Page 98 of The Perfect Stranger

His brows furrowed. “What?”

“The log book. Where is it?”

“You broke in with a gun just to see my log book?”

“I won’t ask you again.”

He moved to a packed but not sealed box with caution, one eye still on the gun pointed at his chest.

“Where are you going in such a hurry?” I asked, glancing around the office that had been all packed away. Any later and I would have missed him.

“Can’t be a Mariner if the wharf is empty.”

“I was here last month. Where did everyone go?”

“Few of us like to be around trouble.”

Was he implying he had never helped the Santos before?

“Pass it here,” I instructed, and he handed it over without issue.

“What’s it exactly you’re looking for?”

“Not what. Who?” I looked him square in the eye. “You tell me the truth, you get to walk from this alive. You don’t? You die in this office.”

“What if I can’t?”

“You will. What’s the name of the yacht belonging to Luis Santos?”

“I don’t know a Luis Santos.”

I’d been watching him carefully, and when his eyes darted to the left for the briefest micro-second, I shot him in the thigh. He fell to the ground screaming, blood oozing between his fingers clamped over the wound.

“You lied,” I said, flat. Cold. “Let’s try this again. What is the yacht called belonging to Luis Santos?”

“Please,” he spluttered. “I don’t know who that is.”

Another bullet struck him in the shoulder. He fell back on impact, his body going into shock.

“I did warn you,” I said standing over him. To the left sat a partially open box, a framed photograph sat on top of the rest of the junk. Pulling it out, I looked at the Mariner’s nuclear family.

“Good looking family.” There was no mistaking the threatening undertone. The Mariner swallowed hard, no longer worried for himself but for his loved ones.

He was in no state to call my bluff.

“I just come to work every day to support my family.”

“And you can go home to them when you give me what I need.”

“Luis Santos doesn’t moor his yacht here,” he started. “Not the one you’re thinking of.”

“Then what?”

“When he’s not using it, he leaves his yacht permanently floating on the international border line. It’s always staffed with his men to stop pirates.”

“So how does he get to it and back to shore?”

“A smaller vessel, sometimes his chopper.”

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