“Contrary to your tough guy self-image, my friend, you are still a female and you’re not bullet-proof. But silly? Girl, you wouldn’t know how to do silly.”

“I was such an idiot.” On a shelf, behind the settee, dozens of books were held in place by a long bungee cord. She snapped the elastic absentmindedly. “I thought I was over him, over all that drama. I’d agreed to see him because I wanted to know more about what happened down there. I was prepared to be fully in control.”

“That’s my girl.”

“But I couldn’t believe how pissed off I got just seeing him.” Riley stopped. She didn’t know how to explain the feelings she’d had.

“What did you expect?”

“Hazel, I thought Lima was the end of something. It wasn’t. In fact, I think now it was just the beginning.”

“What are you talking about?”

 “I still don’t know what really happened down there. I haven’t told you all of it, Hazel. I can’t. I need to know the truth, but I’m afraid, too. There are things that he — that they won’t tell me. Things that don’t add up.”

“Riley, he works for the Agency? Girlfriend, you never will be able to add it up. You know how those people are. They think they fucking rule the world.”

Riley laughed. “You remind of another guy I picked up today. He was a real nut case.”

“You picked up a guy?”

“He was swimming way out at sea,” she said. Then, after pausing for effect, she smiled and added, “Buck naked.”

“You are having fun!”

 “Oh yeah. He says I saved his life.”

“So that should make him your slave for life?”

“Not exactly. He disappeared on me — after I’d reported him to Immigration. So now, thanks to him the French authorities here think I’m smuggling in illegal aliens. They seized my passport.”

“Good God, girl! I can’t let you out of my sight. You might be a big strong Marine, but you aren’t doing so well on the outside away from the government tit.”

“I’m doing fine.” She didn’t want to worry her friend, so she tried to sound as though she meant it. “The wanker stole my radio, too. I’ve got to fix this whole thing on Tuesday. They’ve scheduled some kind of hearing. I’m not that worried. I still have plenty of friends at State. I’ll get it straightened out.”

“You let me know if you want me to call Daddy.”

“No. I just have to find my illegal alien. When I plucked him out of the water, he mentioned he’d been headed down to the Saintes. So, that’s where I’m going in the morning.”

“So, back to the naked guy. Was he cute? Was he a keeper or was the water too cold to tell?”

Riley laughed again and it felt so good. She’d needed this call. “The water was quite warm and, not that I noticed, but he had a body worthy of a Playgirl centerfold.”

“Darling, I want details. Dimensions! Are you going to see him again?”

“First, he was eye candy only. A bit soft in the head – a sort of a hard-bodied hillbilly spouting New World Order conspiracy crap. You know, the old ‘the government is out to get you’ type. But there was something about him, Hazel, something sweet, almost innocent. Like he still believes in tilting at windmills.”

“One sight of all that man flesh and you’re making him heroic.”

“Not really. It was just something he said.” Riley pictured him standing next to her in the cockpit of her boat. He was so different — not tall and elegant like Dig. Bob was broad-shouldered and built solid. But, she reminded herself, you’ve given up on men, remember?

“Hazel, I think he’s more the redneck, butt-crack-flashing type. You know, great ass but no class. Has about an eighth grade education. And yes, I’m going to see him again. I’d better. I plan to haul that sweet ass of his into this court hearing so I can get my passport back.”

“Now listen to who’s gone all snob on me.”

From anyone else, the remark might have stung. Riley came from a family of high achievers — her father had attended Yale, her mother the Sorbonne. After Michael died his freshman year at Yale, she had enlisted in the Marines — much to her parents’ chagrin — and attended no college at all.

“Hazel, you always think my life should have more drama in it.”

“Darling, you and your redneck illegal alien can have lots of little no-neck children. This sounds like a match made in Tennessee.” Only Hazel could come up with that one. They’d both been Liz Taylor fans and watched every movie they could find with her in it.

“Now look who’s being catty!” Riley said, and she heard her friend groan through the phone. “Besides, Maggie and Brick? I don’t think so. They didn’t have any kids. That was the problem, remember?”

“Ahhhh. What am I going to do with you? You and your prickly personality. You’ll drive Mr. Good Buns away. Girlfriend, you need to get laid.”

“I’ve told you — I’m done with that. I’ve joined the Semper Fi Immaculate Heart Convent for Wayward Marines. I’m going to devote my life to good works.”

“Ha! That’ll be the day. Riley, darling, I live in hope that some fellow is going to come along with an axe and chop his way through the forest of thorns you’ve built around yourself. I mean you don’t want to wind up one of those old cat ladies, do you? Tell me you haven’t got a cat.”

“No cat, Hazel.” And with a grin, she added. “Not yet.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Aboard the Shadow Chaser

March 25, 2008

8:05 p.m.

The moon lit the sky from behind the volcano when they raised the anchor and motored out of Marigot Bay. Cole left Theo at the helm and slipped into his cabin. From the bottom of the hanging locker, he extracted a sheet metal box with a combination padlock on it. He set the box on his bunk, spun the combination and withdrew three worn leather journals. Inside the first two, every page was filled with his father’s neat printing. He knew because he had read them all many times. The first entry in the first journal was dated three days after Cole’s birth. Each entry started with the words, “Dear son.”

He’d still been busting his hump at East Carolina U when word came that his father had died at home in Cornwall. There were no details, which didn’t surprise him at the time. Communication with his father had always been a bit odd. Cole had been the result of a brief love affair and an even more brief marriage between an American nurse, Kara Greer, and a British business man, James Thatcher, twenty-five years her senior. Cole’s mother had told him that his father was not suited for family life, and she’d sent her husband back to England. It was not until the journals arrived in a package from Bodwin, England that he had learned his father’s side of the story.

He opened the first of the leather volumes and began to read.

Dear son,

Just received word from the states of your arrival three days past. You must take after your mother – quite punctual, that is. Any woman who could marshal that lot at her hospital could presumably have even got the Italian trains to run on time. Alas, all her attempts to tidy up my life went awry. Love does not conquer all. She’s a scientist, that one.  Maybe unconquerable. She’s a queen from Amazonia, our Kara is, a warrior princess who has never needed a man for much. Could have been much more than a nurse, not to degrade her profession in any way, but she sees the world in the black and white of certainties — truth and falsehood and ne’er shall anything dwell between. That, my boy, is where I think life begins to get interesting. In the ‘tween.

-JT

Cole closed the leather cover and sighed. He wondered how it was possible he could have ended up so much like this father he never knew. He had thought when he went to school to study marine science that he was following his mother’s first love: science. But when he enrolled in graduate school to study Maritime Archeology, he had shifted over to his father’s world in the ‘tween — the world of suspicions and rumors, conspiracies and plots. The shadowy world of dreams.