The Ocean Dark

77

Voss stood in a cluster of Coast Guard officers and seamen on the deck of the Kodiak and watched as Lieutenant Stone switched on the detonator, under the watchful eyes of David Boudreau. A shuddery anger rattled through her with every breath and she glanced over at Ed Turcotte, who stood slightly apart from the rest of them, his eyes downcast.

“Asshole,” she muttered.

David raised an eyebrow and gave her a sidelong glance, but Voss pressed her mouth shut and didn’t say another word. She pushed away from the railing and threaded her way through the seamen, who separated to give her an exit.

“You don’t have any fight left in you at all, huh?” she said, hands balled at her sides. Voss hadn’t thrown a punch in a while and didn’t intend to start today, but her fists ached.

Turcotte looked up. “Excuse me, Agent?”

“You heard me, Ed.”

“Oh, it’s Ed now, is it? We’re friends?”

Voss laughed. “Not fucking likely.”

“I’m heartbroken.”

“We had an hour, you son of a bitch!” she snapped, raising her voice to be heard above the growing roar of the Navy helicopter that even now moved toward the Hillstrom, long rusty container swaying on chains beneath it. The sight made her sick.

“An hour for what? What would have been the point?” Turcotte asked with a hollow laugh.

“The point? Do you have any idea how much time my squad put into this case? I almost lost my partner—”

Turcotte jabbed a finger at her. “Because you put him in jeopardy!”

Voss slapped the hand away. “Fuck you!” she shouted over the helicopter’s noise. “You think anyone could have seen this coming? The whole case is slipping through our fingers, but we had a chance to search Rio’s ship, maybe salvage something to help us take down Viscaya, and you wouldn’t even let us look! It’s dereliction of duty, Ed. You turned your back on the job!”

With a sneer, he shook his head. “You kill me, Rachael. You’re going to write me up? The DOD will eat you alive. Don’t you get it? They’re going to make this whole thing vanish! Stuck in a black box and put away, like it never happened. What evidence could we have found that they would have let us use? Nothing! You want Viscaya, you’ll have to do it the hard way. And if you want to come at me, by all means, try your luck. But nobody’s going to let you breathe a word about the Antoinette or this island or anything about this case, so you might want to think twice about what happens if they decide your little grudge against me is bad for national security.”

She glared at him, but Turcotte turned and stared out across the blue water. They were nearly a mile out from the Antoinette now, a safe distance, and from here the island seemed so small and ordinary and unthreatening that the entire scene became unreal.

“Damn it,” she whispered, dropping her gaze and staring at the small waves lapping against the side of the Kodiak, down below. “Damn you all.”

The roar of the helicopter had diminished. By now, they’d be putting that container down on the deck of the Hillstrom. They’d brought the devil on board, and she was just glad Alena Boudreau had chosen the Navy ship as her base. Voss didn’t want to be anywhere near one of those things.

The Antoinette detonated in three explosions, one on top of the next, a staccato eruption out on the open sea. Voss looked up to see fire and debris raining down around the swiftly sinking, ravaged remains of the container ship. It slid into the water in smoking pieces, all of its crimes and dark secrets engulfed by the blue Caribbean.

The thunder of the Antoinette’s destruction was still echoing in her ears when she heard someone shouting her name. Voss and Turcotte turned as one to see McIlveen hurtling along the Coast Guard ship’s deck toward them, with Dan O’Connell hustling along in his wake. Mac looked grim, but it was the shock on O’Connell’s pale, drawn features that told her something awful had happened.

Off to her right, Lieutenant Stone had started to shout into his comm, and David Boudreau had turned deathly pale.

Something had gone wrong on the island.

Voss hung her head, running a hand through her hair.

“Josh,” she whispered, or thought she did. Maybe she had only thought his name, along with the one other thing that swam up into her mind.

What now?