Rebel Island (Tres Navarre #7)(23)

Ty took a shaky breath. He started climbing down.

“You can take him inside?” I asked Markie. “I want to look around for a second.”

“No problem.” Absolute confidence. I started wondering if maybe there was more to Markie than the ability to belch.

Ty got out of the boat. “Only fifteen minutes,” he reminded me. “Start counting.”

“I will,” I promised. “And, Ty, if you’ve got your gun…”

He blinked. “My gun? Not with me. It’s…back in my room?”

I didn’t like the way he made it into a question. I looked at Markie. “Find it.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“And don’t touch it. Put it in a bag or something. Bring it to me for safekeeping.”

Markie raised an eyebrow, but then he nodded and led Ty away.

“Hold up,” I told Chase.

I walked him over to the worktable and showed him the canvas bag. “Is this Ty’s?”

“Never seen it before. Why?”

A new red duffel bag in the middle of grimy bait buckets and tackle boxes and mildewed coils of rope. It was packed full, and what bothered me most were the shapes pressed against the canvas, like the bag was filled with bricks.

I unzipped the top. Cash—twenties and fifties, all neatly bundled.

“Whoa,” Chase breathed. “How much—”

“Quick estimate? About twenty thousand.”

“Dude. What’s it doing sitting out here?”

“Good question.” I fingered the old airline tag on the shoulder strap. It was an address different from Rebel Island, someplace in Corpus Christi. But I recognized the name. “Christopher Stowall,” I said.

Chase swore. “That little turd. Stowall stashed this cash here? How the hell—”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But twenty thousand…It’s time I searched his room. I should’ve done that before.”

“Yeah,” Chase said. “If there’s more money in there we can, like, split it fifty-fifty.”

I stared at him.

“What?” he said defensively.

I turned and studied the fishing boat—the only way off the island. In the choppy water, the reflection from my flashlight beam looked like a fire. Like flames in the window of a burning house.

“Chase,” I said, already regretting what I was about to do. “I need your help with one more thing.”

14

Lane could still feel the impression of her wedding band, a month after she had thrown it into the sea. She massaged her fingers, trying to get rid of the cold and tightness.

Garrett placed his hand on hers. “Hey, it’s gonna be all right.”

She studied his face. He was unlike any man she’d ever known, and not just because he was an amputee. She’d gotten over that, because he seemed so completely comfortable without legs. He sat in his wheelchair like it was a throne—a source of power. He wasn’t attractive in any conventional way. His teeth were crooked and his gray-brown hair was a rat’s nest. He had a potbelly and didn’t seem to care much whether or not his Jimmy Buffett T-shirt had margarita stains on it. But he had nice eyes—surf green, full of humor and warmth. He smelled like patchouli and wood smoke. She liked the roughness of his hands and his gravelly voice.

“Things haven’t been all right for me for a long time,” she said.

“Hell, you don’t know my brother,” Garrett told her. “He’s gotten me out of worse shit than this. I’m telling you, if there’s a killer here, Tres’ll find him.”

If there’s a killer here.

A wave of guilt surged through her. She kept thinking the burden would get easier, but every day, month after month, it just got worse. She couldn’t close her eyes without seeing the dead man’s face. He had smiled as she served him lunch. She remembered the knife, freshly sharpened for cutting apples…

“You know what you need?” Garrett asked.

Lane forced herself back to the present. “What?”

“A tropical vacation in my room.”

In spite of herself, she smiled. “I’m not sure I know you that well.”

“Trust me,” Garrett said. “You’ll find out plenty.”

His room was strangely personal for a hotel room. The walls were decorated with posters of the Caribbean and the Florida Keys. They reminded Lane of Chris and how much he loved beaches, but she kept that to herself. On the dresser, Garrett had set up a full bar—rum, tequila and triple sec, glasses, a blender, a bucket of ice. He’d hung different-colored Hawaiian shirts on the shuttered windows. Music played from a little battery-operated stereo: Jamaican steel drums and guitar. A dozen votive candles flickered on Fiestaware saucers.

“It looks like you live here,” she noticed.

“My favorite room. I come here a few times a year. Alex lets me keep it the way I like.”

He mixed tequila and lime juice and triple sec over ice in a carafe, stirred it and poured. “Margarita of the gods. No salt. Cuervo white. Mexican triple sec. My brother disagrees with me about every ingredient. Thinks I’m a damn cretin.”

“You sound proud.”

“Of pissing off my brother? Hell, yes. Salud!”