crate was handed over to one of the two unidentified men, then something was shoved into Jack’s hand. All the characters stood in shadow, like the old black-and-white film noirs Carr enjoyed. He half expected to see Humphrey Bogart’s strong-jawed profile flash before him.
No hat-and-raincoat-clad detectives appeared, so Carr concentrated on what he could see. The two unknown men scurried away from Jack and the boat. He tried to estimate their height and weight, but knew both were wild guesses based on a comparison of Jack’s vital statistics.
Jack transferred the object he’d been given—an envelope maybe?—to his other hand, then, suddenly, he turned in Carr’s direction. Fairly certain the angle and the width of the post kept him hidden, Carr didn’t move. He barely breathed. Whatever the meeting with the two men meant, Carr knew it wasn’t something Jack wanted known by a business acquaintance. The timing as well as the conversation itself spoke to that certainty.
After a few moments, he heard Jack’s footsteps receding down the dock. He counted slowly to a hundred before moving and then only to take a quick look. Noting the dock was empty, he shifted from his position.
Puzzling over the discussion he’d heard, he checked his boat to be sure he’d locked the cabin door and secured the rope properly. The exchange had to be a payoff of some kind. The two men had clearly bought something from Jack. But coffee? Why would three men need to meet in the dead of night to buy and sell coffee?
He walked down the dock, stopping as he reached the boat Jack had retrieved the crate from. American Dream was clearly scripted on the hull in bright red letters. Jack’s boat, then.
Stooping, Carr glided his hand over the dock’s rough wooden planks. Something gritty caressed the tips of his fingers. He brought his hand to his face, inhaling the scent. Coffee.
With the scent, he recalled one significant reason coffee grounds might be placed in a crate, then traded for cash in the dead of night. Drugs.
Two weeks later
FBI SPECIAL AGENT Malina Blair glared at the stack of case files on her desk and thought seriously about pulling her pistol from its ever-present side holster and firing at will.
Two computer hacking cases, one suspected drug smuggling and six complaints from helpful citizens who thought they spotted someone from the Most Wanted list hiding out behind the fake designer bags in the straw market.
How far the mighty had fallen.
She recalled fondly the business executive son’s kidnapping case she’d closed three years ago. She supposed the son and his loved ones didn’t remember the ordeal in a positive light, but the family still sent her a Christmas card every year, thanking her for her sharpshooting skills.
And barely six months ago, she’d led a team in solving a six-year-old bank robbery, taking down the ring of suspects as they attempted to break into the main branch vault of the Bank of America in downtown Washington, D.C.
Good times. Career-making moments.
Formally interviewing Senator Phillip Grammer’s son on suspicion of securities and bank fraud hadn’t gone quite so well. The powerful politician had stormed into the interview and claimed his son had fallen in with the wrong crowd briefly and that he and the SEC were working out a special process of restitution.
Phil junior was special all right. He’d ratted on three other people—who Malina considered minor players in the deal—and got away scot-free.
While a lovely city, Charleston, South Carolina, wasn’t exactly the FBI’s hotbed of excitement. Getting back to headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, was imperative, especially since screwing up again was likely to land her reassigned in the desert-to-nowhere field office. Interrogating cacti.
With a sigh, she pulled out the folder about the smuggling case. Her boss had actually dropped this one on her desk that morning. At first, she’d hoped she’d been forgiven for her career-crushing mistake and assigned to the elite team that worked the harbor. With the Port of Charleston being the country’s fourth busiest, illicit goods and terrorist threats were a serious possibility.
Unfortunately, the case she’d been assigned was a vague suspicion of drug smuggling based on a two-minute overheard conversation that took place on nearby—and boringly tiny—Palmer’s Island. The single witness was an attorney and friend of her boss.
It seemed she had another day of tedium ahead of her.
Scooping up the documents, she headed out of her cubicle and toward the elevator.
“Hey, Malina,” Donald, one of her colleagues, called out as she passed his cube. “Gonna work another dog-napping case today?”
She never slowed her brisk stride as she called back, “I’ll see if I can fit it in after kicking your ass in combat training this afternoon.”
“Again,” several others called out helpfully from behind their own cubicle walls.
She lifted her lips in what some people might consider a sneer, but those who knew her recognized it as her version of a smile. She’d only been in the Charleston field office three weeks, and while everyone knew of her setback, most had at least come to respect her skills and determination. Hers was a cautionary tale none of them wanted coming true in their own lives.
Alone in the elevator, she allowed herself the weakness of closing her eyes as frustration overcame her. She should be in a corner office with a view. She should be solving important cases. She should be compiling letters of commendation.
She was good at her job—a few she’d worked with had even called her the best. If only she had tact as steady as her hands and as sure as her roundhouse kick, she’d rise to the top.
Donald hadn’t exaggerated. Her first case since arriving at the office had been a literal dog-napping.
The mayor’s prize Maltese had gone missing, and a ransom demand had been made. It had taken her all of two minutes in an interview with the dog walker to crack him and the master plot.
The mayor’s kids had hugged her; her coworkers had laughed their asses off.
Minutes later, while she drove her government-issue sedan over the bridge to Palmer’s Island, she cast a glance at the sun’s rays bouncing off the rippling Atlantic waves in the distance. Ahead was Patriot’s Point, where the decommissioned aircraft carrier the USS Yorktown had been permanently docked, awaiting the daily flood of tourists eager to explore her proud and massive decks.
The island that was her destination was even smaller than the one where she’d been raised. In fact, Kauai, Hawaii was as different from Palmer’s Island as two floating rock and sand masses could be. And yet, they had the same effect—they calmed and soothed as no other person, place or thing had ever managed in her life.
She’d continue to resist her mother’s assertion that someday she’d want to return home, but Palmer’s Island did force her to remember that her life hadn’t always been about ambition, power and politics.
She found the address she was looking for with little effort and pulled into the small sand-and-shell-dotted parking lot beside a large house that had been converted into a quad-plex of offices. A discreet sign announced Tessa Malone, Family Counselor; Jack Rafton, Island Insurance; Charlie McGary, Suncoast Real Estate; and Carr Hamilton, Attorney-at-Law.
Mr.
