The Bishop's Pawn (Cotton Malone #13)(32)

Doors flew open. Four armed men emerged.

One of whom was Jim Jansen.

I was yanked from the car.

“You should have done yourself a favor and died on that boat,” Jansen said.

Two of the other men began a search of the Toyota. It took them only a few moments to find the waterproof case in the trunk. The fourth man kept a weapon trained on me while Jansen patted me down. In my jean pocket he found the coin.

He stared at it through the plastic sleeve, pleased.

“A total disaster. That’s what this is,” Jansen said. “All thanks to Cotton ‘James Bond’ Malone. Special Justice Department operative. You proud of yourself?”

“I left you stranded at Fort Jefferson.”

“That you did.”

He pounded a fist into my gut, which doubled me over.

I gathered my breath and tried to steady my nerve. The other two men grabbed me by the arms, pinning them behind me, slamming me chest-first into the side of the Toyota.

Handcuffs were clipped to my wrists.

Cars were approaching from the west.

I tried to steady my breathing.

“Let’s get out of here,” Jansen said.





Chapter Twenty


As messes go this one had to be an eleven on a ten-point scale. I was back in the rear seat of a car with my hands cuffed behind my back, exactly how I started in Jacksonville thirty-six hours ago. Only this time, instead of going to jail, I was headed east on U.S. 441 to God knows where.

Jansen sat in the front seat and had not said much of anything. I wondered what had happened to the Fosters and company, but realized that I’d only be told what he wanted me to know. A sinking realization had taken hold. Benjamin Foster had definitely wanted this to happen. Is that why he alerted me to the possible house surveillance? To throw me off guard? To make me think him a friend? Then he sent me off to get food, with the files conveniently in the trunk and the coin in my pocket. Straight to Jansen. I was actually getting pretty good at being bait.

Still, I thought I’d try, “You do know that I reported in to the Justice Department.”

“Ever heard of Jimmy Hoffa?” Jansen asked.

I got the message, and with the Everglades just a stone’s throw away it would not be all that difficult to accomplish.

“We saw you make a call,” Jansen said. “But agents disappear all the time. It’s an occupational hazard. Which explains why pains in the ass like Stephanie Nelle recruit young, stupid hotshots like you.”

Good to know.

We passed a lot of citrus groves, sugarcane fields, and cattle pastures before finally crossing under Interstate 95, cruising farther east into downtown West Palm Beach. From its inception the town had always lived in the shadow of Palm Beach, its more glitzy neighbor across the Intracoastal Waterway. One was created for people with money, the other for those who worked for the people with money. I’d visited both a couple of times, this side of the water reality, the other side like going to Mars. I saw that we were headed straight into outer space as the car veered right and drove across the bridge.

Tall palm trees lined the main avenue like sentinels keeping watch. We stopped at an intersection, then turned north on the old A1A highway that bisected the narrow spit of island north to south. Past a stretch of churches and high-end businesses, houses appeared.

Big ones.

“We headed to your mansion?” I asked Jansen.

He shifted in his seat and turned around to face me. His right arm came up with a gun that he nestled to my forehead.

Then he cocked the hammer.

I will say, the experience was unnerving. Never had I felt a weapon that close to me, being held by a man who clearly wanted to pull the trigger. Making it worse, my hands were cuffed behind my back so there was nothing I could do about it.

“I’m looking forward to killing you,” he said.

“Just not yet, right? Somebody higher on the food chain wants me delivered in one piece?”

His silence confirmed I was right.

“It’s a bitch to be a peon, isn’t it?” I asked.

He released the hammer and withdrew the gun, then turned back around in his seat. I exhaled, realizing I’d been holding my breath a long time.

We kept driving, traffic moving like blood through a clogged artery. The ocean was no more than a hundred yards off to the right, but invisible, shielded by the trees, the mansions, and some unbelievably well-groomed, towering hedges. There must have been some local ordinance that encouraged everyone to grow theirs thick to the sky. Here and there the road nestled close to the shore. Old money hummed a loud and obvious tune. Side streets radiated every couple of hundred feet in defined blocks and we turned down one, a narrow lane that passed between more houses, these not as large as their oceanfront companions, but nonetheless impressive.

We finally stopped at a two-story brick Colonial with a portico supported by columns that reminded me of the White House. More tall hedges screened the front yard from the street. We stopped in a forecourt, enclosed on three sides by a stone balustrade topped with urns. Flowers filled the lavish beds among more shrubbery.

Waiting at the front door was a man with neatly clipped silver-gray hair and a face as smooth and rosy as a child’s. He wore a pair of tortoiseshell glasses. I was led from the car. Our footsteps made rasping sounds on the soft stone steps as we entered a vestibule dominated by a carving stairway of gray marble that reached up to a second-floor balcony. I was waiting for the queen or the president to descend amid a flurry of trumpets. A crystal chandelier burned bright. We walked across a floor inlaid with black marble highlighted by—of all things—the seal of the FBI.