A Quarter for a Kiss Read online

  “Eli, you scared me to death,” I cried. “Do you understand that you may never, ever die?”

  “I’ll try to live forever, sugar,” he said, “but I can’t make any promises.”

  “At least not this time. Not now.”

  “No, not now,” he agreed. “My heart’s pumping strong—I know that because there’s this little blonde nurse who gives me my sponge bath, and—ow!”

  I could hear Stella in the background.

  “A joke,” Eli said. “It was a joke. I only have eyes for you, Stel.”

  Over the line, I thought I could detect the sound of a kiss.

  “Sorry to break up the love fest,” I said, “but you got us in quite a mess down here. I’ve got some big questions for you.”

  “Yeah, I want to know what’s going on. Is Nadine safe? Is she okay?”

  “That’s the first thing you want to know?” I asked. “You get shot by a sniper, make it out of a coma, and the first thing you want to know is how Nadine is doing?”

  “Callie, tell me she’s still alive.”

  “She’s still alive,” I said. “But she doesn’t need protecting from anybody, Eli. She’s a criminal. She’s about to go to jail.”

  “All right,” he replied. “Just make sure they understand she can’t go in under Nadine Peters. She probably can’t go in under Dianne Streep, either. It’s time to change her identity again.”

  “Eli, who is she hiding from?”

  He coughed a bit and then sipped some water before speaking again, his voice a little less vibrant than before.

  “A man named Victor Rushkin,” he rasped. “He was her supervisor at the NSA—and the mastermind behind a vast network of Russian spies. He recruited her directly, and when they were caught, she turned state’s evidence. Her testimony incriminated people at all levels. All levels. She got protected—he got forty years at Leavenworth. Now she’s certain there’s a new contract on her head straight from him.”

  “But why are you sympathetic to her?” I asked. “Eli, she betrayed you. She betrayed our country. You shot her, for goodness’ sake.”

  “Callie,” he said, his voice sounding weaker. “Don’t you understand? A couple months ago, when I took photos of her on that ferry and then later brought them in to the NSA, I opened a great big can of worms. Only a handful of people knew she was alive. I started asking questions and somehow those photos made it to the wrong person. This may have happened decades ago, but these people she turned on have not forgotten, nor forgiven. Nadine told me that ever since I started snooping around and she realized she had been made, her death warrant was as good as signed. She said every time she starts her car, she braces herself for an explosion. Every time she walks through a crowd, she expects to be stabbed or shot.”

  “When did she tell you that? When did she talk to you?”

  “The day I was shot she came here, to Cocoa Beach. I was down at the beach. You know that park where they have the wooden walkways and the little covered picnic tables? That’s where I always rest after my walk. I was sitting there, catching my breath, when a woman came walking up. It was Nadine.”

  He went on to describe their meeting there. She had come, she said, because she wanted him to stop what he was doing—stop investigating her, stop asking questions about her. Yes, she was alive, but now she would have to disappear again, this time for good, thanks to him.

  “If she dies, it’s my fault. If Rushkin kills her, then I might as well have been the one to pull the trigger. By trying to get some simple information for myself, I may have signed her death warrant.”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s not your fault, Eli,” I said. “You couldn’t have known. We reap what we sow. She’s an art thief now, you know. I just saw her make a three-million-dollar sale of stolen artifacts.”

  That seemed to quiet him for a moment.

  “She’s a legitimate art dealer,” he said defensively.

  “She’s also an illegitimate one,” I replied.

  He sat with that, the silence crackling between us.

  “I don’t know why I should be surprised,” he said finally. “She never did like following the rules.”

  Eli gave the phone to Stella and we talked a few minutes more. She was elated at his recovery, confused by the things he had told her, and probably even a bit concerned about the state of their marriage. Eli had kept Nadine a secret from all of us—including Stella. I urged her to forgive him but also to insist on complete honesty from now on. He may have had the right to keep the story of his first love to himself, but as a married man, he hadn’t had the right to conduct the investigation he had conducted without keeping his wife informed.

  “Thank you, Callie,” Stella said. “I was kind of feeling that way, but then I thought maybe I was just being hard on him.”

  “Can I be hard on you?” I asked.

  “Uh, of course.”

  “Your life is too full, Stella,” I said. “I know you enjoy being active, but your husband should be your first priority, not your tenth or eleventh or twentieth. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, I do,” she said, bursting into tears. “And I already realized that on my own, the day he got shot.”

  I soothed her a bit and then asked to speak to him one more time.

  “Eli, I know you’re tired,” I said, “but you’ve got to answer one more question for me.”

  “Okay, sweetheart. I’ll try.”

  “Who shot you?”

  “I don’t know, Callie,” he replied. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  Forty-Two

  When I went back to the control room, the place was in a frenzy. Tom had found the key to the code! Everyone stood waiting breathlessly as he went down the line of numbers, working the final mathematical steps and then converting the numbers to letters, unlocking the secret. I stepped closer to him to see the answer: S T T S E C U R E S T O R A G E 4 2.

  A cheer went up from the agents, and even the restrained Agent Holt had a big grin on his face.

