Stingrays Read online

  So I’m standing here now thinking: I’m a playboy lifeguard about to go on the run. Where do I hide my windfall?

  Now, I knew a lot of guys back at Harvard who did some small-time dealing from their dorm rooms. They needed places to hide their product and their cash. As a work-study/scholarship kid who occasionally found himself a little short, I got to know those dealers and their hiding places very well. (Hey, I only stole from criminals. It didn’t make me a criminal; it made me friggin’ Robin Hood.)

  The usual places—inside an envelope taped to the back of the toilet, inside an aspirin bottle, taped to the bottom of a dresser drawer—wouldn’t work with twenty-five large. Paolo needed to hide those thick stacks somewhere clever in a hurry.

  The fridge—no. Freezer—no. Drawers—no. Luggage—no. Beneath a pile of clothes that reek of cheap cologne—no.

  Come on, where, where, Paolo?

  The best hiding places are often in plain sight. And when I step over a dented and scuffed board game box, I realize that Paolo knew this, too.

  I check one game—nothing. Another—nothing. But the third box feels heavy. I lift the lid and check under the little cardboard insert that keeps the cards and tokens and whatnot in place. And yep, there it is.

  Our “good faith” money.

  You’ve got some brains after all, Mr. Playboy Lifeguard.

  I shove the money into my jacket pockets, knowing that without it, Paolo will be staying put for the foreseeable future. Now, the other thing on my must-find list.

  The clothes he was wearing the night Paige Ryerson disappeared.

  From the looks of this place, our man’s not much for the Laundromat or dry cleaners. So they must be here somewhere.

  My reference is a photo posted on social media from the night of the party. The light wasn’t very good, so I can’t tell if I’m looking for an off-white or a light-blue button-down shirt. But the swimming trunks are unmistakable: pink, with silver tarpons all over them. As if to subliminally tell the ladies that he’s a real catch?

  After a few minutes of methodical searching, I start to wonder if Paolo has been as clever about his garments as he was with the good faith money. Maybe he thought ahead and threw them away or had them destroyed.…

  I hear footsteps in the hall. Time’s up.

  Chapter 10

  QUINN

  Matthew Quinn approaches the reception desk, where he finds a bored security guard who’s making $13.50 an hour to protect a billion-dollar skyscraper.

  The guard glances at Quinn’s forged ID card, then up at Quinn’s face. He sees exactly what Quinn wants him to see—a white guy in his early forties, tired eyes, not exactly looking forward to a long day of hanging from a harness while he squeegees the grime off a pane of glass thirty stories above the pavement.

  The guard nods. Quinn walks through.

  He heads to the service elevators, because right now he’s dressed like one of the service people nobody notices. A few hours ago Quinn scoped out a blind spot not covered by security cameras and studied its dimensions until he could imagine them as clearly as his own living room.

  He slips into that blind spot and begins to shed his khaki skin, walking as he transforms, swiftly and expertly. The khaki uniform goes into a black satchel that’s already strapped across his torso. It’s a Montblanc—most businessmen around here carry them or something just like them. The messy hair beneath his work cap is smoothed and parted neatly into a fashionable rakish look. Quinn’s posture changes from that of a slight, exhausted workingman to a confident, broad-shouldered businessman.

  This takes all of seven seconds, tops. Quinn’s moves are as polished as a stage magician’s. Truth is, Quinn doesn’t even think about any of it very much at this point. His movements are hardwired into his nervous system.

  On the other side of the blind spot, Quinn emerges as a completely different man—a handsome up-and-comer who’s got a very nice suit and even nicer bag and probably a spectacular dinner reservation somewhere this evening. He also looks nothing like the real Matthew Quinn.

  Up on the thirty-sixth floor, the office suites of Paul Clee & Partners are modern and hip. There’s a falling-water display in the lobby, which is both pleasing to the eye and the source of a comforting white noise that practically forces visitors to keep their voices hushed and respectful, as if they were in church.

