The sound of a vehicle approaching from behind drew Jenna out of her musings. She moved to the edge of the street to give it room to pass, and then turned to make sure that she was clear. Her heart fell as she recognized the weather-beaten Ford F-150 pickup that pulled up beside her.
Mercedes Reyes leaned across the seat and spoke to her through the open passenger window. “Jenna, get in.”
There was an unusual gravity to her tone, and despite her reservations, Jenna found herself opening the door and climbing into the cab. She settled into the seat but refused to meet Mercy’s stare. There was a long uncomfortable silence, filled only by the gentle chug of the idling engine.
“Are you just going to sit here?” Jenna finally asked.
“I tried to call Noah,” Mercy said. “No answer. So I called the marina. They wouldn’t pick up either.” She laid a hand on Jenna’s forearm. “What’s going on?”
Jenna felt her resistance eroding. Mercy’s touch seemed to uncork the bottle into which she had placed her weariness and grief. Mercy had the uncanny ability to read her like a book, sometimes even better than her own father.
“I don’t know.” Don’t tell her. You’ll only put her in danger. She met Mercy’s gaze. “What are you doing here? You need to get back to the bar.”
“We’re closed for the rest of the day. I would have been here sooner, but it took a couple of minutes to roust everyone.”
“You didn’t need to do that.”
Mercy squeezed her arm. “Talk to me. I can tell something is seriously wrong. Let me help.”
“You really want to help?” Jenna drew in a breath. “Then tell me this. Who in the hell is my father?”
10
Mercy stared at Jenna for a few seconds then turned her eyes forward and let off the brake. “I’m not going to insult your intelligence,” she said, with a low controlled tone, “by acting like I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“So it’s true. Noah has some kind of secret life?”
Mercy pursed her lips together. “Jenna, please tell me what’s happened. Is Noah all right?”
“Noah’s dead.” It was like ripping off a Band-Aid. She braced herself for a tide of emotion but it didn’t arrive. Perhaps it was too soon, the event too fresh in her mind to truly be perceived as a loss, but Jenna thought it might also have something to do with the sudden realization that her father seemed more like a stranger to her now.
“How?”
Jenna stared at Mercy, surprised at the coolness of her reaction. This isn’t a surprise to her at all. “Somebody blew up the boat. We got away, but afterward, two FBI guys showed up. Only Noah said they weren’t really FBI. One of them shot him. I ran.”
“Are you all right? Were you hurt?”
“I’m fine.”
“Tell me everything. Start at the beginning.”
Jenna did, only realizing after she started recounting the events of the last hour that Mercy had deftly avoided answering her question. As she described the arrival of the bogus FBI agents — or rather allegedly bogus, since she had only Noah’s say-so — she seized the opportunity to shift the conversation back. “Noah told the deputy that they weren’t really federal agents. How would he know that?”
Mercy just shook her head and kept driving. Jenna recognized their surroundings. They had circled around and were in the neighborhood where Mercy lived, just a couple of blocks from the bar.
“What happened then?”
“Then? Then they shot him, and I ran like hell.” She curtailed the story there and tried again. “He told the deputy not to let them put me in their car. Me. Somehow, he knew they were there for me. How did he know that? What is going on?”
Mercy pulled off the street and parked in front of her single-wide mobile home. Jenna thought of the trailer as her own second home. During the school year, when Noah was out on the water, she would come here after school to await his return. She had spent endless hours here, watching television, playing games, doing homework. Now that the boat was in ruins, it was the only home she had left, and that thought filled her with dread. Right now, she didn’t need the false comfort of the familiar. She needed to know why her life had been thrown into chaos.
“What are we doing here?”
“I don’t have all the answers. But I might know where to start looking. But first, you need some clothes. And I have to get a couple things.”
She got out, and Jenna followed her up the steps. Mercy waited until they were both inside, the door firmly closed behind them, to start talking. “Noah never talked much about his past. I take it he never told you much, either?”
Jenna had never thought about it, but it was true. Noah had always been accessible, always teaching her, eager to listen and advise, yet he had never really told her much about his life before her. He had retired to the Keys, but retired from what?
“You can always spot the phonies,” Mercy went on. “They talk big, especially after a couple of beers. The real ones never talk at all.”
“Real what?”
Mercy shrugged. “Soldiers. Spies. Special Forces guys. I’m not sure which Noah is.”
Jenna felt an impulsive urge to deny the suggestion but stopped herself. It made too much sense not to be true.
Mercy didn’t elaborate, but instead went to a pile of unfolded clothes on the living room couch. She pulled out a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and tossed them to Jenna, then she headed into the bedroom.
As Jenna pulled the jeans on over her still-damp swimsuit, she mulled over Mercy’s speculative comment, and was astonished at how perfectly it filled in all the little gaps and answered the niggling but easily dismissed questions. How better to explain Noah’s knowledge of weapons, his quick reaction to the bomb, his ability to recognize the FBI agents as impostors, his lethal hand-to-hand combat skills?
“If you’re right,” she called out, “then is this some kind of…” She searched for the right word, and she found it in the jargon of movie spies. “Blowback? Some old enemy from Noah’s past coming after him?”
Mercy reappeared, carrying a pair of beat-up deck shoes and a large brown string-tie envelope. She dropped the shoes on the floor beside Jenna then began unwinding the thread that secured the envelope. Jenna did not fail to notice one other object Mercy had retrieved from the bedroom.
“You have a gun?” She was surprised by the fact that this didn’t surprise her. After everything that had happened and Mercy’s revelation about Noah’s history, the fact that one of her closest friends owned a firearm was merely a curiosity.
Mercy’s hand momentarily fell to the butt of the weapon, a matte-black semi-automatic pistol in a holster clipped to the waistband of her jeans. “Yeah.”
“Cool.” Jenna stripped off her sodden T-shirt and replaced it with the dry one Mercy had given her, then sat to tie the shoes. “What’s in the envelope?”
“I don’t know. Noah gave it to me for safekeeping years ago. I assumed it was important papers: the title for the boat, insurance policies, stuff like that. Things that he would need if the boat was ever…” She trailed off, and then dumped the contents onto the coffee table. “Maybe there’s something in here that will tell us a little more about him.”
There were several smaller envelopes, each marked with bold black letters drawn in Noah’s familiar all-capital, block-print style. Jenna’s gaze was drawn to one that had just three numbers. Nine-one-one. “In case of emergency?”
Mercy nodded. “I think this qualifies.”