Home > A Distant Shore(8)

A Distant Shore(8)
Author: Karen Kingsbury

Freedom.

Her swimming time was over. Eliza lifted her eyes to the blue sky. Whatever happened to the teenage boy? The one who had rescued her? Couldn’t he tell she didn’t want to be dragged from the ocean that day? The water was her sanctuary. Beneath the water would’ve been even better.

Eliza wiped the water from her eyes. She could see the guards on the hillside, getting restless, watching her, adjusting their heavy black rifles. “I’m coming,” she whispered. She made her way onto the shore and pulled her wet blond hair into a knot at the back of her head.

The future of her father’s dynasty depended on her obedience.

Eliza slipped into her cover-up, and climbed the path built into the edge of the mountain. Halfway up on a narrow plateau she met the guards, and without saying a word, they fell in behind her and followed her to the biggest of the Palace bedrooms.

Top dollar deserved top accommodations. That’s what her father always told her. And even though she’d never been with a man, her time was coming. Nine days from now.

Once Eliza was inside her room, when the door was shut, she thought of Alexa again. What if her father did have her killed and what if he’d gotten his money back? What if Henry Thomas was even meaner than her father? If that was the case, Eliza was ready.

She opened the top drawer of her armoire and sifted through her silk underclothes. Wrapped in a camisole at the bottom was a butcher knife. One she’d stolen from the kitchen late at night a week ago.

When she got married and left this place, the knife would be tucked into her suitcase, next to the cash her father was going to give her. If Henry Thomas tried to harm her or sell her… if his guards did anything to her, she would kill them.

Then she’d be on the next flight out of Belize.

 

 

CHAPTER FOUR


At least there is hope for a tree: If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail.

—Job 14:7

 

Jack Ryder didn’t care if he died.

That was why he was the best special agent in the San Antonio FBI. Jack took chances where other agents were careful. He was bold where the rest shrank back. He lived for the mission. At twenty-six, his superiors all told him the same thing.

They’d never had an agent like him.

Jack was a chameleon. He could grow out his beard and get intel on a Middle Eastern weapons cache. Cut his hair and shave and work undercover drug busts at a high school. Wear tennis shoes and ripped-up jeans and fit in on any college campus.

Since his twenty-third birthday, Jack had been working for the FBI, and in the past few years he’d moved to undercover missions, one after another. Oliver had told him that agents who joined the bureau younger than age twenty-five rarely lasted, and that typically an agent had to be at least thirty to succeed at undercover work.

At every point, Jack was the exception.

Lately his missions were focused on international drug and sex-trafficking rings that also did business in the United States. The missions were getting more dangerous. That was okay with Jack. If there was a God, He had intended Jack for this job alone.

He gripped the wheel of his black Ford Explorer and stared at the road. To get to the FBI office in San Antonio, Jack had to drive past a cemetery. He made it a practice not to look. Better to keep his attention on the living, the ones who needed rescuing.

Cemeteries made him feel. And according to his personal rules, feelings were a sign of weakness, a waste of constructive time and energy, forbidden. Period.

It was Thursday, the first of July, and his meeting was on the fourth floor, where the most sensitive missions came together. Jack wore dark pants and a black belt, the white button-down shirt and navy tie and jacket—a size up to conceal his pistol.

FBI standard fare when Jack wasn’t on a mission.

Martha Lou Henderson sat at the desk by the elevator. She’d worked there a hundred years at least, and trustworthy didn’t begin to describe her. The woman didn’t blink as Jack swept his badge beneath the sensor. Only when the light flashed blue did she smile. “Morning, Jack.”

“You’re still not sure it’s me.”

“Nope.” She grinned. “And I feel that way about your boss. And his boss.” She pressed four buttons on the control panel and the elevator door opened. “Have a good day, Jack.”

“You, too, Martha Lou.” He chuckled as he got on the elevator.

Everyone had to be kept accountable. Agents had turned against the FBI in the past, succumbing to the lure of drug money, bribes and the promise of power. Accountability was necessary even for those who, like Jack, would give their lives for the job, agents who embodied the FBI motto—Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity.

Jack passed through two additional security clearances before entering the meeting room. The walls on the fourth floor were solid glass and always clean. The view of San Antonio’s Hill Country never got old. He looked around and smiled. Never mind that he was early, his boss was already there, talking with two of the bureau’s other top undercover agents.

Jack took a seat at a desk in the front row and spread his legs in front of him. He had topped out at six-three, tall enough to play college football if he’d wanted to.

But after Shane died, football lost its allure. Like life itself.

Until Oliver Layton found him.

Oliver was bald and black, and before his days with the FBI he had set records at Ole Miss as a star running back. He spent the first two hours of every day in the gym and he looked like he could still outrun any defense. Oliver’s mind was even faster than his feet and back in the day he had been best friends with Jack’s father.

For two decades Oliver had run a division of the Transnational Organized Crime program from this office. Oliver’s agents worked with governments and police forces from other countries, and with every branch and office of the U.S. military and law enforcement. Whereas police forces typically focused on taking down a criminal, the TOC unit took down criminal empires. Oliver saw to it. Every mission was secret, and each was critically important to the man.

Jack’s respect for him knew no limits.

“This one will be dangerous.” Oliver folded his arms and stared down the three men as the meeting began. He said the same thing before handing out every mission. The work they did was always dangerous. But something about Oliver’s tone told Jack this one was worse.

“We’ve talked about Anders McMillan before.” Oliver’s expression hardened. “Drug lord, a trafficking demon doing business in Belize. In the past decade, he has run a blatant sex slave factory under the guise of eight different fake business names. Always with young teenage girls.” He shook his head. “Sickening.” He paused. “Anders has gotten a little sloppy this past year. Now he calls his place the Palace. Parades around thinking he’s some kind of Belizean prince.”

Anders McMillan. The name was immediately familiar to Jack. So was the country. “We’ve talked about him before. We never had evidence.”

“Exactly.” Oliver paced a few feet and looked at one of the senior operatives seated next to Jack. “Tell them what you found, Matthew.”

Silver haired and sly as a fox, Matthew Pendergast opened a folder in front of him. “McMillan is still very careful. He advertises his girls a dozen different ways and changes his means of interacting with customers every few months.”

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