Page 145 of Hard Luck (Blackstone House)

She gave him a sheepish smile. “Yes.”

Before he headed upstairs, Cole held out my phone. “Someone tried to call. I thought about answering, but I figured it might be top-secret national security stuff.”

I glanced at the screen. Demelza. “Yeah, thanks. It was.”

Sighing, I stepped outside. It was too early for a conversation with my boss’s boss. How bad would this be?

“Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

Why did people keep asking that?

“The bad news. Get it over with.”

“The bad news is that the San Gallician government couldn’t organise an assassination on a firing range, but the good news is that they’ve come around to our way of thinking and they understand you did them a favour. There won’t be any fallout from your extracurricular activities, but they do want you to walk them through what happened on Skeleton Cay.”

Demelza could be an absolute ball-breaker, but she wasourball-breaker, and she’d defend our interests over those of any foreign government whose work we’d ended up doing.

“Do I have to go back there?”

“Only for a few hours.”

“And Cole?” He’d witnessed more horror than any civilian should see in a lifetime.

“I cast him as more of a bystander. If he doesn’t want to return to Skeleton Cay, he doesn’t have to. I’m also holding back the location of theSpanish Danceruntil we see them sticking to their side of the bargain. Do you think either of the men in custody will talk?”

“I don’t think so. We had words before the police picked them up. Jon is too scared to spill any details, and I swear Clint still thinks he can walk away and salvage the rest of the treasure. I saw it in his eyes.”

“That isn’t going to happen.”

“I know.”

“How about Dr. Blaylock?”

“He hopes that everyone will forget about the gold so the conchs can live happily ever after. Could we add a condition that says the government has to preserve the ecology of the area during any salvage work? I dived down there with Dr. Blaylock, and the reef is beautiful.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Be aware that on the ground, we’re keeping the two cases separate. Only a handful of people at the top of the food chain know you were involved with both the drug find and the discovery of the wreck.”

“Understood.”

Dice and Tulsa came with me to Skeleton Cay, but not for any operational reason. More because they were curious. Getting into the harbour was the first challenge. Cole insisted on coming too, and I had to agree because he’d borrowed his neighbour’s Mako for the trip. We skimmed over the submerged rocks to the south of the island and then tried not to laugh as a coastguard boat drove into one of them. Thankfully, it was going slow enough to avoid serious damage. We had two detectives with us—an old-timer named Robinson and a younger guy,Fernandez—as well as a contingent from the paramilitary wing of the San Gallicano Department of Emergency Services.

The bodies were decomposing nicely now, aided by the warm weather, and I was damn glad it wasn’t my job to wrangle human soup into body bags. A couple of crime scene techs got that honour while the higher-ups congregated in the cellblock. The chief of police himself joined us, and I heard him on a satellite phone telling whoever was arranging the press conference that they needed more tables because he wanted piles of that shit on display for the public to see.

“You did all this?” Detective Fernandez asked in a quiet moment. “How? I get that we’re not supposed to ask, but…”

“I’m not at liberty to divulge the operating capabilities of the US military.”

“Right. Do you think that’s the whole gang? Those six, I mean.”

“Who knows? Finding out is your job.”

I was done with this strange little island.

CHAPTER 51

JEZEBEL

By the time we returned from Skeleton Cay, the sun was disappearing in a blaze of pinks, yellows, and oranges.

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