Fallen Angel: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 9) (16 page)

C
hyrel had finished her work and gone up to the house to get some rest, leaving me and Sheena alone with Finn. He’d had his fill of clams and turned his nose up at the dog food I put in his bowl.

Using a fly rod from the bow of the
Revenge
, I began casting, hoping to catch something better than Moo Goo Gai Pan for my supper. It wasn’t easy, though. Call me an easily distracted fisherman, but I doubt many fly fishermen could make a perfect cast from a foredeck where a beautiful woman had stripped down to a tiny yellow bikini and stretched out to get some sun.

“You’re an unusual man,” Sheena said, rolling over onto her belly and propping herself on her elbows.

I glanced at her for just a second as the fly on the end of my line gently touched the water. “Unusual?”

Sheena pulled her sunglasses down her nose slightly and looked at me over the top of them. “I always check out the people I’m tasked to work with. You’re a semiretired Marine sniper instructor with a net worth somewhere in the eight-digit range. You
own
a freaking island and from what I’ve gathered a whole fleet of charter boats. Your charter business is always in high demand and you charge top dollar. But the wealth hasn’t seemed to change you into a spoiled rich guy. That’s unusual.”

“Not really,” I said, casting toward a disturbance in the water. “It’s more than I’d have need of in ten lifetimes. The bulk of it’s in a trust. I don’t need it, nor want it. Except for what I can do with it to help other people.”

The water exploded just as the fly touched the surface. I set the hook and the fight was on. The fish dove and I let it take up the line I’d stripped, then I slowly began working him toward the stern.

“What is it?” Sheena asked, joining me at the rail.

“Seatrout, I think,” I said, fighting the fish along the handrails to the side deck. It began to run toward the stern and I quickly followed, moving along the side deck. Sheena was right beside me, one hand on the rail and the other on my shoulder. Her touch was like electricity, distracting me further.

Stepping down into the cockpit, I nodded to the cabinet on the port side. “That far cabinet, there’s a net in there.”

The fish began to tire, and I started reeling it closer as Sheena came up behind me with the net. “Where do you want me?”

Grinning, I replied, “In my stateroom.”

She grinned back and punched my shoulder. “I meant with the net.”

“Open the transom door and step down onto the platform. I’ll bring him that way.”

The fish rolled on the surface, a big spotted seatrout. When the latch clicked on the transom door, the fish flipped its tail and dove deep, heading back under the boat. He seemed to know that if he went that way, he might get loose. I tried to turn him toward the bow and finally succeeded before the line got to the propellers. In a last-ditch effort, he charged toward deeper water, stripping off line. When he rolled near the surface again, I knew he was done. He gave a few halfhearted tugs as I reeled him closer.

Sheena stepped down onto the swim platform, net at the ready, as I brought the trout to the surface again. She quickly dipped the net under the fish and lifted it, using both hands. I took the net from her and reached in, pulling the trout out and holding it up.

“Now we can eat,” I proclaimed. There was no need to measure the fish. It was at least two feet long and a healthy ten pounds, well over the limit.

While I cleaned the fish, Sheena went into the galley to find something to go with it. Setting the fillets aside, I looked at Finn, now sitting in the corner of the cockpit.

“Don’t you eat my fish,” I warned him. He cocked his head and watched me with those intelligent-looking amber eyes. “Don’t worry, I doubt she’ll eat much and there’ll be some left for you. Stay.”

I opened the hatch to the engine room, went down, and retrieved my small gas grill. As I set it up, Finn watched me closely. Mounting the grill in one of the rod holders in the gunwale, I screwed a small propane bottle into the connection on the side, allowing it to rest on the gunwale.

“I found a few potatoes,” Sheena said, stepping down from the salon. “And some carrots. But that’s about it. Steamed carrots and French fries okay with you?”

“Sounds great,” I replied, lighting the grill. “The fish will be done in about ten minutes.”

Stepping down into the engine room again, I handed two folding chairs and a small folding table up to Sheena, then she disappeared back into the salon. I noticed with some disappointment that she’d put the shorts back on over her bikini.

