Chương 18
Claire pressed her face into Lainey’s hair, her shoulders shaking with silent, ragged relief. "We have Marcus’s truck parked behind the icehouse. Sloane, where are you going?"
"Colt’s apartment," I said, stepping onto the weathered dock planking.
Marcus Vance caught my arm. His hand was thick, calloused, but his grip lacked force. "Boyd pulled the county deputies off the apartment twenty minutes ago. He sent two men from his yacht crew down there with bolt cutters. If they find that Pelican case first, those drives go into the sound, and you’re left holding an armed kidnapping charge with no leverage."
"They won't find it first," I said. "Take Lainey directly to the Coast Guard Station at Fort Macon. Do not stop at the sheriff’s substation. Do not go through Morehead. Drive out along the beach road and demand federal protective custody from the Officer of the Day. Tell them you have actionable evidence regarding interstate maritime vessel theft."
Vance looked at me in the dim gray light. "And what do we tell them about you?"
"Tell them I’m securing the chain of custody," I said.
I didn't wait for him to argue. I stepped back down into the skiff, untied the bowline, and pushed off from the piling with the heel of my boot.
The trip back across the Newport River channel took twenty-five minutes against the turning tide. I cut the engine two hundred yards out from the marsh behind Colt’s apartment complex, tilted the lower unit out of the water, and used a six-foot push pole to glide the aluminum flat through the cordgrass until the bow ground softly into the sandy mud bank.
The complex was a cluster of two-story cedar-shake buildings backing up against the salt marsh. Apartment 1B was on the ground floor, its sliding glass patio door facing the reeds.
A dark Dodge Ram with dealer plates was parked crookedly across two spaces in the front lot, its engine cold.
The patio slider was locked, but the cheap aluminum latch was no match for the flat edge of my pocketknife. I levered the frame, heard the small brass screw pop free, and eased the glass panel open on its track.
The apartment smelled of stale protein powder, dry laundry, and the faint, copper reek of dried blood on the hallway drywall where Colt had slammed Lainey hours before.
I moved through the dark living room without a flashlight, letting my boots feel the transitions between carpet and linoleum.
In the master bedroom, the mattress had already been shoved off the box spring. The closet doors stood wide, clothes hangers scattered across the floor like picked bones. Boyd’s crew had already started turning the place over, but they were car mechanics and deckhands; they searched like men looking for stolen tools, not soldiers looking for hidden intelligence.
I knelt beside the low platform bed, reached beneath the recessed plywood frame at the headboard, and ran my fingertips along the inside lip of the structural riser.
My knuckles brushed against cold, textured plastic.
It was secured with heavy industrial Velcro—the kind used to mount marine radios to fiberglass consoles. I gave it a sharp, steady yank. The adhesive released with a dry, tearing rip.
A black Pelican 1150 case, watertight, locked with two brass master padlocks.
Before I could stand, the headlights of a heavy vehicle swept across the bedroom blinds, casting striped shadows of light and dark across the ceiling.
A door slammed out front. Then another.
"Check the back patio!" a harsh, familiar voice snarled from the breezeway. Boyd Lusk. "If she came by water, the boat’s got to be in the ditch!"
Heavy bootsteps hammered across the wood-plank porch. The front door, already damaged by the earlier police entry, was kicked inward with a splintering crash.
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Two men stepped into the living room, their silhouettes framed by the amber security lights of the courtyard. Both were broad-shouldered, wearing hooded sweatshirts and work gloves. One carried a short iron pry-bar; the other held a heavy steel flashlight in his left hand and a snub-nosed revolver in his right.
Behind them walked Boyd Lusk. He had changed out of his torn suit into a dark fleece jacket, his face gray and sunken with exhaustion, but his eyes carried the twitchy, desperate malice of a cornered dog.
