Rebel Island (Tres Navarre #7)(2)

Maybe it was the joyous occasion, or the fact that I was surrounded by friends. Maybe it was just the fact that it was raining too hard to leave. But I was in the mood to think well of my brother.

I would have plenty of time to regret that later. But that afternoon, with the rain coming down, I listened as Garrett told me his idea.

2

He got to the cemetery at sunset, drove around it twice to make sure there was no surveillance. He doubted there would be, but he’d learned to be paranoid.

The sky was blood red. Corpus Christi Bay glowed like metal on the forge. The old cemetery had iron gates and limestone markers, the oldest worn smooth by storms and Gulf winds.

He found the graves with no effort: one large, two small, lined up cozily on a knoll, enjoying the million-dollar view. Like they come to watch fireworks, he thought.

He knelt and ran his hands along the names, as if that would erase them.

The top of the smallest tombstone was lined with seashells: a cockle, an Easter oyster, a blood ark. He’d spent years collecting shells like these along the Texas coast. He’d dug them out of the sand, let the ocean wash them clean, held them up to the sunlight and admired the pattern of their veins.

Had the child liked seashells? He didn’t know.

He’d never even met them.

The mother’s obituary picture had run in the newspaper. Her smile had seemed so familiar, the dates of her birth and death. Cold had gripped him as he realized what he’d done.

He’d caused this. And now there was no way to bring them back.

The only thing he could do was make amends. If he had the courage.

He took something from his pocket: a tiny sugar skull, grinning and blind. He crushed the skull and dropped it on the mother’s grave.

Never again.

A flash from the bay caught his eye—a rich man’s yacht coming in for the night. The afternoon had been beautiful, as unexpected as yesterday’s storm. Forecasters were optimistic about a nice weekend. The bad weather was supposed to skirt around them. But he knew better. A bigger storm was on the way.

He watched the yacht disappear behind the fishing piers. The Texas coast had always protected him. However far he roamed, he always came back here, putting his feet in the water, hoping it would wash away his travels and his mistakes the way it washed sand off shells.

But maybe not this time.

Sunset. He had to catch the evening ferry.

He took one last look at the tombstones, lined up so peacefully, long evening shadows pointed toward the sea. Then he turned to leave. The island was waiting.

3

For a guy who was rumored to have killed six men in cold blood, Jesse Longoria looked downright pleasant.

He stood on the dock of Rebel Island as if he’d been expecting us. A jovially plump Latino in his mid-fifties. Smile lines crinkled around his eyes. He wore a gold A&M college ring, a navy blue summerweight suit with his U.S. Marshal’s badge pinned to the lapel and a satisfied expression as if he’d just enjoyed a stroll with a beautiful woman.

“Tres Navarre,” he said. “If I were you, I’d get back on that boat. Now.”

Wind buffeted the dock. Maia was supervising the hotel manager taking our bags off the ferry. Garrett was setting up his wheelchair. We’d just endured a twenty-minute ride from Aransas Pass through choppy seas and I was tempted to throw up on the marshal’s shoes.

“What brings you here, Longoria?” I asked. “Collecting seashells?”

“I don’t need your interference, son. Not this time.”

Thunder crackled over the Gulf. Storm clouds were piling up, turning the air to a wet stew of salt and electricity.

The hotel manager lumbered over with our bags. He stopped when he saw Longoria’s hand resting on his sidearm. “Uh, problem, gentlemen?”

“There was,” I said. “Two years ago. Never found the body, did they, Longoria?”

The marshal’s eyes glinted. “I heard you quit detective work.”

“Sure. Didn’t you get an invitation to the retirement party?”

He stepped so close I could smell the lemon starch sweating out of his clothes. “Who hired you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Longoria. I’m here on my honeymoon.”

I pointed behind me. Maia and Garrett were just coming up the dock—Maia eight and a half months pregnant, Garrett a bilateral amputee.

Funny, Longoria didn’t look too convinced by my honeymoon story.

“Hey, Marshal,” the hotel manager said. I tried to remember his name. Chris Something-or-other. He was a former pro surfer, tan and well-built, but I doubted he’d dealt with many conflicts worse than deciding what kind of beer to buy on the mainland. “Mr. Navarre isn’t—I mean, they have a reservation, sir. They’re friends with the owner.”

Longoria seemed to weigh his options. The ferry was already pulling out for Aransas Pass. The next boat wouldn’t come until tomorrow afternoon. That meant he could shoot me, throw me off the dock or leave me alone. I’m sure the first two options had their appeal.

“Bad storm coming,” he told me. “I’d make it a one-night honeymoon and get off this island.”

Then he turned and headed toward the hotel, the first few splatters of rain making buckshot patterns on the boards at his feet.

“Old friend?” Maia asked.