Reckless Charity

  Copyright © 2017

  Published by DOWN ISLAND PRESS, LLC, 2017

  Saint Helena Island, SC

  Copyright © 2017 by Wayne Stinnett

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without express written permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Cover Photo by Niknikon

  Graphics by Wicked Good Book Covers

  Edited by Tammi at Larks & Katydids

  Final Proofreading by Donna Rich

  Interior Design by Colleen Sheehan, WDR Book Designs

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Most of the locations herein are also fictional, or are used fictitiously.

  Contents: Reckless Charity

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Foreword

  Read More by Wayne Stinnett

  Maps

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Read More Charity Styles

  Many thanks, first and always, to my wife, Greta. Your unerring support and dedication has been the backbone of my success in whatever I try.

  My beta reading team always provides great feedback and advice. These folks don’t look for typos and grammatical errors, that’s the editor’s job. Instead, they look for plot holes and dead ends. Writing takes a long time and often the writer will include something that either doesn’t go anywhere or doesn’t match up with previous works in the series. My beta readers go over the manuscript more than once, looking for just these mistakes. What takes months to write, only takes hours to read and they find all the little problems, even suggesting subtle changes for a better read. Such was the case when I wrote the scene with the bomb. John Trainor saw that what I’d written was similar to a quote from Shakespeare, so I rewrote the scene using the quote, which gives Victor more depth. Much gratitude is owed to Mike Ramsey, Katy McKnight, Dr. John Trainor, Marcus Lowe, Dana Vihlen, Karl Schulte, Debbie Kocol, Dave Parsons, Ron Ramey, Gary Cox, and Charles Hofbauer.

  Trying to capture a feeling in words is not easy. Sailing is an experience that encompasses many emotions. In these books, I try to let Charity describe her feelings and love of the sea just enough to make her real in the eyes of those of you who live the cruising lifestyle, but not so much that it detracts from the story. I hope that I found the balance.

  To my brother, Mike. Only sixteen months apart in age, we were competitors in everything. Backyard football, chess, swimming; anything that two boys could do, we did it together, constantly driving the other to do better. Later, we stood back-to-back in quite a few scrapes. His birthday was just a few weeks ago and he’s now joined me in the “late-fifties” club. Take a look around, bro. We’re miles ahead of the pack.

  “You don’t have to be someone special to achieve something amazing. You’ve just got to have a dream, believe in it and work hard.”

  - Jessica Watson, - Youngest person to sail around the world, alone and unassisted.

  If you’d like to receive my newsletter, please sign up on my website:

  www.waynestinnett.com.

  Every two weeks, I’ll bring you insights into my private life and writing habits, with updates on what I’m working on, special deals I hear about, and new books by other authors that I’m reading.

  The Charity Styles Caribbean Thriller Series

  Merciless Charity

  Ruthless Charity

  Reckless Charity

  Enduring Charity

  Vigilant Charity

  The Jesse McDermitt Caribbean Adventure Series

  Fallen Out

  Fallen Palm

  Fallen Hunter

  Fallen Pride

  Fallen Mangrove

  Fallen King

  Fallen Honor

  Fallen Tide

  Fallen Angel

  Fallen Hero

  Rising Storm

  Rising Fury

  Rising Force

  Rising Charity

  Rising Water

  Rising Spirit

  Rising Thunder

  Rising Warrior

  Rising Moon

  Rising Tides

  Steady As She Goes

  Jerry Snyder Series Caribbean Mystery Series

  Wayward Sons

  The Gaspar’s Revenge Ship’s Store is open.

  There, you can purchase all kinds of swag related to my books. You can find it at:

  WWW.GASPARS-REVENGE.COM

  Tiny waves lapped gently at the coarse, yellow-white sand. They seemed more like the tiny ripples you’d see in a small pond, after tossing a pebble. Just a few yards from the beach, the water of the bay turned a deep blue as the bottom quickly dropped away. Further up the shore, toward the foot of the long, rocky point that protected the bay, several good-sized fishing boats were beached, unloading their catch.

  Around three sides of the bay, craggy volcanic rock rose right out of the water in most places. Aside from this quarter-mile-long shore, there were only a handful of other sand beaches in the bay, all very small. Magens Bay, the largest bay on the island of Saint Thomas, and Magens Beach, arguably one of its largest beaches, were rarely crowded—even in the height of tourist season, which hadn’t yet begun.

  This was to a certain degree due to its exposure to the sometimes treacherous North Atlantic. Magens Bay was a cruising destination, popular for its panoramic views and quiet tranquility. Most of the tourists stayed on the south side of the island, to be close to the nightlife of Charlotte Amalie. Though they were only a few miles apart, mountains separated Magens Bay from the more popular anchorages to the south.

  Normally, the bay would have had at least two dozen cruisers, mostly sailboats, anchored just off the north end of the beach, where the fishermen were unloading. But three days ago a late-season hurricane had passed within two hundred miles of the Virgin Islands, so the bay was empty. The fishermen had only returned to work the day before.

