Chapter 30
Chapter 30
J ones knew enough about boats to realize this one was about to leave. Outside the storm raged hard, tossing the vessel to and fro, even as it was moored. Out on open water it would be misery at least and a death sentence at worst. They must be desperate to make their escape if they were willing to risk it. Perhaps Ribs and Victoria were closing in, perhaps the gangsters only thought they were. Whatever the reason, they were about to make their getaway on the ocean with a cargo hold full of precious little innocents. Jones didn’t realize he was standing and striding toward the boat until Carol trotted to catch up, tucking her hand in his.
He stopped short, reining in his wild emotions, torn between protecting Carol and protecting the girls on the boat.
“Obviously I’m helping you,” she yelled, giving him the Gum Lady hard stare. There was no time to argue with that stare, even if he had a chance of winning. He gave a curt nod. “What’s our plan?”
Jones looked at the boat. Planning, his arch nemesis. “To not die?” he tried.
“Good plan, I like it,” Carol said. She took a step forward and stopped short, followed by Jones. The leader of the gang, the tiny man, departed the dock, got into a car, and sped away. That meant not only were they really getting ready to depart with the girls, but their leader was smart enough not to go with them.
“If I can get on that boat, I can take them out,” Jones mused, albeit in a yell.
“Sounds like you need a distraction,” Carol yelled back. She straightened her rain-slicked hair and pushed back her shoulders, taking a step forward.
Jones held her back. “What’s your plan?”
She patted his chest. “You have your special talents, David, I have mine.”
His eyes scraped her up and down. “That’s what scares me.”
“How much time do you need?” she asked.
“A minute to get on the boat unseen,” he said.
“Done and done,” she replied and headed off. Jones skulked behind her, keeping to the shadows. It was a risk, and he was tense. They could shoot first and ask questions later, but Carol had trusted him. He would afford her the same level of trust. For a few beats he got caught up watching as she stalked onto the boat like she owned it, seemingly unaware she was still dressed in only her underwear. He was certain he wouldn’t be able to hear anything besides gunshots, especially with the raging storm, but the acoustics of the boat made everything inside echo. He could hear, for instance, the sad weeping of children and the guards attempting to hush them with angry words. And then Carol spoke.
“Who is in charge here?” she demanded, and THE TONE had never sounded so imperious. If Jones wasn’t so intent on his own task, he would have rubbed his hands together with anticipation and glee.
On the boat everything seemed to come to a complete standstill. Even the girls had stopped their weeping and seemed to be holding their collective breath. A man murmured something. Jones couldn’t hear what it was as he scaled the side of the boat, but it sounded confused.
“I don’t think you understand,” Carol said in answer to whatever it was. “You cannot go. It’s impossible. I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m here to tell you. I’m from the Board of Departures, and you failed to turn in any of your relevant paperwork for this boat. If you think you can leave the dock before signing the proper paperwork, you are SADLY mistaken.”
There was silence again. Jones wasn’t certain what it said about the state of modern governance that the only thing men feared more than a man with a gun was a woman with a bureaucratic quagmire from which they might never recover.
One of the captors muttered something else unintelligible. “No, I will not leave, not until I speak to your manager.”
Jones couldn’t help it, he chuckled. But it was short lived because he could feel it, the mounting tension of a coming conflict. Jones made his way to the engine room, disconnected what needed to be done, and made his way to the storage hold.
“Don’t touch me,” he heard Carol say, and that was that. There was no need to burst into the room, but he did it anyway, counting the heads of the people he’d need to take down. Four hostiles. Don’t look at the victims, he reminded himself. At this point they were a distraction. Carol covered them, herding them into a corner and talking to them in soothing tones. If she had her bug-out bag, she’d be doling candy, he knew.
