Ridley Pearson - Cut and Run

“You call me the minute you know anything.”

“Same there,” he returned. “If Miller should call-”

“You’ll hear about it,” she said. She leaned away from him, then changed her mind and craned across to kiss him. Larson turned to meet her lips. There was nothing particularly romantic about it, but he felt it long after.

“Don’t do anything stupid.”

“As if I have a choice,” he fired back. “This is me we’re talking about.”

The first hint of a smile began, but then she hid it well.

She paused, the car door now open a crack. “If you find her- when you find her-she won’t trust you. We talked about getting a dog, she and I. We were going to name it Cairo. Like Egypt. Use it. It may help.”

“ Cairo.”

“Yeah. Ever since she saw a picture of the pyramids she’s wanted to go there.” Her eyes grew distant as if watching a film run inside her head.

Larson walked her up the hotel’s front steps and introduced her to Tommy Tomelson.

As he left, he felt horribly alone.

Tommy Tomelson had used some of the life insurance from his wife’s passing to buy the twin-engine inboard-outboard four-hundred-and-forty-horsepower Christine , judging by both the name and all the bells and whistles he’d added. GPS satellite navigation. Sonar. Weather radar. SailMail e-mail. Larson read his own e-mail off the BlackBerry as he navigated the channel cut into the shallow bay between Gasparilla and Useppa. Fishing craft, cigarette boats, and pleasure cruisers stayed to the dredged channel, crowding it. Larson opened it up once he’d cleared the speed-controlled areas. Dusk was an hour off, the sun burning harshly to the west, the air holding that twinge of change that came with approaching twilight.

Larson hoped to make the return crossing before darkness fully descended. He wasn’t keen to test his maritime skills on a friend’s six-figure investment.

Tying up at Useppa, a private spit of old island luxury less than a mile long, required permission. Tommy, who often chartered for the island’s guests, had called ahead for Larson. With no bridges connecting it to the mainland, and only the marina for access, Useppa was as remote a place as could be found. It made great sense as a retreat for Markowitz.

Walking off the immaculate dock and onto the island proper, Larson stepped back a century, entering an enclave like nothing he’d ever seen. No cars here-only golf carts used for everything from maintenance to transportation. Larson climbed a sidewalk set amid a lush botanical garden of wild orchid, mangrove, tropical fruit trees, and flowers in garish colors. Tiny lizards scurried through the underbrush, sounding to Larson like rats. Single-story shell-white houses carried names instead of street numbers, black shutters, and screened-in porches. BEGONIA HOUSE. THE BOUGAINVILLEA. THE ROSE COTTAGE. Larson ducked beneath a heavy overhanging branch that ran tentacles back to the ground like a shredded curtain. Lights already glowed yellow behind a few windows. The air smelled of perfume. Small waves lapped on a crescent-shaped man-made beach below and to his left. A few sailboats were tied up to moorings there. The encroaching dusk foreshortened distance and softened edges, giving everything a look that for Larson usually followed two or three cocktails.

He stepped off the path, making room for a middle-aged tennis couple with a perky teenage daughter in tow who offered Larson a smile full of braces. The sidewalk terminated in front of a hundred-year-old inn, from which emanated the sounds of a busy bar and dining room. The lush life. Tony Bennett crooned about lost love.

Bit by bit, byte by byte, it was to here, Useppa Island, that Dr. Miller’s information quest had led them. The technology had been explained to Larson-using Internet service providers to trace Markowitz’s digital identity to a Direct PC high-speed Internet account.

The address was The Sand Dollar, Useppa Island. Larson had been expecting a hotel, not a private residence.

Larson found the look of the place intriguing, its isolation and privacy perfect for hiding, an ideal location from which to decrypt Laena.

Near the end of the path he reached and entered the Useppa Inn. Paddle fans and linen tablecloths. A wood bar with a dozen varieties of bottled rum hanging inverted in a metal rack. Larson slid up onto a stool and ordered an Appleton Estate rum and tonic with a lime wedge. Two women sat at a window table nursing what looked like iced teas while a pair of elderly fellows shared beers by an overhead television with the sound off showing a prerecorded golf match. One of the women wore a witch’s hat and green nose. The other wore Harry Potter glasses and had a wand sitting on the table. Halloween with the elderly.

Ten minutes passed and Larson ordered another rum. Knowing he shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach, he added a basket of french fries to the mix and called it dinner, capping it off with a double espresso. An octogenarian entered, sat alone, and ordered a vodka up.

Larson daydreamed of the St. Louis Rowing Club on Creve Coeur Lake, missing the spiritual exercise as much as the physical. He felt bone-tired, though the french fries had helped to wake him.

The house detective, an older, florid-cheeked man named Harold Montgomery, whom Tomelson had phoned ahead of time, doubled as the dinnertime maitre d’. Smelling of lime cologne with an afterglow of gin and tonic, he offered Larson a damp, soft-fleshed right hand and the two men greeted one another by sharing a few stories about Tomelson. Montgomery wore dark trousers, a white shirt, a navy blue tie with anchor insignias, and a sheen of perspiration across his brow. His sport coat was a mean-spirited, shocking green better reserved for highway work crews. He had a piece of food stuck in his top teeth. He’d missed a few spots shaving. His white hair was front-combed in a failed attempt to hide his baldness. Montgomery raised his right index finger to signal the bartender and was quickly delivered a gin and tonic.

“To absent friends,” Montgomery said in a tight voice, clinking glasses with Larson.

“Let’s talk about the layout of The Sand Dollar,” Larson began.

True to his training, Tommy Tomelson guarded Hope’s second-story room from the hallway, occupying one half of an old-fashioned love seat located beneath a set of windows that conveniently overlooked the hotel’s semicircular driveway. He’d checked her in under the aliases Stephan and Elizabeth Storey, so as not to identify her as a single woman and to keep the wolves off the scent. The room’s windows, long since sealed shut for the air-conditioning, were behind closed blackout shades. If a killer wanted in there he’d have to go through the glass, and Tomelson would be on top of the intruder before the guy hit the floor.

Soon after she entered her hotel room, Hope’s cell phone rang. She scrambled to answer, praying it was Penny, only to hear the voice of Dr. Miller.

“I can’t talk long,” Hope said. “I need this line free for a call I’m expecting.”

“He’s online,” Miller said. “And I’ve IDed his port.”

“Right now?” She checked her watch.

Miller confirmed.

“He’s early.”

“Maybe not,” Miller said. “More likely I was a little sloppy, a little hasty in my analysis. I was working fairly quickly this morning. By coming online early evening he picks up another five or six hours of processing.”

“But if he’s online right now,” she repeated, “and you’ve identified the port he’s using, are you saying I can communicate with him?”

“He has no firewall in place. No protection. You realize what that means? I know Leo. That’s no accident. If he didn’t want to be found, I wouldn’t have found him.”