Hurricane Fever (16 page)

Nothing.

Roo slid a small panel open near the circuit breakers and flipped a solid switch. The whine of an interference generator let him know he’d dropped an invisible shield down over the cabin.

Elvin fidgeted with his beer and avoided Kit’s openly curious stare.

When Roo set the cheese platter on the table between them, it was ignored by all parties.

“So…” Roo began.

Elvin jumped in. “I don’t have the time, Roo, quit playing around.”

Roo tipped his beer forward. “You’re nervous, Elvin.” And Roo wondered what that meant. He glanced outside the window and down the docks, but didn’t see anyone there.

“Yes, I’m nervous,” Elvin admitted. “Here’s why.”

He slid a palm-sized phone onto the table and pulled up video. “Backtracked and found you some Nazi bad boys, yeah?” Grainy black-and-white footage taken from some random pea-sized camera lying on one of the many surfaces of Aves showed Delroy’s killers walking into the glass-walled lobby of one of the downtown skyscrapers.

Roo would have pulled up info about the skyscraper they were going inside, but he’d killed the connections in and out of the boat, so he looked at Elvin. “Where is that?”

“Beauchamp International Labs,” Elvin said. Kit’s jaw hardened, but she didn’t say anything. Roo made a note of that.

“They make you nervous,” Roo observed.

Elvin nodded. “Look, the Americans still are behind on stem cell research, among other things they blocked and made law and are still struggling to undo. So a lot of American companies have set up research labs in the Caribbean and Mexico. They’re close enough they can be easily inspected in person. And, Americans can fly down here for treatment. Medical tourism is a big deal. It’s big money.”

“Rich people make you nervous?” Kit asked.

“Stem cells aren’t all the man has fingers in,” Elvin said.

“What all is he in?” Roo asked.

Elvin looked at him with mild astonishment. “You know many legit enterprises that have neo-Nazis walking in the front door? You’re the one sniffing after them. You fucking tell me!”

“What, you telling me you haven’t heard any rumors?” Roo snorted. “You have nothing?”

“That man is more dangerous than most rich people,” Elvin said. “Leave out Delroy, I seen people destroyed by him for fighting his projects to expand medical tourism here. More important people than me been broken. So, you need to cash me out. Because if he finds out I been snooping I am done. That man all but owns the island, Roo. Even worse, his ship ducked out for the hurricane. The man himself will be back on Aves soon, and I need to be gone by then, understand? I’m headed for the Pacific. I need to be leaving before his boat slides in here and docks for tonight’s big post-hurricane party. So you’re not just going to pay me, Roo. You gonna owe me big, okay?”

Roo leaned back and put down his empty beer bottle. “Yeah, all right.”

He slid out of the settee and left them in the main cabin, jogging down the stairs into the starboard hull. He glanced back, made sure they weren’t watching, and dropped to his knees to pull open a bilge hatch. His bracelet snagged the edge of it, the carefully pleated paracord hanging up on a burr of fiberglass. Roo pulled it loose and made sure not to scrape his arm against the hatch’s edge.

The interior of the bilge near the front of the hull had hoses running around for bilge pumps, but was dry. It gleamed white: Roo liked keeping it as clean as he could, as it helped him spot anything leaking.

Gray bars were stacked up against a pocket in a ridge. Weight that helped balance the catamaran and kept the hulls level for sailing.

Roo found a small canvas bag and put three of them in.

Elvin opened the bag and peered in when Roo dropped them on the settee table with a loud thunk and then a clink. He pulled one out and regarded it suspiciously, but Roo took it from him and peeled at the gray surface with a thumbnail.

After a few seconds the gray, rubberized paint peeled away to reveal the dull gleam of gold.

“Ras,”
Elvin swore. “That’s gold.”

“Enough for the Pacific.”

Elvin swore again and looked up at them both, words escaping him.

“Told you I look after you,” Roo said.

Elvin slid the bar back in the canvas bag and petted it absently. “I gonna run,” he said.

Roo watched him leap onto the dock and hustle away. Then he got up and shut off the interference generator.

“You have bars of gold in your ship,” Kit said, slightly shocked. “Who does that?”

“I do,” Roo said. “It was a gift.”

“An incredible gift.”