  Somewhere down the hall Paul Clee himself is expecting Quinn, but Quinn is not going to see him.

  Not yet.

  He glides past the receptionist, who’s actually not a receptionist but a college intern filling in during the lunch break, which is why he chose this particular time to meet. The intern has only been here a week, so employee faces are still a little fuzzy. Quinn nods confidently and waves as if he works here; the intern nods and thinks, Crap, I should know that guy’s name, but I can’t remember.…

  Quinn places himself in the conference room and dials Paul Clee’s extension.

  “Mr. Clee? This is Matthew Quinn.”

  “Where are you…wait—are you calling from our conference room?”

  Quinn hangs up and waits. He learned a long time ago to keep his movements secret. To disguise his true identity. A person like Paul Clee may present himself as a potential client only to lure Quinn into a death trap. Better to keep them guessing at all times.

  Clee appears in the doorway a few seconds later. “How did you get in here?”

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Clee. Have a seat.”

  Mr. Clee, to his credit, does. “I wasn’t sure you would ever respond to my message. Friends told me you and your team were…picky.”

  “Why reach out to us in the first place?”

  “I was worried for Hannah and Brooke—they’re still in shock over the whole thing. And I was extremely fond of Paige. We just want to know what happened to her.”

  “So does the FBI,” Quinn says.

  “And they seem to be dragging their feet. Look, I’m not a man who’s used to waiting. If you want something done, you hire the best and get it done.”

  Quinn stares at Clee. No visible emotion on his face, no reaction to the ham-handed attempt at flattery.

  “Well?” Clee asks after a few uncomfortable seconds. “Are you going to take the case or not?”

  “Yes. My team is already engaged.”

  “Hey, that’s great!” he says, clapping his manicured hands together. “But, uh, we haven’t discussed terms or anything. How does this work?”

  “We’ll take care of the details later. If you couldn’t afford our services, you would have never heard from me. But I am curious about one thing, Mr. Clee.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why were you so fond of Paige? I mean, you’ve never actually met her.”

  Clee stiffens. “She is a close friend of my girls, Mr. Quinn. They’re absolutely heartbroken. What father wouldn’t want to do everything possible to get to the bottom of this tragedy?”

  Chapter 11

  KATE (THE SOLDIER)

  Matt, things are moving fast and I’m 95 percent certain that Jamie Halsey, the trust fund kid with the yacht, killed Paige Ryerson. And if that 5 percent chance is right and he didn’t do it—I’ll bet anything he knows who did.

  I caught up with Halsey’s Squadron 60 yacht (named Hostile Wake-Over) at the El Conquistador Marina in Puerto Rico. Halsey thought he was being clever by altering his itinerary at the last minute, slipping down to PR instead of following the reservations his corporation had filed with various marinas in the Bahamas.

  But I don’t track marina reservations. I track boats directly by GPS transponder. Easy enough to do when you pick up the right piece of software on the dark web.

  As we discussed, my forged State Department credentials were enough to gain me complete access to the hotel and its marina. When I arrived, Halsey’s yacht was in the middle of the docking process, and his suite was still being prepared. So I headed in to the 35-slip marina to welcome him personally.

&nb
sp; “Hey, I’m looking for Jamie,” I said, with the brightest smile I could muster. As if I was just a girl, looking for a cute boy I’d met. “I thought I’d surprise him.”

  But the crew wasn’t having any of it. Clearly, they were used to “girls” stopping by for their boss.

  “He in the Bahamas,” one of them mumbled.

  I laughed. “Bahamas, huh? Well, then he’s going to miss one hell of a time in room 223, where I’ll be waiting for him. In bed.”

  The crew glanced at each other, for a moment wondering if I was telling the truth. Room 223 was indeed where Halsey would be checking in—the front desk confirmed it for me five minutes ago. And the boss…well, this probably sounded like something the boss would do.

  I was about to take advantage of the confusion and push my way past the crew to look for the little punk when I saw a blurry flutter out of the corner of my eye. Damnit! Fifty feet away, Jamie Halsey was leaping from the boat to the dock and running like hell. The pedigree of my credentials didn’t matter; somebody at the El Conquistador must have tipped him off.

