Chapter One
“Hey, Ciro.”
Ciro Rodriguez turned to find three men walking toward him across the Port Palm parking lot with slow, deliberate gaits. His stomach twisted with nerves. They didn’t look happy.
He knew why.
“Hey, guys,” he said, forcing a smile.
They smiled back without warmth, and his fear ratcheted up a notch.
It would have been better if they hadn’t smiled at all.
“We need to take the boat out. There’s a report we lost some cargo, and it’s floating out there.”
Ciro scowled. “What? How is that possible?”
The middle one shrugged. “I don’t know. The boss asked us to take a peek and we need a few more hands hauling it in.”
“You want me to come with you?” Ciro swallowed. “I’m kind of busy. I was just wrapping up—”
One of the men waved him off. “You can get back to it. Shouldn’t take long. We’ll take a look—probably won’t even find anything.”
“But—”
“Come on. Let’s get this over with.”
Two turned to walk away. One remained, staring at him.
“Come on.”
Ciro scanned the area for witnesses. He didn’t see anyone. He wasn’t sure it mattered.
“Um, sure.”
He followed the men to the docks and hopped into an inflatable Zodiac boat.
“How big is it?” asked Ciro as he sat on a bench.
“How big is what?” asked the man across from him.
“This missing cargo. I mean, we can’t pick up anything on a Zodiac.”
“This is more of a scouting thing.”
“But—”
The outboard engine roared to life. Ciro dropped his questions and braced himself against the side of the boat as they headed toward the open ocean.
A storm had been looming all day, and the wind had picked up. The chop in the inlet tossed the boat. Ciro clung to the bench and fought back the urge to throw up.
Working the docks didn’t mean he loved boats.
“What is it we’re looking for exactly?” Ciro yelled over the engine as they cleared the inlet and the bouncing eased a notch.
No one answered. No one looked at him. They kept their eyes forward as the driver opened the throttle and headed out to sea.
Ciro eyed the looming storm clouds rolling in from the west. None of the others seemed concerned. They also didn’t seem to be looking for anything in the water. They kept their eyes forward.
Ciro licked his lips.
We’re just not at the spot yet.
The shoreline disappeared. Boat traffic disappeared. The Zodiac eased to a stop. The engine cut.
The men faced him, their eyes locked on him.
“Is this the spot?” he asked. His voice cracked as the words stuck in his throat.
“I got something for you,” said the man across from him. He pushed a white bucket toward him and opened the lid. Inside pink liquid sloshed. The stench made Ciro jerk away.
“Chum,” said Ciro. He hadn’t meant to say it. He’d gone on a fishing trip with his brother-in-law a few years before, and they’d used a similar mash of dead fish. The smell was unforgettable.
Someone chuckled.
The man with the bucket pulled a rope from the bucket dyed pink from the blood. It was almost pretty.
At the end of the rope, a brick of meat dangled. It hung in the air, rocking in time with the boat, dripping.
“What is that?” asked Ciro. It didn’t look like a fish.
“My wife’s pork roast,” said the man.
More chuckles.
Before Ciro could think what to say, the other two pounced on him. They held him as the third lashed the meat around his middle, pinning his arms to his sides.
He yelled for them to stop. He writhed and lurched—tried to swing. It didn’t matter.
One tied his feet together. Another dumped the rest of the chum into the water.
Ciro shook his head.
It couldn’t be real, what was happening.
They just want to scare me.
That was it. This was a threat. No one would really do something like this. He wasn’t in some kind of mobster movie.
It’ll be okay.
He stopped fighting and took several deep breaths. He needed to talk to them. Make them understand they had nothing to fear from him.
“Guys, I didn’t—You think—I wouldn’t—”
“Just save it,” said one. “Keep your mouth shut for once.”
“Yeah,” said the man to his left. “Save your breath.”
More chuckles.
The men dipped to grab his legs.
Panic surged anew in Ciro’s stomach.
“No—”
He strained, arms pinned, ankles tied, flapping like a landed fish.
They lifted and dipped him toward the water. Head hanging upside down, Ciro begged for them to stop.
“No—I won’t—”
He didn’t have time to make a proper argument. They dropped him over the side, the taste of salt sharp in his throat.
Sinking like a stone, he strained to free his arms. His right slid free of the rope.
Yes.
He used his free arm to swim toward the surface. Above him, the engine roared. He couldn’t wait until they left. Only one word rang in his head now.
Air.
His other arm snapped free, and he clawed upward. Progress lagged without the help of his legs. His lungs screamed. Blackness closed in.
Air.
His hand broke the surface. With a final stroke, he felt the breeze on his skin.
Air!
He gulped oxygen—bound legs undulating like a dolphin’s tail as he struggled to stay afloat.
Too much effort. He couldn’t keep swimming this way. He needed to untie his ankles. He spun in the water and spotted the shoreline—the boat a tiny speck on the horizon. It looked a million miles away.
I need to float. Rest. Think a minute.
Tilting back, he noticed his shirt was pink beneath the pot roast tied to his chest.
No wonder I feel so heavy.
He’d forgotten about that.
The water didn’t look right either. It churned with bits of fish—
Chum.
Like that, chum shoved the word air from his head.
No, no, no—
He needed to swim away. He needed to put distance between himself and—
Something flashed in the water beside him, and a new word bumped chum from Ciro’s mind.
A tiny word.
Fin.
Chapter Two
Gun silencers don’t live up to their name. No one ever sneaked into a library, put a bullet in the librarian, and left without people looking up from their dogeared hardbacks.
