He watched the people moving in and out of the ballroom with the dispassion of a rancher at a cattle sale. The meeting and greeting, the fake smiles and handshakes offered in hopes of doing business rather than making any kind of meaningful connection. The logos on their polo shirts were the only way to tell one group from the next. Boxes of pamphlets and corporate swag—pens with floats, ball caps, and T-shirts—were lugged into the large room that was transforming into a trade show of everything nautical.
As he moved easily through the construction of corporate booths and product demo stations, he reflected on the irony of his own name. His call sign was Angler, and in a business where not having a fixed identity was a competitive advantage—if not a life-saving necessity—it had become who he was to the point where even he sometimes struggled to recall the name on his birth certificate.
But despite his call sign, he wasn’t in the market for a new boat or a bimini canopy or a fish finder. He didn’t spend his spare time on a Jet Ski or pontoon boat. For a moment he wondered what that might be like, to actually hang a pole off a deck and sip on a cool drink while not caring whether he caught anything. Perhaps one day. Perhaps after this job. This last job. He felt his teeth grind involuntarily at the thought. One last job. The mercenary’s lament.
Angler wandered out through the exhibit space into the broad South Florida sunlight and flicked his sunglasses down. The small marina at the resort at Tarpon Point was being transformed inside and out. Older private craft were being shuttled out to moorings and docks further up the Caloosahatchee River and replaced by gleaming new demonstration models of speedboats and bass boats and Jet Skis. A shining silver pontoon boat with a deep bass sound system eased into a slot beside Angler as he ambled out toward the water.
The docks reached out like fingers into Glover Bight, a small natural harbor near the mouth to the river that split Fort Myers from Cape Coral. The end of each dock formed a T, allowing larger vessels to moor in the shallow waters without having to access a slip. Angler stood on the T at the end of the longest dock and looked back at the resort. A team of men with a hydraulic lift were erecting a banner that read The Great American Boat Show. To Angler it meant nothing more than a crowd and all the advantages and disadvantages that entailed. And it meant one more thing: that this was where the job would take place.
He watched for a while to understand the traffic patterns of the people moving in and out of the buildings, and scoped out a couple of paths around the complex that were lightly used. They might be dead ends or clear exit paths. He would walk them to confirm. After a few minutes he turned back to the water. There was one way in and one way out of the bight, at least to the untrained eye. From his position he could see out toward the southern reaches of Pine Island and the eastern end of Sanibel. Boats coming in and out stuck to the marked channels that directed vessels around the many shallows and sandbanks. More opportunities and threats in Angler’s eyes. He knew beyond the barrier islands were the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and to the south, beyond Naples and Marco Island, the wild coastline of Ten Thousand Islands. Then onto the Keys and the Caribbean.
He saw many ways in and many ways out. A few ways to get the job done successfully and a longer list of how it could go wrong. Especially now the method had been changed and become more complicated. He had been given direction on the how and when of the operation, but he would make up his own mind. Too many times Angler had relied on the intel of others only to realize the gaps in the information too late.
Not this time.
He captured the surroundings in his memory and then turned back toward the hotel complex. He wanted to know every way in and every way out, by land and sea and any other means, and the lanyard around his neck and the polo shirt on his back would provide him with the unfettered access he needed.
* * *
Deek Morrison watched the man on the dock from the shadows of the rear entrance to the hotel. The guy looked the part—trade show lanyard, corporate polo and chinos, clean-cut hair and well-tended goatee, both with a touch of salt and pepper. Deek wasn’t any kind of military guy, but he lived and worked in the Washington, DC bubble, so he saw plenty of uniforms, and this guy walked like he had once worn one.
He might have looked the part, but there was something off about him, something that set Deek’s imagination running. The resort was a hive of activity, setting up for the coming boat show. Everyone had somewhere to be or someone to meet or something to do.
Except this guy.
He was watching the work happen but not doing any of it. He didn’t stop at any particular corporate booth to check on preparations and he hadn’t shaken a hand or handed out a single card. Instead, he was looking around like a home buyer at an open house, walking the grounds and checking out the rooms.
