Rebel Island (Tres Navarre #7)(50)

I stood at the end of the hall, looking down the stairwell into the shadows. I thought about the story Ty had told me. Given my past luck, I shouldn’t have been surprised to find myself cooped up with a trio of drug dealers, as well as a paid assassin.

I had no trouble believing that Chris Stowall had been making money by helping drug runners. In South Texas, that was a well-established part of the economy, right up there with ranching, drilling for oil and making acrylic-rattlesnake toilet seats for the tourists.

Still, I doubted Chris had died because of a drug deal. Certainly Jesse Longoria wouldn’t have come down here for anything as petty as a crate of Mexican Valium. Both of them had been playing a much more dangerous game.

I rubbed my eyes. I kept seeing Rachel Brazos’s face carved in wood.

Two bodies downstairs, and the death that haunted me most was a lady I’d never known.

I imagined Ralph Arguello laughing. You hang out with the dead too much, vato.

No contest, I pleaded. Then I turned and headed toward Alex Huff’s bedroom.

Inside, the storm had sprayed everything with broken glass and sand like sugar coating on a pan dulce. Somebody, probably Jose, had nailed a quilt over the smashed window. The wind and rain had already ripped it to shreds.

I wondered if it was just wishful thinking, or if the storm sounded a little less intense now. It wasn’t much louder than your average booster rocket.

I picked up the wooden statue and set it on the dresser. She still looked like Rachel, her hand out, asking some question I couldn’t answer.

I went through Alex’s dresser drawers, then his closet. After ten minutes of turning his room upside down, I’d found nothing remarkable. Nothing except the statue.

And that bothered me.

I knew Alex well enough to know that I should’ve found some memorabilia: the photos he’d once shown me from his fishing expeditions, his dad’s army knife, maybe the signed Jimmy Buffett poster Garrett had given him for his twentieth birthday.

Despite his temper, Alex Huff was a sentimentalist. He kept old things. He remembered people he’d known as a child. He’d spent his life savings to buy this hotel because it had been dear to his father.

And yet this room looked like any other room in the hotel. Except for the wooden statue of the dead woman.

I got up and went to the window. The wind was definitely slacking now. Its howl was less insistent. Woven Guatemalan pictures rippled across the tattered quilt—men with machine guns, helicopters over a rain forest.

On an impulse, I ripped it down.

I was standing there, staring into the angry edge of the dying hurricane, when the hotel’s power went out again.

As my eyes adjusted to the deeper darkness, I noticed something out in the storm—a flicker of light, and then it was gone.

I might’ve imagined it. Storms can play a lot of tricks with the light. But I was pretty sure I’d just seen a candle extinguished in the top window of the old lighthouse.

28

Calavera squatted in the dark stairwell, listening to the noises of the house. Four in the morning was a good time for murder. He would not normally choose to work in a house that was occupied. This had already caused him problems, almost given him away. But under the circumstances, he had no choice.

He set his hand on the unpainted timbers. The walls here were so close together his shoulders touched on either side.

He remembered his first job, so much like this one.

A police commander, a judge and a lawyer walked into the brothel. It sounded like the beginning of a joke, but the three men would never come out alive. Calavera had spent weeks studying their habits. He knew they would stay overnight on Sunday, as they always did, and so Calavera had visited on Saturday as a client. In the early morning, when everyone was asleep, he had laid the trap.

Monday at 4 A.M., he watched from the building across the street. He lay on the roof with a rifle, just to be sure. The brothel’s back doors were barricaded. He had seen to that. If anyone came out the front, or made it through a window, he would take care of them. He did not like loose ends.

He needn’t have worried. The explosion was beautiful: flame blossoming simultaneously in the windows. The screams were short-lived. And no one came out of the building.

The display was better than fireworks. Blood rushed through his veins. He felt more alive than he had in years.

Soon, setting bombs had become his addiction. The money was good, necessary for his survival, but he would have done the work without pay. He had finally found something he was good at.

Now, he wished he could recapture that thrill. But this time was different. Necessary, yes, but he would take no pleasure from it.

He connected the last wire to a simple timer. So much could be accomplished with a single electrical pulse.

He sat for a few moments listening to the sounds of sleepers on the other side of the wall—gentle snoring, restless turning in bed. Tomorrow, he would be away from here. He would start again, and this would be his last display. A work of necessity, hastily done. He didn’t like that. But the beauty of fire wiped out one’s imperfections. Fire was very forgiving.

He set the candy skull on the timer, knowing no one would ever see it. But he would know it was there, small sugary eyes watching as the seconds ticked down in the dark.

29

I meant to venture out into the storm to investigate the lighthouse. Instead, I went to check on Maia, lay down next to her thinking it would only be for a few minutes and ended up falling asleep.