“Mademoiselle?” The man standing over her was the museum guard. His belly hung so far over his belt that the belt disappeared — even when viewing it from the ground. “Mademoiselle?” He reached down and shook her shoulder hard. She hissed between clenched teeth, batted his hand away, and rolled up to a sitting position. Off in the distance she could already hear the two-toned pitch of the Gendarme’s siren.

The guard grabbed her by her upper arm and lifted her to her feet. One knee was skinned and bleeding and the once crisp white polo shirt she had put on that morning was covered with dirt and grass stains. The guard was explaining something about filing charges for disturbing the peace.

“The other man,” she asked him in French. “What happened to the other man?”

“Il a disparu,” he said.

Right, she thought. Disappeared. I can just see you running after him.

A crowd of people had formed a circle around them. The guard yelled at them to step back as he led her through the gate and toward the bridge over the moat.  It was difficult to think through the pain. She looked down at her right arm and realized her hand remained fisted. With her good hand, she uncurled the fingers that still grasped the scrap of fabric that had once been Ponytail’s back pocket. She lifted the fabric and beneath it saw a scrap of folded paper. From outside the fort walls, Riley heard the siren stop and the sound of car doors slamming shut. She looked up and saw the light blue shirts and dark pants of two Gendarmes hurrying toward her. Looking back down at the paper in her hand, she unfolded it and saw a photo printed on regular white typing paper. The photo was of a gold coin, and it was the exact same gold coin Bob had been wearing around his neck.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Bourges des Saintes

March 26, 2008

5:20 p.m.

Spyder Brewster sat on the side of the hill thinking that the bitch was pretty dumb if she thought she could kick his ass. Hell, he’d been in more fights in bars and on boats than she’d had pairs of shoes. But all the while he’d sat hiding in the bushes along the side of the road outside the fort, waiting for the cops to cart her off to jail, he’d been thinking hard about what that dude had said in the bar the night before.

Keep an eye on her. Covertly. Report every morning and night to his cell number, and so this morning he had called him, but only after Pinky woke him up to tell him the chick’s sailboat was gone. They’d upped anchor and hauled ass out of the town anchorage in time to see a small white sail on the horizon. That was when he called the dude. Told the man she was headed for the islands called the Saintes. The man said to stick to her and they had. Though when they got here to the islands, they’d just watched for a while and then Pinky had stayed on the boat on account of his condition, and he don’t do too good out in the noontime sun.

That Bertram was a great old boat but she sucked fuel like a thirsty bitch, and they didn’t have the bucks to refuel her. It had been easy enough to steal the boat in St. John’s, Antigua. Him and Pinky had just gone in and chartered her for a day. They put half down, told the guy they’d give him the other half after they got back with fish. Said they wanted to give him an incentive. They caught a mahi and when the captain was leaning over the transom to gaff the fish, Spyder nailed him in the back of the head with the fish billy.

The mate was the captain’s seventeen-year-old kid, and he jumped in after they pushed the old man overboard. Saved them the trouble. Seeing as they were about ten miles offshore and the old man’s head was bleeding, Spyder figured there weren’t any witnesses left to worry about.

Him and Pinky found an anchorage off a place called Great Bird Island. They tore off the tuna tower and slapped some epoxy over the holes where all that tubing had been bolted to the bridge deck. They beached her, changed the color of the boot stripe and repainted the name: Fish n’ Chicks. He’d seen another boat with that name and thought is sounded pretty good.

Whilst he was sitting there remembering how cool it felt to have his own sportsfish, he almost missed the cop car. They didn’t have the siren going like they did on the way up. After they passed, he stood up and stuck his neck out as the little car slowed to make the last switchback. Yup, that was her in the back seat. The little cop car entered the main drag along the beach and speeded up in the straightaway. Spyder stretched, brushed the dirt off his shorts and felt where the pocket had been ripped off.

“Bitch,” he said. “I liked these fuckin’ shorts.”

After they had repainted and renamed the boat, they’d explored all the lockers, and he’d found that he was almost the same size as the kid who’d jumped overboard. He’d been wearing the kid’s clothes, even his shoes, ever since.

He stepped onto the road and started down the last hill. He limped because his knee hurt where she’d twisted his leg, and he felt a blister forming on the big toe. He’d been able to grab his shoes before he ran out of the fort, but his bare feet in the kid’s Crocs didn’t do so good at running.

She’d anchored her sailboat around noon and gone ashore in her dinghy right away, and that was the first time him and his brother had got a look at this chick they’d been sent to follow. He was surprised to find she was a hottie, and he wondered why in hell a woman who looked like that couldn’t find a man to sail with her. He wouldn’t mind getting a little piece of that, and he hoped it would come to that before this business was over.

Shit. He was sweating like a stuck pig and people was starting to look at him funny as he passed the fancy restaurants and tourist shops. He stopped to look at his reflection in a shop window. His shirt was covered with dirt. He slowed his pace and started pulling the tank top away from his sweat-slick chest, fanning it like to try to let some air in there. The damn shirt was already soaked through. His feet were sliding around on the soles of the plastic shoes and every once in a while the raw skin on the top of his toe would make contact with something hard.

Okay, bitch, this ain’t funny no more. Spyder stopped in the shade of a bright blue awning with French words on it. He looked both ways on the street and he didn’t see anyone who resembled the woman. Maybe they really were gonna put her in jail. Just for fightin’? He doubted it. She looked like money anyway. People like that never went to jail. Leastwise, he’d never seen any when he was on the inside.

He never done this kind of work before. Covert work. Back home in Buxton, he’d done just about every job a man of his many talents could do from fishing, shrimping, running dope or working in town at stuff like construction or selling shit to tourists on the streets. But this kind of detective thing was a new one for him. He’d been having fun earlier up at the fort sneaking around watching the bitch, but now he was hot, tired and his feet hurt.

Well, shit, she got to come back to her boat sometime. Spyder turned and headed back to the dinghy dock.

Pinky was sitting in front of a laptop computer at the table in the Bertram’s main salon, headphones on his head, the generator running and the AC cranking the temperature down to sixty-five degrees. He looked up when Spyder slid the aft door open.

“So?” Pinky said sliding the big headphones down and hooking them around his neck.

Spyder stepped into the cabin and crossed the carpet concentrating so he wouldn’t limp. He turned his face away so his brother couldn’t see him mimic his whiny-ass voice saying the word “So?” like he was his old lady. “Bitch walked all over the fuckin’ fort.  Didn’t meet with anybody or do nothing special.  I got tired of playing tourist with her. What you doing?”