was dimly aware that the truck was no longer traveling in a straight line along the flat road surface, but corkscrewing, twisting through the air, and then she was flying free.

The sensation was like nothing she’d ever felt before. It was strangely exhilarating and a welcome relief from the punishment of being thrown about the hard metal cage of the pickup’s cab, but it happened so fast that before she could understand what was happening, it was over.

She slapped against something, a hard surface, only it wasn’t a surface exactly. She felt something like the sting of a belly-flop dive into a pool, which as it turned out was almost correct. Warm water engulfed her, flooding into her open mouth, choking her. A reflexive spasm of gagging brought her out of her daze, but for a few moments, she was nothing more than a thrashing, coughing animal, in the grip of a primal panic.

A cool breeze on her face calmed her by degrees, but her mind still raced to comprehend everything that had just happened.

She looked around, grasping at last that she was floating in the warm waters of the Boca Chica Channel. She saw lights off in the distance, and as she turned her head, she found the elevated hump of the highway, ten feet away. It loomed above her like a great wave about to crash down and sweep her to oblivion. Then she spied a flaw in the dark horizon. A light cut through the night, illuminating a patch of water fifty yards out to sea. It took her a moment to recognize it as a single headlight, shining out from an overturned vehicle that had broken through the guardrail, and was now perched precariously at the edge of the road.

She clutched at her last clear memory: leaning out the window of the pickup…the shots from the men in the sedan.

The pickup had rolled, and Jenna had been thrown clear. She owed her life to the fluke of luck that had catapulted her into the water. She might just as easily have been crushed under the somersaulting vehicle or thrown onto the hard pavement, which would have flayed her raw and pulverized her bones.

Mercy!

Jenna recalled the horrible sound of the bullets striking the truck. Had Mercy been hit or had she just swerved in a misguided effort to avoid that fate?

Mercy was probably still in the truck, injured or dying.

Maybe already dead.

Anger and grief surged within Jenna. First Noah, now Mercy. The killers had taken everything from her now.

No, not everything. You’re still alive.

With a start, Jenna realized that the killers were not done with her. They would almost certainly check the wrecked truck, and when they discovered she was not in it, they would realize where she had gone.

I have to get away from here, she thought, but then another inner voice countered: And go where?

She turned back to the lights she had spotted off in the distance. Boca Chica Key lay off to her right, perhaps a mile away. In the other direction, a little closer, was Stock Island.

Going to Boca would put her that much closer to her ultimate destination on the mainland.

But what would she do once she got there? Hitching a ride was just too risky. If the killers didn’t spot her walking along the roadside, the cops almost certainly would, and chances were good that they were already looking for her. She might be able to stow away in someone’s car or truck. That was less risky, but there was no guarantee that it would get her where she needed to go.

Steal a car?

She felt a twinge of dismay at even considering that possibility, but she couldn’t dismiss it out of hand. As with the theft of the SCUBA gear, extreme circumstances justified extreme actions. She tabled her moral reservations, and considered the practical aspects of such a course. She had a learner’s permit, and she was pretty confident behind the wheel. She didn’t have the first clue about how to break into a car or hotwire it, but she was pretty sure that it wasn’t the kind of thing that could be learned through trial and error. Noah had always scoffed at how easy they made it look in movies. No, if she was going to boost a car, she would need to find one that came with keys. A valet parking lot maybe?

She shook her head, dismissing that idea as well. The Overseas Highway was more than a hundred miles long. Even if she could steal a car, she’d never reach Miami without being caught. So what did that leave?

If she went back to Stock Island, she would be moving further away from her goal, but there were a few more options that way. She knew people there: school friends, teachers, some of Noah’s acquaintances.

She glanced up at the truck, wondering again whether Mercy was trapped inside, dying, or maybe already dead. Was that the fate that awaited anyone who helped her?

Suddenly, Jenna thought of someone else who might be able to help her. It was a crazy idea, crazier even than stealing a car, but the more she thought about it, the more certain she was that it would work.

She rolled over in the water, and as quietly as she could, she began swimming back toward Stock Island.

13

When she had heard the words ‘night club,’ Jenna had envisioned a glitzy, neon-bright industrial exterior, pulsing with a deafening bass backbeat, and a crowd of young over-dressed socialites queued up behind a velvet rope. In hindsight, she should have known better. This was kitschy, touristy Key West, not Miami. The place looked like a standard Key West home, a pastel pink Bahamian conch house, single-story, built on wooden piers so air could circulate underneath. The only indications that it was anything but a residence were its location on historic Duval Street, an area zoned for commercial use, and the hand painted sign that read: The Conch Club — Members Only. The only neon around was a sign in the window with the words: ATM inside. There was no line waiting to enter. The entire block seemed sedate, as if people were making an effort to avoid being seen in the vicinity. As Jenna stared at the old house, she wondered if she had made a mistake in coming here.

It had seemed like a good idea an hour before, floating in the Boca Chica Channel, hunted, sore, exhausted, hungry, and worst of all, completely alone.

Who am I kidding? she thought. This is a terrible idea.

She realized now that the actual destination had not been as important as the simple fact of having a goal. Something to work toward.

The first few minutes of the swim had been a Herculean ordeal. The simple act of stretching her arms out to swim had awakened pains and aches unlike anything she had ever experienced. The sting of dozens of tiny cuts crisscrossed her arms and face. She had wondered if she was bleeding. The blood could have attracted a ravenous tiger shark or bull shark. Or both. The minutes had passed and the pain gradually had subsided into a more tolerable throb, but the ache in her temples had grown, along with a gnawing hunger in her belly.

She hadn’t attempted to swim all the way back to Stock Island, but instead came up amid the trees that lined the side of the road closer to the island. Hidden by the trees, she had made her way back to the island and then kept going, following the Heritage Trail, which ran parallel to the Overseas Highway, until she had reached the address that she recalled from the registration paperwork the Villegas brothers had signed, when they had come aboard the Kilimanjaro the previous week. The information was just another bit of information in the filing cabinet of her perfect memories.

Now that the goal was finally in sight, she was filled with dread for what would happen next. Even worse was the sinking feeling that all her efforts had not brought her any closer to the answers she craved. She took a deep calming breath, headed up the steps and opened the door.

She stepped into a small unfurnished foyer. There was a cash machine in one corner, a window that looked a little like the check-in desk of a rundown hotel and a closed door. On the other side of the counter, an elderly gray-haired woman — Jenna thought she looked old enough to be Noah’s grandmother — played mahjong on a computer.

The woman started to speak, but when she got a look at Jenna, whatever she had been about to say was forgotten.

Jenna stood there, unable to speak. She had been mentally preparing for a different sort of gate-keeper, maybe a beefy steroid-infused bouncer or a hostess wearing a leather dominatrix outfit. She shook her head to clear away the hesitation. “I need to speak to Raul.”

She saw the flicker of recognition in Granny’s eyes. Well, at least I’ve got the right place. Then the woman’s face twisted into a matronly look of concern. “Oh, sweetie. You can’t be here.”

Jenna kept her expression neutral, but puffed up her chest a little, leaning forward. “Raul.”

The old woman squinted behind her glasses, as if questioning her original appraisal, then reached down and pressed the button on an intercom box. “Someone here to see you, Raul.”

There was a brief pause and then a tinny voice issued from the speaker. “Send him back.”

The woman glanced at Jenna again, the anxious look back on her wrinkled face. She really wants me to leave. Maybe I should go while I still can. Jenna pointed down and mouthed the words: “Out here.”

Granny nodded to her then pushed the button again. “It’s not a ‘he,’ and I think maybe you should come out front.” As she lifted her finger, the woman gave Jenna a sad, resigned look, as if to say ‘I tried to warn you.’

Yes you did, she thought. But I’m going to play this through to the end.

The door opened and Raul Villegas stepped out. He was wearing a white linen suit over a lavender silk shirt, opened to just above his sternum, revealing the thick gold chain around his neck. There was an easy-going smile plastered on his face, which vanished in an instant when his eyes found Jenna.