  A thick hand grabbed my upper arm at the same moment I started to bolt down the dock. I turned to look at the crew member who’d dared to touch me.

  “You really don’t want to do that,” I said, by way of fair warning.

  “You leave Mr. Halsey alone, he’s got enough lady trouble.”

  Lady trouble, huh? I thought.

  I’ll admit it, and I apologize in advance—but the crew really ticked me off.

  So maybe I twisted their arms a little harder than I should have, hit those nerve bundles with a little more force than necessary. Once they saw that I was not some silly girl, they started attacking back with serious intent. Hands tried to crush my windpipe. Fists tried hard to shatter the bones in my face.

  Within thirty seconds, however, all three of them were writhing around on the deck of the yacht and I was in full pursuit of Halsey.

  The kid had hopped on one of the funiculars, which was carrying him up the side of the steep hill to the main hotel. There was a second funicular, but it was still crawling down the side of the hill and wouldn’t reach me for another two and a half years.

  So I did the only thing I could—chased after the funicular on foot.

  Hell, Matt, you and I have both hauled ass through more treacherous terrain in the army. So after a minute of huffing it I had caught up with the tram. You should have seen the look on the kid’s face when I pried open the door and leaped into the car with him.

  But that was nothing compared to the way his features shifted when I slammed him to the floor, hard enough to make his teeth chatter.

  “Hi, Jamie,” I said, catching my breath. “Got a minute to talk?”

  Chapter 12

  KATE (continued)

  “I want a lawyer,” the kid said.

  They always say that, don’t they, Matt?

  “Good for you,” I told him. “But I’m not a cop. And a lawyer wouldn’t do anything other than burn through that fat trust fund one billable hour at a time.”

  I think I used too many words for one sentence, because the brat looked up at me with big, blue, uncomprehending eyes. I’m sure his father told him from the time he was a little boy: If you’re ever in trouble, Daddy will send the best lawyers in the world to help you.

  “You…you can’t do this!”

  I had Halsey right where I wanted him, of course. Trapped, with no way out. Which was the right moment to throw him a little lifeline.

  “Come on, get up,” I said. “I’m not here to arrest you. I’m just here with some information you might find useful.”

  The brat relaxed a little, now that I was taking handcuffs and a perp walk off the table. “What kind of information?”

  The funicular came to a stop. We disembarked and Halsey tottered along next to me like a reluctant puppy. We found two cushioned chairs in an empty cabana. I told him where to sit. He sat. I took the opposite chair and stared at him.

  “So…what is it?”

  I continued to stare at him.

  “You said, uh, that you had some, uh, information for me.”

  As you know, most people can’t stand a long silence. They are very eager to fill the void. And the brat did not disappoint.

  “Look, I know you’re here about that girl.”

  “What girl would that be?”

  “What’s her name, Paige something. I’m telling you, I barely even talked to her. She came with a couple of chicks—and I didn’t know them, either. Somehow word spreads about a boat, and suddenly the whole friggin’ island shows up, you know? But anyway, I definitely saw her leave with her friends. So whatever happened to her didn’t happen on my boat. It’s not my problem.”

  I asked Halsey, “Are you familiar with the term bouquet of death?”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “It refers to the chemical by-products of decomposition that only cadaver dogs can detect. Did you know that the nose of a German shepherd, for instance, contains 200 million receptor cells, while human beings have barely a tenth of that?”

  “Lady, I don’t know why the hell you’re telling me this.”

  “There’s also ground-penetrating radar, and chemical analyses of soil and air samples. There’s even this cutting-edge method involving tubes and air pockets that can detect a corpse under a concrete slab. Isn’t that incredible?”

  Halsey stood up to leave. “I don’t have to listen to this.”

  I grabbed his wrist and squeezed. He winced at the sudden pain radiating up his arm.

  “Ow!”

