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He let out a deep breath. She had him dead to rights.

“May I see that?” he asked.

Without thinking, she handed him the cap. He gave it a heave, and it flew through the air and landed in the water, never to be seen again.

“God damn you! You’re under arrest. Put your hands out.”

She reached for her cuffs. He again shook his head.

“Don’t you dare resist,” she said.

“Don’t you want to rescue the victims? Or should we let Baldini do that?” he said.

The words were slow to sink in.

“You found them?” He nodded, and she said, “Where?”

He pulled up a photo on his cell phone and showed her. “They’re being held on this fishing boat a few miles north of here, near the tip of Honeymoon Island. Their captors are tied up, and won’t give you any problems. I rented a motorboat to take you there.”

“You rented me a boat?”

“And a captain. All you have to do is board, and free them.”

It was all too much, and she struggled for a response.

“You need to hurry before they untie themselves,” he said.

She ran back to the restaurant, and grabbed her crew. Moments later, they boarded the rented motorboat. As it pulled away from the dock, Jon gave a little wave, and it was all she could do not to shake her fist at him.

Lancaster found Gamble and Dylan having coffee inside the restaurant. He told them to settle their tab, and meet him at the dock.

The second rented boat was being handled by Chuck. Dylan passed his video camera to the captain, and then boarded. Gamble hadn’t spoken a word, and was eyeing him coolly. Instead of boarding, she made Lancaster follow her down the dock, so that Dylan and Chuck would not be able to hear what she was about to say.

“You haven’t told me what you want,” she said.

“You know what I want,” he said. “I want you to kill the piece about me.”

“But it’s the heart of my story.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Really? Then what is?”

“The FBI agent running the show is the heart of your story. Her name is Special Agent Elizabeth Daniels. She’s devoted her life to saving victims of human trafficking, and is a real hero. Focus your story on her, not me. You won’t regret it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because this story will be picked up by every paper in the country. Don’t you want to get your ticket punched, and go to work for a big newspaper in New York or Washington? Or would you rather stay in Tampa, covering city council meetings?”

“Who told you that I wanted to move?”

“A little bird. Now, do we have a deal, or not?”

She bit her lower lip. “You’re a sneaky bastard.”

“Is that a yes?”

“I’ll have to meet her first.”

“Remember, her name is Elizabeth Daniels. If you do a search on Google, you’ll find a lot of great stories about her.”

“I just might do that.”

He watched them depart on Chuck’s boat. He had given her the sales pitch, but it would take meeting Beth to seal the deal. Beth was a force of nature, and hopefully Gamble would recognize this, and shift the focus of her story.

He went to the restaurant and ordered breakfast while sitting at an outside table overlooking the water. The mission had gone as well as he could have expected. Dexter and company were dead, and the women on the boat would soon be free. His scrambled eggs and bacon came. He tried to eat, but realized his appetite had faded, and he balled up his napkin and tossed it on his plate. Every mission had collateral damage, and this one was no different. He’d harmed his relationship with Beth, and he didn’t know if it could be repaired. He’d manipulated her into doing his bidding, and that was wrong. He’d broken their trust, and without trust, there was nothing.

His waiter asked if his food was okay. He made a lame excuse about having an upset stomach, and accepted a refill of his coffee. As he drank, he realized that this wasn’t going to be easy. He’d fallen for Beth, and losing her would be hard.

He told himself that he’d get over it. Not right away, but he would. They shared a passion for their work, but it was also their work that separated them. Beth believed in following a strict set of rules, even when those rules were being bent by the people she was trying to apprehend. In that regard, she was almost noble.

He was different that way. He didn’t believe in following rules when innocent lives were at stake, and his opponents were openly skirting the law. Rules were the enemy in those situations, and often led to the worst possible outcomes.

These feelings hadn’t come from being a cop, or from his time in the military. They dated back to when he was a teenager, after he’d read a lengthy newspaper article about the man who’d tried to kidnap him, Ottis Toole. The article had called Toole one of the most proficient serial killers who’d ever lived. Along with killing Adam Walsh, Toole and his friend Henry Lee Lucas had murdered two hundred people across the Southeast, and had managed to escape detection by jumping in their car and hauling ass each time they took another life.

The article also said that Toole was a habitual offender, and no stranger to the police. Dozens of law enforcement officers had dealt with him, and considered him a risk. Yet they hadn’t been able to stop Toole’s killing spree.

That had gotten him thinking. What if one of those cops had manufactured a reason to pull Toole over, and search his car? Toole was a trophy hunter, and there was a good chance the cop would have found a piece of a victim’s clothing or jewelry. Then the cop could have arrested Toole, and a lot of lives would have been saved.

Cops weren’t supposed to do stuff like that. Even as a teenager he’d known that. But the way he saw it, if a cop knew a person was causing harm, the cop needed to find a way to stop it. By doing nothing, the evil only grew.

Chapter 47

The day after the shootout and rescue at sea, Lancaster drank cold beer on the sprawling back porch of the Palm Pavilion on Clearwater Beach, content to soak up the sun and chill.

Keeping tabs on Beth wasn’t hard. Every few hours he went inside to the bar, parked himself in front of a TV, and persuaded the bartender to turn on the local news. He watched a dramatic video of the victims being escorted off the fishing boat a dozen times, and later, one of Skye Tanner being tearfully reunited with her mother. Beth was in each video, the cameraman capturing her in nearly every frame.

He also bought a copy of the paper, and read Gamble’s article. She’d taken his advice and painted the FBI as heroes who’d risked their lives to free the victims. It wasn’t true, but that didn’t matter. It was a good read with a happy ending, and there weren’t a lot of those kind of stories these days.

Gamble had written a sidebar about Beth, and talked about her career. He’d been dealing with Hollywood for a while, and he knew what the folks on the Left Coast liked. Very soon, Beth would be hearing from a studio wanting to buy her life story, and he wondered if she’d take the bait. Knowing her, she’d probably say no.

In the afternoon, he called Echo to hear about her new life in Tennessee. She sounded happy, and said that life on the farm was agreeing with her. She’d seen the news about the shootout at Earl’s, and asked him if Dexter had perished. When he said yes, she breathed a sigh of relief into the phone.

He also texted Gar, to make sure the FBI had made good on their promise to put the programmer and his girlfriend in witness protection. Gar responded that they were in a new location, and while it wasn’t as warm as Tampa, it was much safer.

On his second day, while he ate conch fritters at the bar, the show on the TV was interrupted by a live news conference featuring Florida’s governor. The governor was a rich guy who dressed like Joe Sixpack whenever he was in front of the cameras, and he stood at a podium flanked by a wall of men and women wearing navy FBI windbreakers. The agents included Beth, Baldini, and their respective teams. They were basking in the glow of a job well done, and smiled for the cameras like they were getting their yearbook pictures taken. The governor’s praise ran across the screen in closed captions, and included words like true heroes and America’s finest.