Deek wasn’t worried about setting up his booth. He had come early on a hunch—no, it was more than a hunch. It was a solid working theory, even if his boss couldn’t see it. Didn’t want to see it. Deek knew what he knew. And this guy might be the guy. There would be time to do the less important stuff. The stuff that had gotten him to Florida in the first place.
He watched the man turn from the dock. Deek glanced down at his trusty Omega Seamaster Professional watch as the guy strode by, then he followed him back inside.
* * *
Boring, boring, boring.
It was the only way to describe the fire department lieutenant’s briefing. Sam Waters looked around the room at the assembled first responders. Who would have thought that being a firefighter could be so dull? She had figured it was all dashing into burning buildings and saving kittens from trees. But this was not that. This was traffic patterns and flow rates, marshaling and exit strategies for large crowds, hallway widths and logjam points. The lieutenant walked them around the hotel describing how they should be prepared for anything that could induce panic, not just fire. Sam wondered if that included trying to get away from the lieutenant’s monotonous deadpan delivery.
Sam shot Dusty an eye roll and got a shake of the head in return. He could be such a killjoy. He was the reason she was at the walk-through. Part of the reason, anyway. The blame part. When he had suggested she take on the role of citizen deputy with the Lee County Sheriff, he had sold it as a chance to spend her days out on the water. For the most part that had turned out to be true. She cruised around in a sheriff’s launch checking fishing permits and safety violations on the waters around Cape Coral-Fort Myers and the barrier islands just offshore. It was largely sunshine and the rush of sea spray through her hair. But if the tradeoff was doing these event gigs and listening to the most boring man in the world, she might have to reconsider.
The lieutenant was pointing out each and every exit from the exhibition hall when Sam’s attention wavered and landed on the blond guy. He stood in the corner of the room trying to look like he was working a phone, but was really watching someone else that Sam couldn’t see. He didn’t look like anyone else in the room despite trying to do so. For a start he wore a button-up shirt instead of a corporate polo—the only other button-up shirt in the room belonged to the fire lieutenant—and over the shirt he wore a blue sports jacket that was a thirty-four long when the guy really needed a thirty-two regular.
Sam watched him until the lieutenant led the group away to the restaurant across the marina. She pushed him from her mind. All these guys probably did a circuit of trade shows and knew each other, so he was no doubt looking at his business archnemesis or some woman—or hell, some guy—who had spurned his advances at a past conference drinks session.
They walked across the concourse and around the marina to the restaurant. The fireman droned on and Sam looked out at the glistening water. It called to her, and she wondered why she was landlubbing with Dusty.
“Blimey, this is dull,” she whispered in her English accent, as the lieutenant went on about the nature of kitchen fires. “Why am I here?”
“The show has to pay for law enforcement presence, and you are part of that presence.”
“But I’ll be on the water, won’t I?”
“They might put you on parking lot patrol.”
“I resign.”
“Or there might be a fire that you need to attend.”
“I already know how to extinguish a marine fire. Kitchens are well outside my domain, mate.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“I’ve seen where you live, remember?”
Sam shrugged. “What are you doing here, anyway? You’re a detective. Aren’t you supposed to arrive after the crime has been committed?”
“Captain Cross asked me to attend.”
“So you’re smooching your boss’s—”
“I am representing the department. So are you.”
Sam said nothing more. There was no point. She tried to focus on the ins and outs of grease fires but found her attention wavering. Even through the tinted windows in the restaurant the water sparkled. She wondered if the windows had been polarized. The color of the water really popped, and—
There was that guy again. Standing by the entrance to the main building, his hand shading his eyes as he looked out onto the marina. Sam tracked his focus and found another guy standing at the end of the dock. This guy looked the part. The polo and the chinos. He was standing at the end of the dock looking out onto the water, which was a perfectly reasonable thing to do, for a guy working at a boat show.