She took a deep breath and then turned away, heading for the door. She had rehearsed this encounter dozens of times during her long walk. It was imperative to control every aspect of the scene, and the first step was moving Raul away from his home turf. Equally important, she had to make sure that she had an escape route if things went sour. She paused on the front porch, waiting to see if he would follow.

He did.

Raul exited the house, glowering. “You,” he said in a low, threatening voice. His body was tense, a coiled spring full of unpredictable energy.

Take control, she told herself. Keep him off balance. “I need your help,” she said quickly, forestalling the accusations that she knew would come.

She turned to face him, positioning herself under the porch light so that it would illuminate her scrapes and bruises. She saw his eyes move, and knew that he had seen them. His mouth opened, but before he could say anything, she continued.

“I ran away, Raul. You saw how violent he is.” She held his gaze, tightening the muscles of her eyelids so that her eyes would not betray the fiction in her words. The ability to detect falsehood was instinctive, even in those untrained in the techniques she was now attempting to use.

Raul’s indignation seeped away. “He did that to you?”

She nodded, but did not elaborate. The lie would be all the more convincing if she let Raul’s imagination fill in the details. “I can’t go to any of my friends. You’re the only person that can help me.”

His eyes began moving, and Jenna recalled Noah’s words. Most people are an open book. She had no difficulty reading his thoughts. Raul was calculating how he would turn her vulnerability to his advantage. He would invite her inside, get her somewhere isolated, comfort her with words, a touch, maybe offer her a drink, and then he would take her. She knew this was a dangerous game, but it was a game she could win.

“Do you need some money?” he asked.

That surprised her. “Money?”

“Isn’t that why you came here?” A faint smile played across his lips.

She shook her head. “No. Maybe. I don’t know. I just need to get out of here.”

I’m losing him, she thought. Get back on track. Control the scene. She glanced at the street, gauging the distance to the nearest well-lit storefront where she might be able to find refuge.

His expression was becoming more confident. “Oh, sure baby. I can help you with that.”

With an effort, she stilled her racing heart and met his gaze again, reminding herself to mimic his stance. “I shouldn’t have bothered you, Raul. I thought you might be able to drive me to Miami, but I have no right to ask.”

There, she thought. The seed is planted. Without breaking her stare, she turned her body away from his, as if preparing to leave.

“Hey baby, don’t run off. Of course I can take you to Miami. First thing in the morning. And you can crash here if you want. Or come back to my place.”

“No. I have to go tonight. Right now, before he realizes I’m gone.” It’s not working, she realized. It was a stupid idea. Time to go.

In the moment she looked away, preparing to step off the porch, she felt a hand close around her arm. The grip was firm, and it sent a throb of pain through the wound she’d sustained when Zack had shot through Mercy’s door. She jerked away.

“Wait,” Raul implored, drawing his hand back and holding it up in a disarming gesture. “I can help you. I’ll take you.”

Jenna studied his face again. He was doing his best to project sympathy, but his eyes could not hide a predatory gleam. You knew this might happen, she told herself. You knew you would be playing with fire. She took another deep breath and managed a grateful smile. “Thank you.”

“I’ll go grab my keys. Meet me around back.”

As she watched him leave, Jenna felt no sense of victory. The most dangerous part of the game, she knew, was yet to come.

14

Any sense of physical relief Jenna might have felt at sitting in the plush seats of Raul Villegas’s 2006 Corvette was squashed by the stress of maintaining her façade of innocent helplessness and hiding the sheer terror she felt. She was ignoring a sacrosanct command that had been drilled into her head by Noah, Mercy, her teachers and innumerable public service announcements: don’t ever get in a stranger’s car. But Raul Villegas wasn’t actually a stranger. With a stranger, there was the possibility that the ride was merely an altruistic gesture. She tried, with limited success, to comfort herself with the knowledge that there would be no surprises where Raul was concerned.

When Raul had turned the key in the ignition of the red sports car, the upbeat rhythms of Caribbean music assaulted Jenna. He moved to turn the volume knob, but Jenna waved him off. “I love this music. Turn it up.”

Any louder, and the stereo system would become a sonic weapon, but the strident music made casual conversation impossible. She endured the pulsing beat and managed to bob her aching head in time with the relentless rhythm of the congas. Raul stared at her sidelong and smiled, then put the car in gear.

With Raul’s attention occupied by the drive, Jenna finally allowed herself to relax a little. She figured at some point Raul would try to make a move on her, but if she played him right, he would wait until they reached Miami, where she would find a way to give him the slip. She could not ignore the possibility that he might pull off on some deserted side road and try to take what he wanted by force. If it came to that, she would be ready to do whatever it took to stop him.

What she was not prepared for was the snarled traffic on the Overseas Highway leading out of Stock Island. Jenna silently berated herself for not taking it into consideration. The only road to Miami led right past the place where the pickup had overturned. The emergency response was going to take time. She tried not to think of the incident in terms more specific than that, but it wasn’t easy.

As the Corvette slowed and stopped, taking its place at the end of the long line of brake lights, Jenna considered jumping out and abandoning this dangerous game. But the traffic jam was a grim reminder that Raul was the least of her enemies. Noah’s last message — what she had come to think of as his ‘fire alarm’—had directed her to Homestead. She felt sure that reaching the coordinates he had left behind was the only way to end this ongoing threat. Or at least get answers.

The music went silent. Jenna opened her eyes to see Raul staring at her, his expression more bemused than lascivious. “So what are you going to do in Miami?”

She gave a careful shrug. “Whatever I have to.”

He nodded. “What are you, nineteen?”

It took all her willpower not to laugh aloud. He knew damn well that she was jail bait, and probably assumed she would be flattered at any suggestion otherwise. “Something like that,” she replied. The line advanced a couple of car lengths, then it ground to a halt again.

“I thought so,” he continued in the same smooth voice. “I’ve got a friend who runs a modeling agency in South Beach. You’re going to need money to get started, am I right?”

She considered the question carefully. What response would satisfy Raul, keep him on her side? “A modeling agency?” she said with a tone of awe. “That’s so cool. But I’m not pretty enough to be a model.”

“Oh, baby, who told you that? Your old man, I bet. You made the right decision getting away from him. He’s muy loco, understand?”

She bit the inside of her cheek to conceal her emotions. It’s just a game, she told herself, and then a flash of inspiration hit her. “Hey, so, tell me something. Last week, just before he — my father — kicked you off the boat, he said something to you.”

Raul’s eager expression darkened at the memory. He turned his eyes forward, staring into the red glare of brake lights. Jenna sensed a return to the smoldering anger that had initially greeted her. “What did he say?” she pressed.

Raul grimaced. “Like I said, loco. He told Carlos that if he ever saw us again, if we ever tried to get some payback, he’d kill us both and then go after our family.”

The threat was so unlike Noah that Jenna had to fight back the urge to accuse Raul of lying, and yet, if she had learned anything in the last few hours, it was that she really didn’t know anything about her father. It was the reason she had asked the question in the first place. “I thought you said your family is still in Cuba.”

She winced even as she heard herself speak. It was the wrong thing to say, and if she wasn’t more careful, he would see right through her.

Raul did not seem to notice, however. Anger had loosened his tongue. “He knew about them. Knew their names. He said if anything ever happened to him…” He glanced over, concern creasing his forehead. “Or to you, that he would have his people hunt them down and feed them to the sharks.”

That definitely did not sound like her father. If true, it explained why Noah had not been more concerned about the possibility that the Villegas brothers might seek retribution for his insult.

His people? What did that mean? What was Noah involved in that gave him ‘people’ who can go to Cuba and assassinate someone?

Then another thought occurred to her. What if Noah’s fire alarm was nothing more than a kill order on the Villegas family?

Her gut told her it had to be more than that. If Noah did indeed have ‘people,’ then the fire alarm was her best chance of finding them, and maybe turning the tables on whomever it was that wanted her dead.

“Don’t worry,” she heard herself saying. “He’ll never figure out that I came to you.”

“Hey, I ain’t afraid of that old man.”

She decided silence was the best answer. Maybe fear of Noah’s reprisal would make him think twice about making any kind of move on her. The lapse in conversation lasted for nearly a mile. In the distance, Jenna could see the flashing lights of emergency vehicles at the very spot where Mercy’s truck had rolled. She wondered if Mercy was still there, still trapped in the truck or maybe wrapped around a tree on the roadside.

