CHAPTER 37
C HAPTER 37
S ometime after midnight, Rae woke from a dream about Cape Fortune.
Such moments still came occasionally, when the past sparked into candle flames that lit her lonely bed. Usually, she woke with an image of Curtis holding the gold doubloon, the two of them shouting their joy to the cloudless sky. The memories always carried into the next day, sometimes longer, leaving her with a unique blend of joy and unshed tears.
Tonight was different.
In this particular dream, she was back inside the Barrett home, standing by the bar with her client. There was a party out on the rear deck, people drinking and talking loudly around a smoking grill. Rae made it a point never to be alone with the man. Even here in her dream, her client’s dark side lurked in the hidden reaches.
In the dream, Barrett wore a New Yorker’s version of Carolina casual. Landon was a skinny man, with oversized hands that were never still. Rae had always suspected his diminutive build held a tensile strength and the speed of a striking snake. His tailored shorts were overlarge for his bony frame, kept up by an alligator belt with a tooled silver buckle. Over this, he wore a loud silk shirt in floral pastels that only heightened the unhealthy cast to his features.
They were seated to either side of the bar, with Rae’s semifake pirate map framed on the wall behind him. In her dream, the map glowed brightly, as if lit from behind. Landon had loved hearing her tales about buccaneers and buried treasure. It was the one time when his nervous energy stilled and he listened with unblinking intensity.
Rae rose from her bed and realized she had left the a/c running. The fact left her unsettled, as if the previous day’s troubles had shoved their way into her night. This time of year, the habit of opening all her windows was a natural part of her daily cycle. If she left the a/c off all day, her upper-floor apartment was an oven when she arrived back. The place then took forever to cool. But nights like these were magic, especially when the breeze came off the ocean. It was a natural part of her nightly routine, cutting off the a/c and opening all her windows before slipping into bed.
She padded to the living room and hit the controls. As she approached the rear windows, an idea began whispering. Rae felt the hairs on her arms lift, not fearfully so much as sparked by the unseen. Her senses were on full alert as she opened the living room’s two windows, then went back to the bedroom and reached for the window latch . . .
When it hit her.
* * *
Rae waited until a few minutes past five to call Amiya. “I’m sorry to wake you.”
“I’d have to be sleeping for that to happen. What is it?”
“I have an idea. Crazy, lunatic, utterly bonkers.”
“Does it have anything to do with the mess that’s robbed me of sleep?”
There was no reason why such a question should send Rae’s heart into overdrive. “Where are you?”
“I spent the night at Daddy’s.”
“Is Curtis there?”
“Huh. No. More’s the pity.”
“I’ve called and texted him a dozen times. He doesn’t answer.”
“Let’s hope he’s sleeping for all three of us. Rae, tell me what’s going on.”
“I’d rather show you. And I need your help. Can you meet me at Cape Fortune?”
* * *
Rae had never been particularly worried about snakes.
But tramping around the Barrett property the hour before full sunrise, while shadows were still deep and the place was utterly quiet, all her childhood boogeymen-fears crept out and slithered. Not to mention gators, which she’d heard all her life didn’t make it this far north. The softest rattle of palm fronds in the dawn wind had her searching for monsters creeping out to swallow her whole.
When she heard tires scrunch down the long drive, she ran out to meet the Land Rover. “What took you so long?”
Amiya rose from the Rover’s front seat. “What are you talking about? I came straight here.”
“That’s impossible. I’ve been waiting hours.” She waved to Holden and his two smiling crew. “You brought reinforcement. Excellent.”
“We also brought coffee,” Holden said.
“Even better. Are you armed?”
“Always. Who needs getting shot?”
Rae gestured toward the rubble-strewn expanse where the house formerly stood. “Anything you see slithering in my direction.”
Amiya retreated toward the car door. “There are snakes?”
“I haven’t seen any. Yet.”
Holden turned to the nearest guard. “You’re hereby volunteered to tromp around the property.”
“Ha.” The guard walked over and handed Rae a steaming plastic mug. “No.”
A young man built like a human tank began passing around power bars. “That is definitely the boss’s job.”
“Not a chance,” Holden replied. “I’m a lead-from-behind kind of boss when it comes to snakes.”
Amiya told Rae, “I am hereby ordering you to tell us what we’re doing here.”
* * *
“There I was,” Rae told them, “standing by my bedroom window, listening to the night. All of a sudden, Landon was right there beside me.”
“You and the money launderer,” Holden said.
“Allegedly. Right.”
“In your bedroom together. Three-thirty in the morning.”
“Just stop, okay. It wasn’t like that.”
“Still,” Holden said, grinning at his mates. “You got to admit, there’s a definite hint of the deviants.”
