So she swam. She relaxed her mind and swam, finning through the water and praying that she would soon feel the saving cover of the coastal vegetation about her hands. Stars began swirling in front of her closed eyelids, some red but mostly white, dancing like they were being stirred by an unseen spoon. With her last few moments of air, Ellie felt the slimy firmness of thick roots. She grabbed them and turned herself upward. It took every last bit of oxygen and energy to control her muscles and to keep from breaking the surface with a choked gasp. She brought her mouth out of the water and once her nose had cleared she slowly, with every bit of control she could muster, brought air into her lungs. Her heart was beating rapidly, but Ellie forced herself to breathe slowly. She silently exhaled and then slowly took in more air.

  Jet was still coming through her earpiece. As her heart rate slowed and oxygen once again filled her cells, she tuned in. “He’s still looking around. We can’t see you. I don’t know where you are in relation to him. He’s at the mouth of the cove, not moving.”

  That was what Ellie needed to know. She turned her body upright and moved deeper into the overgrowth. She brought her head out of the water and looked toward the direction she had come from. The kayaker was twenty yards away. Ellie had swum further north than she had thought. He wouldn’t find her. Not that he would begin an expedition for her - the odds were that he still figured her for an animal. But he would have been trained not to work off his assumptions but a worst case scenario instead. He was good at his job.

  “He’s moving in toward the shack. You’re clear, Ellie.”

  She took another minute to fully regain her oxygen levels and start off back the way she had come in. She arrived at water’s edge near her truck ten minutes later. She took off her fins and slipped out of the water.

  She touched the tiny button on her earpiece. “I’m okay,” she said.

  “Oh, dear Lord, Ellie. We could see him shooting into the water. Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. He didn’t make me. I got out.”

  “Why did he shoot at you?” It was Mark.

  Ellie filled him in on how his paddle had engaged her. “Are you still across the jetties?” she asked.

  “Yes. We’re watching the video feeds and the tracker.”

  “Let me get out of this wetsuit, and I’ll drive over. Give me half an hour.”

  * * *

  Ellie rapped lightly on the door to the surveillance van. Mark opened it, and she stepped inside and shut the door behind her. When she looked back, Glitch, Jet, Mark, and two others were all staring at her with concerned eyes.

  She offered a tired smile. “I’m fine,” she said. “Really, I am.”

  “What was that paranoid idiot doing shooting into the water?” Mark steamed.

  “Like I said, he nicked me with his paddle. Obviously, those guys are paid to keep that little operation we saw tonight in the dark - literally. He was just covering his bases. I would have done the same thing in his shoes.”

  Jet said, “I talked with Garrett. Did he call you yet?”

  “He did.” He had called, worried after he’d gotten an update from Jet. She’d given him a run-down, assured him she was all right, and told him she was going to go home and file her report online and then take a couple days off. That, Garrett said, was fine by him. When Ellie agreed to come on as a DEA contractor a couple months ago, it was with the understanding that it would be part time; three, maybe four days a week. The investigation was quickly getting to a point where Ellie was starting to feel like she would need to step up her hours. It didn’t concern her. They were making good progress, and that’s what mattered most to her at the end of the day.

  Mark rolled a chair toward her. “Here, sit down.” She winced as she stepped toward it. Her hamstring was going to have a nice bruise to show for it all. She had wrapped her upper arm with gauze from the first-aid kit she kept in her truck. She sat down and looked at everyone. They were still staring at her. “Would you stop it?” she said. “I’m fine. His paddle hit me in the back of the leg, and a bullet skimmed my arm.”

  “He shot you?” Glitch said. This, coming from a man who usually never saw more action than someone reaching for a doughnut faster than he did.

  “It grazed me. Skin wound. Nothing more.”

  Mark rubbed his forehead with his fingers. “I’m sorry, Ellie. I thought this whole thing would just be an easy in and out for you. I had no idea.”

  “That’s the risk we take,” she replied. She’d been in worse situations, and had the scar to show for it, seven inches long on her lower back from where a Jordanian’s knife had sliced into her. It took three years for feeling to return fully to the area. “So fill me in,” she said. “That’s why I’m here.”

  And for a moment they all forget about her getting paddled and shot. The men huddled around in front of a wall of monitors, some full color, some black and white, and Ellie stepped in with them. Glitch stuck a pencil between his teeth and laid one hand on a joystick and the other on a keyboard. With his chin he pointed toward the screen directly in front of him. He spoke past the pencil. “Here. That’s the go-fast.” A small blip showed up inside concentric circles. “They pulled up and stopped for a bit ten miles offshore. We think to gas-up. Now, it’s already a hundred miles out, blazing across the open Gulf toward Mexico at seventy-five-ish knots. They’ll have to slow down a little once they hit the current, but they’ll probably be at their destination by the time we’re done with lunch tomorrow.”

  “Once they arrive we’ll release the tracker,” Jet said. “We won’t know when it’s coming back, but knowing their origination point is a great start. We’ll be able to interface with other offices that know more about who’s sending what out of that location.” His voice held a bit of excitement.