She glanced at the clock on the radio display. It was late. She figured it had taken her an hour and a half to get to Raul’s club from Mercy’s trailer, and maybe another thirty minutes had passed since then. More than enough time for the firefighters to pull Mercy out of the truck and get her to a hospital. Mercy was alive, she had to be. The traffic snarl was just the cops doing what they did, measuring the skid marks and taking pictures. No doubt, someone had noticed the bullet holes in the truck. That would make it a crime scene.

For the first time since starting back toward Key West, Jenna found herself wondering what had become of Zack and the other men in the sedan, and she settled a little lower into the Corvette’s passenger seat.

Raul evidently noticed. “You worried the cops might see you?”

“Is it that obvious?” she lied.

“Just be cool,” Raul advised. “Don’t give them a reason to give you a second look.”

She heard an undercurrent of anxiety in his voice, and she realized he was just as concerned as she was, albeit for very different reasons. This might well be her last chance to bail out and turn herself over to the authorities.

Her thoughts drifted back to the last time she had seen flashing emergency lights, sheriff’s deputies and firefighters responding to the explosion at the marina. She remembered the two men claiming to be FBI agents who had gunned down the deputies…and Noah. Would they be here, too? The killers had the resources to insinuate themselves into the investigation. They might even now be searching for her.

Somehow, being with Raul seemed a lot safer than trusting the authorities to protect her.

“I can do cool,” she replied, giving him a reassuring nod.

As they inched closer to the flashing lights, Jenna saw vehicles in the right lane merging into the left ahead of them, shunted aside by a line of guttering orange flares and hastily deployed traffic cones. Raul followed the lead of the car that pushed in front of him, veering to the extreme left edge of the highway. The Corvette was not made for such low speeds, and the delicate job of accelerating and clutching kept his attention fully occupied as they rolled past the crash scene. Jenna risked a casual glance off to the right. She saw the battered Ford pickup resting on the deck of a flatbed tow truck. It was surrounded by men in uniform. She looked back at Raul. Just like that, they were through. The road opened up to two lanes, and motorists charged ahead like racehorses out of the gate.

“See?” Raul said cheerily, letting the Corvette do what it did best. “Stay cool, and there’s no problem.”

“No problem,” echoed Jenna, wishing that she could believe it.

15

Jenna awoke with a start, dismayed that she had so easily surrendered to the seductive embrace of sleep. A person was never more vulnerable than when they were sleeping, and she had let her guard down with a potential enemy seated right next to her.

She straightened and looked down to see if her clothes had been disturbed — there was no indication that they had — and then glanced over at Raul. He smiled back at her.

She looked away from his unnerving gaze and out the window. The Corvette moved slowly, no longer on the highway. The constant rate of speed and the persistent thrum of the engine had lulled her to sleep. The change in speed as they exited the highway, had woken her.

“Why did you turn off?” The question burst from her, revealing her trepidation.

“Gotta gas up,” he replied, but she saw his eyes flicker ever so slightly.

He’s lying. Jenna felt a chill pass through her, but forced a nod. “Maybe we could get something to eat. I’m starving.”

He grunted and returned his attention to the road.

Jenna stared through the windshield looking for some hint of where they were, but the road ahead was featureless. They could be anywhere, but she was pretty sure there wouldn’t be a gas station on this remote tree-lined stretch of asphalt.

She glanced down at the door lever. The Corvette was barely crawling forward, maybe twenty miles an hour. A leap from the car would cost her only a few more bruises, but what then? Run?

Running was looking like a pretty good option.

She forced herself to relax as she mentally rehearsed her escape. She would have to release the catch on her seatbelt. She might be able to do that without Raul noticing, but the dashboard indicator would give her away. The door had electronic locks. She recalled that they had automatically engaged when the car had gotten up to speed earlier. If she tried the handle first and the door didn’t open, that too would reveal her intentions and give Raul time to take action.

She would have to synchronize her actions perfectly. Seatbelt with my left hand, the lock with my right.

The engine revved suddenly, but only because Raul had depressed the clutch and shifted to neutral. The abruptness of the move caused Jenna to falter and miss the perfect moment to initiate her plan. But her curiosity overrode her urge to flee. She looked forward and saw a metal fence on either side of the roadway. A man swung a gate open to admit them.

Jenna glimpsed the man’s face in the headlights.

It was Carlos Villegas.

She reacted instantly, stabbing a finger at the lock button, but even as she grazed it, something slammed into her chest, driving the wind from her lungs and knocking her back into the seat. As she gasped for air, she felt Raul’s hand at her waist, groping for the seat belt, sliding along its length to find the catch so he could hold it secure.

“Nice try, baby,” he said, his voice a smooth and dangerous croon.

“What…?” She couldn’t find the breath to finish the question.

“Good news, chica. You know that job I told you about? It’s all yours. You’re going to love it.” He swung his gaze around to the figure that now stood just outside the window.

Carlos looked in and gave Jenna a cursory glance. “Well, well. The captain’s daughter. Nicely done, hermanito.”

“I thought you’d like. She just walked right up and gave herself to me. Couldn’t believe it.”

“You’re sure this isn’t a setup?”

“Look at her, hermano. She’s all beat up. Her old man did that, like I told you. She’s for real.”

In some distant recess of her mind, Jenna heard the deep sense of satisfaction in Raul’s voice as he savored his older brother’s praise. That was about the only thing that made sense to her.

How did I miss this?

“Take her out to the plane,” Carlos continued. “I’ll get the gate.”

As the elder Villegas brother stepped back, Raul turned to Jenna. “I don’t want to mess up that pretty face of yours, but if you so much as breathe wrong, I’ll knock your teeth down your throat. Got it?”

She nodded, and he let go of the seatbelt.

She spoke, “Raul, what—”

He held up his hand, fingers curled into a fist, and shook it in front of her face. “Shut up.”

She nodded again. He lowered his hand to the gearshift lever, and worked it into position. The Corvette rolled forward again. Jenna saw a long stretch of pavement cutting across their path. A runway lined with small civilian aircraft.

She forced herself to go limp. Maybe if she appeared compliant, the brothers would relax their vigilance just enough for her to break away.

She had misjudged Raul, underestimated him. Somehow, he had gotten word to his brother. A phone call or text message, probably sent when he had gone inside the club for his keys. She didn’t see another car. Carlos must have leapfrogged them, flying from Key West while they were stuck in traffic. While she had been congratulating herself on her ability to manipulate Raul, she had let the Villegas brothers draw her deeper into their web.

Lesson learned, she told herself. Don’t underestimate them again.

Her first mistake had been believing that Raul wanted her for himself. There was something more going on here. She recalled his earlier line about a modeling agency, and his quip about having a ‘job’ for her. I don’t want to mess up that pretty face of yours, he had said.

She shuddered as the picture resolved.

Noah had misjudged the Villegas brothers as well. They weren’t drug dealers, or if they were, it was just one of the criminal enterprises they were running out of The Conch Club. Jenna understood now why the little old lady behind the counter had urged her to get away while she could. She wondered how many girls her own age were imprisoned behind the doors of that unassuming house. Of course the brothers wouldn’t dare put her to work there. She might be recognized. No, they would take her somewhere else. Somewhere out of the country. Then they could sell her, like livestock.

Raul stopped in front of a twin-engine plane at the end of the line. It was a relatively small craft with low slung wings protruding from the bottom of the fuselage. Jenna didn’t know the make or model, but it looked like the kind of aircraft used by island-hopper charter companies.

And smugglers.

“Stay put,” Raul warned, thrusting a finger under her nose for emphasis.

Jenna put on her best deer-in-the-headlights look, and to all appearances, she cowered in the seat. Raul stared at her a moment longer, then seemingly satisfied that he had broken her spirit, he opened his door and got out. Jenna watched through hooded eyes as he circled around the front end of the Corvette. He approached her door and used the remote on his key fob to disengage the lock. Then he reached for the handle.