From a small drawer above the mini-fridge, I took out a little container labeled “Swimmers” and opened it. A friend in Marathon, who works for Rusty, keeps my boat stocked with simple island spice mixtures. Rufus was once a gourmet chef at a five-star resort in Jamaica. After his wife died several years ago, he came to Marathon and Rusty hired him as a part-time cook. He lives in a former rum shack on the back of Rusty’s property, and people come from all over the Keys to watch him at work in his open-air kitchen.

Sprinkling a pinch of Rufus’s spices on each fillet, I placed them on the grill at low heat and closed it. The spices would seep into the flesh of the fish as it slowly cooked.

Fifteen minutes later, while we were enjoying our meal, Sheena asked, “So why is it you don’t carry a badge like the others?”

Swallowing a bite of fish, I looked across the small table at her. She knew about my finances and my background in the Corps already. She probably knew a lot of other things, too. “What I do started out as a once-in-a-while kind of thing. Carrying a badge means carrying responsibility and obligation. I don’t have a problem with the responsibility side of it. But I prefer having the option to just say no if I don’t want a certain assignment.”

“Have you turned many down?”

“No,” I replied. “I tried a couple of times, but circumstances beyond my control always seemed to drag me in anyway.”

“Why would you turn one down?” she asked. “I don’t mean to insinuate that you’re some kind of bloodthirsty killer or anything. Just curious where your line is.”

“I have two daughters and a grandson,” I replied. “The girls and I have been estranged most of their lives and we’ve only recently been reunited. So, I have them and a grandson to think about now. Besides, I’m just getting too damned old.”

Sheena laughed, nearly choking on the food in her mouth. “You can’t be more than a year or two older than me. Forty? Forty-one?”

I looked across at her. “I thought you checked people out that you’re assigned to work with.”

“I tend to gloss over personal data,” she said. “The only information I’m really interested in is the agent’s background, intelligence, and experience.”

“I turned forty-seven a few months back.”

“That’s not old at all,” she said with a smile. “You’re not even ten years older than me. I know a lot of field agents much older than that, and I don’t plan to leave the field for quite a while. You’re obviously fit, and I know from your file that you’re a very intelligent and resourceful man.”

“This team is made up of highly skilled warriors, for the most part,” I explained. “Not investigators, or more precisely, not
primarily
investigatory. They go where others won’t go, where others can’t go. They go where only the highly trained can possibly go and where only the strongest have any chance of coming back. They go right into the mouth of the beast. Snake eaters is what we called them when I was in the Corps. I
used
to be one of them.” I looked out across the salt marsh to the west, where the sun was now slowly sinking toward the horizon. The sky was bright blue, not a cloud in sight. I knew the sunset would be spectacular, and I couldn’t help but wonder if Linda was watching it as well. “Seems like a really long time ago to me.”

Changing the subject, I pointed at the half-eaten fillet on her plate. “You gonna finish that?”

Finn’s head came up from where he’d been napping in the corner as Sheena pushed her plate toward me. “No, go ahead. It was delicious.”

I picked up her plate and placed it on the deck. Finn rose and came over. Looking from the fish to Sheena, and then to me, he finally sat down.

“Oh, good grief,” I muttered. “You too?”

Finn cocked his head, his droopy ears up as high as they’d go and those amber eyes catching the angled rays of the sun.

“Go ahead,” I told him, and then he stretched his front legs out on either side of the plate and began wolfing down the rest of Sheena’s food.

We both laughed. “Okay, so you know all about me,” I said. “What’s Sheena Mason all about? Married? Kids?”

“Almost married once,” she replied. “No kids. Not that I don’t like kids. I just don’t want to have my own. I’d rather spoil someone else’s kids and send them home.”

“Career law enforcement?”

“Not the career I would have chosen,” she said. “But it suits me.”

“Hey,” Tony called from the gate. “You guys want any of this Chinese?” Finn barked once at him as he came down the ramp to the dock.

“He might,” I replied. “If it’s not anything spicy. He doesn’t seem to like dog food very much. We had fish on the grill.”

The others streamed down the ramp after Tony, two black men with long dreadlocks among them. I assumed they were the two undercover DEA guys. Tony introduced them as Agents Dannell Burton and Keenan Ray.

“Come aboard,” I said.

Tony stepped down and dumped the contents of two partial baskets of Chinese food into Finn’s bowl as the others took up places all around the cockpit. My boat suddenly felt very crowded with nine aboard.

