Rebel Island (Tres Navarre #7)(30)

Alex grabbed me by the shirt collar and pitched me headfirst into the water.

I came up spluttering. Salt water burned in my nose and my eyes stung. I dog-paddled frantically, clawing for the side of the boat. My shoes weighed a thousand pounds. I knew the shark must be close, already crazed from the smell of fish blood.

Alex looked down at me. His face was cold and harsh. “Don’t ever, ever mention that again. You can swim home. Do you want to swim home?”

I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t even beg. I tried to grab the side of the boat but my hands wouldn’t work.

Alex swore in disgust. He grabbed my shirt and hauled me soaked and trembling into the boat. When we got back to Rebel Island, Garrett was waiting for us on the dock, scowling as I trudged ashore dripping wet.

“What the hell happened?” he asked.

I was too ashamed to speak. When Alex explained, I expected Garrett to bust out laughing, like he’d done many times before, but this time Alex seemed to have gone too far even for Garrett.

“You fed my little brother to the sharks?” he demanded. “What the hell for?”

He and Alex began to argue. Under different circumstances, this would’ve pleased me. Garrett was actually standing up for me. At least he didn’t think I quite deserved to be shark bait. But watching him and Alex yell at each other, all I could think of was my parents—the way they’d been at each other’s throats the past few weeks, the idea that their marriage was over.

“Stop!” I yelled. “It was my fault.”

I didn’t wait for a reply. I ran, and I didn’t stop until I reached the northern tip of the island.

Alex and Garrett stayed mad at each other the rest of the weekend. I refused to speak to either of them. I never explained to Garrett why Alex had pushed me overboard.

Neither Garrett nor Alex ever mentioned the incident again. As for me, I did not develop a lifelong fear of sharks or deep water. But I never forgot the shock of asking the wrong question of the wrong person and getting pitched headfirst into the warm sea with the blood and the sharks. For my last ten years as a private investigator, every time I interviewed someone or prodded for information, part of me was that twelve-year-old boy, and I imagined myself holding tight to the edge of the boat so I could not get surprised again.

“Señor?”

Jose was back, smiling blandly, holding the registration cards I’d asked him for. “You are fine, señor?”

“Yeah,” I managed. “Great.”

I took the cards and began flipping through them.

The first was in my handwriting: Mr. & Mrs. Navarre. I stared at it, marveling at the weirdness of there being a Mrs. Navarre.

I flipped through the other cards, went back to one of them, checked it against the phone records.

“Here,” I said.

“Señor?”

“Three calls to this number from the hotel. All in the last two weeks.”

“Is that bad, sir?”

“I don’t know.” I held up the registration card with a name, a Kingsville address and a phone number, all written in neat block letters. “But I think I should ask Benjamin Lindy.”

18

Garrett found Alex in the parlor, staring at the marlin above the fireplace.

“Yo, Huff.”

Alex’s shirt had a tear in the back, like it had snagged on a nail. Plaster and dust speckled his curly hair. “You sure you don’t want to buy this place?” he muttered. “Price is getting cheaper by the minute.”

His tone reminded Garrett of another friend—a fellow programmer who’d climbed out onto the tenth-story ledge of his Bee Cave Road office in Austin after the high-tech bubble burst. The guy’s voice had sounded just like that—fragile as glass—right before he jumped.

“You’re gonna get through this, man,” Garrett promised.

Alex turned. He was holding his old whittling knife—the knife his dad had given him for his thirteenth birthday. The blade was folded against the handle, but it still made Garrett uneasy.

“I was wrong to bring you all down here,” Alex said.

“You said you needed help. I’m telling you, man. Tres can help.”

“It’s too late. I’ve screwed up too much.”

Garrett remembered the body in the basement. A shiver ran up his back. Even so many years after he’d lost his legs, there were times he missed being able to run away. Down in the basement had been one of those moments. The way Tres had calmly shone a light over the dead man’s face, gone through his pockets and completely ignored the dried blood and the gunshot wound in the chest—how did little Tres, the annoying kid who used to complain to Mom whenever Garrett so much as touched him, grow up being able to examine dead bodies?

“Alex, if there’s something you ain’t told me—”

“Shit, Garrett. You couldn’t even start to guess.”

“That stuff about Calavera. If you had anything to do with that—I mean, you would tell me, right?”

Alex’s expression was hard to read—fear, maybe even shame. “You remember Mr. Eli’s funeral?”

Garrett nodded. It wasn’t one of the days he liked to remember. He’d come down to Corpus for the memorial, mostly to console Alex. There hadn’t been many people there, which had surprised Garrett. After all the people old Mr. Eli had helped, all the good things people said about him, Garrett figured there would be a mob scene. But it was just Garrett, Alex and a couple of ladies from the local Presbyterian church who seemed to have nothing better to do.