Jenna’s movements were swift but sure. In the instant that her door started to open, she dropped a hand to the seat-belt buckle and depressed the button. Then, with the same smooth motion, she pivoted and planted both feet on the door panel, thrusting out as if trying to jump sideways across the interior of the car.

The door slammed into Raul and sent him sprawling backward. Jenna used the same energy to propel herself through the open driver’s side door. A moment later, she scrambled to her feet and sprinted down the tarmac.

The Corvette’s lights shone a good fifty yards down the runway. Beyond that expanding cone of illumination, the landing strip was shrouded in darkness. She ran toward the unknown, but she knew whatever awaited her had to be better than what she was leaving behind.

She could hear someone chasing after her, the rapid footfalls just out of sync with her own, but she did not look back. The hard tarmac gave way to soft grass on sandy soil. Almost too late, she saw that the grassy area ended at the perimeter fence they had passed through earlier. She caught herself before slamming headlong into the barrier. Then she quickly laced her fingers through the diamond-shaped mesh and climbed, as if it were a rope ladder to freedom.

When she reached the crest, she realized that the top of the fence was adorned with a long coil of razor wire. The thought of getting ripped up by the barbs stopped her only for a second — what were a few scrapes compared to being sold as a sex-slave — but the moment was enough for Raul to catch her. She felt something clamp around her ankle, and then she was ripped away from the fence and thrown to the ground.

16

Sand cushioned Jenna’s fall, but before she could even begin thinking about what to do, she felt a weight settle onto her chest. In the faint glow of the starlight, she could see the silhouetted form of her attacker sitting astride her chest, pinning her body and left arm beneath his straddled legs.

Noah’s voice flashed through her mind, an ancient movie commentary that seemed grossly inappropriate at the time, but came to her now as welcome knowledge. Three good punches to the kidneys will put a man down and make him piss blood for a week.

Her free hand sprang to action before the memory faded. She struck hard and fast, delivering two solid punches to Raul’s back, just below the ribs, sending a pulse of pressure through the kidneys. Raul shouted in pain. “Bitch!” He caught her arm before the third punch could connect.

She struggled to buck him off, but the effort ended with a blow to the side of her head that nearly knocked her senseless. There was a flash of blue across her vision, like the inside of a lightning bolt. Her ears rang, and the taste of blood filled her mouth.

She knew she could not stop fighting. To give up was to surrender the rest of her life to a fate that seemed like the stuff of bad dreams.

I’d rather die than let them put me on that plane.

The thought of dying snapped her out of her despair. Maybe she had misjudged the brothers, but they were still just a couple of small-time thugs. Jenna had survived more than one attempt on her life this night, from people a lot tougher and a lot smarter than Carlos and Raul, and she was not about to let these assholes stop her from figuring out who was after her and why.

As the ringing in her ears relented, she realized that Raul was almost face to face with her, shouting threats and obscenities, showering her face with spittle.

“Okay!” she shouted, or rather tried to. Blood and saliva had gathered at the back of her throat, and when she opened her mouth, it triggered her gag reflex. She turned her head, spat and then tried again. “Okay. I give up.”

Like hell I do.

Raul seemed to hit the pause button on his rage. “I warned you what would happen.”

“I know you did. I’m sorry.” It was another lie, but she didn’t care if he believed it or not. What mattered was his reaction to what came next. “I didn’t tell you the truth about Noah. About my father.”

“You think I care about that?”

“You should,” she said, choking on another mouthful of blood. Her tongue probed the inside of one cheek where Raul’s blow had shredded it against her teeth. “He’s dead.”

All the fight went out of Raul, but he did not move, did not release her. “Dead?”

“Someone killed him. Some very bad, very connected people, and they’re after me now. That’s why I came to you.” Jenna paused, partly to let the words sink in, and partly because she wasn’t sure exactly how to play this wild card.

The pressure at her chest abruptly vanished, but before she could think about trying to turn it to her advantage, Raul knotted his hand in her hair and hauled her erect. A whimper of pain escaped her lips, the motion aggravating all of her injuries all at once. He yanked her forward, striding away. She had no choice but to follow, jogging to keep up, a dog on a leash.

She had run much further than she realized. The Corvette’s headlamps were just pinpricks of light, far down the landing strip, a beacon guiding them onward. The trek was an excruciating ordeal. Raul kept tugging the handful of hair in his fist. But Jenna used the time to concentrate on what she would say next. If she got this wrong, she would have very few options left, and all of them were of a very final nature.

I won’t die without knowing why Noah was killed, she promised herself.

Carlos met them halfway, and even in the darkness, Jenna could see the laughter in his eyes. “This one’s a tiger. She almost got away from you, hermanito.”

“Maybe I need to tame her,” Raul answered. His words were clipped, his breathing rapid, whether from the exertion of the chase or from anticipation, Jenna could not say.

“Better not,” Carlos answered. “She’s worth a lot more if she’s still got her cherry.” He pushed his face close to Jenna. “How ‘bout it, girl? You still a virgin?”

Jenna almost spat in his cold, calculating face, but stopped herself. Angry people were easy to manipulate but only if the anger wasn’t directed at the person trying to do the manipulating.

“She says her old man is dead,” Raul intoned. “Someone offed him.”

“Yeah? Damn, all of a sudden it’s like Christmas. I’ll send a ‘thank you’ card to whoever did it.”

“You don’t want to mess with the people who did it,” Jenna managed to say. She hoped she had judged the brothers correctly. A taunt like that might very well push them away from the thing she planned to use as bait.

“Oh?” Carlos made a clucking noise. “The captain made some very bad friends, did he? I’ll bet he wishes he’d done business with us instead.”

“They’re looking for me now,” Jenna went on. “They think I can lead them to their money.”

Jenna thought it sounded contrived, but maybe that was because she knew it was a falsehood. Or is it? Suddenly, she wasn’t sure anymore. What if Mercy had gotten it wrong? Maybe Noah had been involved in something illegal? Maybe the attack on the boat had been some kind of organized crime vendetta? The fact that she could not easily dismiss the notion ate at Jenna’s resolve like a cancer. I have to know the truth. I have to get to Noah’s fire alarm.

Carlos had heard only one word, and he repeated it almost breathlessly. “Money?”

She let the seed of the idea germinate in silence as she allowed herself to be drawn closer to the shining headlights. What she needed to do next would work better if she could see their faces, though she was in no hurry to get closer to the waiting airplane. When she could finally look her tormentors in the eyes, she elaborated. “A lot of money. Noah hid it somewhere in the ‘Glades.”

Carlos gestured for Raul to release Jenna, and then he gripped her arms and held her so he could study her face. She realized that he was using the same lie detecting techniques she had — reading eye movements to detect intention and duplicity — and she made a willful effort to control her reactions. The look of fear came easily enough. Then she tapped into the possibilities of what Noah might have concealed in Homestead, making her fabrication feel authentic, even to herself.

“How much?”

Jenna shrugged. “I don’t know. A lot, I guess. Enough to kill for.” She looked up as if hit by a lightning bolt of inspiration. “I’ll take you to it, if you let me go.”

Carlos shook his head. “Why don’t you just tell me where it is? If it’s there, then maybe we can make a deal.”

His eyes did not betray the lie she knew he was telling. He had no intention of letting her go. Nevertheless, she smiled as if she believed him. “I can’t tell you exactly how to get there. I’d have to show you. But it’s all yours if you want it. Just promise to let me go.”

Raul was shaking his head, looking at the screen of his smartphone. He held it up, revealing a news report about shots being fired at the marina. “This is messed up, hermano. Her story is legit. Someone killed the old guy because of it. That’s heat we don’t need.”

Carlos ignored his brother. “The Everglades. That’s pretty vague. Narrow it down for me.”

“If you promise to let me go.” Jenna needed him to believe that she was desperate enough to trust his word.

“I don’t make promises like that, little girl. But I promise that if you’re screwing with me, you’re going to wish we’d just stuck to the plan and sold your ass. Now, where in the ‘Glades?”

“Near Homestead.” She let her lip quiver a little, as if she wanted to say more but knew better. Carlos snapped his fingers in a ‘tell me more’ gesture, but she just shook her head.

He stared at her a moment longer, then turned to Raul. “Get your car off the runway.”