  Mark pointed to another screen. “The other boat - the one that loaded up some of the shipment - is moving up toward Tampa. It stopped for a while near Bonita Springs and then kept going north. I’ve put a fresh drone on it.”

  “Great,” she said. “I’ll be interested where the shipment that’s still sitting in that shack ends up. And where those two pulling security roll off to.”

  “Us too,” Jet said. He stepped over to a tall Thermos and refilled his coffee cup.

  “I’m taking the next couple days off,” Ellie said. “If you compile all the info from tonight and need me to come in sooner, just let me know. If not, let’s make a new game plan when I get back. Good?”

  “Good,” they all said.

  “Either way,” she said. “Don’t let me sit in the dark. Call me tomorrow with an update.”

  Mark put a concerned hand on her good shoulder. “You sure you’re good? I can drive you back.” Ellie was beginning to like working with Mark more and more. He was smart, diligent, and, not that it really mattered, thoughtful.

  “I’m fine. Really.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know what else we’ve got.”

  She opened the door and stepped out. Jet came out behind her. He shut the door. “Hey, listen, I just want to say thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “Well, since you came on we’ve started making some progress. I was right there with Garrett, frustrated that I could only commission my teams toward localized raids. It looks like we’re really starting to get into the land of the higher-ups, and we all have you to thank for that. You’re doing a good thing, you know.”

  “Thanks, Jet. We’re a team. Everyone is playing their part well.”

  “Maybe one of these days we can get you to come on full time, huh?”

  “Nice try.”

  He grinned, said good night, and went back inside.

  Ellie headed back to her truck, wincing as she walked.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  When Ringo walked out of the door to the convenience store, he held it open for a small boy with no shoes and a threadbare t-shirt. The kid, ignoring him and acting as if the door had opened of its own accord, walked in without acknowledging him. Ringo returned to his Cadillac and turned it on. He opened the bottle of Coke he had just purchased and switched the air conditioner up a notch. Then he buckled.

  The glass door to the store opened and the kid came out, started walking away. Ringo rolled down his window and called after him. The boy stopped and turned around, squinting against the late afternoon sun.

  “Come here.”

  The boy, who apparently had never been warned against approaching strangers who bid you come, obeyed. Ringo stirred and brought his wallet out of his back pocket. His chiropractor had warned him for years not to put his wallet behind him, said it ruined the natural lay of his spine. But Ringo didn’t care. His back had always been fine. It was still fine. He fished out a few bills and, sticking them between a couple fingers, held them out the window. “Here. Take this.”

  The kid’s mangled hair, clumped together by scalp oil and road dust, fell over his ears and eyes. He stared at the money but didn’t take it. “Here, kid. Take it.” Ringo said again. “Get yourself some candy or some shoes or something.”

  The boy stared at the money and didn’t reach out and take it until Ringo flicked out his fingers again. He snatched it, and the feral, scared look on his face might have made one think he had just stolen it and didn't know where to run. He stared at the money then looked up.

  “What’s wrong, boy? You ever see a hundred dollar bill before? There’s four of them there. Don’t show anybody, now.”

  The boy kept staring. A lady in tiny cut-off jeans and a tank top came out of the store and walked back to her car without paying them any attention.

  Ringo sighed. Then he snapped his fingers. The kid blinked. “Okay?” Ringo said.

  The boy came out of his trance and nodded. Then he turned, still ogling the money, and disappeared into a clump of trees without saying a word.

  Ringo pulled out of the parking lot. He got back onto the old country road and drove another three miles against the sun. He slowed and turned off onto a dirt road where a slash pine and two banana trees grew together at the corner. He went on another mile and turned into a small clearing hedged in barbed wire. Aldrich was already here and out of his Toyota Camry, leaning against it and studying his fingernails. Ringo pulled in next to him and unlocked the doors. Aldrich got in. He shut the door.

  “Let’s make this quick, shall we?” Ringo said.

  “Let’s.”

  “Thank you for your expertise in Miami. That Saucedo kid would have done us in.”

  “I know. And you’re welcome.”

  “So to what do I owe the pleasure of a face-to-face meeting?” Ringo asked.

  “You need to be careful,” Aldrich said. “Your name, I’m hearing it more. Before, it was hardly a whisper in the wind, and now it’s said in a loud, angry growl. You’re making a lot of people very unhappy. That’s a good way to get hooked.”

  Ringo sighed, looked into the rearview, and adjusted his fedora. “I know. I am aware of that.”

  “You don’t seem bothered. This is a big deal.”

  Ringo smiled. “I didn’t get this far by being foolish. There is, you know, a difference between risk and foolishness. You can risk wisely.”

  “Well, now you’re straddling the line.”

  “I just gave a poor boy four hundred dollars.”

  “What?”

  “I just gave a poor boy four hundred dollars. He looked like he’d been sleeping on a dump heap - a friend of Job’s perhaps.”

  “Okay.”

  “It reminded me of something my father did when I was a young boy.”

  Aldrich waited for the story to begin.