The guy in the polo turned from the dock and strode back toward the building. Sam noted that he didn’t walk so much as march, his posture high, his shoulders back. He walked like Dusty, as if spinal alignment were mission critical. As the guy reached the resort entrance, Sam looked for the blond man. There he was, fussing with his watch, until the second guy passed by, when blondie turned and followed him inside.
“Any questions?” asked the lieutenant.
There was shuffling of feet but no one spoke. Dusty made to raise his hand but Sam grabbed his wrist before the damage was done.
“In that case, thank you all for your diligence. Your departments will forward assignments for the event by day’s end.” The lieutenant nodded to suggest this was the end, and they were dismissed.
Sam smiled at Dusty. “What are you doing now?”
“Back to the office. You?”
“Same.” Sam’s smile widened. His commute entailed a good forty-five minutes in Cape Coral traffic. Hers was a cruise in her launch back up the sound to the sheriff’s Gulf District office on Pine Island.
“Jerry’s later?” he asked.
“I’ll save you a seat.”
* * *
Angler did his walk-throughs and then headed back to his rental jon boat. It was clear from the moment his aircraft came in for landing at Southwest Florida International Airport that a boat was the smart way to get around. The cities on either side of the river were a tangle of streets packed with slow moving vehicles. Everything about this job said water was the fast way around, so he had found a low-key marina to hire a boat, and the place had provided even more.
Angler stepped down into the aluminum jon boat and pulled on the cord to fire up the tiny eight-horsepower outboard. He eased the tiller around and cruised slowly away from the dock and into the channel. The boat was small enough to get across the shallows and he could even drag it across sandbars if he had to. The only downside was the speed. Right now it didn’t matter, but later it would. An old, dented jon boat would not do.
He motored out past the Sanibel Causeway and St. James City at the southern end of Pine Island. He cut north between the islands and into Pine Island Sound. It was a wider expanse here, room for bigger craft to maneuver, but far from deep. He passed the populated islands of Sanibel and Captiva before easing off the throttle as he reached Baskin Island.
His intel had suggested this island as a suitable base from which to launch the operation, but Angler would make his own call on that. The place had its merits: it was only sparsely populated and even then, mostly at the north end. There was no bridge across from Pine Island or the mainland, so emergency response was limited. The subdivision at the north end was actually a fly-in fly-out community with a small grass landing strip. Angler would confirm the suitability of all that. For now he floated in the sound, his focus on the south end of the island, where his intel said he should be.
* * *
Deek handed over his credit card and threw up a prayer. He was confident there was enough credit on it for now, but it was dependent on how big a hold the hotel had placed. Deek was aware of the irony of someone with his qualifications struggling to manage a credit card, but living in DC wasn’t anyone’s idea of cheap, and the federal government didn’t exactly pay like Morgan Stanley.
The woman at the boat rental stand offered him a smile as the charges were approved, and Deek let out a sigh that he hoped she couldn’t hear.
“Now, the rental will need to be back by dark, otherwise you will have to return it to the dock on Pine Island. Because of the boat show, see.”
“Got it,” said Deek, handing over the pages of waivers. He felt like he had taken responsibility for the national debt.
“Are you familiar with outboard dinghies?” she asked, as she slowly looked over the paperwork.
Deek repeatedly checked his watch, but the woman failed to get the hint. “Sure am. I’m on the water all the time,” he lied.
“Awesome. Well, Jonathon can run you through it if you want.”
“I think I’m good,” he said, tapping his foot.
“All right, then. It’s that one there, skiff number six.”
“Perfect, thank you.” Deek rushed out toward the little boat and could feel his stomach turning a touch already. He tried to tell himself it was because he had lost sight of his quarry. The guy he was following had his own boat already so he had just taken off. Deek had to hire one and that took longer than the rental car line at BWI. Now he faced the real test.
Deek didn’t do boats. He didn’t really do water. He had grown up in a small town where the biggest patch of water was a swimming hole in the nearby river, and Deek had not been part of the crowd that hung out down there. Living in DC meant he knew people who spent their leisure time on the Chesapeake Bay, but Deek wasn’t part of that crowd, either.
