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Back Stop at Nothing Save as PDF
Contents ( 98)
  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77
  78. 78
  79. 79
  80. 80
  81. 81
  82. 82
  83. 83
  84. 84
  85. 85
  86. 86
  87. 87
  88. 88
  89. 89
  90. 90
  91. 91
  92. 92
  93. 93
  94. 94
  95. 95
  96. 96
  97. 97
  98. EPILOGUE

Sergeant Jeremy took the card and beamed down at it exaggeratedly. The fake smile on his face like he’d just won the lottery.

Reyland, the card said under the FBI logo. Deputy Assistant Director Robert Reyland.

“If I hear of anything, Mr. Reyland,” he said, giving the arrogant American official his best vacant welcome to the Bahamas, mon grin, “you’ll be the first to know.”

Reyland stood there for a moment staring at him, staring at the empty field around.

“Can I give you a lift back to the road?” Sergeant Jeremy said, stepping up into the tractor cab.

“No, thanks,” Reyland finally said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “You can go ahead now, Sergeant. I’ll find my own way out.”

23

There were about a dozen fat gulls atop Mama Lizbeth’s grocery store’s dried wood awning, and they all seemed to give Gannon the stink eye as he jogged in off the beach the next morning at a little after 8:00 a.m.

As he caught his breath, he spotted an old red Toyota sedan with missing hubcaps and tinted windows at the other end of its sandy asphalt lot.

Gannon smiled as the island beater gave off a brief honk.

As he stepped over, its driver’s door swung wide. A thin, smiling, mischievous-looking young black man with long dreads stepped out and gave him a funny little bow. His white wifebeater and khaki shorts were immaculate, pristine.

“Oh, so you really are still alive,” Gannon said as he came over and gave his on-again, off-again first mate, Little Jorge, a hand slap and hearty man hug.

Little Jorge laughed.

“Alive and kicking, Captain Mike, always,” he said in his musical island drawl.

Gannon shook his head at him.

When he first came down to the islands, Gannon took an instant liking to the cute, funny, hustling kid who hung around the docks with his older brothers. He’d actually been pretty good buds with Little Jorge’s whole large family ever since he had taught the motley lot of them how to dive free of charge in an effort to keep them out of trouble.

The sun caught the glint of gold in Little Jorge’s pirate’s smile.

Gannon definitely had his work cut out for him there.

Little Jorge wasn’t exactly what one would call a reliable employee, but when the wiry twenty-two-year-old showed up for work, he was actually top-notch. He knew the waters around the Bahamas better than anyone and was one of the most skilled, natural fishermen Gannon had ever seen.

“How’d your, um, vacation go?” Gannon said.

“Just got back this very minute when I saw your text,” Little Jorge said.

“Three weeks this time?” Gannon said.

Little Jorge shrugged and laughed again.

His family was originally from San Andrés Island in Colombia, and sometimes, he and his brothers—like other reckless young island men—would try to make a quick and extremely dangerous buck by acting as pilots on the Picuda go-fast drug boats that played cat-and-mouse in the Caribbean with the coast guard from South America to Miami Beach.