It took Jenna a moment to comprehend the significance of this. “We’re flying?”

“We can be at Homestead in less than an hour by air,” Carlos replied. He didn’t seem irritated by the question, but when he grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the airplane, his forcefulness silenced her. He shoved her onto the plane’s wing and opened the door that lay just above it. “Get in.”

She complied, squirming through the opening into the claustrophobic confines of the cabin. It was her first time in any kind of aircraft. She had expected it to be more spacious, but then she could not have imagined that her first flight would be under these circumstances. As she settled into a seat just behind the cockpit, she surveyed every detail of her environment like a general studying a battlefield in anticipation of a fight. As a last resort, she was prepared to crash the plane by attacking the pilot — presumably Carlos — on take-off or landing.

She thought she might even survive.

Jenna wondered why the brothers had been looking for charter boats to make smuggling runs for them if they had a plane and knew how to fly it. Maybe they were trying to distribute the risk?

Carlos waited outside until Raul returned, then both brothers climbed inside. Carlos got into the cockpit and fiddled with various instruments. Raul took a seat across from Jenna, his eyes never leaving her.

So much for the kamikaze plan, she thought. Her chances would probably be better once they reached Homestead. It would be easier for her to create an opportunity to escape in the unfamiliar territory of the Everglades, especially since she would be leading the way.

As the engines roared to life, it occurred to her that, when they did get to Homestead, she would have only one chance to turn the tables on her captors. She had about sixty minutes to figure out just how she was going to do that.

17

The hour passed quickly. When the distant lights of Miami came into view, the small plane descended toward a dimly lit area in the foreground that could only be Homestead. The ride had been rougher than Jenna expected, but none of her expectations were based on any kind of prior experience. She had imagined that flying would feel smooth compared to other forms of travel, but the air, much like the water upon which she had spent most of her life, was full of invisible currents and pockets of turbulence that rocked the small plane. It was enough to fill her with nausea, exacerbating the roiling of her empty stomach and intensifying the headache that had taken root during her long walk to Key West. She wanted to close her eyes and seek refuge in sleep, but even if her body had been able to do so under such conditions, she knew that dozing off could be a fatal mistake.

The shaking grew worse as the plane descended through the layers of the lower atmosphere. Outside the window, Jenna saw the buildings and streets of Homestead grow larger until it seemed that they would set down right in the middle of traffic. Then a ribbon of asphalt appeared beneath them and a moment later, the fuselage shook with the impact of touchdown. Jenna squeezed the armrests, holding on for dear life. All thoughts of how she would escape the Villegas brothers were forgotten as she envisioned the plane coming apart around her, exploding in a fireball.

She sighed with relief as the aircraft settled onto its wheels and slowed, trading the rough chaos of thin air for smooth but unyielding terra firma.

Raul laughed at her. Jenna considered flipping him the bird, but decided that would be a bad idea for several reasons, the first being that she’d have to let go of the armrests.

They taxied for several minutes before pulling to a stop alongside a row of similar aircraft. Jenna looked in vain for ground crew or other personnel that she might be able to call out to if the chance presented itself, but the airport looked deserted.

Carlos extracted himself from the cockpit and threw open the door. After the unexpected cool temperature in the plane’s interior, the hot, humid, tropical air was yet another physical assault on Jenna’s frayed nerves.

Pull it together, she urged herself.

“I’m hungry,” she said, aware of how pathetic she sounded.

“Tell you what, chica,” Raul answered. “After you take us to daddy’s stash, I’ll buy you a great big steak dinner.”

The thought of eating steak — greasy, salty, dripping with bloody juices — nearly made her retch. “Actually, not that hungry after all,” she murmured.

Carlos ignored the exchange and led them down the tarmac, around a building to a nearly empty parking lot. As they approached a generic looking sedan with a rental sticker on the rear bumper, Carlos took out a phone and began tapping the screen. After a few minutes, the sedan’s locks clicked open.

“How did you do that?” Jenna asked, curious in spite of everything else.

“I’ve got the app” he said, waggling the phone in Jenna’s direction. “No more waiting in lines or filling out papers. No business hours.”

She had been wondering how they would proceed once arriving at Homestead. Hiring a taxi or renting a car might have given her yet another opportunity to seek help or slip away, but Carlos had avoided all human contact by ordering the rental car online and having it delivered to the airport, keys inside, to be unlocked remotely when he entered a confirmation code.

Carlos directed his brother to take the wheel, then opened the rear door for Jenna, sliding inside next to her. “Where to now?”

Jenna tried to remember the brief glimpse she’d caught of the map displayed on Mercy’s cell phone. “It’s south of the city.”

“What’s the address?” Carlos’s tone was impatient.

“There’s no address. It’s out in boonies. You know, it would be a lot easier to do this in daylight.”

“I’m sure it would. For your sake, I hope you can show us how to get there in the dark.”

She clamped her mouth shut. Daylight would have been preferable for a very different reason, but if the map was any indicator, the area where they were going was so remote that she doubted they would see anyone else even at high noon.

“I’ll need your phone.”

He laughed. “You think I’m stupid, little girl?”

“I need your phone’s GPS to find the exact spot.”

He considered this. “Just tell me the GPS location. I’ll put it in.”

“If you want the money, we do this my way.” The confidence in her voice wasn’t just an act, and she wondered from where she’d gotten her wellspring of fortitude. Noah, she decided. From watching his example and from listening when he spoke.

Probably his genes, too. Is grit an inheritable trait?

Jenna braced herself for the expected reprisal, but Carlos surprised her by holding out his phone. When she reached for it, he whispered, “You try to call someone or send a text, and I will hurt you.”

She nodded and took the phone. Although Noah had never let her own one, she had used Mercy’s phone many times, as well as occasionally borrowing them from her classmates. She brought up the phone’s search program and typed in the coordinates from memory.

The search returned a variety of options. She spotted ‘maps,’ but as her finger hovered above the screen, she quickly scanned the other search results.

Interesting.

The list was replaced by a close-up satellite projection of the area. She saw a road leading to it, but if her suspicions about the place were correct, there would be no vehicle access. With two fingers, she zoomed out until the outskirts of Homestead were visible, a patchwork of neat green and tan rectangles sitting above the featureless brown of the Everglades. She found the airport at the edge of the city, and then she memorized the route they would need to follow to reach their final destination.

She handed the phone back to Carlos without making any effort to erase the search. It didn’t matter if he knew the coordinates now. Her brief look at the search results had revealed something very unique about their destination. There hadn’t been much really, just links to web pages, with only the title and a few words of description for each, but it was enough for her to finally make sense of the bizarre coordinates, and the last set of numbers Noah had written down.

Jenna felt as if there was now a light at the end of the tunnel. For the first time since Raul had revealed his treachery, the advantage was hers.

18

Jenna watched Carlos’s face as he contemplated the gate blocking their path. “It’s about six miles down that road,” she said. “Sure you don’t want to come back and try this during the day?”

He gave her a patronizing smile, leaned forward and whispered something in Raul’s ear. The younger brother reached under his jacket and took out a pistol. He waggled it under Jenna’s nose. “Oh, look! We brought the key, chica.”

She stared at the weapon, more angry than surprised. She hadn’t realized that the brothers were carrying guns, though in hindsight, she realized she should have expected it. No matter, she thought. A lot of people with guns have failed to kill me tonight. It doesn’t change what I have to do.

Raul got out and walked up to the barrier. He looked around, as if making sure that they were as alone as they seemed to be, then aimed the gun and pulled the trigger. The loud report sent a pressure wave rippling through the interior of the car. They were well away from inhabited areas, so there was little chance of the shot being heard. Even if it was, the locals might assume that it was one of their good ol’ boy neighbors out poaching. The broken padlock fell to the ground at Raul’s feet. He kicked it out of the way, then swung the gate open and returned to the car.

A concrete road waited beyond the gate. It was wide enough to allow two vehicles to pass, but encroaching vegetation had shrunk the passable space down to one lane. Raul steered the rental car down the middle, proceeding slowly to avoid storm debris and other obstacles. More than once, Jenna glimpsed movement in the shadows, as large animals ducked away from the headlights. Intersecting roads hinted at human activity, but most were overgrown. Jenna knew from her brief glimpse of the satellite map that these roads led to empty lots and abandoned buildings.