He climbed down from the dock into the small fiberglass boat and settled himself on the bench seat. The boat rocked from side to side as Deek turned to the outboard motor. He knew plenty about how boats worked—more than most people. He just didn’t have a lot of practical experience. He was more a theoretical guy. But his theories were being ignored by people who could do something about them, so Deek pulled on the cord and started the little five-horsepower motor. It spluttered to life and he let out another sigh.
Deek turned the throttle and the little boat eased out into the bight, then he checked his phone and made his heading for the causeway. There was no telling where the other guy had gone but chances were it wasn’t out into the Gulf. His boat wasn’t that much bigger than Deek’s and he had no fishing gear.
Deek followed the path of least resistance around the bottom of Pine Island and up between it and Captiva. There were a good number of boats cruising the sound but few of them were dinghies. Most seemed to be center consoles with bimini tops, so Deek took out his field glasses to scope the water for a smaller vessel. He was at the north end of Captiva when he saw something familiar.
An aluminum jon boat sat on the Pine Island side of the channel. Through his binocs Deek could see that the boat wasn’t moving, but no fishing rods hung out over the water. The man in the boat had no field glasses of his own but he was definitely focused on the island on the Gulf side of the sound.
Deek checked his phone. Baskin Island. Not much to it. Shaped a bit like a seahorse. A small community, a little marina, a long beach on the Gulf side. The man was looking at the south end of the island but to Deek’s eye there wasn’t anything of note there. He looked again through his field glasses. Now he could see it. Some houses. The scale was difficult to discern but the homes were clearly large, each with a dock. Only one home had a boat. It carried the shape and white hull of a luxury motor yacht. Deek moved his view along the row of homes, noting four of them. They looked the same, as if they had been built as one development. He saw no people. Not around the houses, not on the docks, not on the boat. He wondered what the guy in the jon boat was looking at.
Deek cast his glasses back across toward the other boat but with the limited field of vision he couldn’t pinpoint it. He dropped the glasses and looked across the water.
The other boat was gone.
Deek scanned the water again, and then a third time. The jon boat was nowhere. He twisted the throttle and headed toward where the other boat had been but didn’t get there fast. When he reached the point across from the south end of Baskin Island, Deek cut the motor and scanned the area but saw no sign of the other boat.
He wondered if the other guy had gone over to the homes he had been looking at. Deek snatched up his field glasses and scanned the island. The bulk of the shoreline was mangrove and scrub. The homes at the south end were the only visible buildings. Three empty docks led to three lifeless homes. He focused on the boat behind the second home from the south. The sleek lines and wide entertaining decks were familiar to Deek. He knew the model and he knew the manufacturer. He moved his view to the transom of the vessel. He read the name.
Aeolus.
Deek knew the very boat. And suddenly all the theoretical strands came together. He was right. He had been all along. This thing was really happening.
* * *
Sam eased her patrol launch out of the resort marina and headed for the sound. Traffic was heavy on the river but craft moved slowly, the channels having been disturbed and the sandbars moved around during Hurricane Ian. The charts were not completely accurate anymore, and the dredging of the channels only half finished, so she headed for the channel that led to the deeper water around Pine Island. She took a deep breath of briny air and banked around St. James City and headed north. The boat was a rigid inflatable center console, one of the smaller vessels in the marine unit, but it suited Sam just fine. The twin outboards could open up and get her where she needed to be plenty fast if she wanted, but mostly she took it easy and tried not to harsh anyone’s mellow by creating too big a wake.
There were a few recreational boats out and she considered checking them for safety gear, but Sergeant Mulligan had asked her to be prompt in returning from the briefing—overtime was not in the unit’s budget. Sam would have done this part of the job for free, but now she was officially on the payroll—albeit the lowest of the low in the ranks—the sergeant had ruled out unpaid overtime, at least as long as she was in an LCSO vessel.