  “That’s out by the airport,” Abraham said. “On St. Thomas.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Holt said into his microphone, “I would like for team one to head to St. Thomas. We are going to STT Secure Storage, unit forty-two.”

  Amidst the cheering, I told Tom I had been talking to Eli and that he was awake.

  We embraced, and a surge of emotions swelled in my heart. Relief. Elation. Confusion. Fear.

  This day wasn’t over yet.

  From Abraham, I caught up on all that had happened while I was in the other room on the phone. Using face recognition software, FBI headquarters had gotten a match on the two goons. Apparently, they were a pair of two-bit thugs with a long list of petty crimes but few incarcerations. Dianne Streep was known to employ them from time to time, and much to our surprise, it turned out that they were the ones who had been caught in the act of art theft by Interpol and had subsequently become informants. It was their tips that led the investigation to the Streeps and St. John in the first place.

  The two goons had finished loading the truck items into the Enigma, and now one of them was waiting there with the boat while the other one was driving back toward Dianne’s house. Merveaux was currently sitting in a taxi on the south side of the island; his bodyguard was still in the process of hiking from the taxi down to the Drake’s Pond area. Using the archaeological grid to locate F12, the FBI agents had found the code there already, a weird row of letters written on a rock. At first look the agents thought the letters were hieroglyphics, but when they asked Tom to look at the screen he had simply chuckled and told them that it was a mix of letters and numbers that had been written upside down and backwards. The rock protruded out over the pond, and the code was meant to be read in the reflection on the water. I remembered Dianne and Merveaux’s conversation, where they said he could “pause and reflect” there. They had been making a joke.

  “Actually, that is not an original idea,” Abraham
said. “Some of the most interesting petroglyphs on this island are reflected in pools of water. Archaeologists think it may have been done for the same sort of reason—to hide messages by making them upside down and backward.”

  I listened to Holt communicating with his agents, and I thought he was acting prudently in all regards. They would keep the satellite focused on Merveaux, but otherwise they were going to lie in wait at the storage facility and catch him red-handed there with the stolen goods, thereby ensuring the greatest number of possible criminal charges for him.

  As for Dianne, they were ready to arrest her now, but they wanted to wait until Merveaux was off the island so as not to tip their hand. In the meantime, they were trying to ascertain the whereabouts of Earl, Larry, and Zach—all of whom had been conspicuously absent so far.

  Thus we waited, watching on the monitor as the beefy, sweating bodyguard emerged at the bottom of the trail, walked over to the dig site, and began checking the tags on the posts.

  “What’s he doing?” I asked.

  “Looking for F twelve,” Abraham answered. “The dig site has been divided into a grid. See the wires that stretch between the posts? That is how they catalog the items they uncover. He will find row F going down then row twelve coming across, and where the two meet is where the code will be found.”

  “Amazing.”

  Sure enough, the man found the code and seemed to know already that he was supposed to write down what he saw in the water, not on the rock. Once he had done that, he rolled up his shirt sleeves a bit higher and started back up the trail.

  “Don’t you have to unencrypt it?” I whispered to Tom.

  “No,” he replied, “that’s the numeric security code Merveaux will use to unlock the storage unit.”

  I couldn’t take the tension of waiting, so I offered to go and pick up some lunch for everyone. That was met with an enthusiastic yes, so Abraham gave me directions to the nearest restaurant, and Tom and I set off down the street on foot.

  As we walked along in the fresh air and sunshine, I was filled with the overwhelming urge to be out in a canoe, paddling into the water, sailing across the shimmering waves.

  “You know what I want more than anything on earth right now?” I asked as we went.

  “For this waiting to be over?”

  “More than that.”

  “To hear how much I love you?”

  I giggled. “More than that.”

  “To get your hair braided by Mrs. Ruhl?”

  “How did you know?” I asked, laughing.

  “No, really, what do you want, Callie? Your wish is always my command.”

  I reached out for his hand but then remembered it was bandaged. I held his wrist instead.

  “I want to be on a canoe,” I said. “Right now. I want a paddle in my hands and Sal in the bow and miles of empty water stretching out in front of me.”

  “You want to go home?” Tom asked.

  “Not really,” I replied. “I love my river there, but that’s not what I mean. I just want a canoe. I feel like paddling. Why did I ever have to have a hobby that was so utterly not portable?”

  Tom slipped his arm around my shoulders.

  “I tell you what,” he said. “When all of this is over, I will take you somewhere and get you a canoe. With all of the water sports they have going on around here, I wouldn’t doubt we could find one somewhere. How about I’ll sit there with an umbrella while you paddle me around?”

  “Why, sir, it would be my pleasure to take you for a ride.”

  We found the restaurant easily and placed an order to go for a variety of food, including salad, garlic chicken, and something called “johnny-cakes.” It took a while, but eventually the food was bagged and ready. As usual, Tom picked up the tab. We argued about it, until I remembered that all I had in my wallet was ten dollars anyway.

  When we arrived back at the command center, it was obvious something was going on. We set down the bags of food and looked at Abraham questioningly.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  “It’s Dianne,” he replied. “Looks like she’s on the move.”

