getting that request a lot tonight,” Jonathan said just loudly enough for Gail to hear.
Tyler turned to face Jonathan and waved both his hands. “That’s his voice,” he said. “That’s Jaime Bonilla. He’s the maintenance guy here.” Then he turned and hurried to the door of the tar paper shanty and pulled it open.
A dark-skinned man dressed in flowered shorts and a wifebeater lunged from the opening and tackled Tyler to the ground.
Jonathan tracked them with his muzzle, but couldn’t get a clear target through the tangle of flailing limbs.
“Jaime! Jaime!” Tyler yelled. “It’s me. What are you doing?”
Jonathan let his rifle fall against its sling and he waded into the fight. It was really more of a schoolyard flail fest, the kind of struggle where both players were guaranteed to escape with only a few bruises. The kind of fight you saw among people who didn’t know how to fight.
Jonathan found a shirt collar, closed his fist around it, and pulled. The fabric pulled then tore, but it held enough to peel Jaime out of the scrum and onto his feet. Barely older than Tyler, he weighed maybe 125 pounds, and he was still flailing. He spun to flail on Jonathan, but whatever he saw convinced him in an instant that throwing that punch would be a bad idea.
Jaime pulled away. “Who are you? What the hell is going on?”
“Settle down, son,” Jonathan said. “We’re in the same boat as you. No clue what’s happening, and just trying to stay alive. Now, are you going to settle down, or are we going to have an issue?”
Jaime looked to Tyler. “Sorry, bro. I thought . . . oh, hell, I don’t know what I thought. Did I hurt you?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“What’s going on down there?” Jaime asked. “I heard all this shooting, and then there was screaming. I mean, what the hell?”
“Terrorists.” Tyler took the better part of a minute to catch his friend up.
As they chatted, Jonathan poked Gail’s arm, and motioned for her to join him, away from the others. Together, they swept the structures in a search for bad guys, but neither was surprised that the shacks were empty.
“We can’t win this fight,” Gail said. “Not if it comes to shooting. Even if we got rifles for every one of them—”
“Yeah, I know,” Jonathan agreed. “Whoever these terrorists are, they seem to have skills. That’s concerning.”
“Right,” Gail said with a chuckle. “That’s exactly the word I was going to use.”
“You were able to snag our cell phones on the way out of the room, right?”
“They’re in my backpack.”
“Okay, it’s time to wake some people up.”
Gail unslung the backpack and was able to reach directly to the phones. “You calling Mother Hen?”
Jonathan took his phone and pushed the button to bring it to life. “Yup. We need reinforcements.”
CHAPTER 7
BACK WHEN SHE WAS A TEENAGER, VENICE ALEXANDER HAD DECIDED in a pique of adolescent self-importance that her name was too boring. Her mother, now known to everyone in Fisherman’s Cove simply as Mama, had been named Florence by her mother, Roma. When she had a daughter of her own, she insisted on perpetuating the generations-old tradition of humiliating children with names drawn from Italian tourist destinations. So, Venice decided to elevate her name with a more exotic pronunciation. From then on, her name was pronounced Ven-EE-chay. Everybody got it wrong on the first try, but that fact made for a great trap to filter out telemarketers.
The single mom of a thirteen-year-old boy—Roman, and yes, he hated his name, too—she’d been a part of Jonathan’s life for as long as she could remember, back to the days when she was a little girl with a crush. She’d grown up in the mansion she now called home, on the grounds of what was now Resurrection House, a charitable home for the children of incarcerated parents. Back then, though, she lived in the basement with Mama, who was the full-time housekeeper for the Gravenow family, whose only child was the boy named Jonathan. Venice was never sure why Jonathan changed his name, but she suspected that it had much to do with the fact that his father was a notorious criminal.
Venice was thrilled that Jonathan and Gail had finally carved out time to be together. Their absence tripled the amount of work she had to balance at Security Solutions, but if it could bring happiness to Jonathan, and restore some of the confidence that had been beaten out of Gail in that terrible attack a while back, then the extra effort would be worth it.
Besides, it never hurt for the boss to feel as if he owed you a favor.
She’d had trouble sleeping tonight, and she couldn’t determine why. The day hadn’t been especially stressful, she’d had ample time to spend with Roman, and even the boy’s adolescent angst seemed to be tamed for the moment.
It didn’t help that JoeDog had chosen Venice’s bed as her own this evening. The black Lab lay sprawled sideways, as she was wont to do, but Venice was something of a coffin sleeper and still had adequate room. She didn’t even mind the dog’s snoring, though the flatulence could be eye watering.
Because she’d been thinking so intently about Jonathan, it did not surprise her when her phone rang and it was him.
“It’s awfully late there, isn’t it?” she asked as she connected the call.
“The island has been invaded,” Jonathan said.
Venice had been expecting a sharp retort, but she didn’t understand the humor in this one. “Which island is being invaded?”
“Ours. The Crystal Sands Resort.”
“‘Is being invaded.’ ” Saying it again did not make it more sensible. “What does that mean?”
“It means that a whole bunch of bad guys have invaded the resort and taken hostages.”
Venice sat up in bed, causing JoeDog to open an eye and then close it again. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“As a heart attack.”
Her head raced nearly as fast as her heart as she tried to make pieces fit. While she hadn’t slept, she realized that she wasn’t fully awake, either. “So, you and Gail are hostages?”
“Not in the active sense,” Jonathan said. She could hear the irritation growing in his tone. He was tired of the warm-up conversation, and wanted to get to something meatier. “Some guys with guns came to our bungalow and tried to take us, but it didn’t go well for them. We got away, but there’s only so far to go when you’re on a friggin’ island.”
“Well . . .” She had nothing. “Did you call the police?”
“It’s an island, Mother Hen. And it’s private. Shit, I don’t even know what its nationality is. That’s why I’m calling you.”
His use
