Rebel Island (Tres Navarre #7)(57)

“Dude, why are you telling them this?” Markie demanded.

“What does it matter?” Chase said. “We’re dead. We’re completely dead.”

“Explain the ‘completely dead’ part,” I said.

Chase stared at the hole he’d made in the sand—no more than a dent now. Markie said nothing.

Finally Ty took a shaky breath. “We should’ve picked up the drugs last night. We couldn’t because of the storm.”

“That’s why Chase and Markie were trying to leave the hotel last night,” I guessed.

Ty nodded glumly. “Now it’s too late. The drugs are gone. The thing is…the Mexicans won’t believe us.”

“You didn’t make up the hurricane,” I pointed out.

“Doesn’t matter. They’ll expect payment.”

“You brought money to pay them?”

“Thirty-two grand.” Ty glanced at Markie. “But it’s gone, too. It disappeared from the room last night.”

Suddenly their distress made more sense to me. No drugs. No money. Storm or not, their Mexican friends were not going to be happy.

“We’ve got to get them to come ashore,” Markie said.

“They won’t listen,” Chase objected.

“Maybe not. But we take the boat.”

Benjamin Lindy was studying the young men. It seemed to me his anger turned to disappointment as he did so. Once again, his vengeance was without a likely target. “What about Stowall? Did you kill him?”

“Hell, no,” Markie said.

“That’s not true!” Ty said. “Chris was blackmailing you—”

“Ty, shut up!” Markie warned.

“He wanted more money,” Ty persisted. “They had a big argument. Chris said he needed to get away fast. He wanted an extra cut. He said he could make life really bad for us. He asked if we’d ever heard of Calavera.”

Markie cursed. “That doesn’t mean I killed him, dude.”

“When was this argument?” I asked Ty, ignoring Markie.

“Friday afternoon. Not long before you got here.”

“We didn’t kill him,” Markie said. “We don’t kill people, okay? It’s just drugs. It pays tuition, for Christ’s sake.”

I exchanged looks with Lindy. I hoped he was coming to the same conclusion as me—that whatever crap these guys had gotten themselves into, they weren’t murderers. They knew as little about Calavera as we did.

Then I heard the sound of a speedboat engine.

A sleek black twenty-two-foot Howard Bow Rider rounded the southern tip of the island, cutting its way through the chop. Nobody except the Coast Guard or drug runners would’ve been insane enough to be out in seas like this. And I had a feeling this boat was not part of the Coast Guard.

Chase scrambled to his feet. He and Ty and Markie watched silently as the boat approached. Two men stood at the helm. Both wore black rain gear, their hoods pulled down over their faces.

One man steered. The other held an assault rifle.

We had no place to run. No cover. If they decided to shoot us, we were dead. So I just stood there with the college kids, waiting to see what they would do.

The boat slowed, passing a hundred yards off to our right. The driver seemed to know this area well. He navigated cautiously, keeping to the main channel, away from the submerged parts of the island.

The boat slowed to an idle. Chase held up his sand-caked hands in a gesture of surrender.

The two men studied us. What they saw: five gringos standing in ankle-deep water where their stash of money should have been.

Without a word or gesture, the driver sped up. The boat veered away. It headed out to sea, leaving a silver wake like a scythe.

Ty exhaled. “Close.”

Chase stared at his empty hands. Markie’s face was pale.

“What?” Ty asked. “They’re gone, aren’t they?”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him. But their message was clear: the Mexicans wouldn’t waste their time shooting Ty and his friends now. They would have it done properly, in a much more public place.

I knelt down and sifted through the water until I found the gun Markie had dropped. It was a .22, Ty’s marksman pistol. It occurred to me that a .22 could’ve been the same caliber that had killed Jesse Longoria.

“Start planning your statement for the police,” I told Markie.

“The drugs are gone,” he said miserably. “What’s the point of talking to the police?”

“Because it might be your only chance at staying alive.”

I sloshed back toward the ruined hotel, leaving the college kids standing in the water where the source of their next year’s tuition had washed away.

“What kind of wire?” Garrett asked.

We were sitting in the destroyed dining room. I was briefing Maia and Garrett on my fun-filled excursion into the surf. Garrett’s question took me by surprise.

I dug around in my pocket, found the frayed copper wire and handed it to him.

He scowled. “You found this in Lane’s closet?”

“Yeah.”

“Ain’t for computers.”

I didn’t argue. Garrett was the computer programmer in the family.

He twirled the wire between his fingers. “So what’s it for?”