Chapter 10 #2
She picked through the options. There were shorts and T-shirts that would fit, but she chose a yellow flowered sundress with cap sleeves. It was meant to be loose, meaning it would be comfortable and cool, and it was absolutely nothing like anything Captain Kenzie would wear.
She changed, pinned her hair up, and fastened the wig in place. It was good quality, allowing her to pull the strands back in a low bun.
The image in the mirror told her she looked like herself in a blond wig, but whatever. It would do.
She stepped out. “You ready?”
Jaz looked past one of the large cups of real coffee and smiled. “Good morning, Simone. Aren’t you looking gorgeous?”
“Let’s keep the playboy under wraps until we need him.”
“Sometimes, he just slips out.”
“Hmm, and here I thought you had that guy under control.”
“Most of the time.” Smiling, he handed her the other cup of coffee, grabbed the bags of food, and led the way.
The breeze carried the scent of flowers as Kenzie followed Jaz up the stairs to the hotel’s rooftop.
She crossed to the railing and peered over the buildings across the street to the sea that stretched endlessly, its surface glittering in the morning light.
After pulling in a deep breath of freedom, she turned and took in the space.
The patio held a few café tables and chairs, along with a little seating area—rattan sofa and matching chairs flanking a coffee table.
As Laguerre had said, the rooftop was deserted.
Jaz chose a table near the railing and spread out their breakfast feast—croissants still warm from the oven, breakfast sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper, and fresh fruit in plastic containers. Her stomach growled loudly enough that she checked to see if he’d heard.
“I think someone’s hungry.” Jaz’s smile seemed more genuine than playboy.
Kenzie settled on the opposite chair and chose a croissant. She pulled off a small bite, added butter and jelly from the little to-go packets, and popped it into her mouth. She closed her eyes as the layers melted on her tongue.
For a few blessed minutes, they ate in silence, the only sounds the rustle of paper, the distant hum of traffic, and the occasional cry of a seagull.
It felt strangely intimate, sharing a meal with this man.
He’d seen her at her worst—terrified, crying, desperate.
But they didn’t know each other in real life.
Whenever they’d met in the past, he’d played the playboy, and she…
well, she didn’t feel like she played a part in the same way, but she definitely never let her guard down around strangers.
Captain Kenzie was tough and capable. But when she was with her family in Maine, she was casual and fun, a different person altogether.
Maybe she wasn’t that different from Jaz. Except she didn’t have to shed personas as often as she changed her clothes.
She sipped the delicious coffee, studying him as he stared out toward the horizon.
At this moment, he looked like a normal man.
She kept thinking of him as either partying playboy or DEA informant, but at one point in his life, he’d been neither of those.
He’d been a son and a brother, a schoolboy, maybe a college kid.
What had happened to the person he used to be? Was he still there, under the facade?
Jaz reached for a clean napkin and caught her staring. “What?”
“What…what?” She sipped her drink, pretending she didn’t know what he was talking about.
He shook his head and looked away.
So much for normalcy.
After finishing his croissant and a breakfast sandwich, Jaz wiped his hands and pulled the laptop from his duffel bag. He set it on the table beside his coffee. “I need you to tell me what you remember about the contract to move the Blue Fantasy.”
Kenzie took another sip of coffee, savoring the rich taste before the conversation turned serious. “Like…?”
“Start with how you got the job. Who contacted you?”
“I was contacted by email about six weeks ago. It was a standard inquiry—a yacht owner needed transport from St. Barts to Miami.”
“Who sent it?”
“A yacht management company.” She closed her eyes, trying to recall the exact name on the email. So many companies managed yachts for wealthy owners who used them only occasionally. “Caribbean Yacht Management? Or maybe Island Yacht Services? Something like that.”
“This is a company you work with often?”
“I work with this kind of company a lot. This one in particular?” She shrugged. “I’ve worked with them a couple, maybe three times.”
“You ever deal directly with the yacht owners?”
“Sometimes. Just depends.”
Jaz leaned forward, fingers poised over his keyboard. “I need to know exactly who hired you.”
“It’s probably in my email, but without my phone—”
“You can use mine. But first, I want to know how it works when you’re hired.”
“It’s always pretty straightforward. If there’s a yacht management company, they’re hired to handle all the logistics for the owner. I get the keys, the paperwork, and deliver the boat. Simple.”
“And who did you work with specifically on the Blue Fantasy? Who gave you the keys and—”
“A woman at the marina, Cheri.” Kenzie chose a bite of mango and popped it into her mouth, though she barely tasted it now as her mind focused on Jaz’s questions.