Two of the goons, the original two who took Jones and Carol to the shed island, were armed. The other two were not, probably relying on their even greater size for strength. Life in combat didn’t always work out well, especially when everything happened at once, but in this case training and surprise trumped confidence and puffy muscles. Jones broke the arm of the first man, grabbed his gun as it fell, and shot the second armed man in the shoulder, all within thirty seconds of entering the room. The remaining uninjured hostiles piled on him at once, knocking heads with each other in the process. If his teammates were there, someone definitely would have laughed at the loud “CLUNK” they made. As it was, Jones wasn’t laughing when one of them jabbed his kidneys and another clocked his jaw.
As he’d thought, they weren’t as well trained as they were overly bulked. For a few glorious seconds he backed out of harm’s way and let them battle each other in their haste to strike a few blows. And while their punches didn’t feel like tickles, neither were they hard enough or skilled enough to be disabling. Unlike Jones’s well-placed hits that left the first man retching, the second bent over and gasping.
He stood at the edge of the scrum, panting, assessing the threat, trying to decide what to do next. He needed to get the girls and Carol off the boat before the next threat arrived, one that might be more lethal for all of them.
Too late, though. The threat arrived, more lethal than Jones could handle. Fortunately for him, this one was on his side.
“What’s up,” Ribs said casually, strolling into the hold with unhurried ease. His eyes fell to the four men in various states of distress. “You didn’t save me any? Greedy, Jones.”
“I didn’t know you were coming,” Jones replied. He sounded exasperated, but it was a farce. He was relieved on a level that can only come from being with someone you trusted as much as he trusted his friends. Whatever happened next, Ribs had his back and would cover Carol and the little girls, too.
“When have I ever missed a party this good?” Ribs asked, toeing one of the half-conscious men on the floor. “Victoria and I were taking care of their boss. He’s in custody, at least temporarily, until enough money changes hands and he’s back out again.”
“How’d you find us?” Jones asked, stretching his neck to ease the kinks. Despite stretching beforehand, he was going to be sore tomorrow. What he needed, he realized, was a speed bag. It was way too long since he’d practiced his punches. He was going a little soft, and that was unacceptable.
“Blue,” Ribs replied. “He did a little poking around with comms and satelites.”
“He always knows how to find the best parties,” Jones agreed.
For the first time they let their attention drift to the muddle of humanity in the corner, Carol surrounded by about ten little girls, aged from about four to eight. She hovered over them, henlike. Now that the threat had been neutralized, protective ferocity had morphed to a sad sort of worry.
“Hello, Carol, darling. You’re looking good,” Ribs said, then took off his shirt and tossed it to her.
“Ribs, always a pleasure. More so now,” she added, giving his shirtless form an exaggerated wink as she deftly caught his shirt.
“I love her,” Ribs muttered softly, smiling.
So do I, Jones thought. He didn’t know how it was possible. He was certain he had much more to learn about her. But somehow in a way he didn’t understand, he knew he’d found his person.
The locals arrived, led by Victoria, quite literally. She barreled in front of a bevy of officers who stared behind her a bit stunned, the way men sometimes are when they learn a beautiful woman can not only speak but also wield a weapon. It was clearly her scene, and neither Jones nor Ribs had any desire to divest her of that. In fact it was kind of fun to sit back and watch her bark orders. At last her nastiness had found a productive outlet on a group of fawning policemen who seemed more than happy to do her bidding. Jones and Ribs sat side by side, smiling in amusement, glad they weren’t the ones hopping around like bunnies as Victoria alternated between French and English, snapping at underlings to bring her a coffee and precisely two cigarettes, unfiltered.
He was so occupied with the scene, Jones momentarily forgot everything else, including Carol. When he snapped to attention and decided to find her, she was nowhere to be found. He asked everyone, but no one remembered seeing her.
“There was another woman here?” one of the locals asked.
Jones sighed impatiently. Had he ever been that daft, that blinded by the sight of a woman like Victoria? Yes, came the ready answer. Well, no more. The blinders were off. Victoria was interesting and complex, but good luck to the man who decided to delve in and start plucking at threads. Jones now understood exactly what he wanted and needed, someone in his lane, someone who matched the soft simplicity of his grandparents’ Nebraska farm. If only he could figure out where she went.
