Page 85 of Redemption
A man emerges from the car, and I know it’s DuFort without even seeing his face. The first thing he does is draw down.
Fool. He’ll never hit us at this range.
With J safely aboard, I yell to the captain, “She’s aboard! Go! Go!”
I grab the fiberglass arch and J to secure us as the twin diesel engines snarl with their full force and the boat jerks forward in the water.
But DuFort has always been a fool. He unloads in our direction, and I watch him with a smile as the span of churning water increases between us and the pier.
You’ll always be one step behind, DuFort. That’s the price of your arrogance.
And as I watch Marco slip behind the door to the Mercedes, I know that I couldn’t have pulled this off without him. Thank you, brother.
DuFort’s face is red as he yells at the boat as we pull farther and farther away from where he stands on the end of the pier, powerless to do anything to stop us.
It’s a beautiful sight.
I salute DuFort, simply to give Marco more time to do his part and slip away.
J swings around to face DuFort too. Her arm comes up, and with her fingers, she forms a gun and pulls the trigger. DuFort’s enraged shrieks fade into the roar of the engines and the sound of the water as we make our perfect getaway.
The stage is set.
Now, you’re playing my game, DuFort. I hope you enjoy the grand finale.
Less than ten minutes later, J and I climb off the boat onto a low platform attached to a much larger ship. The captain and first mate salute us, and the captain points the vessel upriver toward the marina that is his final destination for the day. The charter boat is no longer solid white either. The first mate peeled back white stickers as soon as we were out of DuFort’s view, revealing the boat to be Roy’s Rockin’ Reels. If the Feds are looking for an all-white fishing boat, they’ll never find it. The vessel is now red, white, and blue, and the switch took less than sixty seconds.
Absolutely brilliant, Leo.
I’ll thank him in person shortly, as he’s the man J and I are now being led to see. We pass through the metal porthole-style door of a rusted cargo ship and enter a completely different world. The inside of Leo’s cargo ship looks nothing like the outside. Leather and mahogany cover the interior walls, and brass ship sconces light the way. The twenty-something-year-old man leading us to Leo pauses at another porthole door, this one finished with tufted leather and brass rivets.
It reminds me that I’ve always enjoyed Leo’s taste for the finer things in life.
The man knocks on the door. “They’ve arrived, monsieur.”
“Enter.” I hear Leo call from inside.
The younger man turns the brass wheel that opens the door and steps aside with an arm out, gesturing for us to enter.
Shifting the duffel bags on my shoulders that I took from J, I stride into the interior cabin.
My shoes sink into the layered oriental rugs that carpet the stunning library. Leo’s love of art is on full display here. A Monet hangs on the wall between what I know are shelves of rare first-edition books. A Degas sculpture stands on a pillar in the corner of the room.
Leo stands behind a Louis XV desk, a smile stretching his tanned face.
“He is good and mad, mon ami. Spilling vitriol and filth nonstop from his classless American mouth.”
“Anything we need to know? And thank you, by the way.”
Leo shrugs. “It’s my pleasure. And aside from the fact that he wants to do unspeakable things to you, your wife, and your daughter … he has said some things of interest. He contacted a dirty judge for a warrant. I’m sorry to inform you that they are going to ransack your home.”
“Expected,” I say, feeling nothing about the loss of my possessions. They’re only things.
“It must have been,” Leo says with a tilt of his head as he hands me one of the receivers for the bug and tracker. “Because Remy says that the pickup at the bar was much larger than expected. I thought you said you were only retrieving one painting?”
My attention cuts to J beside me. “What did you do?”
When she smiles, she looks exactly like the mischievous little girl I once knew. “I figured for five grand, the bar manager didn’t care what she was watching … so I robbed the place. Clean.”
