Page 104 of Deep Tide

“It happened just last month. Google ‘journalist’ and ‘Veracruz’ if you don’t believe me.”

She looked at him. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“This reporter was kidnapped, and his cell phone with all his contacts on it fell into the wrong hands.”

A knot formed in Nicole’s stomach. “What happened to the reporter?”

Miguel’s jaw tensed. “Rumor is he took one of those chopper rides.”

“Chopper rides?”

“Over the Gulf of Mexico.”

CHAPTER

NINETEEN

Sean had come up with dozens of ways the plan could fail.

And there was really only one way for it to succeed. Everything had to happen perfectly. Given the painstaking planning that had gone into this operation, he gave it about one-in-five odds.

Sean sat in his rented 4Runner, which looked more or less inconspicuous surrounded by pickup trucks and SUVs. The parking lot was shared by a row of commercial fishing docks and the headquarters of an offshore drilling company. Slouched low in his seat, Sean kept his eye on the docks, as he’d been doing for more than an hour.

Specifically, he was watching Pier Eleven, where a shipment of doctored electronic devices was supposed to be delivered at midnight.

Acid roiled in Sean’s stomach as he monitored the wooden pier. Midnight had come and gone. It was now 12:36 a.m. and the pier sat empty. A commercial shrimping boat was moored to the dock beside it. The surveillance team had watched the crew unload their catch hours ago, but Pier Eleven continued to be unoccupied.

Sean rubbed the knot at the back of his neck. Tension radiated through him. The heady confidence from last night had become a sour ball in the pit of his stomach. Maybe they had the day wrong. Or the time wrong. Maybe the M @ midnight Pier 11 that had been scrawled on the notepad on Luc Gagnon’s desk referred to a person, not a day. Or maybe the pier he was referencing wasn’t even on the island.

Sean glanced around at the shadowy parking lot. Everything was quiet. Near the neighboring dock, a heavyset man in yellow waders smoked a cigarette and hosed off the sidewalk in front of a fish shop. But no one had stepped foot on any of these piers in nearly an hour. Grabbing the binoculars from his passenger seat, Sean hazarded a glance at the corrugated metal shack by Pier Eleven. The building was quiet and dark. No activity except a fat brown pelican on the roof stretching his wings and resettling himself on his perch.

Sean’s phone vibrated, and he read the caller ID: Unavailable.

He connected.

“Yeah.”

“We’re thinking of calling it,” Moore said.

Sean peered through the binoculars again. This lead had seemed solid. Sean and Moore had pored over Leyla’s photograph, analyzing every scrap of paper on Gagnon’s desk. And they’d both concluded that the writing on the yellow sticky pad was the best intel they’d gotten their hands on in days.

“Five minutes more,” Sean said.

No response.

His shoulders tightened as he waited. Ultimately, it wasn’t Sean’s call, but his boss trusted him.

A shadow shifted, and Sean leaned forward. “Wait.”

“Hold up,” Moore said almost simultaneously. “We have movement.”

Sean’s heart rate sped up as a shiny black Suburban pulled into the parking lot. It rolled to a stop in front of the pier.

“I’ve got a black Suburban, tinted windows, just parked in front of Pier Eleven,” Sean reported.

“Roger that. Hang on.”

Sean heard muffled voices on the other end.

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