Chapter 15 #2
“Bad news is by the time we got to the airport we discovered they’d taken a private jet—a Gulfstream G650.
I understand it’s an ultra-long range model, the kind with enough range to make it all the way to Martha’s Vineyard.
And fast. They should be arriving any minute if they haven’t already landed. ”
David paused. Dane stopped breathing, but he held Shana’s eyes. She didn’t blink, but her eyes changed from emotion-filled to hard green chips. No one else in the room did more than breathe, but they were breathing heavier than before. David continued.
“We’ll be on a fight leaving in forty-five minutes and not arriving until late evening.
Sorry we won’t be any help in this confrontation.
I called the governor—he’ll need to wait until something happens before he can convince anyone to detain Floyd, but he may be able to get someone to snag Henrique on an active warrant.
Probably have to let Erico go and whoever else is in their entourage unless they have some kind of file.
The governor will work on that—getting the warrants. We’ll have the state police—”
“Keep the state police out of this. No need to get any of them killed. I’ll call when we need them.”
There was dead air and a still dread filling it. No one took a breath—at least Dane’s chest felt too tight to suck in any of that bad air.
Shana spoke up, dispelling the pall. “I’ll make sure we call when we need back-up. I promise. Watch your back.”
David scoffed at that and ended the call.
“I should at least put my men on alert—” Cap said.
“No,” Dane said. He stared Cap down a beat. They both knew it would be dangerous. “We’ll call them in when we have Floyd dead to rights.”
Shana said, “You two need to disappear.” She pointed at Sassy and Ronnie. If Dane figured they’d be scared out of their pants and running for the door given their past harrowing experiences at moments like this, he’d have been wrong.
But Dane was hardly ever wrong about people and he knew he’d have to toss them out bodily or at least threaten bodily harm to them, their family members or their cats, before they’d cooperate.
“Call the airport and check on—” Dane began.
“Already on it,” Acer said with his phone to his ear.
“Where’s your stash of weapons?” Oscar said.
All the normal boisterous jocularity was gone from his voice and manner.
He understood this was more serious than an ambush in Rio.
This was home turf. An advantage, but also a disadvantage.
There was nowhere else to go. They needed to defend themselves here.
At all costs. Dane’s gaze gravitated to Shana, who was trying to shove Sassy toward the back door. And not gently.
“And who the hell do you think is going to take care of your cats if anything happens to you?” Shana said.
Dane smiled—on the inside. Her voice sounded three octaves higher than normal.
Maybe Sassy didn’t recognize the level of urgency in the normally icy cool Shana.
It caused Dane’s heart to skip a beat then race ahead.
He turned to Oscar. “In the basement.” He tossed the man the keys to the locker and told him where to find it. Then he turned to Ronnie.
“What’s my assignment, boss? I can be a lookout—”
Dane covered the ground to where the kid stood between the dining room and kitchen and grabbed him by the arm. He used his momentum to drag Ronnie, in spite of the kid’s dragging his rubber-soled canvas sneakers across the old linoleum floor, to the back door. Cap pulled the door open for him.
Acer slipped his phone in his pocket and called out, “Dane. No time for fooling around.”
Dane stopped where he was—about to shove Ronnie out the door. He lasered in on Acer and prompted an explanation with mental telepathy—or the look in his eyes.
“They landed and ‘commandeered’ two taxis. The airport manager’s words. They had eight men and several large heavy-looking bags.”
“When?”
“Ten minutes ago.”
Dane looked at the back door and reflexively pulled Ronnie back from it, allowing the outside screen door to screech on the hinges until it banged against the wood frame.
He swung the heavy inside door shut and slammed his back against it as he harnessed the million thoughts running through his head into some semblance of a prioritized list.
“You—to the basement.” He shoved Ronnie back through the kitchen toward the hall. He looked at Shana. He didn’t need to tell her what to do. She’d grabbed Sassy by the shoulders now and shoved her in the same direction.
“You two hide in the basement and protect each other and call the state police in when we give you the signal.” She flipped the phone from her pocket and gave it to Sassy as Dane opened the door and the two were shoved through it.
Oscar was heading up in the other direction with two bags and they squeezed past each other until he emerged and Dane slammed the door closed behind him.
That was priority one. He knew there was anywhere from two minutes to zero seconds to prepare.
A phone rang and they all turned to Cap. He slipped it from his pocket, put it to his ear and said, “Governor.” Cap put Peter on speakerphone.
“I called ATF and the FBI. No one has a live warrant. Not even on Henrique Tavares.”
The bottom fell out of the room. It went from dark and cloudy to tornado-swirling skies in the short span it took for Peter to say twenty-four words.
Dane said, “None of them have done anything yet officially—especially not Floyd—since Oscar was never kidnapped. We can’t prove Floyd was responsible for kidnapping me and Shana.”
Peter said, “Maybe he wasn’t responsible. Oscar—what do you think?”
“I still need some convincing.” Oscar met Dane’s eyes, unapologetic.
“Even if we could prove with your testimony that Henrique Tavares kidnapped you and threw you in a dungeon—” Cap squinted at him “—and that Floyd beat you up, that was in Brazil. Outside our jurisdiction.”