He started tapping on a spare screen near the galley. Beauchamp Labs. Construction. Aeroponic and vertical farm investments.

Roo stared at the image of the man he pulled up. A hawk-faced executive with a neutral expression and dark-blue suit. Shaved, balding head. Wiry. Did that face order the foot soldiers to come in and try to kill him? Or was he separated from it by a cadre of middle management who’d made the call?

Roo leaned against the galley counter and let out a long, deep breath. “I know you’re DGSE,” he said to Kit. “And I saw you react to the name of the company. It’s a French name, so I’m guessing you had them as a suspect already. You’re going to call this in. And you should. But before you do, I just ask you one favor.”

Kit had been looking thoughtfully down at the table, not denying anything he’d said. She brushed her hair back and looked at him. “What is that?”

“Wait until tomorrow morning,” Roo asked.

“And why,” she asked, poking around at the cheese platter, “should I do that?”

Roo pointed at the screen over the galley. It showed video taken from the rooftop of Beauchamp Labs from a party thrown last summer. Rich men and women in tuxedos and shimmering cocktail dresses clumped around each other while attendants with silver trays and tiny hors d’oeuvres flitted in between.

“While most people are fixing hurricane damage or wondering how they’ll handle being homeless, they’ll be enjoying a rooftop party. I’m going to break into the labs.”

“And find what?” Kit looked less than impressed.

“I’ll bug it. I’ll look around.”

“Roo, how much experience do you have with infiltration?”

Roo picked up the platter and empty beer bottles. “Just give me a day, okay?”

“I can’t go with you,” Kit said.

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“This is a bad idea, Roo,” she said softly. “A very bad idea. I have to leave.”

Roo gripped the edge of the table and leaned forward. “They killed Delroy,” he hissed. “They killed him.”

“You need to keep your distance and gather evidence. When you go after him, it needs to be with people backing you up. In large force. Because this man is
dangerous
.”

Roo threw the platter and bottle into the sink. The crash of broken glass was a release from the quivering feeling he had of energy building up everywhere inside him with nowhere to direct it. “There’s no one behind me, Kit. There’s just me. I’m all that’s left. Surely you know the feeling?”

He looked back over his shoulder at her. She swallowed and looked away from him. Her voice cracked. “I know you’re hurting, we’re on the same mission, Roo. But you can’t charge in there. Please believe me.”

“And what has stepping softly around these people gotten any of us?” Roo asked. “We’re going to be careful, because, what? He is rich? Powerful? Has friends in high places? Because doing this can
hurt
us? I’m already hurt. I’ve already been broken.”

“Roo…”

“I don’t have time. I ran from St. Thomas, that will have repercussions. I’m no longer protected by the CIG. I have no family. I’m all there is. This is all I have.”

And saying that out loud left him feeling hollow inside.

18

Aves’s skyline glittered in the night. Roo tugged at his tux and grimaced. He’d last worn it a few years ago, and despite the weekly training, long swims, the pull-ups off the davits on the back of his boat, it still didn’t quite fit right.

He wondered if anyone noticed, and then decided to shrug it off. Focusing on it would only bring attention.

“A drink, sir?” one of the attendants asked. Her overly short cocktail dress revealed rather muscular legs. A sprinter? Roo wondered. She held up a tray of delicate glasses and looked artificially chipper.

Roo stared at the tray for a moment.

“I have a Château Margaux…” she started to say.

“Is there any beer?” Roo asked. “Carib? Red Stripe?”

“No.”

In last year’s videos there’d been a temporary bar over at the corner. “Rum,” Roo said.

“We have a wide selection…”

“Mount Gay Extra Old,” Roo said. “No ice.”

The rich, amber rum was easy to sip. The familiar semi-sweet of a good sipping rum with some fruity undertones and oak took the edge off as Roo began to circulate. The party was ostensibly a benefit. An eye-watering per-plate fee covered the overly pretentious finger foods, vat-grown steaks, and locally sourced vertical-farm grilled vegetables cooked by a chef flown in just for the occasional. Whatever was left over would be donated to a charity to help rebuilding efforts.

Mainly, Roo thought, it was a chance for the upper crust to enjoy the fact that they remained untouched by the storms.

