Rising Moon: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 19) Page 19

  Realization?

  Quick rose to his feet and assumed sort of a fighting stance, though his feet were squared under his shoulders.

  “So, you know how to fight, huh?” he growled, still only barely breathing hard.

  This was a new problem. I have an unusually long reach for my height. The average man’s arm span from fingertip to fingertip was usually very close to his height. But at 6-3, my reach was 6-5, a decided advantage in a straight up, bare-knuckles brawl against most opponents. But not when he’s 6-8, with shoulders wider than a door. With any skill at all, he could strike from a greater distance than I could reach.

  Going toe-to-toe was also out of the question.

  Instead, I rolled forward in a somersault, shooting both legs out as I finished the roll and catching him square in the cojones.

  His hands went to his groin as he doubled over in pain,

  I whipped my right leg up, catching him on the chin, straightening him back to his full height.

  Spinning on my shoulder, I scissored his legs, bringing all of what I was guessing to be 350 pounds down hard onto his kneecaps.

  Scrambling to my feet, just out of his reach, I shot a front stomping kick at his chest, my heel striking just to the right of center with all the force behind it I had in me.

  There was a loud cracking sound, as if stepping on dry twigs.

  Quick slowly fell backward onto his heels, then slumped against the wall, both hands going to his chest.

  I stood there, my breathing a little raspy, and watched the realization come to his eyes.

  The ribcage is an extraordinary thing. It protects the internal organs and creates a platform anchoring the major muscles of the upper body. Curved bones run from the sternum to the backbone, an engineering marvel, really. The curved shape of the ribs means they can withstand great outside forces for such small bones.

  My guess was that at least one of those ribs had broken from the relatively small impact area of my heel. And a part of that bone had torn through his heart.

  The color was draining from Quick’s face. He was bleeding internally.

  His eyes darted around and finally came to rest on his gun, lying on the other side of the room. He got one knee up, but when he attempted to stand, the knee wouldn’t hold his weight and he fell forward, unable to move an arm up to break his fall. His face hit the deck with a sickening thud.

  I moved wide around him and kicked his gun through the open doorway to the outer room.

  Quick’s head was turned, eyes open and unfocused, staring vacantly in the direction I’d sent the gun.

  I got a hand under each of his shins, but it took all I had to drag him, facedown, into the other room. I continued to pull him toward the opening in the floor, unsure if he would even fit.

  As I dropped his legs over the hole, one bent at the knee, slipped through the opening, and dangled below. I moved the other leg over the hole and it too, hung there in the open.

  Straddling the opening, I grabbed his belt loop and pulled, then let gravity do the rest. There was a loud splash below the house, followed by several more. When I looked down, a big gator had Quick’s torso in its massive jaws, trying to swim away with it. But a second, smaller one had a knee firmly in its bite and was doing a death roll to tear the limb from Quick’s body.

  Tony and Tank came through the front door and looked down at the macabre scene. Another gator had arrived and was trying to tear off an arm.

  Tony looked up at me. “Are you okay?”

  I picked up Quick’s revolver, moved over, and dropped it through the opening. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  He looked me up and down. “That guy was huge, Jesse. And you don’t have a mark on you.”

  “Of course, he doesn’t,” Tank said. “It’s called LINE training.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” I grumbled, then headed for the back room.

  I picked up my Sig, slid the mag in, and holstered it behind my back. Slinging the rifle over my shoulder, I stepped past Tony and followed Tank outside.

  In the distance, I heard the familiar, heavy whump of an approaching Huey.

  “What do we do with this?” Tony asked, opening the back of Quick’s vehicle.

  Tank stepped up beside Tony. “We should drive it into the swamp under the house and torch it. What’s with all the boxes?”

  “I don’t know,” Tony replied, reaching for one of them.

  When he tried to pull it to the rear, I could tell the box was heavy.

  “What the hell’s in this?” Tony said, lugging the box closer. “Dive weights?”

  He opened the box and we looked down at the contents.

  “Is that real?” Tank asked, trying to pick up one of the bars that lay inside the box. It was a little bigger than a dollar bill and less than two inches thick. “Damned thing weighs at least twenty pounds.”

  I hefted the other one and looked at it in the fading light. It was stamped 12.5KG. “Over twenty-five,” I corrected him.

  “What is it?” Charity’s voice came over my earwig.

  I counted the boxes; there were thirty of them. “Can you lift off with the four of us and sixteen hundred pounds of cargo?”

  “Yeah,” she replied. “What’s the cargo?”

  “Gold.”

  An hour later, after Tony and I checked the water around the shack for Vanessa Ramos’s body and not finding anything but the remnants of her yellow dress, we left the shack.

  Paul called and reported that Andrew had dropped him and Michelle Tate at the hospital, explaining that her husband was there waiting.

  “I told them that when the police asked, they were to just say that she’d escaped her abductor and made her way to the highway, where I just happened to find her.”

  “Think they will?” I asked.

  “I believe so,” he replied. “I gave the husband my card and told him to call me tomorrow, once he got his wife home.”

  “Good thinking,” I told him. “How are you getting home?”

  “I have an Uber on the way. Wait…I think he just pulled up.”