Finally, after making his way through the chain of locals, he reached Victoria. “Have you seen Carol?”
“She went away,” Victoria replied, waving away the puff of smoke she’d just expelled. Even though it came from her mouth, she seemed to have no patience for it. And neither did she take pleasure in the cigarette, if the way she angrily stubbed it against the wall was any indication. Even the way she did that was alluring, like some sort of ancient muse. Jones could easily get sucked in again, could find himself staring at her, mesmerized, as he tried to figure out what made her tick. He shook his head, willing himself to focus.
“What do you mean away? Where did she go?”
“Away, back to America.” Victoria flicked her fingers impatiently in the vague direction of America.
“No,” Jones said. “She wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye, without talking to me.”
Victoria smiled at him with genuine amusement, for the first time. “And why is that? Do you think you are so special? She’s a tourist, here today, gone tomorrow. And even if she weren’t, what is love? Merely a distraction.”
“A distraction from what?” Jones asked.
“Real life,” Victoria returned.
“What is real life without love?” Jones countered.
She lit her second cigarette, the amusement in her smile fading to cynicism. “So much easier.”
“Come on, I’ll help you find Carol,” Ribs said, clapping a hand on Jones’s shoulder. It worked to break the trance so he could stop staring at the enigma that was Victoria.
“What’s her deal?” he asked Ribs after they’d moved out of Victoria’s orb.
“She’s been wounded by life,” Ribs said, sounding grownup and wise for a man currently watching a Shirley Temple video on his phone.
They stepped outside and Jones squinted against the harsh glare of the sun which seemed to be shining brighter now, after the storm, as if it had to make amends for its brief lapse and disappearance from their lives. “Dude, what the heck,” he said, shading his eyes with his hand. “You know how creepy it is to watch that after we just rescued a bunch of little girls?”
“It’s Charlotte, dummy. It’s her dance recital.” He faced his phone toward Jones, who didn’t know Shimmer and Jordan’s daughter well enough to pick her out by sight, but it didn’t matter because all the little girls were adorable.
“Did Shimmer send that to you? I thought he was in Egypt.”
“He is. Jordan sent it to both of us,” Ribs explained. “She keeps me updated, considers herself my tether to real life.”
“Huh,” Jones replied, only half paying attention. He scanned the horizon, but there were no hints of Carol. “Do you think I’m doing the right thing here? Or should I let this go and move on?”
“Jones, I think if you don’t take your shot, you’re going to regret it forever. Jump. Smooth the landing later.”
“I barely know her,” Jones said, heart thumping.
“Sometimes you can see someone through a window and know they are your person, the person you will love for the rest of your life.”
His phone chirped with a text. Jones caught sight of his screensaver and squinted. He held out his hand. Ribs placed the phone in it. A picture of Shimmer, Jordan and Ribs stared back at him, Jordan between them, her face upturned toward Shimmer with a smile. Jones noticed the thing he’d overlooked a thousand times before, the way Ribs’s smile was trained on Jordan.
He stared at his friend who stared back, daring him to say something.
“Gaines,” Jones said, tone serious.
“What?” Ribs replied, tone defiant.
“What did we call you before the shark bite? I can’t remember.”
Ribs grinned. “Losses. Ribs was an upgrade.”
“I’ve always just been Jones.” It bothered him, that. Everyone else got a cool or funny handle. Shimmer, for instance, earned his name when he burned before his wedding and made the supreme mistake of trying to use an abundance of coconut oil to soothe it while on assignment.
“Because, Jonesie, no one ever found anything about you we wanted to make fun of. Now, David , go and get your girl.”
Jones glanced at Ribs’s phone, still in his hand. Jordan’s face stared back at him. “Ribs, don’t do the same,” he replied handing it over.
“Only in my dreams,” Ribs replied, tucking his phone in his pocket as they headed for the resort.