“How much farther?” Carlos asked after about fifteen minutes.

“I’ll tell you when we get there,” Jenna retorted, but then to avoid any repercussions, added, “It shouldn’t be much further. The road goes straight for a while, then makes a hard left turn. Just follow the pavement.”

They arrived at the turn less than a minute later. It was the first significant deviation from the straight line they had been following since leaving the main highway. A dilapidated concrete building stood at the corner, and Raul slowed the car. “Is that it?”

Jenna stared at the half-ruined structure for a moment. She didn’t actually need to take the brothers to the exact place indicated by Noah’s coordinates. She just needed a place where she could slip free of their control and escape. On the other hand, if she had to run, she might not get another chance to retrieve Noah’s fire alarm.

“No,” she said. “That’s not it. Keep going.”

A mile and a half later, she saw another building, a sheet-metal structure, several stories high, with a large square opening, like a garage door, at the southern end. “That’s the place.”

Raul pulled to a stop fifty feet from the opening. He shut off the engine, but left the lights on, illuminating the interior and revealing another identical opening on the opposite side.

Carlos stared at her for several seconds, as if searching for some hint of treachery. “Your old man put the money in there?”

She nodded. “This is the place.”

Carlos got out and then motioned for Jenna to do the same. “All right, little girl. It’s show time. Lead the way.”

Jenna complied, careful not to seem too eager or too reluctant, though in truth, she felt a lot of both. She wanted to see what Noah had left behind, to learn the truth about her father, and perhaps discover why someone wanted him — and her — dead. She was also anxious about the imminent showdown with the Villegas brothers. She didn’t know exactly how it was going to play out, and that scared her a little. It was also exhilarating. She felt like a volcano, desperate to erupt before the pressure blew her apart.

The headlights illuminated the area closest to the large door, leaving the rest shrouded in darkness. Carlos and Raul both used their cell phones as flashlights, casting the beams into the shadowy corners. There was debris on the floor, and pieces of metal and construction material was scattered everywhere, but the building was mostly an empty shell.

“What is this?” Raul asked, shining his light up at the cavernous ceiling. There were holes in the roof, where sheets of metal had been torn away. “An airplane hangar?”

Jenna did not know if it was a rhetorical question, but she decided to treat it as one. She saw no benefit in revealing what she knew about this place. When she had entered the coordinates into Carlos’s phone, one of the search results had triggered a memory about an obscure bit of South Florida history that she had learned and never forgotten.

In the early 1960s, as America and the Soviet Union raced to conquer space, a company called Aerojet had spent $150 million to build a solid-fuel rocket testing facility in the Everglades, just outside Homestead. But NASA decided to use liquid-fueled rockets in the Apollo program, and that, along with a waning interest in the Space Race — once Neil Armstrong planted the Stars and Stripes on lunar soil — had resulted in Aerojet closing the plant before the decade’s end. They abandoned it entirely, leaving the derelict structures, many still filled with specialized equipment for producing and testing solid rocket fuel, like the ruins and relics of a forgotten civilization. One particular relic that was mentioned in news reports and documentaries about the Aerojet facility, was the AJ 260-2 rocket motor body, which had been used to test the fuel mixtures.

The rocket motor, one of the largest of its kind ever, was too large to move by truck or train. A canal had been dug so that the rocket could be floated to the facility on a barge, where it was lowered into the silo with a crane. The silo had to be open to the air for test fires, but covered the rest of the time, so the engineers had designed the enormous shed to be movable. The rocket motor was just a metal cylinder — a fuel tank without any hardware to create ignition. For the tests, it had to first be filled with the rubbery, solid rocket fuel, and then fitted with a cone-shaped rocket nozzle, placed atop the motor, so that its explosive energy would blast into the sky. According to one documentary Jenna had watched, the glow of the third and final test in 1967 had been visible from Key West. At sixty feet in length and more than twenty feet in diameter, it was too large to be removed from the site, so for more than forty-five years, it had sat idle in this enormous structure, or more precisely, under it. The rocket motor still rested in a silo, covered over with plates of welded metal, directly beneath where Jenna now walked.

It was not the rocket motor that had captured Jenna’s attention, though. It was the silo. Fifty feet wide. One hundred-eighty feet deep. It was the only place anywhere near the coordinates Noah had left where the third number in the message made any sense.

‘Minus eighty’ had to mean eighty feet down. Noah had left his fire alarm in the silo, probably somewhere under the rocket motor.

Carlos gave Jenna a look that was both impatient and suspicious. “Well?”

Jenna stomped a foot on the floor. The metal plate beneath her made a hollow sound, and the vibration made her captor jump back in surprise. “It’s under here.”

“Under?” He turned his light onto the welded plates, and his inspection showed where many of them had rusted completely through.

Jenna inched closer to the walls where the floor was bare concrete. The metal plates were covering the silo opening, and if Noah had left something eighty feet below, then there had to be access. Her eagerness to discover exactly what it was her father had hidden overrode her anxiety regarding her present situation. Freeing herself from Carlos and Raul was still high on her list of priorities, but figuring out who was trying to kill her — who did kill Noah — was still at the top of that list.

She crept around the floor’s edge, skirting the metal plates and inspecting the seams of each to see if all of them had been welded shut. After five minutes, she came upon a section that was covered by a thick metal grate. She peeked through and could just make out a large cylindrical object. She knelt, threaded her fingers through the grate and tried to lift. It gave just enough for her to know that it wasn’t welded in place, but it was too heavy for her to lift alone.

“Help me,” she called out, and when neither brother moved to assist her, she added, “Do you want the money or not?”

Raul looked to his brother as if checking for permission, and then moved to help Jenna. Like her, he attempted to lift the grate up, but even with their combined strength, it refused to yield.

Carlos regarded Jenna suspiciously. “That thing hasn’t been moved in years, little girl. I think you’re jerking us around.”

Jenna was inclined to agree with the first assertion. Unfortunately, it didn’t support her claim that Noah had recently hidden money here. But she felt certain that this was the place. “Just help us lift it. Or better yet, find something we can use as a lever.” She glanced around the debris strewn floor, looking for something sturdy enough to fit the bill.

“Raul,” Carlos said, his tone still dubious. “Get a tire iron from the car.”

The younger brother moved off without question, leaving Carlos and Jenna alone. Jenna measured the distance between herself and him, calculating her odds of taking him on one-on-one. He was bigger but she had years of training in unarmed combat, and she would have the element of surprise on her side. He had a gun, but as Noah had often told her, people with guns had a tendency to put too much faith in them. If she charged, he might waste precious seconds trying to draw the gun and aim it, time in which she would be able to close the distance and punch him in the throat.

But not quite enough time, she thought. Carlos, consciously or not, had kept a good stand-off distance. That was another thing Noah always complained about when watching action movies. When someone — a cop maybe — held a prisoner at gunpoint, they would always get right up in their face. It was dramatic as hell, but Noah always scoffed and talked about how easy it would be to disarm the gunman in that situation.

It was funny how all those little things Noah had said and done over the years, things which she had never thought twice about, now made sense. All that time, Noah had been teaching her, passing along his accumulated wisdom, preparing her for…

For this?

He must have known a threat like this might someday materialize, and while he had chosen not to reveal the truth about himself to her, he had taken steps to ensure that she would be prepared. He had trained her, mind and body, to deal with whatever happened. That was why, even though her muscles ached, her empty stomach rumbled and her head throbbed, she did not feel afraid.

Raul came back with a short lug wrench, tipped with a chisel point at one end for popping off hubcaps. It was not long enough to provide much leverage, but Raul was able to work it into a seam and managed to lift the grate and jam the pry bar under it.

“See,” Jenna said, pointing triumphantly.

Carlos looked unimpressed, but joined in. The three of them succeeded in pushing the grate aside a full eighteen inches. He then shone his light down into the hole. Jenna looked in and saw the smooth concrete walls that curved in either direction to form a wide circle, and at the center of the circle, the enormous white cylinder of the rocket motor. A line of hooplike protrusions — curved pieces of rebar, each about the size of a horseshoe — were set in the concrete wall at one-foot intervals, forming an access ladder.

