Maroon Rising (4 page)

My ex-wife.

“W
hat in the hell are you doing here?” My eyes were riveted on Heather.

She turned to face Jack and they held a long glance. No words were exchanged, but her reaching forward to grasp his tattooed bicep, ever so briefly, was not lost on me. A wave of hot nausea hit—it was all I could do to swallow the bile shooting up from my stomach.

“You have no right to be here, Reilly,” Jack said. “But since you are, why don’t we go inside and talk for a moment—”

“I have no desire to talk to either of you. Heather, I asked you a question. I want an answer.”

Heather’s 36Cs lifted toward the cobalt sky as she drew in a deep breath. My mind rewound to the years of our marriage, her travels as a model in global demand, my time spent in the armpits of third-world countries negotiating with crooked government officials for salvage rights while Jack held down the fort and schmoozed investors in our Northern Virginia corporate headquarters. Heady days, a jet-set lifestyle, anything goes—but how far? Images of us together, including Laurie, Jack’s wife, played in my mind like an old home movie.

“So?” I said.

“Jack and I have been together for a while—”

“Since when? Since he got out of jail?” I turned to face Jack. “What about your wife?”

Heather pursed her lips. Jack stared at me without a trace of remorse or guilt—hell, without any emotion at all.

“Since
when,
Heather?”

“Before jail.” A tear slid from a sky blue eye and down her bronzed cheek.

No nausea now. Just three words like bullets.

“How. Long. Before.”

Jack crossed his arms. “Years before.”

My vision blurred. For just a minute, I froze.

“Buck, I’m so sorry, you were always gone—”

“So were you!”

“I was lonely, Buck—I’m not a suburban housewife type, you knew that. I’d go to your office and wait to hear from you. Because you never called—”

“No cell reception in jungles—”

“Jack was always there, he listened to me, cared about my career, my dreams, my needs … Buck, you can’t understand—”

“Oh, I understand, all right.”

“Buck—”

“Spare me the tears, Heather. You vanished while I was fighting to stay out of jail, my parents got killed—and now I find out you were off with
him
?” My finger stabbed Jack in the shoulder. He brushed it away, still calm and in control. Fucking accountant. “You cleaned out our bank account—took
everything
that wasn’t bolted down—and fucking disappeared!”

Jack shoved me away.

“Back off, Buck.”

“Don’t tell me to back off,
partner
! And you were pissed at me for not visiting you in jail? Are you fucking kidding me? You were banging my wife!”

I felt the eyes of Jack’s crew on us. Mine were now aimed at Heather.

A twinge of guilt stabbed at me. I
had
been gone a lot. I remembered our discussing it at one point, but there was always the next treasure waiting to be found…

“And what about your billionaire husband—the one you married before the ink was dry on our divorce papers?” Spittle shot from my mouth and made Heather wince. “What the hell was that about?”

“I didn’t … When I went to see Jack, I realized I didn’t love Barry, and—”

“Now you’re with Jack, he has Betty, and he’s using the fruits of
my
time in those jungles to take what should have been ours!”

The sound of laughter brought a cold numbness over me. Gunner must be loving this.

My breathing settled. My heart rate became steady and my vision intense, as if I were seeing the teak deck of the fishing boat through the most sophisticated of camera lenses—reminding me that Jack still had money he’d hidden from the investigators after our bankruptcy, while I’d mostly lived like a pauper ever since filing Chapter 11.

Jack got the girl—
my
girl. He got the salvage contract—the one
my
research led to. That last thought made me smile. I waved and the fishing boat idling a hundred feet off the port side instantly accelerated, its Yamaha motor the only sound. Again I smiled.

They looked at each other then back at me, confused.

“Maybe there’s justice after all,” I said. “Your salvage efforts—sorry, your archaeological reconstruction project—has been nothing but a dry hole. What have you spent, Jack? Couple million? More?” I smiled again. “And this one here?” I tipped my head toward Heather. “You’d better damned well find some treasure—and a lot of it. Between the two of you, you’ll need it.”

T
he gray concrete skyline of Kingston grew close as the captain took me to shore. I caught a taxi back to the airport to check on the Beast. Thom had needed to head up to the north coast, Oracabessa, and I planned to fly to the airport near Ocho Rios, now called Ian Fleming International. I was surprised to find Thom sitting in the lounge at the General Aviation terminal when I arrived at Norman Manley Airport.

“Thought you rented a car,” I said.

“Was about to, then I found out how long it would take to get all the way up there, so I decided to wait around for you. Truth be told I was also a little worried, as pissed as you were when you left. You kick some ass?”

A long exhale was all I could muster. Thom read the signal and didn’t ask any more questions.

It only took twenty minutes to file my flight plan and get squared away to head north. The afternoon sun hit hard as we stepped out onto the tarmac. Thom carried his suitcase and guitar, and once to the Beast, I let him inside to air her out while I inspected the holes in the port wingtip. Unbelievable. There were only six inches separating the closest hole and the edge of the 110-gallon fuel tank, and miraculously, the bullets hadn’t hit the flap or the vacuum lines that control the flaps. I pushed my finger into the holes, one by one, to feel around for anything sharp, wet, any kind of damage invisible to the naked eye.

