Again, Mia stopped listening and tentatively turned to Romeo.
He rolled his eyes at Doc and Cami, as if to say,“Can you believe those two?”Aloud he said, “We’re almost there.” He motioned with his chin over his shoulder.
She let her eyes slide past him to the gleaming stretch of white sand and the long line of palm trees swaying in the wind. It wasn’t much as far as a home away from home went, but it was so much better than drifting with the current in a life raft the size of a sectional sofa.
When she returned her gaze to his face, he gave her another friendly wink, and no matter how hard she looked—and she lookedhard—she couldn’t see any of the wary trepidation that’d been in his eyes earlier.
It worked,she told herself.He believed what I said to Cami. I didn’t ruin everything after all.
She grabbed hold of that certainty and clung to it with the tenacity of a lamprey on a sturgeon.
Chapter 8
12:49 PM...
“Fuckin’-A, man,” Carter snarled, powering the speedboat to a stop and letting the big engines idle for a moment before killing them. “Where the hellisit?”
As quick as the speedboat was, the amphibious aircraft had been quicker.
After the explosives Kenny had wired to the plane only shredded the tail section instead of igniting the fuel tanks and blowing the whole thing from the sky, they’d lost sight of the wounded aircraft when it disappeared over the horizon. The only thing they’d had to follow was the smoke trail. But that had long since disappeared, leaving nothing to look at but undulating ocean waves as far as the eye could see.
“Ya think they didn’t crash after all? Think maybe they were able to make it back to Key West?” Robby braced his legs wide on the deck of the speedboat as he lifted a set of high-powered binoculars to his eyes, scanning their surroundings.
The heat of the midday sun was intense as it reflected off the water. All the same, a chill stole up Carter’s spine. If Robby was right, if Mia and company had made it back to Key West, then they’d know someone had tried to end them.
I mean, I’m no forensics expert, but I’m pretty sure they’ll be able to tell the plane’s tail section was obliterated by an explosive.
Which, inevitably, meant there would be questions. Question would lead to the authorities being notified. The authorities being notified would lead to an investigation.
Shit!
The whole point of this plan was so that everyone would think the plane had fallen victim to an unexplained crash. That it’d simply disappeared over the ocean like so many small aircraft did. That all onboard had been lost, never to be seen again.
Carter had spentweeksworking out the logistics with Robby and Kenny. The three of them had been best friends since the sixth grade. As such, they’d been through a lot of firsts together. First time getting drunk, first time getting high, first time getting laid—Jessica Jones had let them take turns for twenty bucks a pop. It’d just made sense that when Carter needed to kill someone for the first time, he’d gone to Kenny and Robby for help.
Kenny had jumped at the idea. Thanks to the summers he’d spent running around in the woods with his uncle Doyle and his uncle Doyle’s militia buddies, Kenny had been preparing for something like this his whole life.
Robby? He’d taken some convincing. Of course, it had helped that there was a payday involved, because Robby had a bit of a gambling problem, and he owed a pretty penny to a loan shark in Kenwood.
Funny how quickly a man puts aside his morals when he’s being threatened with a pair of broken kneecaps.
In the end, they’d all been onboard and, just like always, when the three of them put their heads together, good things happened. Case in point: The Plan.
And it’d been a good plan too,damnit!Agreatone. Carter had been sure they’d run through all the contingencies.
But apparently not.
Slapping the steering wheel so he wouldn’t slap Kenny, he demanded, “I thought you were sure that blast was going to take them out. What the hell happened?” He nudged the remote-control unit Kenny had used to set off the initial charge on the plane’s electrical systems and the subsequent charge next to the fuel tanks.
“Who the hell knows, man?” Kenny huffed. “Maybe one of the blasting caps didn’t blow. Or maybe a wire came loose during takeoff. Shit happens.”
Robby dropped the binoculars from his face to ask Kenny, “Where’d you say your uncle got that remote detonator again?”
“Beats me. Ya know Doyle.” Kenny grinned. Since the man had a pronounced brow ridge, making him look more Neanderthal than Homo sapien, a smile never looked quite right on his face. And given the trouble they were in, Carter wasn’t sure how Kenny could evenmanageone. “Thirty years in the Michigan Militia means Doyle’s gotta whole lotta shit you wouldn’t believe, bought out of the backs of vans and picked up at gun shows. When I went to get this from him”—Kenny toed the remote, which he’d dropped into the bottom of the boat after setting off the explosions—“he told me he and his buddies were trying to do a deal with some Russians for fifty Kalashnikovs.”
Robby blinked and shook his head, his wispy blond hair tousled around his face by the breeze. “’Merica. Land of the free to buy weapons of war and home of the brave enough to head out into the woods and play soldier-boy with a bunch of drunk rednecks. Don’t you just love her?”
“Hey! That’s my uncle you’re talking about!” Kenny blustered before chuckling. “But you’re right. Doyle is crazy on a cracker.”