  Forty-Three

  We all ate as we watched what was happening on the monitor. Abraham said Dianne and her goon had come out of the house and were now in the white truck. The farther they drove, the more obvious it became that they were heading to the Enigma. If that were true, then we all felt fairly certain she was about to make her getaway from the island. Calculating the risk, Holt decided he would rather be safe than sorry; the agents would wait as long as they could to stop her, but if Merveaux was still on the island by the time Dianne started to leave, they would have no choice but to move in and make the arrest.

  We watched two satellite feeds—one of the cab carrying Merveaux to the Sugar Manse, the other of the truck bringing Dianne to the Enigma. We wanted Merveaux to move quickly and Dianne to move slowly. It was trying to watch it all unfold, to say the least.

  “Parker, any chance you can cause a little traffic jam on the road that leads to the marina?”

  “I’ll try, sir,” a voice said. “The street is pretty narrow here. I can jack up the back and make it look like I’m changing a tire.”

  “Good. Maybe that’ll hold things up a bit.”

  In the meantime the technician was working on getting a third satellite shot, this one of the Streeps’ estate. Once Dianne was arrested at the boat, agents would also be moving in on the house; but with Larry, Earl, and Zach still unaccounted for, they wanted to go in with as much knowledge as they could.

  Finally, Merveaux reached the resort, and we all breathed a sigh of relief when he and his bodyguard emerged out of the other side of the building without much delay. Dianne, meanwhile, was less than a mile from the marina.

  “Come on, come on,” Holt whispered as we all watched, spellbound. There were now three agents ready to apprehend Dianne—Craig on the boat, Reese on foot, and the one named Parker with the car. The remaining agents were well on their way to St. Thomas, setting up the welcome party for Merveaux at the Secure Storage facility.

  The truck reached the small cluster of cars that were feeding around Parker and his flat-tire diversion. When the truck finally made it around, Merveaux was just climbing onto his boat at the Sugar Manse.

  “It’s almost time,” Holt said.

  A few minutes later, Parker announced he was back behind the wheel and heading into the marina.

  The Cezanne pulled away from the dock at the Sugar Manse. Moving slowly, it made its way past rows of other boats and yachts and then slowly picked up speed out in the open water.

  On the video feed from Craig’s boat, we could see Dianne and the second goon getting out of the truck and walking toward the Enigma. Her movements were tight, her posture tense. Despite the floral skirt and scarf, she now looked less like a tourist at the beach and more like a fugitive on the run.

  “Gentlemen, make your arrest,” Holt said.

  Reese was the first to move, jumping up from behind a barrel on the dock, holding out his gun, and yelling at them to “Freeze!”

  We could hear Parker’s car screech to a stop, and then he also yelled for them to “Freeze! FBI!”

  Dianne stopped moving and held both hands up in the air. The goon, however, surprised everyone by turning, grabbing her, and then making a dive for the boat. They landed face down on the deck, with her struggling to get back up as he sprawled out as flat as he could get. The boat roared to life and sped away from the slip, the ropes snapping just before they ripped the cleats right out of the wood.

  Gunfire ensued, but the boat kept going. Both agents jumped aboard Craig’s boat, and they shot out of their slip in hot pursuit.

  Stunned, we all watched the scene play out in front of us through the satellite feed, helpless to do anything. As Holt cursed a blue streak there in the command center, the FBI agents at the scene fired off some shots at the Enigma. The FBI’s boat was smaller but faster, and the distance between th
em quickly narrowed.

  Then the Enigma exploded.

  With a piercing kaboom, the large boat burst into flames. We could hear our agents yelling and we watched as they managed to veer quickly to the side, avoiding the inferno there on the water.

  Dianne and her two goons were dead, the boat totally destroyed before our eyes. Despite everything, I couldn’t help but feel a surge of pity for the woman who had made so many wrong choices in her life.

  I looked at the monitor of Merveaux, praying his boat was far enough away so that he wouldn’t see the fire and smoke on the horizon. In shock we listened as the agents at the scene all yelled at once. They hadn’t been shooting when it blew, they said. The didn’t know why it had exploded. With a lurch in the pit of my stomach, I had a feeling I knew.

  Rushkin had located his target.

  Instantly, Holt was on the phone with the Coast Guard. Sirens blared in the distance.

  “Sir,” the technician said, interrupting. “We have satellite on the house.”

  We looked at the third screen, at the bird’s-eye view of Dianne’s estate. I had stared at the satellite photos so many times that the image was completely familiar to me.

  Except for an odd black blotch that was now on the tennis court.

  “Look at that!” I said, running to the screen and pointing. “What is that?”

  The technician zoomed in tightly.

  “It’s a helicopter!” Tom cried.

  As we watched, two people ran from the house to the helicopter. It looked as though they were carrying something large and square, which they put into the helicopter’s side door. The camera zoomed in further.

  “The house, the house!” Holt yelled into his mike. “Get to the house!”

  As he directed his agents how to reach it by boat, Abraham dispatched the police. Meanwhile, the two men ran from the helicopter back toward the house. Just before going inside, they paused and looked up at the sky.

  “That’s Earl and Larry,” Tom said, leaning forward.