“I agree with you both,” Peter said.
Dane felt the anger vibrating in Peter’s voice.
“We have nothing on him yet except your personal accusations.” Peter added in a quieter voice, “I can’t go to my contact at the CIA with that.
We need something more solid.” What Peter didn’t say, but Dane—and everyone else in the room—understood was that they would need to play the pigeons and let Floyd and Tavares make a move on them.
And hope to hell they could escape unscathed when it happened.
Dane felt the chill in his blood begin at his core and spread over him. He said, “Floyd Parker will know all this. He will have thought it all through and come to the same conclusions.”
Dane didn’t need to say out loud that Floyd would not walk into their trap with guns roaring and hand them a case against him. He’d convince Tavares of the merits of patience as well. Henrique Tavares was not the idiot his nephews were. He would be willing to bargain for Aldo’s release from prison.
“He’s not going to let us play pigeon and get caught with his pants down. Neither Floyd nor Henrique Tavares will want to come after us with guns blazing so the authorities can bring them in.”
“I’m confident you’ll come up with some way to get them. Call me when you do.” The governor ended the call. Cap slipped his phone back in its belt holster.
“Get Sassy and Ronnie out of the basement,” Dane said to Shana.
“There’s not going to be any attack like in Rio.
They’ll be subtler here. I should have realized that.
” She eyed him like she wanted to slap him, but after a quick glance around the kitchen, she turned and did as she was asked.
The slam of the basement door behind her made him smile in spite of everything. She hated when he bossed her around.
“You think he’ll strike at night or set up surveillance and—” Acer began, but he stopped speaking when the sound of another phone ringing caught everyone’s attention.
It was Dane’s phone. Not the one Acer had given him after he and Shana had escaped the Tavares compound dungeon, it was the one that Floyd had given him around the same time.
He slipped the phone from the back pocket of his cargo pants and motioned to everyone for quiet and to listen in.
The circle of men tightened around him. He had a flash of being in a huddle on the football field when he was a teen—before he’d given it up for surfing.
Dane put the phone to his ear and swiped the screen with his thumb, bringing an abrupt halt to the ringing.
“Floyd,” he said.
“Nice island you got here.” This was Floyd’s not so subtle message to let him know he’d invaded Dane’s home turf.
Dane said nothing. He’d wait the man out.
Dane heard his wall clock ticking. In the next moment, the silence was broken by Shana opening the basement door and reentering the hall to the kitchen with Sassy and Ronnie, their excited voices high.
“You at home?” Floyd asked.
“No.” Dane caught Shana’s glance and she put her arms out to stop her charges and shush them with a gesture and meaningful look. She’d make a formidable mother someday. There was another silence as Floyd waited and Dane waited longer.
“We have some unfinished business,” Floyd finally said.
Dane again remained silent. He could hear Floyd’s breathing. He could hear a pin drop in his kitchen. He kept his eyes on Shana’s. There was no reason for it, but staring into her intense green eyes kept him steady.
“Meet me at the Lucky Parrot in ten minutes. Bring Shana George. No one else within five hundred yards. Not David Young, not Antonio Rizoni, not Captain Lynch or any of his staties—not even Chief Dan O’Keefe. No one else but you and Shana. Clock’s ticking.” He disconnected.
“He knows the players but he thinks David and O’Keefe are here,” Cap said.
“That’s Floyd showing off,” Oscar said. “It tells me he’s still in touch with the CIA, either officially or via a friend unofficially. But he’s not completely on the mark with his intel.”
“He didn’t mention Acer,” Dane said.
“He didn’t mention me or Sassy either,” Ronnie squeaked.
“Don’t get any ideas, kid. We need to get you out of here.”
“You don’t have time to waste,” Cap said. “Our best chance is to meet him and lull him into thinking we’re negotiating with him.”
“It’s a goddamn trap. I don’t like it,” Oscar said as he took a step toward Shana.
“We can take care of ourselves.” Dane turned to Cap. “I agree, but Floyd’s not going to bail if we’re a few minutes late.”
“He implied that he’d know if we accompanied you—He may have some of the men in his party covering this house and us,” Cap said.
“I doubt it since his intel was way off, but we’ll be cautious. Acer, you’ll need to get out through the basement window and check the perimeter.”
“I’ll go with him. Cover more ground. And I have an idea of what to look for,” Oscar said.
“I’ll cover your back at the Lucky Parrot,” Cap said.
“No one is coming with us to the Lucky Parrot, but we will be wearing body cameras so you’ll feel like you’re there with us.
” He winked at Shana. Her green eyes didn’t wink or blink, but she turned and went for the hall closet where he kept the equipment.
“You can wait just outside his 500-yard perimeter.” Dane went to his gun drawer, but there were no guns. He looked at Ronnie.
Ronnie’s eyes went wide. “Dude, I couldn’t replace your gun—she wouldn’t let me—” He pointed at Sassy.
“Never mind.”
Oscar had dumped the bag of goodies from the basement locker on the dining table. Dane went to it now and found what he needed in the zipper compartment. One Glock 17 for him and Shana’s backup Century Arms CZ 82.