Rebel Island (Tres Navarre #7)(56)

Alone, Maia reclined on the bed and listened to the rain plinking into the silver cup. She decided she should go down to the dining room, just to see what was happening. But she lay still and stared at the ceiling. She thought about her old home in China, how the rain would drum against the corrugated tin roof, and how she would fall asleep listening to her brother’s labored breathing—until the day he died. Ever since then, she could never fall asleep in a silent room.

33

I got to the bottom of the stairs and found that the water was receding from the first floor, leaving a spongy marsh of carpet, seaweed and salt foam.

The front door had been blown off its hinges. Outside, rain made a steady downpour, but the wind was almost tolerable. Waves lapped a few feet from the base of the lighthouse. Mounds of sand stuck up here and there above the churning water—scattered bumps that emerged and disappeared with every surge, so what was left of Rebel Island reminded me of a smudged charcoal rubbing.

From the outside, the hotel didn’t look as bad as I’d feared. The roof had been scoured away in places, leaving a skeletal frame of beams. The windows looked more like craters.

Otherwise the building seemed intact, but something bothered me about its appearance. I couldn’t decide what.

I asked Benjamin Lindy to stay behind. I wasn’t sure how his legs would hold up in the floodwater, and, more important, I didn’t like the angry look in his eyes. But of course he didn’t listen. He followed as I trudged into the tide looking for our college friends.

It wasn’t hard to spot them. They were about a quarter mile north, standing ankle-deep in the stormy water like disciples. One of the guys—redheaded Chase—was squatting down like he was looking for something. The other two stood and watched.

I did a quick scan of the horizon. Nothing in any direction except storm and ocean. On a clear day, the coastline would’ve been visible from Rebel Island. Not today. If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve sworn we were a thousand miles from the mainland.

I wanted to stop at the lighthouse and check on the strange flicker I’d seen the night before, but Benjamin Lindy was already ahead of me, wading purposefully toward Chase, Markie and Ty. I didn’t intend to let the old man confront them without me. We had quite enough dead bodies as it was.

Chase was on his knees in the surf, clawing at the wet sand that sucked back into place as soon as he tried to scoop it out.

“Dude,” Markie told him. “We got company.”

Chase looked up at us, a vacant stare in his eyes. “It should be here. Two crates. They can’t just disappear.”

“He’s confused.” Markie slipped his hand into his pocket. “Been cooped up too long. Doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

I glanced at Ty. “Maybe he needs a Valium,” I suggested. “Or codeine.”

Markie’s expression darkened. He turned to Ty. “You told him?”

“I—I didn’t—”

“You sorry little—”

I saw the gun coming. I punched Markie in the gut as it came out of his pocket. The gun tumbled and was lost in a cloud of wet sand. Markie sat down hard in the water.

“Don’t hurt him!” Ty yelped.

It took me a second to realize he was talking to me. He was terrified I might beat up the guy who’d been about to shoot him.

Markie rubbed his sore stomach. He eyed me with contempt. “Pretty fast for an old man.”

He started to get up, but Benjamin Lindy stepped forward. “Stay down, son. Or this much older man will make you sorry. Now tell me about Calavera.”

Coming from most eighty-year-olds, such a threat might’ve been amusing. No one laughed.

Markie looked at Chase and Ty. He shook his head cautiously. “We don’t know anything about that.”

“Calavera was connected to this island,” Lindy said. “He did most of his work for the drug cartels. You were moving drugs through the island—”

“Totally different thing, man!”

“When the police start asking why a U.S. Marshal and your friend Chris Stowall are both dead,” Lindy said, “you will look very bad.”

I had to give him credit. The old lawyer really knew how to sweat a witness. Markie squirmed like the ocean was boiling suddenly around him. “We don’t know anything about murder, okay?”

“How often did you come to the island?” I asked. “How did you make the exchanges?”

“You think I’m going to tell you that?”

“Every two months,” Chase cut in.

“Dude, shut up!”

“We’d stay for a weekend,” Chase said. “The Mexicans would bring a boat on Friday night when it was dark. We’d never see them face to face. They’d bury the drugs…here.”

He lifted his hands. Clumps of sand dripped through his fingers. “Later that night, we’d come down and put the stuff in bait buckets, like we were fishing, right? We’d bury the payment and leave. The Mexicans would pick it up…today. Saturday morning.”

“They’d leave the drugs first?” I said. “They trusted you to pay?”

Chase was slumped over, his spirit broken. Hard to believe he was the same smart-mouthed kid I’d picked out as the leader of the gang last night.

“Trust had nothing to do with it,” he said. “You don’t cross these people. Chris Stowall was the go-between, keeping an eye on the whole thing. If we’d tried to leave before the Sunday ferry, he would’ve radioed the Mexicans. We would’ve been dead before we got back to the mainland.”