“Fuck, Charlie, just spit it out.”
“I checked for the disappearance of young girls in Central America, specifically, Nicaragua,” Charlie hesitated before finishing his thought, “and on an old friend of yours.”
Sin’s complexion blanched and her pupils dilated. “Tell me it’s not what I’m thinking.”
Charlie freshened both of their espressos. “I’m afraid it is. That bastard was released as soon as you put his ass in jail.”
Sin slammed the file shut. “How? I had him and his men dead to rights. I caught him in the act of raping a teenage girl!”
Charlie slung a leg over the corner of the desk and sat facing Sin. “Veloz owns almost everyone in Nicaragua.”
“But her family . . .” as she looked at Charlie the life seemed to drain from her jade green eyes, “they didn’t testify, did they?”
Charlie shook his head. “The child’s father was killed—executed, gangland style, and the little girl was ‘gone’ on the day she was to testify.”
He placed a hand on Sin’s shoulder. “Veloz has been lying low the last four years, but this smells like him. I would bet this house that he is involved.”
Sin opened her mouth and inhaled deep. She stood and exhaled. “Fuck.”
She paced the room trying to gather her thoughts.
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that I’ve wasted too much time since I’ve been back in the Keys. I have some reconnaissance to do.”
“Such as?”
Sin leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “The Church of the New Son is not what it seems . . .”
“How so?”
“The square footage is much bigger than the floor plan. I need to get inside and scope the place out.” She thought for a moment and smiled. “Can you get me a security layout of the property?”
Charlie nodded. “Consider it done. What else?”
“I have a bad feeling about the orphanage. It’s too much of a coincidence that Heap opens an orphanage and shortly after bodies start showing up along the gulf.”
Charlie could tell she wasn’t finished. “And?”
“And, the night I arrived, I saw two boats on the first reef in the black of night.”
That peaked Charlie’s interest. “Are you sure?”
Sin nodded. “My father asked me the same thing and then he told me I must have been mistaken, but I know what I saw.”
“But that’s a death trap. Boats can’t navigate those currents or reefs in the light of day, forget the dark of night.”
Sin smirked. “Not the reefs we know.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, what if someone changed the landscape—made it easier to navigate.”
“How?”
“I’m not sure, but I’m going to find out. I’m planning a little night dive tomorrow. Care to come along?”
Charlie chuckled. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Sin sat back and chewed on her bottom lip.
“What else are you planning?”
Sin thought about telling Charlie what she had planned, but thought better of it. She would probably need his help to pull it off, but now wasn’t the time to talk about it.
She released her lip and brushed her fingers through her hair. “I was just thinking about that church.”
Charlie nodded. “Why don’t you go look around the rest of the house and I will see what I can find out.” He tapped a key and the monitors sprang to life once more.
Sin was about to leave the library when she suddenly stopped. “Won’t anybody see the lights?”
“Nah,” Charlie said. “All the windows have been blacked out and sealed with a film that doesn’t allow any light to seep through. You can turn on every light in this place and it will still look abandoned from the outside.”
Sin shook her head and walked out of the library.
An hour later, at five a.m., Sin and Charlie were back on the beach where their night began.
“I want to be with you when you hit the church as well as the water,” Charlie said.
“Meet me at eleven tonight at the north point of Tumbleboat. The current should take us right onto the first reef,” Sin said.
“How would you know that?”
She had a mischievous gleam in her eye as she wiped her windblown hair from her face, picking a strand off her tongue with a pearl white fingernail. “You never did figure out where I caught those three-pound lobsters I always gave you as gifts, did you?”
Charlie expression broke into a wide grin. “Sinclair, you’re a piece of work. Hell, you might be crazier than I am.”
“That’s the greatest compliment you could have given me.” Sin hugged her friend and walked up the beach just as the sun was beginning to crest the eastern sky.
17
The day was uneventful. Sin napped when her father did, thereby avoiding any questions as to why she was tired. She hadn’t heard from Troy, but knew he was working, so it wasn’t a surprise. She spent a good part of the afternoon in the carport going over the dive gear she received from the military. She had learned never to trust anyone else’s checking of her equipment, no matter how skilled they were. They may be proficient, but it’s not their life on the line.
As she tore her dive equipment apart and put it back together again, her mind kept drifting to the pictures of the girls she had seen. The stark images were impossible to shake. Charlie’s words about this being a death mission rattled in her head, but that reality only made her more steadfast in her resolve.
Equipment checked and loaded into a black dive bag, she headed inside for an early dinner and to spend some time with her father, Carmelita, and Maria.
Maria jumped off the couch when she heard Sin walk in and started talking a mile a minute in her native dialect.
Sin put her hands up in a mock surrender position. “Hold on, Sweetie,” she said. “I can’t understand everything with you talking so