She was itching to descend into the silo, to seek out its hidden depths and whatever it was that Noah had left here, but she waited for Carlos to give her the go-ahead. She did not want to let either of them go down the ladder, but neither did she want to seem too eager to do so herself. If either one of them did decide to explore the silo, she decided that would be her cue to strike.

“Okay, little girl,” Carlos said, gesturing at the opening. “This is your show. Go get it.”

19

Jenna dropped onto the floor, swung her legs out into empty space, and twisted around until she felt a steel rung underfoot. She tested it. After forty-five years of exposure to the tropical Everglades air, the steel could have been as rusted as the metal plates covering the silo. The first rung felt solid underfoot. She stepped down to the next and tested it the same way. Just as she was about to take the step that would plunge her into the darkness below, she raised her eyes to Carlos.

“I’m going to need a light.”

He frowned then looked at his phone for a moment before handing it over. “No bars out here, so don’t bother trying to call for help.”

In truth, the idea had not even occurred to her. “I just need to see what I’m doing.”

She turned the bright LED down into the depths of the silo. Far below her feet, at the base of the rocket, was a platform made of the same metal grating. The distance seemed about right for Noah’s ‘minus eighty.’ She slipped the phone into the back pocket of her jeans and started down again.

The round mouth of the silo, dimly lit to begin with, shrank to a spot that glowed about as brightly as the luminescent numbers on a wristwatch — enough to be seen, but not enough to illuminate anything. She didn’t need light for the descent, though. She could see everything in her mind’s eye, and she knew exactly where she was in relation to the platform. She had, without even thinking about it, calculated the number of rungs. She ticked them off in her head as she went down, testing each hold before trusting it with her weight. After several minutes, she reached a foot out behind her to find the platform.

She was less certain about its stability, but there were no creaks or groans. With one hand on a rung, she lowered her other foot down and stood there for a moment.

“Okay, Noah. I’m here,” she murmured. “What am I supposed to do now?”

She took out the phone. It had timed out and gone dark, but she found the button to wake it up and was gratified to see that there was no password lock. That would come in handy if she needed to use the phone after…

First things first.

She used the screen’s brightness to survey the area. The rocket motor was just behind her, its rounded end perched atop a solid concrete pedestal at the center of the metal grating. The silo continued down into the shadowy unknown, but Jenna knew that what she wanted would be found right here. She waved the light around, painting the area into her mental image but also looking for anything that seemed out of place.

She focused on recesses and niches hidden in shadow. Noah would not have left his cache out in the open. As inaccessible as the silo’s bottom was, there was nothing to stop a thrill-seeking urban explorer from making the descent. Noah would have recognized that possibility. After a few moments of searching, she spied something just above the inverted dome of the rocket motor.

It was a metal box, about the size of the aluminum lunch-boxes that some of her schoolmates carried. Most kids who brought lunch from home used collapsible insulated bags, but a few liked the kitschy appeal of having a metal box painted with images from cartoon shows. My Little Pony. Hello Kitty. Things she had never been interested in. This box was an undecorated gun-metal gray. She rapped her knuckles on it. Solid as a bank vault. She held the light closer and saw where the box had been spot-welded to the rocket. She also saw that it was secured with a three-digit roller combination lock.

It was suddenly all very real now. Noah had been here, standing right where she now stood.

When did he do this? It had to have been many years ago, probably on a day when she was in school and there were no charters on the schedule. She recalled that, among his many tools for boat maintenance, Noah had a miniature acetylene blow torch. He sometimes used it to braze pieces of copper tubing. He would have used the torch to cut through the grate above, and then made the same descent she had. It would have taken only a few minutes to weld the box in place.

“Okay,” she said aloud, as if speaking to her father’s ghost. “What’s the magic number?” She cycled through birthdays: hers, Mercy’s and Noah’s late November birthday. A four-digit combo was out. What else?

He had left it with Mercy. Could it be an important date that only the two of them shared? If that was the case, her only option would be a brute force attack, trying successive combinations until she finally hit on the correct one. If she started at all zeros and the number was in the 900s it would take her close to an hour. It might not even be a date.

Think. Noah wanted the right person to open this if the need arose. He left precise coordinates so it could be found in case of emergency…

“Duh!” She quickly set the combination to 9-1-1 and heard an internal mechanism click. The box opened to reveal a small leather-bound notebook inside a large Ziploc bag, and nothing else.

Jenna opened the bag and then the book. She thumbed through it, instantly recognizing Noah’s precise printed letters. It was a journal. She didn’t read any of it. There would be time for that later.

The book was too large to fit in a pocket, so she put it back in the bag, stuffed it into the waistband of her jeans at the small of her back and covered it with her T-shirt. She drew a deep breath and mentally centered herself, putting her dojo habits to use in the real world. She moved to the steel rungs and began climbing.

The ascent went quickly, partly because she did not take the time to test her footholds, but also because the impending confrontation, like the last day of summer vacation, was something she dreaded. It was the exact opposite of the old saying about watched pots never boiling.

She maintained her calm focus by counting down the rungs. When she got to fifteen, she could see the faces of her tormentors, silhouetted in the ambient light, staring down at her. When she got to eight, Carlos called out.

“Unless you’ve got a wad of ten thousand dollar bills in your pocket,” he said in a low menacing tone, “I think I’m about to be very disappointed.”

She climbed a couple of rungs higher before giving the answer she had mentally rehearsed. “The money isn’t here. It’s in a bank account. Cayman Islands.” She thought that sounded pretty plausible. “My dad hid the account number here. I’ve got it now.”

Carlos did not look convinced. “Give it to me.”

She reached into a pocket and found the strip of paper on which Noah had written the coordinates for the silo. It was still damp from her plunge into Boca Chica Channel but she succeeded in taking it out intact. She waved it for Carlos to see. Then, she took another step and held it up like an offering.

Carlos reached out to snatch the paper from her fingers, but as he did, she let go of it and encircled his wrist with her hand. His face registered surprise, but she only caught a glimpse as she yanked down hard on his arm.

As he started to fall toward her, she let go and pressed herself flat against the smooth concrete wall. There was a tug of friction as his body slid past hers, but she held on tightly, and an instant later, Carlos was gone.

20

Jenna exploded out of the silo like a missile, leaping toward the stunned figure of Raul. He was too far away to be pulled in. She knew that trick wouldn’t work twice, but she had something different planned for the younger Villegas brother.

She landed on the iron-clad floor, coiling like a rattler getting ready to strike, and then she unleashed all her energy in a kick aimed at Raul’s head. Even as she moved, she saw him struggling to draw his gun, just as she thought he would. She corrected her aim at the last moment, striking his right shoulder. Raul spun around, unbalanced. The pistol flew from his hand.

Jenna did not stop. She had committed to this course of action the moment she had started climbing out of the silo. She would not stop. Not to catch her breath. Not to assess the results of her attack. Not until Raul was…

Dead?

Yeah, dead.

She felt no guilt about that. She had already sent Carlos to Hell, and that didn’t bother her at all. She felt about as much remorse for Carlos as she would for a roach ground beneath her heel. Truth be told, it was a rush. It was like she’d been given an invitation to a secret and very exclusive club. Noah had been in that club. Something told her that Ken was not the first man he had killed. Noah might not have wanted her to join the ranks of killers, but he’d prepared her for it, perhaps knowing this initiation might be unavoidable.

I’m a killer now. I passed the test, and I’m ready to do it again. Raul, your brother’s holding the door for you.

She advanced, throwing a pair of mid-body punches that rocked Raul back again. With each strike she shouted her kiai, using the sound to focus her energy and intimidate the man. Despite the attack, he stayed on his feet. She might have been able to punch through boards and bricks, but Raul was probably twice her weight, and flesh yielded whereas planks and cinder blocks cracked. Punches, she realized, weren’t going to do the trick. She took another step forward and with another shout, spun into a roundhouse kick, aimed low to sweep him off his feet.