“Good to meet you, finally,” the taller Keenan said.

“Oh?”

“Your name keeps popping up down in Miami,” Dannell said.

“Not sure if that’s a good thing or not,” I said.

“Rumor has it that you’re the guy ultimately responsible for the breakup of the Zoe Pound gang.”

“More these guys than me,” I said. Turning to Tony, I asked, “Where’s Pat and Chrissy?”

“Chrissy’s doing the dishes and Pat’s taking care of our laundry,” Andrew replied. “She said it was the least she could do. We have a bit of a problem. There’s eleven of us and I don’t think Burton and Ray should stay in town. Too much of a chance they could be seen.” Turning to the two DEA men, he added, “No offense, guys, but you stick out like a sore thumb here.”

“None taken, mon,” Keenan said, slipping into his cover. “I and I agree wit yuh.”

“So, that means eleven people and beds that’ll sleep eleven,” Andrew concluded.

“Okay, what’s the problem, then?”

“Pat and Chrissy would like to stay aboard,” Andrew said. “Since most of their stuff is already in your stateroom, I figured that’d be the place for them. Tony, Art, and I will take the guest cabin on board, with Keenan and Dannell crashing in the salon. Would you mind sleeping in one of the kids’ rooms? Craig can take the other one, then Chyrel and Sheena can have the master bedroom.”

“Thought you said there was a problem,” I said with a grin. “Sounds like you already got it figured out.”

“Apparently your friend only has granddaughters,” Craig said.

I shrugged. “A bed’s a bed.”

“In that case,” Craig said, “you get the My Little Pony room and I’ll take the Dora the Explorer room.”

At this, everyone laughed, including the two DEA guys.

“Look,” Sheena said. “This is probably going to be a really easy arrest. It’s just one man and I don’t see him as the type to resist. But, due to his position, it’s smart to do this one hundred percent by the book. We have a good location, where there shouldn’t be any innocent bystanders, it’ll be broad daylight, and we have much greater numbers. Is there anything we haven’t thought of?”

There were head shakes and negative responses all around. Andrew said, “Then we should get some rest. I’d like to move the boat to the marina at nine hundred. That way Chyrel can start monitoring anyone in the area.”

“Y’all go ahead,” I said. “I’ll be up in a little while.”

As the others started to leave, Sheena picked the plate up from the deck, along with Finn’s bowl. “You caught dinner, I’ll get the dishes.”

“You won’t get any argument from me,” I said. “I’m gonna take Finn up to the foredeck and see what he thinks about sunsets.”

Sheena went into the salon, and I got a cold Red Stripe from the mini-fridge and called Finn to follow me. When we reached the bow, I sat down with my feet hanging over the starboard side and Finn sat down next to me. I took a long pull from my beer and looked off to the west, where the sun was just about to touch the salt marsh.

“You like sunsets, boy?”

Slowly, he walked his front legs out till he was lying on the deck. With his paws stretched out in front of him and his head up and alert, he reminded me of that Sphinx statue.

Slowly, the sun began to slide down into the marsh, and again I wondered if Linda was watching it as well. Her last trip to Tallahassee had been more than two months ago. When she’d returned a week later, she’d told me about her promotion and transfer. That’s when she dropped the bombshell that we should see others. I wasn’t looking for anyone when I found her and definitely wasn’t looking for anyone now. Since the death of my wife almost three years ago, I’d had three women pass through my life. One was too fragile to deal with the dangerous situations I sometimes found myself in and the other two had sailed on, following their careers.

“Here’s to love lost,” I said to Finn and lifted my bottle. He barked once and laid his head between his legs, staring out over the water. “I agree, brother. Give me a setting sun over open water anytime. The sea’s a much more patient mistress.”

“Is this strictly a guy thing?” Sheena asked as she came up the starboard-side deck, carrying two beers.

“Sol has no preference who he shows off for,” I replied. “Pull up some deck.”

I heard voices below as Pat and Chrissy got ready to turn in. Sheena came around and sat down next to me. “A man who’s on a first-name basis with the sun? Quite unusual.”

“The sun, the moon, the stars, and the sea,” I said, holding up my nearly empty bottle theatrically.