“I know Cheri. She works for the marina.”
“Right. That’s normal. The management company arranges for someone at the marina to be my contact. I get a walkthrough of the yacht, and they hand over the paperwork. All that usually happens the day before.”
“And when you deliver?”
“Same process in reverse. I hand the keys and paperwork to the marina manager at the destination.”
“What’s the benefit of the management company then? What are they doing?”
“They just connect me with the owners, so the owners don’t have to do their own homework finding a crew to transport. I contract with the management company. If there’s a problem, they deal with it so the owners don’t have to.”
“Makes sense.” Jaz’s fingers tapped against his laptop. “So everything with the Blue Fantasy was normal. No red flags.”
“Right.”
“Does the procedure ever change?”
“Well, sure. Sometimes I’m picking up after a repair and get the yacht from a boatyard service manager instead. And then he or she does the walkthrough. But usually—”
“It’s Cheri.”
“Not necessarily her, just someone with the same job. There are multiple marinas on this island, and of course I work all over the Caribbean and Gulf. My jobs don’t all originate on St. Barts.”
“But Cheri has done this before? Given you keys to other yachts?”
“Several times.” Kenzie tried to remember exactly how many. “She’s usually professional, friendly. Nothing seemed off about her.”
Jaz’s expression was unreadable as he typed something into his laptop. “Let me see if I understand this. You get hired by a yacht management company, but you never actually meet anyone from that company in person?”
“They’re just middlemen. The contracts come through email, payment’s wired to my account, and the marina manager handles the physical handoff.”
“You can log into your email from my phone?”
“Should be able to.” Kenzie took the phone he offered, accessed her email account, and searched, scanning through the results. “Here it is.” She angled the phone toward him.
“Caribbean Yacht Management,” he read, then looked up. “Pretty generic.”
“Businesslike, because this is a business.”
“Did you get paid?”
“I always take half up front and half on delivery.” She’d have to return the half she’d received. Except, when the owner had her transporting drugs and nearly got her killed, did he really deserve his money back? Would the cartel leave her a bad Yelp review?
Jaz eyed her across the table as if trying to read her mind. “All the documentation—insurance, registration—seemed legitimate?”
“If they hadn’t, I wouldn’t have taken the job. Nothing raised any alarms.”
“And you’ve worked with this particular company before?”
“Yeah. A few times.” She took the phone back and searched for other emails from the same company, but there were none. “I guess I’m wrong. I’d thought…”
She scanned all her transport orders. Some were from private owners. Some were referrals from marina managers. But almost all had come from management companies. “Island Marine Services,” she read, “Tradewinds Yacht Services, Caribbean Care and Transport. I think that’s the one I was thinking of.”
“All different companies?”
“Of course.” But then she wondered. “I mean, I think so. How would I know?”
“Do they use the same verbiage, the same forms?”
She started clicking through attachments, skimming emails. “Not…exactly.”
He held out his hand, and she gave him the phone, more than a little uncomfortable to have him scrolling through her email.
His expression grew more intense as he studied the screen. “Same format, same generic language, same payment structure.”
“That’s not that unusual. Again, this is a business, and businesses use similar language.”
“Or, it’s a bunch of shell companies made to look like different organizations.” He set the phone aside and tapped on his laptop.
She hated this. Hated it. Had she been a fool to trust these organizations? Her connection with management companies had kept her business afloat. She’d been counseled very early on to take every job she was offered from yacht management companies.
“They’ll be your bread-and-butter,” her mentor had told her. Edwin wasn’t in the business, but he owned a yacht and had spent half his life in the company of sailors.
Edwin had probably never heard of anything like this, drug cartels smuggling their product on private yachts with contract sailors.
Did the owners know what was going on, or were they being played for fools too? Maybe the management companies were the bad guys, and both Kenzie and the yacht owners were being used.
“I’m trying to find the owner of the Blue Fantasy.” Jaz looked at her over his screen. “Any chance you have that information?”
“Yeah.”
His eyes widened like it was the best news he’d heard all day.
“It’s part of the paperwork.”
“Tell me it didn’t go up in flames yesterday.”
“One copy did. I always store my copy before I leave.”
He sat back in his chair. “Let me guess. It’s at your apartment?”
“Sorry to say. But if we can get to it, we’ll find the owners of every yacht I’ve ever transported.”
He smirked. “Assuming it’s still there.”
“It will be.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure. The cartel might have searched your apartment already.”
Why was she surprised to hear that? Why did anything still surprise her at this point? “I might be a sailor, but I’m the daughter of a very paranoid former CIA agent. He’s taught me a few tricks.”