  Moving Wind Dancer was a waste of time, Charity thought as she gazed out over the water. The storm had never come any closer than two hundred miles, and its forward speed had been enough that it didn’t kick up large waves on Saint Thomas. Still, moving Wind Dancer had been the prudent thing to do. Living on a boat, you didn’t mess around with hurricanes.

  “One comes this way, you go that way,” a salty old sailor had told her, just before weighing anchor and heading south out of the path of Hurricane Ike.

  So she’d moved the Dancer to a slip at Yacht Haven Grande, a large marina on the more protected south side of the island.

  Charity had come to Saint Thomas to unwind, work on her tan, and be alone—and for the last two days, she’d been forced to ride her bike for miles to find a secluded beach.

  Starting early this morning, she’d ridden the three miles from the marina to check on the anchorage in Magens Bay. Not a long ride on her folding bike, but the route across the island wound its way through
the higher mountains. The pass on Hull Bay Road, roughly the halfway point of the ride, was nearly a thousand feet above sea level.

  Charity spread a towel on the deserted beach and dropped her pack next to it. She took a long pull from a water bottle as she slowly looked around. Aside from the fishermen several hundred yards away, the beach and the bay were completely devoid of people. She pulled off her tee-shirt and shorts, then stretched out on the towel wearing the yellow bikini she’d bought in Aruba several months before. The towel was already warm from the sand, and the sun felt hot on her skin. Occasionally, a puff of a breeze out of the north would rustle the coconut palms and cause her exposed flesh to prickle.

  “I’ll move back here tomorrow,” she said aloud and closed her eyes.

  The late summer air hung heavily, and the warm sun lulled Charity to a more relaxed state than she’d been in many weeks. Her mind wandered back over the past eighteen months, since she’d left the States headed for an encounter with a terrorist cell on a volcano on the Mexican mainland. She’d been sent there to kill the leader, but she’d killed the whole cell in a bloodthirsty rage.

  Since then, there had been several more missions, and she’d crossed the Caribbean in all directions. She preferred to sail Dancer to each one, but occasionally she flew a helicopter that was currently stored at a private airfield in Puerto Rico.

  She’d been reprimanded after that first mission, but more work had soon come her way. She’d been sent after a land baron in Venezuela, a cartel kingpin in Colombia, and a gang leader in Jamaica; she’d even kidnapped a couple right out from under Fidel and Raul’s noses in Cuba.

  The Cuba mission had come very close to getting her killed, so she’d requested a month of rest and relaxation.

  Her missions now were a lot different than the ones she’d participated in, while working under DHS. There, she’d worked with a whole team of highly skilled operators, each sharing his or her expertise with the other members of the Caribbean Counter-terrorism Command.

  Now she worked alone, completely unfettered by responsibilities for others or ridiculous rules of engagement that gave the enemy a huge advantage. In the near future, she’d be given another target; soon after, that person would die. She had no illusions about what she was doing, nor about her own abilities.

  Well-trained in hand-to-hand fighting, Charity had taught krav maga to her former teammates. She’d learned the Israeli combat fighting technique while convalescing from injuries she received in Afghanistan, then continued her training after returning home and taking a job as a Miami-Dade patrol officer.

  Through her DHS counterparts, she’d mastered other skills and weapons, as well.

  And she had wiles that could disarm her target, and looks that could distract any man—as she’d done in Colombia. There, she’d had to get in close and kill the man with a fast-acting poison. The two days she’d spent inside his compound—and in his bed—would have nauseated her, but for the knowledge that he would die as soon as he let his guard down.

  Later, in Cuba, Charity had sensed that she was losing her edge. She wasn’t as focused as she normally was, and that lack of focus had nearly cost her life. Inwardly, she readily admitted to herself that only the killing of the terrorists had been satisfying. But she would never tell anyone else that.

  Since then, her missions had been more against enemies of the CIA than against enemies of the state. She was unsure how much longer she could continue, or even if she should. Her reassignment was supposed to be more about fighting the country’s enemies on their terms, which were no terms at all. No rules—kill or be killed, any way she could get it done.

  Her nightmares had all but ceased after Mexico; the demons that had once prowled her mind while she slept were for the most part dormant. She’d always been able to compartmentalize her conscious mind, to put the bad things that had happened to her under a mental lock and key. She’d openly confided in one of her former teammates, a man with whom she’d spent several weeks tracking down a traitorous killer. She’d told him about her nightmares and everything that had happened to her when she’d been captured in Afghanistan.

  She’d never told anyone else everything that had happened—not even her shrinks, though she did have to give them something. She couldn’t very well tell them that her Taliban captors had provided sweet tea and fresh linens on her bed, but she also couldn’t tell them that for the first twenty-four hours her “bed” had been the table she was tied face down on while she was repeatedly raped and sodomized.

