Chapter Seventeen
Raquelle was a bundle of nerves as she reached Knotter Marina and found a place to park. She wondered if Eddie had stayed put or if he’d been scared off by real or imagined threats and bolted away, leaving her in the lurch.
She took out her cell phone and saw the voicemail from Landon, who undoubtedly would not have approved of her going solo to meet her brother.
Maybe it wasn’t the smartest thing to do, with Eddie wanted by both the FBI (as a CHS vulnerable to the whims of some bad actors) and those wanting to silence him for good.
But I had to go with my gut instincts on this one, Raquelle mused, sure Landon would understand and respect that. She listened to the voicemail:
“Raquelle, thanks for letting me know that Eddie’s alive and well—and wants to meet you at the marina.
I’d strongly advise that you wait till I get there.
I think someone may have put a GPS tracker on your car, hoping to be led to your brother.
If so, it could place you both in danger.
Call me when you get this message. I’m on my way there. Please, be careful…”
Raquelle considered whether or not Fred Davenport might have placed a GPS tracker on her Infiniti when he was lurking around the vehicle on campus—with those responsible for Davenport’s death now being able to track her whereabouts in search of Eddie.
Should I go look for it on my car? she asked herself, sighing.
While grappling with that and about to call Landon for further clarification, Raquelle heard a familiar voice say in an uneven tone, “You came…”
She turned to see Eddie standing there. He was wearing a blue cap and dark shades along with a brown corduroy shacket over a white crewneck T-shirt, jeans, and black hiking shoes. He was sporting a five o’clock shadow beard on his face.
“Of course I did,” she told him levelly, as though he had given her a choice.
“Thanks.” His eyes darted in both directions nervously. “Let’s walk…away from everyone…and then we can talk.”
“Okay.” Raquelle walked beside him toward the end of the pier that extended out onto the lake on both sides. It allowed them a bird’s-eye view of others coming and going.
For now—not wanting Eddie to freak out if she called Landon to tell him where they were—Raquelle put her cell phone back inside the pocket of her slim jeans. They were worn with an almond-colored chenille sweater and comfort shoes. She had her hair in a low ponytail.
Removing his sunglasses, Eddie regarded her and asked casually, as if a routine conversation starter, “So, how have you been?”
“Worried to death about you,” Raquelle said, meeting his brown eyes squarely. “More than once—with zero communication between us after the boat explosion—I feared you were dead.”
“I get that,” he muttered. “My bad. I’m sorry I put you through everything that I did.”
“I’m just glad you’re all right.” She decided with a once-over that he didn’t appear to be the worse for wear in spite of living life on the run. “Why did you drop out of sight instead of contacting me or Landon for help…?”
Eddie’s shoulders slumped. “I really screwed up,” he offered contritely.
“Made some bad choices that I wished I could take back. That includes selling some Native American art that I knew wasn’t legit—but I needed the money.
When Landon offered me a way out by becoming his CI and being let off the hook—I took it.
” He sucked in a breath. “But after the people I was working with discovered I was feeding Landon information, they came after me. When I was nearly blown up with my pontoon, I panicked—not sure if there was a mole within the FBI or who I could trust… I didn’t want to get you involved and become a target too, so I fled—”
“To the rez,” Raquelle finished his story. “Jay called me.” When she saw Eddie furrow his brow, as if this was an act of betrayal, she told her brother, “He was worried about you—and felt I had a right to know, after visiting the reservation in search of you.”
“I know,” he spoke equably. “I saw you there, with Landon—but I just wasn’t ready to see either of you at that time.”
She gazed at him, questioning. “And you are now…?”
“Yeah. I was tiring of having to continuously look over my shoulder.” Eddie’s chin jutted.
“I want my life back and am prepared to tell Landon everything I know and give him what I’ve gathered to make his case against a dirty art dealer and his associates.
But first, I needed to see you to try and explain what happened—if you’d let me… ”
“I’m glad you did, Eddie—and thank you for coming back to the surface.” Raquelle’s eyes welled with tears, and she hugged her brother.
“Love you too, sis,” he spoke emotionally, hugging her back.
She looked him in the eye and said straightforwardly, “Now, we need to get you out of here. Landon thinks that a GPS tracker may have been put on my car, meaning I could have been followed here by—”
Eddie said swiftly, “We’ll take my car…”
“Okay.” Raquelle didn’t bother to ask where he got the vehicle, knowing that his Audi Q4 Sportback e-tron had been impounded by the authorities as part of the investigation into his disappearance.