The holes felt clean, though I’d have felt better about them if Ray were here.

I spotted Thom watching me from the cockpit window. Back at the open hatch, I leaned inside.

“Do me a favor and grab the roll of duct tape in the file box next to my seat,” I said. I heard him rooting around.

“This gonna work?” he said when he held it out to me.

“I’m not planning any water landings, and there isn’t any internal damage, so yeah. It’ll help preserve the aerodynamics at least.”

I rolled up little pieces of duct tape, stuffed them in the holes, then covered each hole with a strip and rubbed it smooth. Ten minutes later I’d done a preflight check, confirmed we still had plenty of fuel, and closed the hatch.

Should I take the Beast getting shot as a bad omen, drop Thom off, and head home? Probably. Was I going to do that?

Hell no.

“What time’s your meeting with the record producer?”

“We’re having dinner.”

I completed the preflight inspection, paying careful attention to the flaps and the vacuum system, which seemed fine. I turned on the fuel valves, moved the mixture control to idle cutoff, pumped the throttles, hit the ignition switch, and engaged the starters. Once the warm-up was done, I checked the oil and fuel pressures and waited for word from Air Traffic Control. Once it was our turn we taxied out, cranked up the manifold pressure, and lit off down the runaway.

As we climbed over the azure bay between Kingston to the north, with Port Royal to the south, I didn’t so much as glance at Jack’s armada for the big Merritt where I’d found him and Heather. I kicked the starboard pedal instead and banked hard over Kingston, another place I had no desire to gaze down upon. The recollection of the HARC selection meeting at Hibbert House was still an irritant.

Dry hole or not, I hated to lose.

“Wow,” Thom said.

Out his side window were the Blue Mountains, some of the tallest in the Caribbean. Our passage, which ATC instructed us to maintain at seven thousand feet, kept us eye to eye with the highest peak to our east. The interior of Jamaica is rugged, green, and full of surprises.

The flight took only fifteen minutes before I hurried through the landing checklist, circled the airport once as we descended, then announced our final leg and approach onto runway 9, the lone 4,700-foot asphalt strip that ran parallel to the sea.

Once we came to a stop and shut everything down, I removed my headset and saw a big grin on Thom’s face.

“I really appreciate you bringing me down here, Buck. Sorry we ran into trouble there in Kingston, but man, I can’t tell you how excited I am to meet with Chris Blackwell.”

“How you getting there?”

“Taxi. I got you a room at GoldenEye, too, man.”

I nodded my appreciation. I hadn’t really given any thought to where I’d stay, and I had yet to contact Nanny Adou or Johnny Blake to let them know I was here. So might as well spend the night at Ian Fleming’s old digs and see whatever inspired him to write thirteen James Bond novels and launch the most successful franchise of spy movies in history.

That, and get a belly full of Appleton’s Rum.

G
oldeneye was nestled into a private lagoon on one side, Low Cay beach on another, and the ocean on yet another. Private villas tucked into mature vegetation blended earth tones with the brilliant blue water and crashing white surf. It was peaceful, private, isolated: just what I
didn’t
need, given my highly agitated state of mind. After dropping my bag in the lagoon view single villa, I opted to try and swim off some anger rather than heading straight to the bar.

The warm water welcomed me, and I could see clearly even without goggles as I swam around the large oval-shaped lagoon and the perimeter of the green island in the center. After an hour of semi-mindless freestyle swimming at as strong a pace as I could maintain, I lost track of how many times I’d circled the island.

I climbed out by the water sports station and crossed over the big pedestrian bridge, illuminated with large multicolored lights reminiscent of holiday festivities. I sat in the gin-clear water by Low Cay Beach, where I watched the few guests snoozing, drinking, and reading in colorful chaise lounges scattered along the sand. Daylight faded to oranges and pinks, and I could picture the amazing sunset visible from Negril on the western end of Jamaica.

My marriage had ended over five years ago. Knowing Heather to be shallow, narcissistic, and spoiled, her disappearing when I filed for bankruptcy had not come as a surprise. Or when she married the elderly oil tycoon less than a year later. By recognizing the inevitability of her need for wealth and the good life, I could justify losing her, and even marrying her. If the entire relationship had been based on a mirage, I could tell myself I hadn’t really lost anything.

But seeing her today, for that split second before my brain connected the dots, I’d felt my heart shudder. It sickened me to face it, but of course I’d married her because I loved her. My trophy wife and I had been the toast of the town, young, beautiful, successful. The world had been ours for the taking. And oh, the fun we’d had.

It was easy to now see that I’d not only been a fool, but a blind, ignorant, self-centered fool. My darling wife and my business partner had found each other while I was out killing myself in third-world shit holes, bribing academics, digging through jungles, negotiating with criminals—all the while seeing myself as a real-life Indiana Jones.