The Water Keeper(52)

I couldn’t guarantee that no one had seen Gone Fiction as we pulled out of that harbor. If the harbormaster had seen us, he’d know what type of boat we were in. A Whaler like mine is easy to spot. The lines of the Dauntless are distinctive. If you know boats, chances are good you can pick mine out of a crowd. If I was smart I would abandon her, walk away, and find another. But I was short on time and we had too much history. I could no more abandon Gone Fiction than I could cut out my own heart. Too many miles traveled.

I returned to the marina where I pointed to the “Marine Wrap” sign and asked the guy working, “You do that?” Marine wrapping is something akin to vacuum wrapping really tough plastic wrap around a boat. Most guys do it to advertise a brand name, but it also protects the hull from pretty much anything. It can also affect the speed for the better, at least until something tears the wrap.

He spoke without taking his eyes off the Yamaha he was working on. “Yeah.”

I pointed to Gone Fiction. “How long would it take you?”

“What do you want done?”

“Solid color. Complete wrap. Just something to protect her.”

“T-top, motor, hull, everything?”

“You got time?”

“Yeah, but it’ll be next week.”

I pulled out a wad of hundreds and he quit working on the Yamaha. I licked my thumb and started pulling them off one by one. “Would tonight be too soon?”

He wiped greasy hands on a rag and stared at the money.

I said, “How much you make in a week?”

“A grand.” That was probably the truth.

I handed him a thousand dollars. “Another thousand if you can finish her tonight and I can roll out of here tomorrow morning.”

He took the money and started studying my boat. “Done.”

I pulled out another three hundred dollars. “You got a car I can borrow?”

He pointed at a Tacoma. “Keys are in it.”

I gave him the money. “I might be gone a few hours.”

“No hurry.” He took off his cap, glanced at the coffee maker, and smiled. “I’ll be up awhile.”

While Summer went to find something to eat, I opened my laptop and began searching the hard drives we’d stolen from Fire and Rain. There were hundreds of videos, which mandated a rather sophisticated video monitoring and recording system. All total, I counted fifteen girls, multiple clients, and lots of traffic. In business terms, this was a well-oiled machine, and I felt my anger rise with each new face. I was also careful with the drives, producing backups—both in hard copy and on the cloud. Each video would serve as nails in the coffin of a courtroom conviction, no matter how much power or money these animals once had.

Each of the sick and twisted men I saw on video believed his past lay behind him. Buried. Hidden. Each was currently walking about the earth with a smile on his face. Having gotten away with it. Going about his everyday life as if he’d made a run to the grocery store to buy butter. But in the next few hours, I was going to pass these videos to a group of people who had made a career of putting guys like that in dark cells the rest of their natural lives. And prison is not kind to men who take advantage of young girls.

There is courtroom justice, and then there is prison justice.

Angel appeared often in the common areas of the boat but never with a client. The two men I’d seen on the Sea Tenderly when she’d docked at my island were regulars in the videos but never with the girls. Professionals, they didn’t sample. Lastly, the cameras had recorded Summer and me as we’d stepped on the boat, following us throughout our journey. I guessed that one of the four men we’d met had been watching a live feed. I doubted the hard drives I now held were the only backup, but with that much video, it would take a long time to upload to the cloud. That meant there was a chance, albeit small, that the flesh drivers did not have a record of Summer and me. Only what the four guys could remember seeing.

As I expected, each video had a GPS signature. I opened Google Maps and began entering the coordinates for the video signatures. The results told me what I already knew: that Fire and Rain had motored south down the IC without stopping, which meant they used tenders to ferry customers to and from the moving vessel—which again suggested a well-oiled machine and a rather effective word-of-mouth advertising campaign. It also meant they’d done it before. That the customers knew about the boat and were expecting to be contacted. What I wanted was that list of customers—the names.

While most of the longitudes and latitudes formed a series of satellite bread crumbs moving down the IC, one coordinate stood out. It looked like a house along the water where the vessel had moored for a couple of hours.

I saved the coordinates in my phone.

Summer returned with lunch while I took screen shots and cut the videos into shorter three-and five-second videos that showed clear faces and features. Just enough for identification. I uploaded it all to a Dropbox account, sent my contact the link, and dialed his number. He answered quickly. I put him on speakerphone this time so Summer could hear. There was a ping-pong game in full volley in the background, including the sound of laughing women.

He spoke without waiting on me. “My fun-meter tells me you bumped into some trouble.”

“Same stuff. Different day.”

“You hurt?”

“Summer closed the leaks in my hull.”