  Ending the call, I sat in the back of the chopper and stared out the window at the passing skyline of Miami off to the left.

  I tapped Charity on the arm. “Head for Tavernaero Park.”

  She nodded without comment, pulled up the small, private airport on her navigation system and then turned slightly more westerly.

  I called Andrew and kept it short, telling him that he’d see me and Tank on the side of the road in Tavernier.

  “Me, too,” Tony said. “I want to see this through to the end.”

  “Tony, too,” I added.

  They were ahead of us on the Sawgrass Expressway but wouldn’t be for long. We’d have to wait a few minutes when we got to the airstrip.

  Fifteen minutes later, Charity touched down at the west end of a single runway, situated between rows of houses. The three of us climbed out with our gear and I closed the cargo door. When I opened the pilot’s side, Charity pulled her headset down around her neck.

  “Thanks,” I shouted over the turbine, extending my hand. “I owe you one. You know what to do from here, right?”

  She nodded as she took my hand, then pulled me into a tight embrace and kissed my neck. “Don’t you ever do anything stupid like that again, Jesse McDermitt. Ever!”

  I pulled away and could only nod.

  Charity closed the door and put her headset back on.

  Before we could move to get out of her rotor wash, she twisted the throttle and pulled up on the collective, causing the three of us to squat and cover our eyes as the heavily loaded chopper lifted off the ground.

  When the rotor wash subsided, we stood and picked up our bags, then headed toward the main road. From there, it was only a hundred yards to the Overseas Highway, where we walked south a little way and stopped in front of a boat dealership.

  I dropped my pack. “They won’t be long.”

  Tank and Tony stood on either side of me. �
�You should call your fiancée,” Tank said. “She’ll be worried.”

  I looked at the tracking app on my phone. Andrew was still fifteen minutes away. I had another call to make first.

  Removing Manny’s card from my wallet, I punched in the numbers. He answered on the third ring.

  “We found her,” I said, without waiting. “We’ll be at Fishermen’s Hospital in about an hour.”

  “Is she all right?” Manny asked, his voice cracking a little at the news.

  “She will be,” I replied. “But it’s going to take a while.”

  Next, I called Savannah and told her what happened. She started to ask a question, but I cut her off. “Andrew’s arriving to pick us up,” I said. “We’ll be at Fishermen’s in an hour.”

  I ended the call and put my phone away. I didn’t want to talk to her about the details. Not now. Maybe not ever.

  “This is what you do,” Tank said. He wasn’t asking. “You dart through traffic to save someone’s kid. That’s no easy job.”

  “When you stood on that wall,” I said, without looking at him, “when you faced down that tribal leader and his mob, did you think about how it might have changed everything if you’d pulled the trigger? Changed who you are?”

  He was silent for a moment. “Those thoughts go through a man’s mind in an instant,” he said somberly.

  “I killed three men tonight. One might not even have been armed.”

  “There’s rarely time to debate your instinct,” Tony said. “You did right, Jesse. That’s all.”

  Tank nodded. “I don’t know you well, Tony. But I’ve been around long enough to know a thing or two. We’ve all had those thoughts and pulled the trigger. We do what needs to be done and there just isn’t enough time to dwell on it.”

  I looked at him, understanding exactly what he meant.

  The big sedan turned into the boat dealership. Cobie was in the backseat alone. Andrew climbed out and then got in the backseat with her.

  “One of you drive,” I said, getting in on her other side.

  Cobie’s arms went around my neck and she held on as if her life depended on it. She was sobbing.

  “Did you—”

  “It’s over, Cobie,” I said, stroking her tangled hair. “You’re safe.”

  Tony turned the car around and we got back onto Overseas Highway.

  Pushing her away a little, I said, “Nothing’s going to happen to you now. I talked to Manny a minute ago. He and your mom are going to meet us at the hospital.”

  She looked at each of us in turn, took Andrew’s hand in hers and settled in on my shoulder. She continued to sob quietly.

  By the time we got to the makeshift hospital, everyone who knew about Cobie’s rescue was there waiting for us. Fishermen’s Hospital had been damaged so badly during Hurricane Irma three years ago that it had to be almost completely rebuilt. They’d set up an emergency room to the right of the old building, sort of a modular unit to handle emergencies only.

  Tank and I were the first to get out.

  An orderly stood by the entrance with a wheelchair. Tank marched straight up to him.

  “I’ll take that,” he said. “Get me a warm blanket. Do it now.”

  Without waiting for a response, Tank pushed the man aside and wheeled the chair to the back door, where I was helping Cobie out of the car. The orderly appeared with a blanket, which I wrapped around her shoulders.

  Her clothes barely hid her body.

  Manny and Donna came out to us and she rushed to her daughter’s side, crying.

  “She’s going to be okay,” I reassured Donna, as Tank pushed the wheelchair to the open door.

  Once inside, the ER staff took Cobie away. She wanted me to go with her, but only one person was allowed, so Cobie and her mom were whisked off through the security door.

  Savannah and Flo were there, too. And sitting quietly beside Flo were Finn and Woden.

  I looked from the dogs to Savannah, questioningly.

