The Drifter (Peter Ash #1)(96)
EPILOGUE
The British Virgin Islands were a boater’s paradise, with steady winter winds, sheltered anchorages, and excellent restaurants. The sailing yacht Skin Deep swung on her anchor in thirty feet of turquoise water off Cooper Island. Manchioneel Bay was crowded with boats, the Christmas tourist season in full flood.
The fifty-foot cruiser was a beautiful boat, her sleek lines much admired by the charter tourists from Indiana and Missouri in their smaller rented plastic tubs. Skin Deep’s owner had brought her in by himself, the boat apparently rigged to sail single-handed with every modern convenience.
Like the boat, her owner was handsome with an aristocratic charm, clearly a man of means and much invited to dinner at the Cooper Island Beach Club. He flirted shamelessly with the wives and daughters and impressed the men with his broad knowledge of fine wines and the financial markets. When asked what he did for a living, he smiled broadly and said only that he was an investor whose biggest bet had paid off handsomely. Then changed the subject to various routes through the islands to South America. He planned to make Rio in time for Carnival.
After dark, the reggae grew louder in the beachside bars. Daiquiri-stunned tourists steered their buzzing dinghies uncertainly from the Beach Club to their chartered tubs. Nobody noticed the silent swimmers easing through the black water toward Skin Deep’s teak-trimmed stern ladder.
Three forms floated like ghosts up her side and into her salon. Footprints wet on the deck, and warm as blood.
Then came a moment when the boat rocked violently, but only for a moment. Perhaps just a rogue wave in the night, from a ship passing far out at sea.
Then Skin Deep’s hatches slid shut one by one. The generator started up and the air-conditioning came on, the metallic purr floating softly across the water. For a long time, no other sound could be heard.
In the morning, the charter tourists noticed that Skin Deep, that elegant sailing yacht, seemed to have slipped her moorings in the night and headed off to sea.
—
Standing behind the big chrome wheel, steering past Great Dog Island, Lewis was sorry they couldn’t keep the boat.
When the news of the bomb came out, the markets panicked. Even though the bomb didn’t actually explode, Skinner’s scheme paid off in a big way.
So once they had the account numbers and passwords, once the money was transferred and laundered, Lewis could buy his own boat. They all could. They could buy a damn fleet.
Although he was probably just going to go back home. He and Dinah were really talking again. And those boys. He was crazy about those boys.
He didn’t know if it would work out. But he could try.
It was amazing what happened when you started doing the right thing.
He could see Midden and Peter inside the boat’s salon, talking quietly with Skinner, who lay wide-eyed and duct-taped on the teak floor. Skinner’s laptop was open on the chart table, waiting for the satellite connection.
The lights of Virgin Gorda were gone behind the headland when Peter came out of the salon with two cold bottles of Red Stripe.
He took a deep breath of the cool night air to settle the white static and closed the door behind him. “It’s done.” He handed Lewis a beer.
Lewis smiled, his tilted grin wide. “How much?”
“You won’t believe it,” said Peter. The breeze felt clean on his face, and the lights on the distant islands looked close enough to touch. The boat lifted on the waves and he felt his shoulders loosen and drop. “More than an honest man could make in a hundred lifetimes.”
“Never said I was an honest man,” said Lewis, his grin white in the dark night. “Four-way split, right?”
“Our deal was eighty-twenty, remember? Eighty for you, twenty for Dinah.”
Lewis shook his head. “I invalidate that agreement, motherfucker. Make it an even split, four ways. You, me, Midden, and Dinah.”
“What you do with your money is up to you,” said Peter. “I wouldn’t know what to do with it.”
“We’ll work that out,” said Lewis. “I got some ideas. Midden and Josie talking about the vet center, want to get it going for real.” Lewis flashed the tilted grin again. “Got some decent funding now. Do some good in the world. Could use us a jarhead.”
“I can’t spend the winter in Wisconsin,” said Peter. “If I’m stuck inside more than twenty minutes, I start climbing the walls. It took me eight Xanax to manage the plane trip here.”
“Got people you can talk to about that,” said Lewis, not unkindly. “Don’t have to be no permanent condition.”
Josie had told Peter the same thing, before she’d kissed him good-bye. She was staying in Milwaukee. She had work to do.
“Here’s the thing,” said Peter, and opened his arms to the warm Caribbean wind. A smile spread across his face. “Mostly I’d just rather be outside. Someplace where the weather isn’t trying to kill me.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The plight of America’s veterans is very real.
Most veterans come home and restart their lives. They go to work or school, reconnect with their families or start new ones. Thanks to improvements in battlefield medicine, more injured veterans survive their physical wounds than ever before.
But our country still doesn’t put enough effort into helping those veterans settle back into civilian life. There’s a great deal yet unknown about traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress, war wounds that are often not visible but can lead to significant challenges for those affected.