He’d paid the donation via an offshore account, forwarded his picture and a false identity, and shown up in the gaggle of well-dressed partygoers down in the lobby.

Security guards and black-suited attendants guided them up into elevators that took them up to the roof, one load at a time.

“A super party for a super storm,” a matriarchal lady with a perfectly sculpted nose giggled. She wore a shockingly white fur around her neck.

A younger man with dark brown hair was staring at the fur. “Can I touch it?”

“Of course! It’s
real
Arctic fox. It’s extinct,” she said, excitement in her voice. They smiled at each other, and for a moment, Roo wondered what it would have been like to walk up here with Kit at his arm.

He shook that away.

“That must be impossible to get!”

“You have
no
idea.”

“Is it hot?”

“No, it’s soft and natural to the skin. Excuse me.” She grabbed Roo’s forearm with bony fingers as he slipped past her and the gathered clump of people to head inside toward the far side of the roof, near a clump of decorative tree-like solar arrays that had folded down their light-seeking leaves for the night.

He looked at her waxy perfectly taut skin and snow-white fur. “Yes?”

“Can we get some more of those little pickled things, they were absolutely delicious!”

Roo gently disentangled himself. “I’m sorry, we’re all out.”

The woman sighed dramatically. “Just my luck.”

A minor tragedy, Roo was sure.

He circled around the party again, slowly edging further and further out, until he ducked behind the solar arrays. Alone in the dark shadows he pulled out his phone and swiped to one of his running apps.

The distant, grainy image of the rooftop wavered slightly. The quadcopter was fighting the wind to hover in place where Roo had piloted it before he’d walked into the lobby.

Now he aimed it through the air to him.

It buzzed loudly as it approached the edge of the roof and coasted into his hands like a wobbling, mechanical falcon. Roo glanced around. No one noticed anything over the sound of cocktail laughter and the live reggae band performing in the corner. The band was trying to find the right amount of laid-back bombast that left the donors comfortable.

Roo pulled three grenades off the hasty duct-tape harness, and pocketed the pistol.

He’d known there would be security in the lobby, including airport-grade scanners.

Inside his tuxedo’s inner pocket were the deck gloves with the gecko pads. He hadn’t put those on the quadcopter, because he’d been toying with the idea of breaking into the labs even if he wasn’t armed and the copter had failed. Last time he’d used these, Roo thought as he pulled them on, he’d been in the middle of the storm with Delroy.

A lifetime ago.

Roo looked over the edge of the building. Twenty stories down. He’d never been a fan of heights. Never even been in a building more than a couple stories tall before the Caribbean Intelligence Group scooped him up and gave him something better to do with his talents.

He swung over the edge.

For a moment, feet dangling uselessly, Roo found himself second-guessing the glove’s ability to hold onto his hands. The wrist strap, an advanced Velcro, bulged slightly. But after another long moment waiting for the long fall to happen, he calmed. He’d used these to go up the mast enough to know they’d hold just fine.

He began crabbing his way carefully down to the floor underneath, looking for the balcony he’d spotted when digging through public photos online of the building.

The lock to the balcony door yielded to a skeleton key that used brute force algorithms to run through wireless security until it told the door to open itself up with a satisfying click for Roo. While the skeleton key was running, Roo took the time to unwind his paracord bracelet and tied it off to the balcony.

Just in case.

He looked into the gloomy, half-lit offices and hallways, waiting for his eyes to adjust. He folded the gecko gloves and slid them into his jacket’s pockets before he stepped in.

The lights flared on. He staggered back, hands still in his pockets, blinking, and three security guards with submachine guns snugged up shoulder-high and tight stepped forward. “Mr. Jones?” called a voice from behind them.

Shit
.

There was no way he could run. One step back and they’d riddle his chest with bullets. He’d make it over the balcony. His dead body would hit the ground.

Kit had been right. This was a stupid move. They knew the ostentatious balcony was their weak point. They’d set up a trap and just simply waited for him.

Roo casually stepped forward. “You know who I am?”

Inside his pocket, he flicked the pins off the grenade in each hand.

Adrien Beauchamp, hard to miss in his cream-white designer tuxedo, stepped forward to stand just behind his three guards. They wore black suits, but Roo noticed a hint of some tattoos around their wrists.