Karen Harper - Drowning Tides

* * *

Jace paid for a ridiculously pricey room over a row of shops on West Bay Road that ran along Seven Mile Beach. He’d told Nick he knew someone who lived on the island, but that wasn’t true. He figured this dive overlooking the front street above a noisy area was at least several miles from the tonier place Nick and Claire would be. Close but not too close.

He ditched his gear, except for his camera and the pistol he’d managed to sneak in. He rented a motorbike, ignoring street hawkers trying to get him to windsurf, Jet Ski or take a jitney bus tour. He bought a really loud shirt with parrots on it and wore it with his worst-looking cutoff shorts and a ratty sailor’s cap to hide his recent haircut. He hated flip-flops, but they looked like the shoe of choice around here, so he bought a pair of those. If he had to run fast, he’d kick them off.

He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days and hoped he looked like a beach bum instead of former navy man. And he hoped that someone that rich and powerful felt secure enough that he didn’t hire guards on his property, though Jace would have to locate it before he could case it. He tried to slouch and lose the military bearing and pilot pose. Top gun, heck. He just wanted to be top dad, that’s all—top husband too.

He rode his motorbike north along West Bay past a loud, brass street band as he headed for the Sand and Sea Club where Claire and Nick would stay. Two massive cruise ships, which had disgorged passengers to shop or hit the tourist sites, were visible through gaps in the tinted glass, pastel-colored office buildings. He’d learned the ritzy places where Ames probably lived were a little ways out of town, but he needed to be where he could keep an eye on Claire and Nick, then follow them when the sick bastard who held Lexi contacted or summoned them.

He found the Sand and Sea Club a six-mile ride away at the north end of Seven Mile Beach in a cluster of similar rentals and “club” apartments, most really nice-looking if a bit dated. The Sand and Sea Club offered oceanfront suites and a restaurant with a menu posted outside that he stopped to glare at. It offered turtle stew, jerk chicken, coconut bread, conch fritters and panfried fish like snapper, grouper and marlin. His stomach rumbled but not from hunger. He was as tense as when he used to get in the captain’s seat for combat.

He took a flyer from a glass box that touted Cemetery Reef as a great snorkeling site, only fifty yards out. Man, that’s all he needed, to think about someone dumping a body out at sea at a place called Cemetery Reef.

Trying to blend in with the locals and tourists, he chained and padlocked his bike to a palm tree and slouched between two buildings to wait for Nick and Claire’s arrival. On his phone, he shot a few pictures of the entrances to the club and the beach. The sand was wide, blinding white and crowded. Maybe he could rent a beach umbrella to hide behind. He figured he’d beat them here by about two hours, but he was content to wait. Content at least for that, because he’d like to kill Lexi’s kidnapper right now.

* * *

Claire’s skin crawled as they checked into the Sand and Sea Club. It wasn’t the humidity, because there was a nice sea breeze that also kept the bugs pretty much away. It was the prickly feeling they were being watched. Yet she hesitated to scan the people waiting for some sort of snorkeling tour with fins and masks in hand. She didn’t want to stare back at anyone in a challenging way. Patience. They had to be patient and wait to be contacted.

She went with Nick to their suite down a hall with breezeways throughout. Two double beds, thank heavens, instead of one. A sitting area and decent-sized bathroom. Fantastic view, of course, through sliding glass doors that led to a private lanai set off from the rooms next to it by flowered trellises. Bright beach umbrellas stuck in the sand provided some shade for patrons in the glare of the sun. Too much of that and Claire’s skin would freckle and turn as red as her hair, but what did any of that matter now—matter ever again if they didn’t get Lexi back and soon?

Nick put her small bag on the bed farthest from the door. “Don’t unpack too much,” he said. “I’m sure things will work out and you and Lexi, at least, will be leaving soon, and I’ll do whatever our friend wants.”

Dialogue prepared in case there were mics or cameras in the room, of course. That gave her the creeps too: Did Clayton Ames hope for some sort of reading on Nick’s relationship with her? Were they being watched to see if they were affectionate? Made love? More than once, she would have liked to but she’d thought they barely knew each other and circumstances were bad then—ha! How could they even pretend more than clinging to each other when things were so dangerous and desperate? Ames obviously knew enough of what they meant to each other to be sure that threatening Lexi’s well-being would turn the screws on Nick.

She made some small talk about the hotel and the view, unpacked a change of clothes and went into the bathroom. She propped her hands on the seashell-shaped pink sink and stared at herself in the mirror. Grayish bags under her eyes like half-moons. Windblown hair. A bruised bottom lip she’d chewed too hard. Exhaustion. Terror she was trying to control. She hadn’t eaten a thing and she could throw up in this basin right now.

She set to work washing up and changing, then twisted her hair into a topknot. Or, since she didn’t wear it like that much, would that set Lexi off when they were reunited? She took her hair down and brushed it loose again, refreshed her makeup and went out.

Nick was stretched out on his bed, using his laptop. Wi-Fi was included here. She wondered if the dangerous, ubiquitous lackeys who reported to Ames had a way to snag whatever Nick was sending or reading online. Probably. But surely he knew that.

“Lie down and take a nap,” Nick said. “I’ll be here, waiting.”

“Yes, all right. But I’d rather pace. I’m praying we will have Lexi back safe and sound as soon as possible,” she said in a loud voice. Let the eavesdroppers and spies report that to Clayton Ames, she thought.

She leaned against the open sliding glass door and watched the sunbathers in various sizes of bathing suits or near undress. Could their contact be out there? Was Jace out there?

She jolted when a knock sounded on their hallway door. Had Nick ordered anything while she was in the bathroom? He got up from the bed, but she beat him to the door, slid the bolt and pulled it open.

3

The plump, chatty British woman they’d sat next to on the plane stood there, dressed the same as before with a little smile on her lips and a beige envelope in her hand. Claire gasped as Nick appeared beside her. “We meet again,” he said to the woman.

“Indeed. A friend has sent you this,” she said, extending the envelope to him. “I wasn’t to give it to you earlier. If I were you, I’d follow those directions straightaway. That is all I know, so don’t inquire more. Ta-ta, then.” She turned away and scurried down the hall.

Claire tugged Nick out into the now empty hallway and whispered, “What does it say?”

They bent close as he pulled a card from the stiff vellum envelope. “It’s a handwritten invitation,” he muttered so quietly that she could hardly hear him. “Our presence is requested, and so on—smart-aleck wording. But here’s his address. I’d love to let the FBI have this, but Lexi comes first.”

As he started to go back into their room, she grabbed his arm and mouthed, “The FBI? Are they in on this?”

“No,” he whispered so quietly she had to read his lips. “But an agent questioned me—grilled me—a couple of years ago over what I knew about the man I used to call ‘Uncle Clay.’ They’re not interested in my father’s death but looking into IRS taxation questions about Ames’s global companies that are under the umbrella of a massive conglomerate called Ames High. I could only tell them I’d tried to track him but he kept moving and lives mostly as an expat now. Let’s get a cab and go see him before he disappears again.”