12:54 PM...
“What’s that?”
Carter glanced away from surveying the flotsam that remained from the crash of the amphibious plane. As much as the thought of seeing a dead body turned his stomach, he was really hoping to spot one. You know, to make sure everyone aboard the aircraft reallyhaddied. “What’s what?” he asked Robby.
“That.” Robby pointed toward the horizon.
Once again, it took Carter a few seconds to see anything beyond the glare of the sun atop the waves. But when he finally spotted what Robby gestured toward, an immediate sense of foreboding crackled at the back of his brain.
“Where are the binoculars?” He spun in a circle, his eyes pinging desperately around the speedboat.
No, no, no.Please don’t make this harder than it has to be.
“Here.” Robby pulled the binoculars from around his neck and passed them to Carter, who wasted no time pushing his sunglasses to the top of his head and lifting the magnified lenses to his eyes. It took him a couple tries to adjust the magnification, but the instant he did, he let loose with a low, vicious curse.
“What?” Kenny questioned. “What d’ya see?”
“Survivors,” Carter snarled. “They fucking made it.”
He stabbed a finger in the direction of the island—which was little more than a glimmer of white and a wash of green to the naked eye.
“All of ’em?” Kenny asked, looking annoyingly unperturbed by this shitastic turn of events. The fucker was supposed to have blown them out of the damned sky, not knocked out their tail section, leaving them enough plane left so they could ditch andsurvive.
Kenny hadassuredhim he knew just where to plant the explosives“And if I fuck it up, which I won’t, they’ll still crash and die.”
So much forthattheory,Carter thought now, trying to smother the anger that burned through his veins. “I don’t know,” he admitted carefully. “I didn’t count heads. See for yourself.” He passed the binoculars to Kenny.
With a nonchalance that made Carter want to scream, Kenny lifted the magnified lenses to his face. After a moment, Kenny muttered, “I only count two people on the beach and neither one is your cousin. I think— No. There she is in the trees.” Lowering the binoculars, he nodded. “Yup. They all survived. Damn.”
Damn didn’t quite cover it. Which was why Carter let loose with, “Goddamnit. Goddamnit!” as he stalked toward the helm, prepared to fire the engines.
“Wait a minute.” Kenny frowned. “What’s the plan?”
“We have to go over there and kill them.Duh.”
“Did you forget that they’re Navy SEALs?” Robby squeaked.
They’d considered and discarded about a hundred different ways of offing Carter’s cousin. But they’d finally settled on driving down to Key West, waiting for Mia to make a trip there from Wayfarer Island, and then turning her plane into a firebomb on her return flight, because that had been the only plan that didn’t include them potentially having to come face-to-face with a bunch of Navy SEALs.
But this is different,he thought.
He voiced that exact sentiment aloud. “No, I haven’t forgotten. But this isn’t Wayfarer Island or Key West we’re talking about. They don’t have access to their weapons here. They don’t have anywhere to run and hide. We can take them all out from a distance with Kenny’s gun.” He motioned with his chin toward the matte black weapon lying on the console.
“Hang on.” Kenny patted the air, his heavy brow wrinkled. “Let’s think about this. I thought your whole thing was you wanna leave behind no trace. Blowing four people to smithereens will leave behind a fuck-ton of traces.”
“Ourwhole thing, as you call it”—Jane sniffed—“is to kill them. Period. End of story.”
There was a cold gleam in her eyes that Carter recognized. It had made its first appearance on a stormy night eight weeks ago when he’d gone to tell her he wanted to quit. That she didn’t pay him enough to continue to put up with her bullshit.
She’d been on a three-month bender at that point. He’d bailed her out of jail once for jumping the curb in her Mercedes and taking out a fire hydrant. She’d seduced and then dumped his boss after begging Carter to introduce them, which had made the man fire Carter from the first job he’d had in years that he actually liked. And for two weeks straight, she’d failed to pay him his stipend, forcing him to go to the lawyer who controlled her trust to beg for back pay.
That’d been the last straw. Hehatedhaving to crawl on his knees with his hand out to her snooty attorney. The man looked at him like he was something stuck to the bottom of a shoe. It was humiliating.
“I already texted Mia to let her know I’m quitting,”Carter had said to his aunt.“I told her if you need something, you’re going to have to get it from her. I’m out.”
Jane’s eyes had narrowed.“What did she say?”
“That she understood. But that, given your history, she feels like she needs to keep up the boundaries she’s set. Which means I guess you’re on your own.”