  She’d told all these things to Jesse McDermitt, during their weeks alone on his boat. She’d sensed that he was plagued by his own demons, and he was the kind of man that could draw things out. He’d told her not to fight against the demons, but to embrace them and bend them to her own will. He’d shown her how she was stronger than them—and he’d been right.

  She’d soon learned to control things much better, tempering her desire to slaughter the enemy with a methodical approach and selective targeting. Jesse had once trained Marine snipers, and was a good teacher and role model of self-discipline—and when it came to the rifle, she’d learned later, there was no equal. He’d taught the team not just the art of shooting accurately at long distances, but also how to use cover and concealment in many forms.

  Charity missed the friends she’d made. She wondered all the time what they were doing—if they remembered her, or talked about her.

  The sound of a splash brought her back to the moment. She propped herself up on her elbows and looked out over the serene bay. There was a sailboat anchored about fifty yards off the north end of the beach, with a man on the bow securing the anchor chain.

  She must have dozed. The entrance to the bay was a mile and a half away, and the bay had been empty when she’d lied down in the sun. The boat was big—bigger than Wind Dancer by about ten feet in length, with a cutter-ketch rig and the beamy look and high freeboard of a passage-making blue-water cruiser. She recognized the lines of the small ship, a Formosa.

  She also recognized the man on the bow.

  Quickly, she gathered her towel, clothes, and backpack, and walked toward the trees where she’d left her bike. She didn’t move fast enough to draw attention—at least, she hoped not. She walked nonchalantly toward the trees and didn’t look back until she was out of sight of the boat.

  Behind a flowering bush, Charity stopped and moved a branch slightly for a better view. Victor Pitt was looking in her direction through a pair of binoculars, scanning the tree line. She was certain he couldn’t see her through the brush, with its bright yellow flowers. But had he recognized her as she walked away with her back to him?

  Her hair was now close to its natural blond, so she doubted the fugitive CIA agent recognized her. She’d been a brunette—and he’d been Rene Cook—when she’d met him on the island of Trinidad, over a year ago.

  Slowly, Victor lowered the field glasses and went back to the aft cockpit, disappearing below deck. Charity quickly pulled her shorts and tee-shirt on over her bathing suit, shouldered her pack, and grabbed her bicycle, hurrying toward the road that would take her back to Charlotte Amalie and Wind Dancer.

  Pumping hard up the trail leading to the high pass, she released her body to the task of riding the steep ascent and thought about the man she’d just seen. They’d shared a bed, more than once—even after they’d each known who the other really was. He’d helped her on her mission into the jungles of Venezuela, had even taken a bullet in doing so. Then he’d disappeared like a puff of smoke.

  She grinned slightly, remembering that he’d told her that had been his code name before deserting the Agency: Smoke.

  What’s he doing here? Magens Bay was just the kind of place Victor would choose, if he were still on the run. Secluded and isolated, visited by cruisers who mostly wanted to be left alone. Could that be all there is?

  Charity Styles wasn’t the kind of woman who slunk away from an altercation, but she’d also learned
patience. If an altercation was unavoidable, a smart operator would make it on their own ground and at a time of their own choosing.

  She would move Wind Dancer back to Magens Bay and confront Victor Pitt, but not today—and not at a time when he could see her coming. Today, she’d go back to the marina and make ready to sail. It was only fifteen or twenty miles around the western tip of the island; it wouldn’t take long, even if she had to run the diesel engine the whole way. There was no chance that Victor might stumble upon her at the marina. She’d go to sleep early and leave after midnight, so it would still be dark when she dropped anchor in Magens Bay.

  As she reached the pass, the ground leveled off for a few yards. Charity stopped for a moment to look down at the bay. The area where Victor was anchored was obscured by trees, but the high pass had a commanding view of the bay’s entrance and Hans Lollik Island just to the north.

  She chugged half a bottle of water, then leaned over and poured the rest over her head and neck, letting the water cascade down over her face. Though it was warm from hours in the backpack, it cooled her. She flipped her hair back to sling off most of the water, then got back on the little bike and coasted down the hill toward Long Bay and the marina.

  The afternoon sun had heated Dancer’s interior, so Charity opened all the hatches and went back up on deck to store the bike and let the cabin cool down. In the cockpit, she powered up the chart plotter and plotted a course around the western tip of Saint Thomas.

  Wind Dancer had a five-and-a-half-foot draft, and there were shoal waters to avoid. A forty-five-foot cutter-rigged sloop, designed by John Alden himself, she’d been built in a small shipyard in Maine in 1932, and refitted nearly two years ago. With her modern technology and amenities, Wind Dancer was easily single-handed. She had electronics that controlled virtually everything onboard, and she could sail herself across the Pacific. With her thirty-nine-foot waterline, she was easily capable of a sustained speed over eight knots—not fast by powerboat standards, but she had no engine failure worries. The bulk of her eighty-gallon fuel tank was used to power the auxiliary generator, to keep the batteries charged on cloudy, windless days, when the solar panels and wind generator were useless.