Michael’s son?

Then Sergeant Jeremy saw the pale bald round head and a sudden sense of panic rattled through him.

“You,” Sergeant Jeremy said in utter confusion.

“Yes, it’s me, Sergeant. Funny meeting you here,” said the FBI man with the wolf’s eyes.

“I should say the same thing,” Sergeant Jeremy said. “This is not your house!”

“And whose house might it be, Sergeant?” the FBI man said. “In fact, why don’t you come in here, Sergeant, and talk to us. We’re all friends, right? Colleagues, fellow law enforcement officials. Perhaps you could help us with the investigation we’re conducting.”

Sergeant Jeremy stiffened as something cold touched his neck at the back of his collar. A short muscular man in black tactical clothes and some kind of goggles over his eyes was standing there with a gun pressed to the back of his skull.

“After you, Papi,” the soldier said.

The blow to his chest that came when he set foot into the house was like a sledgehammer. Sergeant Jeremy went back off his heels onto his ass with his breath gone. He actually skidded a little down the short corridor before he came to a stop against the wall.

It took him a second to process that the FBI man, Reyland, had kicked him. The huge bald man had just stomped him in the chest with the heel and sole of his big dress shoe.

“There you go. Have a seat, mon,” the FBI man said. “You sit right back and get real comfy, you little lying sack of shit.”

73

It was eight thirty in the morning, and out on the faded sunny South Florida concrete, the Beatles’ iconic song “Day Tripper” died down from the speaker above to be replaced by some driving steel drum Bahamian dance music.

For the twentieth time.

Gannon sipped on the dregs of his iced coffee as a yellow forklift loaded with pallets rumbled by on the quay.

They were in Fort Lauderdale now at the busy Port Everglades Harbor. The terminal they were sitting outside of was for a US-to-Bahamas daytrip high-speed ferry service called Raytrippers.

Gannon’s son, Declan, had taken it a few times because it was cheaper than flying and only a driver’s license was required to get through customs if you told them you weren’t staying overnight.

Gannon smiled as Ruby came out from the lounge inside and sat beside him.

Forty minutes after they had taken off she’d landed the plane as pretty as you please in a hayfield in a little town called Dalton, Georgia. Since then, they’d been heading stealthily south via local taxis.

“You must speak Bahamian by now. What do they keep saying?” said Ruby, who was dressed now in a maxi dress with a ridiculously garish sunset on it.

On their way south, they had stopped outside of Jacksonville and bought some beach stuff at a Dollar Store that didn’t have a camera out in front of it. With Gannon’s new madras shorts and a seagull T-shirt and floppy golf hat, they could have been a blue-collar couple doing a second honeymoon on the cheap.