She ran up the west side of Pine Island toward Pineland, but just as soon as she opened up the throttle she eased off it again. Ahead she saw a small fiberglass skiff, the kind of thing they rented by the day out of Tarpon Bay resort. There was only one occupant and no fishing gear. That in itself was not so suspicious—lots of tourists hired the little putt-putts to spend a few hours on the water, taking in the sanctuary around Pine Island. But this guy had binoculars out, and they were pointed directly at the houses at the end of Baskin. Houses that belonged to her friend, Enoch Brookes.
As she got closer she recognized the blond hair of the guy from the resort. This guy seemed to enjoy watching other people, which was fine sitting at a café in Paris but started to edge into creepy when he was scoping out a house through binoculars. She slowed and eased the patrol boat between Baskin and the guy with the binoculars, and he didn’t look up until her hull blocked his view.
The guy squinted into the sun and up close she noticed the man’s blond hair crept over the tops of his ears, and his nose looked like he had a deviated septum. Sam pushed her throttle into neutral and tossed a mooring line around a cleat on the smaller boat’s bow.
“Afternoon,” she said.
“Hello,” said the guy. “Is there a problem?”
“Lee County Sheriff. This your boat?”
“No, it’s a rental.”
“Right. Did you do a safety briefing?”
“They gave me a form to sign.”
“I’m sure they did. I just need to check you have all the right safety equipment. Do you have your rental agreement?”
The man pulled a sheet of paper from inside his jacket pocket. The sports coat had felt like overkill at the resort but really didn’t suit the skiff. He handed the agreement over and Sam gave it a cursory read.
“What’s your name, sir?” she asked.
“Are you English?” he replied.
“I am. And your name is?”
“Deek Morrison. What’s an Englishwoman doing in a police boat in Florida?”
“Keeping you safe. And I’m with the sheriff’s office.”
“You said.”
“So what are you doing out here, Mr. Morrison.”
“Just boating.”
“Just boating? Not fishing?”
“No. Just looking around.”
“Sure. You got a PFD in there, Mr. Morrison?”
He looked under the seat and caused the boat the rock, then produced an orange life jacket.
“What’s your interest with the houses over there?” Sam asked.
“What houses?”
“The ones you were looking at through your little binoculars there.”
“I was just looking at birds.”
“Birds? What kind of birds?”
“Egrets?”
He didn’t sound too sure.
“Egrets,” said Sam. “And what were you looking at back at the Tarpon Bay resort?”
“Where?”
“I saw you at the resort earlier. You were watching someone.”
“Was I?”
“Yes, you were. And I have to tell you, Mr. Morrison, you were acting a little suspiciously.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Fair enough. How about I just tow you into the sheriff’s office and we talk to my sergeant.”
“No, you don’t need to do that.”
“All evidence to the contrary.”
“Okay, look, can you keep a secret?”
Sam raised an eyebrow.
“I’m a federal agent,” he said.
“A federal agent?”
“That’s right.”
“Do you have some ID to that effect?”
Morrison leaned to the side and reached into his trouser pocket. Sam remembered that Dusty had said to be careful when people reached into pockets—they might produce guns. Sam had never carried a gun. Not as a police diver in Britain and not here. As a civilian deputy she wasn’t authorized to carry and had yet to feel the need.
Morrison took out a card and handed it to her. It read Deek Morrison, Maritime Administration, Department of Transportation. There was an official seal on the card and everything. Sam figured she could have knocked one up on a computer in about five minutes.
“You got anything with a photo?”
“No. I didn’t bring my actual ID. I’m technically not on the clock.”
“But you are technically following people and looking at private homes through binoculars.”
“Yes, I was doing that. But listen, there’s a reason.”
“I’d love to hear it.”
“I am a federal agent. I’m trailing someone I believe to be about to undertake a terrorist attack on American soil.”
“Mr. Morrison, are you armed?”
“It’s Deek, and no ma’am, I’m not carrying.”
“You’re a federal agent tracking a terrorist and you’re not carrying a weapon? I thought all federal agents were armed.”
“I’m not that kind of agent.”
“Well, I don’t know what that means, Deek, but I think you should come and talk to my sergeant. If there’s a terror attack about to happen, he needs to know.”
“He won’t believe me.”
“Why?”
“Because they never do.”