Standing behind the hotel’s check-in desk, Croix heard the pop. As ex-Navy, she recognized the sound. Her focus jumped to the front door as the Loggerhead Inn’s enormous doorman collapsed—his noggin dropping like a lumpy stone to the porch.
Once he fell, she couldn’t see him from her station.
Next came the screeching of the screendoor’s hinges. That squeak usually signaled the arrival of sunburned tourists. This time it had her reaching for a weapon.
A young man burst into the lobby as she reached for the gun hidden below the counter. He had the wild-eyed look of a rabbit on the run.
“They’re after me. You have to help,” he said, pausing to lock eyes with Croix.
She pointed her gun at him. He raised his hands as if sweaty palms could stop a 9mm bullet.
“I’m Wraith,” he added.
That made more sense.
The screendoor flung open a second time, and a tall, dirty blonde man entered wearing a drab-gray henley shirt, khaki pants, and thick black boots. The outfit didn’t ring tourist.
He hadn’t come for the conch ceviche.
The gun in his hand confirmed it.
Without stopping, the blond assessed the Loggerhead lobby situation—eying the young man first and then snapping his attention to Croix. His weapon arced upward.
Maybe he didn’t register the gun in her hand.
Croix shot him in the chest before he could fire. She didn’t shoot to maim. The quarters were too tight and she assumed he’d been the one to take down Bracco at the door.
The intruder fell back against the loveseat sitting outside the hotel’s reading room, and as he dropped to the floor, his gun bounced from his hand and skittered beneath the concierge desk.
Croix looked for the young man.
Wraith had disappeared.
“Wraith?”
Before the aerated blond man’s chin could collapse to his chest, his last breath expended, Wraith popped up from behind the concierge desk like a whack-a-mole.
“Did you kill him?” he asked.
“What’s going on?” Croix spat through gritted teeth.
Wraith’s saucered eyes bounced in the direction of the front door.
“There’s another one.”
He dropped out of sight again.
Croix turned her attention to the door.
Another man appeared—this one darker and shorter by four inches. As he strode through the doorway, Bracco lunged from his prone position on the porch to wrap a meaty paw around his ankle. Unable to stop his momentum, the dark-haired man tripped into the lobby, breaking free of Bracco’s clutches as he fell.
Croix pointed her weapon but couldn’t fire. Living up to his nickname, Wraith manifested between herself and the stumbling man, blocking her shot. The lunatic was running at her. He threw out a leg, bounced off her counter, and propelled himself at the new intruder. Balanced on one knee after his spill, the man had no recourse when Wraith launched himself to kick the gun from his hand.
“Get out of the way,” said Croix, moving around the desk to better aim.
Both men ignored her. The intruder leaped at Wraith as the young man attempted to dance away. Tumbling, the two clipped Croix as she rounded the desk. Her gunhand smashed into the counter, and she yelped as her knuckles cracked against the marble. Her Beretta M9 pistol slipped from her hand like a wet fish. She watched it disappear behind the counter, released once again to the wild.
Shit.
No time to mourn the loss of her firearm. The thrashing men pulled her into their melee, and the three collapsed to a heap on the ground. Croix bonked her skull on the edge of the check-in desk on her way down.
She saw stars.
The intruder recovered his balance first, standing to jerk Wraith to his feet. He shoved him toward the breakfast room off the lobby.
Croix scrambled after them, only rising from her hands as knees as she neared the room. Inside, the man struck Wraith, slamming his head against the walls, demanding something in a language she didn’t know.
Russian?
There wasn’t time to get her gun. If she allowed the Russian to batter Wraith, he’d be brain-dead by the time she retrieved her weapon.
She balled both hands together over her head and hammered the Russian’s back. The wind knocked from his lungs. He spun to swipe at her, and she dropped to her knees to avoid the blow. She rose again to snatch a butter knife from the counter. Whirling, she plunged it into the Russian’s side, hoping the cream cheese still clinging to it might cause some terrible instantaneous infection.
The man howled and backhanded her across the cheek with his left hand. She tumbled along the edge of the counter.
The Russian returned his attention to Wriath, who dangled from his opposite hand, limp and bloodied.
Croix could tell Waith and his bouncy parkour moves would not be shifting the tide in his favor any time soon.
She kicked away a chair and flung open a lower cabinet to retrieve a box cutter. Plunging back into the fray, she stabbed the Russian four times with the shallow blade before he turned to swing at her. She ducked, dropping level with the butter knife sticking from the man’s side. Jerking it free, she arced upward, catching the man in his Adam’s apple as he loomed over her, preparing to knock her down.
The Russian froze—a sharp gagging noise his only sound. He twisted sideways and dropped to his knees, grabbing his throat and fingering the butter knife as if he couldn’t decide if it should stay or go.
As she watched, the index finger wrapped around the butter knife uncurled to point at Croix. The corner of his mouth curled.
“You—” he croaked.
She stared back at him, panting. “Yes? Problem?”
His eyes rolled back into his head. On his knees, his torso tilted backward like a felled tree. He stuck that way, dead in a neverending backbend.
Croix looked back into the lobby where Bracco now sat beside the dead man. He must have crawled there.
“Are you okay?” she asked him.
Bracco nodded, though he looked exhausted.
“No,” croaked Wraith.
Croix eyed him. He was bruised and bloodied, but he’d live.
She had other problems, like two dead Russians in an occupied hotel and a gunshot doorman.
“Can you help me bring the other dead guy here?” she asked him.
Wraith looked up at her, peering through the one eye less swollen than the other.
“You’re kidding, right?”
She headed toward Bracco to check his wound, calling over her shoulder to Wraith as she moved.
“Did I thank you for stopping by?”
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