Beyond that, she was sure that Landon would soon be at the marina to assist in getting Eddie out of harm’s way.
But perhaps not soon enough for them to wait it out.
They left the pier and were headed down the dock walkway when they were suddenly approached by a tall and bearded thirtysomething man who was stocky and had black hair in a hipster fade style and dark eyes. Raquelle noted that he was holding a gun with a silencer—and pointing it at Eddie.
“You’re a hard man to track down, Eddie—or should I call you snitch?” the man said in a deep and hardened voice.
Raquelle turned to look at her brother, who responded tartly, “Guess you just didn’t try hard enough, Yusef.”
“You know him?” She eyed Eddie and then the other man.
“Yeah. His name’s Yusef Abercrombie,” Eddie answered matter-of-factly. “He works for Ivan Pimentel, the dirty art dealer who wants me dead.”
Both names rang a bell to Raquelle as she’d heard them mentioned more than once by Landon in regards to Eddie missing in action and the art-crimes investigation. “This can’t be happening,” she thought out loud.
“I’m afraid it is.” Abercrombie peered at her, then turned to Eddie. “Welcome back from the should-be dead,” he said sarcastically. “The man I hired to get the job done was an utter failure. My mistake. He’s left me to do the dirty work for him—and clean up his mess…”
Eddie sneered. “So, what, you plan to shoot me here at the marina, where any and everyone can see…?”
“If I have to,” Abercrombie retorted, then glared at Raquelle. “Your sister will be the first to take a bullet if you fail to cooperate, Eddie. I have no qualms about killing her, trust me.”
“Just let her go,” Eddie pleaded with him. “It’s me that you want—and here I am.”
“Yeah, here you are.” Abercrombie regarded him with contempt.
“Unfortunately, you don’t get to call the shots.
We’re all going to leave the marina together.
Once we get where we’re going and you give us what we want, only then can your sister—Professor Jernigan—walk away…
” He shot her a cold stare. “The choice is yours, Eddie…”
Raquelle was under no illusion that Abercrombie had any intention of letting her—much less, Eddie—come out of this alive to talk about it.
As she was now a victim of their abduction and witness to Abercrombie’s plans to murder her brother, there was no way Ivan Pimentel’s enforcer would ever leave her to implicate them in Eddie’s murder.
I have to try and buy some time, Raquelle told herself as she glanced at her brother, who had been put in an almost impossible situation that she was at least partially responsible for.
She fixed Abercrombie’s face and asked pointblank, “How did you find us anyway? Was it the GPS tracker that Fred Davenport—your hired assassin—put on my car…?” She watched as Abercrombie reacted with surprise as to her knowledge of this, thanks to Landon.
“You know about that, huh?” Abercrombie made no attempts to deny this. “Since it makes no difference at this stage—yeah, I took ownership of the tracking device in hoping to locate your brother—once Davenport’s services were no longer needed.”
“So, it was you who killed him with his own gun while trying to make it look like Fred Davenport died from a self-inflicted shot to the head?” Raquelle pressed and thought, Keep him talking.
Abercrombie laughed. “Guess the cat’s out of the bag now—thanks to Agent Briscoe and his ties to both of you.
” He kept the gun aimed at them. “Davenport’s repeated failures to do what he was paid to do—starting with taking out a stoolie by blowing up his boat—left me with no choice but to remove Fred from the picture—permanently.
Now, enough of this chit-chat. Let’s go… ”
As they proceeded down the walkway, Eddie was clearly hoping to find a way out of this.
He said brusquely to their abductor, “Killing me—us—won’t change anything.
The deed is already done. The FBI has more than enough to put you, Ivan, and others involved in art theft and forgery away for a long time.
You’d be smart to just give yourself up. ”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Abercrombie chuckled wryly. “Not going to happen. The way I see it—and Ivan feels the same way—without your testimony, the case falls apart and we walk. Not too complicated.”
It’s complicated enough, given the multiple dead bodies they would leave in their wake, Raquelle thought, herself included among the casualties.
She mused about the Witness Security Program possibility that had been mentioned for Eddie as a means to escape being prevented from ever testifying.
Of course, it would never come to pass should Abercrombie get his wish to take her brother’s life beforehand.