  “They wouldn’t get out of the boat,” she said, quietly. “When we got to the Rusty Anchor, they both jumped into the back of Rusty’s pickup and wouldn’t get out.”

  “And when you got to the hospital, where dogs aren’t allowed?”

  She shrugged. “They can be stubborn sometimes.” She paused. “Jesse, Deuce called and told us everything that happened. I wish it hadn’t happened, but you did the right thing. I’ve come to accept over the years that there is evil present in this world. I just wish it wasn’t drawn to you.”

  “What’s three more to the nightmare?” I said with false bravado, holding her tightly.

  She squeezed me back. “I won’t let them come for you,” she said. “I’ll watch over you when you sleep.”

  I conjured a mental image of a mythical blond guardian standing over me.

  The orderly who’d held the wheelchair approached, looking over at Finn and Woden. “Dogs aren’t permitted in the ER.”

  “They’re service dogs,” Tank lied.

  “They don’t have vests.”

  “I’m a Marine, son. Am I any less a Marine because I’m not wearing a uniform? Is a police officer any less a cop when he’s not wearing his badge?”

  Just then, Detective Clark Andersen strolled in and looked around. He spotted Manny and headed straight to him.

  “Who found her?” he asked.

  Manny’s eyes flashed to mine and the detective followed his gaze.

  “I did,” I replied, stepping away from Savannah. “She was being held captive in the Everglades.”

  Once he heard my voice, I saw a sudden spark of recognition in his eyes. “You’re the anonymous caller.”

  “Jesse McDermitt,” I said.

  “You and I,” he said, pointing toward the door, “we need to talk.”

  I followed the detective outside, where he turned and strode down the sidewalk, away from the emergency room entrance. When he stopped, he looked all around before turning to face me.

  “How did you know about the pictures?” he asked.

  “What did you learn?”

  “I’m asking the questions, Mister McDermitt.”

  I just stood there and looked at him, waiting. It really doesn’t matter the position of authority; when two people are facing one another and one is silent, the other will talk.

  Finally, he threw his hands up in exasperation. “Whoever drove Miss Murphy’s car was a lot taller than her,” he finally conceded. “She didn’t run away. Now, how did you get access to my files?”

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to invoke my fifth amendment rights, Detective. Suffice it to say that the internet, just like the real world, isn’t as secure as it should be, and there are both bad and good people who know how to thwart the best security.”

  “Yeah, well, that evidence is now inadmissible.”

  “It’ll never be needed,” I said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I told you where she was being held,” I said, hearing rhythmic footfalls behind me. “The Glades cover a million and a half acres. They can hide a lot.”

  Tank joined us. “You better come inside, Jesse.”

  “We’re not through here,” Andersen said. “Hide a lot of what?”

  “It’s over, Detective,” I said, more venomously than I’d intended. “The men responsible won’t kidnap any more girls, and two of at least five women they abducted are safe. My only wish is that I’d learned of it in time to save the others.”

  “You’ve said your piece. Now it’s my turn,” Tank said, turning to face the cop. He handed the man a coin in a sleeve and waited until Andersen looked at it and grasped its meaning. “I keep these handy to give to people who I think are deserving. Jesse has one and now you do. He also has one from the President of these United States. People are safe in this world because of folks like you, Detective. And like Jesse, here. You two are two sides of the same coin, but you have rules to follow. Now, if it comes up in court, everyone involved, including mys
elf, will all say the same thing. The women got away and were found by a passing Samaritan. Nobody knows what happened to their abductors.”

  “Arrest me or walk away,” I said.

  When he did neither, Tank and I turned on our heels and marched back toward the entrance.

  “You think you can be judge, jury, and executioner?”

  I stopped and slowly turned to face him. “You and I both know there are elected officials—prosecutors, judges, even cops—who will turn a blind eye to a victim if they can line their own pockets. I can’t be bought.”

  Then Tank and I went back inside.

  An older man, wearing a black suit and sporting a neatly trimmed white beard, was talking to Andrew, who was clearly irritated. An attractive, dark-haired woman was with him. She was slim and wore a black skirt and jacket. My first thought was that they were ambulance chasers, lawyers who prowled hospitals looking for wrongful injury cases.

  “I demand to know who you people are!” the grey-haired man said.

  “And who are you?” I asked.

  I recognized the man instantly when he and the woman turned to face me. Senator Jubal Blanc.

  What the hell’s he doing here? I wondered.

  I saw recognition in both their eyes, too. I’d never seen the woman before and had no idea how either of them might know me.

  “You again,” the senator said.

  I grinned. “That’s funny. Your late brother-in-law said the exact same thing just an hour ago.”

  He stepped closer. “You saw Willy?”

  “And a couple of his friends,” I replied. “I’m afraid we had a bit of a disagreement.”

  He eyed me suspiciously. “You’re probably not aware, but he’s wanted in connection with the murder of one of my sisters.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “Not aware and don’t care.”

  He stepped even closer, lowering his voice. “He took something that didn’t belong to him.”

  So, that was it, I thought. He knew about the gold.

  “What your family does is no concern of mine, Senator. Except when it comes to abducting innocent young girls.”