Her foot struck his calf, a few inches below where she had aimed, and she rebounded away, struggling to recover her balance and irritated with herself for missing. It wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened, but it did erase any advantage her surprise attack had given her.

Raul snarled at her. She could see in his eyes that he was now little more than an enraged animal. His fury would allow him to tap into reserves of near-superhuman strength. If he got close enough to grab hold of her, she might not be able to break free. She took a step back, forcing herself to stay calm and focused.

He charged but she stepped aside, whirling around to deliver a powerful blow to his already pummeled kidney. It was enough to knock him off his feet. He went sprawling on the metal plates that covered the silo. A few feet to the left and he would have plunged into the hole.

Jenna didn’t think he would be fooled into such a reckless advance a second time. She backed away, glancing around for a weapon. She didn’t know where the gun had gone but the tire iron lay just a couple steps away. As she reached for it, Raul scrambled back to his feet and charged again.

A math problem flashed through her head: R is moving toward J at 15 m.p.h. J is trying to reach a tire iron 5 feet away. Will J reach the tire iron before R kills her?

It was a chance she couldn’t take, and at the last instant, she veered off. Raul had indeed learned his lesson, and he pulled up short, facing her, taunting her with curses and threats, reverting to some kind of primal threat display. “Me cago en la madre que te parió! Think you’re tough, chica?” He motioned to his body. “Think you can take this?” He spat at her. “You’re nothing but a puta. A scared little puta.”

She ignored his empty words and paid attention to what his eyes were saying. He took a step toward her, and she matched him, backing up as she settled into a ready stance. He took another step, and then his eyes darted to the side. She knew what would come next. When he lunged, she shouted a kiai and aimed her fist at an imaginary spot six inches behind his chin.

The punch connected solidly. Raul’s jaw broke with an audible crack. Yet, even as his head snapped back, his flailing hands caught her T-shirt. When he staggered away, she was pulled off balance.

Then his arms were around her, pinning her own arms against her body, crushing her in a bear hug. For a moment, they were locked in a crazy dance, Jenna trying to squirm free and stay on her feet, Raul simply trying to stop her from doing either. Then, they crashed down to the concrete floor.

The collision sent a flare of pain through Jenna’s body, but she ignored it and focused on the much more immediate peril. Her sensei had taught her some grappling, just enough to know that strength and size were not always the deciding factor in a wrestling match. But if Raul squeezed the breath out of her, she would not be able to put up much of a fight. She twisted, squirming to get her hands free of his embrace. He doubled his efforts, squeezing tighter.

In a flash of inspiration, she drove her forehead into Raul’s chin. There was a bright flash in her field of vision, but the sound of grinding bones filled her head. The broken pieces of Raul’s lower jaw smashed together, followed by a howl of pain. His hold loosened, just enough. She ripped her arms free of his grasp and wrapped them around his skull.

She felt him pounding his fists against her back. The blows were painful but not precise enough to do any real damage. She answered his fury with her own, wrenching her body back and forth, as if trying to rip his head off. In a way, that was exactly what she was trying to do. She remembered how Noah had broken Ken’s neck. Could she do that?

After just a few moments, she knew that she couldn’t. Maybe there was some special technique, but what she was doing wasn’t it. She felt Raul moving beneath her, rolling over and struggling to rise. If he succeeded, she would have almost no leverage against him. He was too strong, and she was too light. She squeezed and shook him again, but to no avail. She just wasn’t strong enough…

Maybe my arms aren’t strong enough, but I’ve got other muscles.

The same intuitive guidance that had prompted her to head butt him now gave her a different set of instructions. She dropped her grip onto his shoulders and then pushed down, launching herself straight up like a child playing leapfrog. The move got her high enough to swing one leg over Raul’s shoulder, and a moment later, she had his neck caught in a scissors hold between her thighs. With a shout that was like the mother of all kiais, she twisted her entire body — and Raul’s head with it — completely around.

The sound of snapping vertebrae vibrated through her body. When his body went rag-doll slack beneath her, she knew it was over.

The fight ended somewhat anticlimactically, with Raul collapsing beneath her, his death throes slamming her onto the hard floor. She disentangled herself quickly, scrambling away from him like he was on fire.

She lay there for a moment, panting. The fight had taxed her, but her breathlessness owed more to a sense of victory. She had won.

Her moment of triumph ended when she felt a hand close over her arm. She jerked in surprise and found herself staring into the bloody visage of Carlos Villegas.

Impossible. It was an eighty foot fall. He couldn’t have survived.

She jerked free. He made no effort to hold on to her, and as she crabbed backward, she saw why.

He had somehow survived and crawled back up out of the silo. But survival was a relative term. The fall had broken him, literally. Although she had recognized him, his face was misshapen, stretched over a skull that was no longer in one piece. Blood streamed from his ears and eyes. His limbs were also deformed. The hand that had grasped her appeared to be the only one of his extremities still functioning. She still could not fathom how he had pulled himself back up, but he had no strength left with which to menace her.

He didn’t need strength, though.

As she backed away, he reached his good hand down to his shattered body, and when she saw it again, he was holding his gun.

Jenna felt herself go numb. Carlos had been in no condition to fight her, not like Raul had, but she had instinctively retreated from him, creating the standoff distance that would allow him to shoot her before she could reverse course.

I have to try, she thought. Maybe he’ll—

The report made her jump, but there was no pain, no sensation at all. It didn’t seem possible that he could have missed. When he slumped forward and didn’t move again, she realized that Carlos had not fired his gun.

The shot had come from behind her.

She turned slowly and saw a tall figure silhouetted in the still blazing headlights of the rental car, one arm outstretched, holding a gun. Jenna’s rescuer lowered the gun and took a step forward, then gestured at the two bodies on the floor. “You’ve been busy.”

Though the face was still obscured by shadow, Jenna instantly recognized the voice and bolted forward, shouting, “Mercy!”

21

Unlike Jenna, Mercedes Reyes had been wearing her seatbelt when her pickup lost control and started corkscrewing down the Overseas Highway. Aside from being shaken up like the marble in a can of spray paint, Mercy had come away from the accident with nothing more serious than a few aches and bruises.

“I think they almost crashed, too,” Mercy said. “When my head stopped spinning, they were gone. I looked for you for a while, but then the police showed up.”

“I’m surprised they let you go. Aren’t you like a material witness or something?”

“I may not have actually hung around to answer their questions.” Mercy ducked her head guiltily. “You said that the bad guys might be connected with the police. I couldn’t take the chance. Someone gave me a ride as far as Marathon, and from there I was able to get some wheels and come here.”

“Because you knew this is where I would go.”

Mercy’s expression became grave. “No, honey. I came here because I thought you were dead. If I had known you were out there, I wouldn’t have left. I came here because it was what Noah told us to do.”

Jenna felt chastened. She had done exactly the same thing, albeit by a much more dangerous route. “Good thing you got here when you did.”

Mercy nodded. She explained how she had walked into the building just in time to see Carlos aim his pistol at Jenna. Her own gun had been lost during the wreck, but she had found Raul’s discarded weapon on the floor and had not hesitated. Jenna had a lot more questions, and she suspected that Mercy did, too, but those could wait. There was only one thing that really mattered now. “So, did you find it? What Noah left?”

Jenna felt for the journal tucked into her pants, but it was gone. She looked around, panic building, but quickly found it on the floor, still safe inside the Ziploc bag. She picked it up and moved forward until she was bathed in the glow of the car’s headlights. She opened the Ziploc, pulled out the journal and let the bag fall to the ground.

“Are you sure you don’t want to wait?” Mercy nodded toward the pair of corpses. “Maybe go somewhere that’s a little more…I don’t know…not here?”

Jenna shook her head. “After everything I’ve been through to get here, I just want to know the truth.” She opened to the first page.

She could almost hear Noah’s slightly gruff voice as she read the words. It triggered an unexpected surge of emotion.

Below that was an address, but it had been crossed out and an arrow pointed to the margin where a different address had been written in.

Mercy read over her shoulder. “Next stop: Miami?”

Jenna blinked back tears and swallowed. “I want to read the rest of it. I have to know what was so important that it got him killed.”

She turned the page and read aloud. “November sixteenth, nineteen ninety-nine…”