  “What I’m saying is that it’s only a matter of a day, maybe even a few hours, before they find Paige Ryerson’s body.”

  “So what? I told you, that has nothing to do with me.”

  “I’m also hearing that there is concrete evidence linking you to her death.”

  “Evidence? Of what?”

  My eyes bored into his. “I want you to think about this carefully, Jamie, and answer me honestly. Your freedom may depend on it. Are you sure there’s nothing that would link you to this girl?”

  Halsey’s eyes went up and to the right. Which—as you know, Matt—is a surefire tell that he’s accessing visual memories. Something he saw.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m sure. Now let me go.”

  I released my grip on his wrist. As Halsey rubbed it, some of the arrogance returned to his face. He was thinking he was back in charge again. A brat like him couldn’t stand the idea of being bossed around by a “chick” like me.

  “When I tell my father what just happened, he’s going to go nuclear on you.”

  I smiled. “Who do you think sent me, dumbass?”

  Halsey’s jaw popped open. I just blew his mind. “Wh-what?”

  “Listen to me, Jamie. For your own good. I know that what happened was probably an accident, and it would be very smart if you told the truth now. Things will go a lot easier on you. If you don’t, and they pull that poor girl’s body out of the sand…well, there’s nothing even I can do for you. And let me tell you, if they sent me, it means your daddy pulled strings at the highest of levels.”

  Matt, the look on his face at that very moment is what convinced me. This little brat did it. Or at the very least, knows what happened to Paige.

  Chapter 13

  KATE (continued)

  After leaving Halsey quivering in his Armani boxer briefs, I went looking for his head employee—Captain Jacob Kurtz. Maybe he’d spill a detail or two that would cement the case against his employer.

  Didn’t take long to track him down. I selected the most ridiculous bar in the vicinity and listened for the sound of a man bragging. I elbowed my way through a force field of drunk women until I finally reached the bar, where Kurtz was sipping fruit juice and rum cocktails and holding court.

  What is it about women and certain uniforms, Quinn? Put somebody from our old army unit in that same bar and I guarantee you he’d be drinking alone, unless there were
other soldiers present.

  But Kurtz? I had to fight to get anywhere near him. Yet all I saw was some overtanned blowhard in a yacht captain’s uniform—complete with his white cap tilted to one side, like he was going to be performing with Toni Tennille later that evening.

  He noticed me right away, though. At first I thought it was because he sensed I wasn’t like the other women looking for a little vacation fling.

  “You, young lady, embarrassed the hell out of my crew,” he said. “I think we ran out of ice tending to their bumps and bruises.”

  “Where were you, Mr. Kurtz?” I asked. “Kind of wish you’d been part of the action.”

  “Belowdecks. I’m a lover, not a fighter. A seafarer, not a war-wager.”

  Oh, boy. I decided to get to the point or we could be here all night.

  “But are you a killer, Mr. Kurtz?”

  The captain smiled. Genuine amusement lighting up his eyes. “Oh, I like you. I had no idea government agents could be so much fun. Come, let’s go somewhere a little more private.”

  As Kurtz led me to a half-circle booth in the corner of the bar, I thought about the half-dozen ways I could incapacitate him if he tried anything. Kurtz offered me a drink. I got to the point.

  “I’m here to give you a heads-up. Paige Ryerson’s body is only a few hours away from being discovered. If you want to jump off your boss’s sinking ship, now’s the time to do it.”

  “But the yacht is completely fine, Miss…? Or is that Mrs.? I’ll be honest, it doesn’t matter to me either way. Marriage is just a piece of paper.”

  “If that body comes up, and it has your forensics anywhere near it, it’ll be too late to help you.”

  Kurtz smiled. “I can think of some ways you can help me, Kate. Some very creative ways.”

  “So you know my name. Your boss called you.”

  The flirtation drained from his face quickly, as if I was suddenly boring him. “Yeah, I know all about your supposed string-pulling on behalf of the kid’s old man. Junior may have believed you, but you can’t kid a world-class kidder, kiddo.”