The Girl Beneath the Sea (Underwater Investigation Unit #1)(66)

She sits still for a moment and reads my face, then replies, “This is all bullshit. Isn’t it? There’s no fucking client. What are you, a cop?”

She gets up to leave. I grab her wrist. “Sit the fuck down.”

Her demeanor changes, and she slides back into the booth. “I’m not what you think I am,” she says.

I ease my grip on her wrist. “I’m not here to arrest you. I’m not here to get you into trouble. Actually, the opposite. If I were you, I’d stay clear of South Florida. Hell, if some rich, horny asshole wants to take you around the Med and chase your ass around his yacht, I’d do that instead of sticking around here.”

I pat her wrist and let go. “Your friend is probably dead. Sooner or later, someone’s going to make the same connection that I did. Only they’re not going to give you a dumb lie. They’ll hurt you for everything you know, and then they’ll kill you.”

I recall the sensation of the hole in the back of Raul’s skull. “They’ll want you dead for what you know or what you can tell someone else.”

“Fuck.” She shakes her head. “Damn it. I knew something awful happened to Yvonne. Goddamn it. Okay. I got a friend in France. Am I safe there?”

“I don’t know. It’s better than here.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Sooner is better. Fly somewhere else in the US if you have to. Just make yourself hard to find.”

“Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if Wilmer did it.”

“Wilmer? Who’s he?”

“Some guy Jason knew. Met him on the boat. Scary as fuck. One of the girls said he worked for the cartels as a killer. Not a thug. A smooth guy. I stayed clear. Other girls dug it.”

“Was he on the Morning Sun?”

“Never. You know, Jason seemed even more worried about us mentioning that boat. He said he had a jealous girlfriend or something. But, no, Wilmer wasn’t on that ship. We met up with him in Bimini. He sailed with us all the way to Aruba.”

Aruba? Interesting. “Did you ever see anything weird on board?”

“Like messed-up sex stuff?” she asks.

“No. Just something that happened that didn’t on other boats,” I reply.

“No. They were super strict about their crew drills, though. When they had one, you had to stay in your cabin. I got caught in the hallway one time, and Jason went ballistic. I couldn’t figure out why he was out. Anyway, that’s it.”

“Were these drills during the day or at night?”

“Night. Always night.” She starts to look around the place nervously.

“One more thing: Did Jason ever board the Morning Sun in Miami?”

“No. Never. He always caught up with us in Bimini or sometimes out at sea.”

“Did the night drills happen only after he boarded?”

“Uh, yeah. I think so.”

Now we know how and when the Kraken was loaded and unloaded. We just have to figure out where the Morning Sun was the night the Kraken went missing.





CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

HARBOR

I snap a photograph of a young, tanned, blond man wearing white shorts and a maroon polo shirt as he walks down the gangplank of the Morning Sun and onto the pier of Sea Isle Marina. According to the harbormaster, the boat is owned by Klein Holdings, an investment firm based in the Caymans.

The ship itself is a custom-built, 190-foot, sleek, black vessel with an extra-long rear deck. Below that deck is a “toy locker,” a recent development in yachts. Basically, a garagelike cavity that opens to the sea so you can store Zodiacs and Jet Skis.

The locker’s also the perfect size for the Kraken. Conceivably, you could use the submarine to take whatever contraband you wanted to and from the yacht by loading it inside the locker.

George and I have been staked out at the Miami Marriott in Biscayne Bay, overlooking the marina, watching who comes and goes from the vessel.

We count a total crew of eight, which feels light for a boat this size but still manageable. God knows Dad operated boats almost as large with child labor when hired help fled over wage disputes.

I tell George, “I think that’s Himmler.”

He makes a note on a large piece of white paper stuck to the television cabinet. We’ve given each of the crew made-up names, because we haven’t figured out their actual ones.

Since we started watching the boat last night, only crew have come and gone. Seven of them returned to the boat at eleven p.m. sharp, suggesting that they had a curfew.

They mostly have fair features, and all appear to be Northern European or Scandinavian. I offered to go chat one of them up in town, but George pointed out that they’ve likely been trained to smell anything suspicious. If you’re willing to pay, there are highly dedicated former Russian sailors for hire—ones with experience working on Russian oligarch yachts.

I set the camera down and drop on the twin bed closest to the window. “Now what? That’s got to be the boat? Right?”

“I’d say that’s a fair assessment. We need to know where it was when the Kraken missed its rendezvous. You know boats better than me; how can we find out?”

“The logs aren’t going to be much help. Lord knows we didn’t log places we anchored when we didn’t want anyone to know about it. Although . . .” I pick up the camera and zoom the telephoto onto the mast. It has radar and other communications equipment attached to it. “I’m sure there’s some kind of electronic record aboard. They might wipe their computers when they get to port, but even that could tell us something.”