“You sound like a ten-year-old,” Amiya said. To Rae, “Then what?”
“All the time we talked about pirates and buried treasure,” Rae said. “Barrett never went hunting himself. Not once.”
Holden said, “Maybe he couldn’t swim.”
“No idea. And it doesn’t matter.” Rae never took sugar with her coffee. Now her mug was sweetened by too much sugar and condensed milk. Somehow the combination tasted right. Perfect. “What if he saw himself as a modern-day version of those same buccaneers?”
“News flash,” Amiya said. “Barrett’s safe was ripped out. And the rest of the house isn’t there any longer.”
Holden inspected the two ladies. “Okay. I’m lost.”
Rae turned from the rising sun and inspected the empty lot. “Something I haven’t thought of in years. Barrett brought in a contractor from Jersey. A number of owners use builders they know. What made this totally unique was how this guy didn’t work on the house. He poured the foundation and vanished.”
The four of them formed a motionless tableau.
Rae went on, “He came down, dug the hole, set the steel supports in place, poured the concrete, and left.”
Amiya said, “That is definitely strange.”
“I know, right?”
Holden asked, “Who built the house?”
“Local guy. He died from a heart attack during Covid.” Rae waved that aside. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Matters to him,” Holden said.
Amiya told the security chief, “Let’s try and focus here, okay?” To Rae, “The foundation.”
“Why would he bring in this guy from Jersey, unless—”
“He’s hiding something,” Amiya said.
“Maybe, yeah. It’s what woke me up.” Rae stared at the house that was no more as she told them about the destruction they had found, the video they shot for the judge.
Amiya was with her now. “You think the wall safe was just a decoy.”
“ ‘Think’ is too strong a word,” Rae replied.
“A modern-day buccaneer buries treasure under his own house, and then vanishes,” Amiya said. “This is just so totally off-the-wall crazy good.”
“ Maybe he did,” Rae corrected. “Call it one chance in a hundred billion.”
Holden said, “And here I thought this was going to be just another boring security gig.”
“There’s a problem.” Rae pointed to the garden shovel and kitchen broom. “That’s all I have for tools.”
In response, two of Holden’s crew walked back to the Rover and drove away.
Amiya demanded, “Where are they going?”
“Doing what they do best,” Holden replied. “Making things appear out of thin air.”
Ten minutes later, they returned, the SUV’s hold so jammed with gear the rear gate stood open. The grinning pair started handing around industrial-strength gloves, shovels, construction-grade rakes, wire push brooms.
The human tank told Rae, “You owe us three hundred bucks.”
“Probably best if you don’t ask why,” Holden added. “Our accountants pretend blindness to things we stick in the miscellaneous column.”
In addition to the equipment they had bribed off a night watchman, the guy had also offered them a cheerful description of demolishing the house. The watchman had actually called it a gleeful day’s work. Being given just twelve hours to tear down the home meant all the tedious bits were set aside. There was no time for salvage. Speed was everything. The crew had been offered triple pay, plus bonus, for completing the job by sundown. Which they did by employing all the heavy equipment they had on hand—a dozer, two excavation diggers, and a half-dozen dump trucks. They were done by four.
Over where the support columns had been tilted by wind and the waterway’s flood, the foundation was riven by deep cracks. Otherwise, the concrete slab was largely intact. All the support beams had been sawed off and carted away, leaving dark stubs rising six inches or so from the foundation. Holden and his crew got busy shoveling and raking away the blanket of rubble, while Amiya and Rae followed behind with the construction brooms.
The sun rose; and with it, the heat. The concrete slab became a reflector for both. An hour or so after full sunrise, the wind died altogether. Every push of the broom lifted more dust and grit that drifted in the still air. Rae became drenched with sweat and coated in grime. Holden passed around bandanas, which she and Amiya tied around their noses and mouths. The cloth helped. Not a lot. But some.
Then she realized Amiya was humming.
“You can’t possibly be having fun,” Rae needled.
Amiya timed her words to pushing the broom. “This is so much better than not sleeping.”
Push.
“And being captured by the helpless feeling of losing a battle.”
Push.
“I’d pay money to be here.”
Push.
“If I had any.”
Push.
“Which I don’t.”
Push.
“Even if this is all we gain from today, it’s enough.”
Push.
Holden tossed another shovel load of rubble off the slab. He told his crew, “Let’s all pretend we didn’t hear that bit about the boss being broke.”
Half an hour later, Rae was beyond ready to call a break, admit defeat, say they needed to get back and clean up and ready themselves for what would definitely be an awful meeting with Ajeet. Anything to get off that slab and out of that baking heat.
Then Amiya managed to sing the words “I think I’ve found something!”