When Michael’s mother had died, the Air Force had provided him with an extended family and given him a good life, a fulfilling life, but he had always dreamed for more even if he hadn’t been sure what that was. Love stories didn’t usually involve someone recovering from gunshot wounds and the other person having to do his courting with a broken back, but that was his life, and his love story. Somehow, he had come out on the other end of the rainbow.
Mona was showing now. The two of them were planning for their family. Their fairy tale was ready to end with the words, “And they all lived happily ever after.” But Michael was having trouble with the words, “The end.”
Peter Stone, or someone in his employ, had gotten away with murder.
Some days Michael could almost forget that, but it still ate at him. Deke had tried to help him see the big picture, how their actions had improved the lives of so many. Michael tried to see it that way.
Miami Maritime Investigations had just sent over their final report. The firm had tracked down all the movements of the Seacreto until its sinking off of Cape Coral. Their forensics investigation of the wreck had determined that at least five limpet mines had been attached under the hull of the yacht. As their report noted, it wasn’t easy to legally obtain limpet mines, especially as they were a preferred weapon of terrorists. Limpet mines—named for the mollusks that clung to rocks—had been used against US Navy ships and oil tankers.
A last dead end, thought Michael. Dark Ghoul had been cautious from the first. There was nothing to link Darkpool with any of the deaths or destruction. A frustrated Michael had looked at the marina tapes dozens of times. The beginning and ending never changed. There was no footage of any Darkpool employees going onboard the Seacreto. And Karina Boyko had never come back.
The universe is telling me it’s time to move on, thought Michael. Like Deke had told him, he needed to take solace from all the good outcomes their work had yielded. He reached for the report, prepared to put it away in a drawer. It would follow the path of good intentions, he knew, and bit by bit find its way deeper into the drawer. If he was lucky, with each passing day its hold upon him would ease, but to his thinking, what passed for wisdom felt more like capitulation. Michael still wanted to nail the bastards.
Michael took a last look at the pages, then noticed there was a new link to marina footage. According to the time line, on the day after the booze cruise, Vicky Driscoll had visited the marina and had boarded the yacht. Her visit had been a short one.
Curious, Michael decided to look at the footage.
From his computer, he called up the file. In fierce wind and rain, he watched Driscoll moving around a deserted marina where hazardous sea warnings had kept everyone and everything hunkered down in port.
Everyone but Vicky.
In pouring rain and buffeting winds, she made her way to the Seacreto. Although she was wearing a trench coat with a hood, it wasn’t a match for the storm. For extra protection, she’d wrapped a tote bag over her head. To get to the Seacreto, she passed through two locked security gates. The surveillance cameras showed her walking along the dock, but they didn’t offer a vantage point to her movements on the Seacreto. Whatever had brought her out that day didn’t keep Vicky long. She only stayed aboard for five minutes before making her way out of the marina. There appeared to be a slight detour in her route out to the parking lot, but the pouring rain from the fall squall obscured the surveillance footage and blurred her movements.
Still, from what Michael could observe, she paused along the walk-way. With her back to the camera, and the image grainy, it was all but impossible to see what she was doing, but whatever it was didn’t take more than a minute. Michael tried manipulating the screen to get a better picture, but his efforts didn’t yield much in the way of additional clarity.
He could just make out a white rectangular object next to where she was standing. It had to be a dock box, he decided. Most berths had their own dock boxes, but this box wasn’t located in proximity to the Seacreto. Michael remembered having read something about dock boxes in Miami Maritime’s report and began flipping through the pages. Yes, there it was. Several dock boxes at the marina had been broken into, including the box in front of where the Seacreto was berthed. The break-ins had occurred not long after the fall squall.
Was that just a coincidence? Michael wondered. Or was it something more along the lines of how the Pussy Cat Palace had been burned down and the Seacreto sunk?
Michael reviewed the tape once more. His heart was pounding, even though he didn’t want to get his hopes up. Maybe Vicky had visited the marina for some innocent purpose, but most people don’t go out into pelting rain and forty-mile-per-hour winds without good reason.
He still couldn’t see what Vicky was doing at the dock box. She could have been reading some notice, or adjusting her clothing, before hurrying to get to the safety of her car.
That’s when Michael saw it. Vicky was no longer carrying her tote bag.
For a third time, he followed her route. The bag was covering her head when she went to board the Seacreto, and it was still in her possession when she got off the boat. Now, though, Vicky wasn’t using it as a head wrap. She carried it at her side. To Michael’s eye, it looked as if there was something in the bag.
There was another thing he noticed. Vicky had bypassed the Seacreto’s dock box in favor of using another one. It was likely that no one had known about her second dock box.
Michael ran out of his office.