  Ringo said, “I was about the age of the boy I gave the money to. Maybe eight or nine. We lived on the outskirts of Breckenridge, Colorado, and I had always wanted to ski, but, you see, we were too poor. It cost money for the skis and the warm clothes and the boots and the fee to get up the lifts. I may as well have asked for a ride on a spaceship. But one day I get home from school, and there, propped up against the chipped and rotted siding of our house, was a brand-new pair of skis and a pair of boots and poles sitting next to them. A twenty dollar bill was wedged into a boot. My father came out with this wide smile on his face. I’ll never forget his words. ‘They’re yours,’ he said, and then he blinked the moisture from his eyes. He was proud. Proud that he could do something like that for me. And so I cried too. It really was like he had gotten me a ticket on a spaceship. So I went out. And I walked down to Marty’s Ski Shop and bought all the used gear I needed and a pass for the lifts. Marty even waxed my skis for me. Then I rode those slopes - the green ones at first, but by the time they closed down late that night I was riding the reds - giggling and laughing all the way down.”

  Ringo paused and frowned. “But when I got done, he wasn’t there to pick me up like he’d promised. I waited and waited, and he never showed. There I was, almost eleven at night, shivering in my long johns and ski suit, and he never showed. Some lady that worked the slopes offered me a ride, so I let her take me home. When I got out and took my gear from her car, I looked up at my front porch with the light on, and all my worry about not getting picked up washed away. I was just thrilled to go in and tell my dad how much fun I’d had. So I left my gear on the porch and went inside. And I found my father. He was lying in a pool of tacky blood in our foyer. He wasn’t dead - not yet.

  “As it turns out, my father had stolen the skis and boots that he had given me. Stolen them from Artie. Artie, the Sheriff's brother. Artie had come and paid my father a visit, and, of course, being related to the Sheriff meant that nothing ever came of it.”

  Ringo shook his head. “It changed me, and not in the way you might think. I couldn’t do anything about my father getting murdered by beating. But I could do something about what I had felt that day. I felt the power of what money could do. More than raw power, it was freedom. Freedom is what it gave me. For one overcast January afternoon, I felt the invigorating sense of being born anew. It felt like fresh snow stuffed down my underpants. It woke me up.”

  Aldrich nodded, understanding.

  “My father,” Ringo continued, “oddly enough, grew up in a little town called Gibeon. It was said of the Gibeonites of old that they were hewers of wood and drawers of water. After being baptized into freedom that cold wintery day, I knew right then that I would not grow up and be a hewer of wood and drawer of water like my father had been. I would cast off the internment of the Gibeonites forever.

  “Now,” Ringo said, “maybe that dirty-haired boy who just received my generosity won’t protect that money properly. Maybe his mother - if he has one - will steal it from him and tell him she needs it for something he wouldn’t understand but that involves needles and rubber arm bands and spoons. Maybe some punk teenager is stopping him even now and inquiring where he was coming from and where he was going. He might push the boy and, as he’s laying on his back, shove the toe of his sneaker into the boy’s ribs. Then, on a whim, he’ll search his pockets, find the money, and take it. Or, maybe the kid will get off scot-free and find that he now has enough money for a full year’s supply of Skittles or Hershey's. Either way - whatever transpires - it won't be the theft or the beating or even the candy he remembers. Do you know what he’ll never forget?”

  Aldrich said, “You giving him the money.”

  “Me giving him the money,” Ringo repeated. “He’ll remember that someone gave him four hundred dollars. And whether or not he can articulate it this way, he will be, above all else, thankful. He will be thankful. He will be thankful because he will have tasted the power that comes with money. The sense of control over your own destiny that it gives you. That you no longer must be slave to anyone.” He paused and stared out the window. “I was poor once, my friend. I never intend to be so again.” Then he added. He looked over at Aldrich. “My point...don’t worry about hearing my name more than you’re used to. I have control. You and I know that my largest competition is about to go away. Many thanks to you. After that, let them whisper my name. Let them shout my name from the masts. They won’t find me. Have I been more aggressive lately? Yes. I do admit that. There is a time to plant and a time to uproot; a time to scatter stones and time to gather them; a time for war and a time for peace. I make everything beautiful in its time. Do you believe that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  “What then of César?” Aldrich asked. Ángeles Negros was the largest and most feared cartel in Mexico. César Solorzano, for now, was at the helm of their maritime operations, and it was he from whom Ringo sourced his product.

  “César is fraying at the edges. He is losing favor with more than just me. His style has caused many - me included - to take greater risks, risks that I’m no longer willing to take. He’ll be dealt with in time.”

  “Deal with him? César?” Aldrich asked incredulously.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  “How is everything else?” Ringo asked. “You? Are you keeping low?”

  “Of course. Things couldn’t be going better.”

  “Excellent. Let me return the sentiment and remind you that you are on shaky ground too. Be careful. We walk a precarious line. We’ve come a long way, you and I.” Then he said, more seriously, “Be careful with those in your care.”

  Aldrich nodded. He fingered the door handle. “Until next time.” He got out and shut the door.

  Ringo waited for him to leave before he smiled. Another good day.

  Chapter Twenty-Four