“Do you feel safe here?”
“I did when we first moved in. Now, not so much.”
“We need to fix that.”
“I’m open to any suggestions.”
“I know three ex-SEALs who will protect you when I’m not here.”
“That sounds like a wonderful idea.”
He followed her across the downstairs holding his steaming mug.
“One of our neighbors has a surveillance camera with a partial street view,” she said. “He shared a tape from last night with us. It’s very alarming. The neighborhood appears to be overrun with men stalking my daughter.”
They entered the study. The blinds were drawn, and it was dark. South Florida was all about bright-blue skies and sunshine, and the room felt like a cave. Pearl sat on a couch facing a wall-mounted TV, Nicki cross-legged on the floor, doing homework. On the TV’s screen the neighbor’s grainy surveillance video played. Each time a vehicle drove down the street, Pearl made a mark on a yellow legal pad. He glanced up.
“Hello, Jon. Congratulations. I saw the story about your rescue on the news. My wife said there was a suspicious van parked outside.”
“It was the same pair from yesterday. They bolted when I approached them.”
“But you shot one of them.”
“He was wearing a bulletproof vest. It was them, I’m sure of it.”
“Do you think they’ll be back?”
“Normally, I’d say no. But this situation isn’t normal. These guys don’t seem to care if they get spotted. May I ask what you’re doing?”
“I’m counting the vehicles that drove down our street last night. My neighbor leads the neighborhood watch group and said we normally get six cars per hour after midnight. Last night, it was triple that.”
“Eighteen cars per hour.”
“Correct.”
“Are there any road closures that you know about?”
“None that I’m aware of. The increase in traffic was caused by five vehicles.”
“Let me make sure I’m getting this right. Five different vehicles kept passing your house late last night. How long did this last?”
“From midnight until five a.m. Then it stopped.”
Pearl passed him the legal pad. Written on it were the names of five vehicles. There was a Chevy Malibu, a BMW Roadster, a Dodge Charger, a Ford pickup, and a Mini Cooper. Each car had a row of check marks beside it. The list didn’t look right, and he quickly realized what the problem was. The white van with the two kidnappers wasn’t on it.
Chapter 9
King Tides
“May I keep this?” Lancaster asked.
“Of course,” Pearl said.
Tearing the sheet off the pad, he turned it into a square, and slipped it into his shirt pocket. The more he learned, the less he understood. If the white van hadn’t been casing the house last night, then who were the drivers of the other five vehicles? How did they fit into the puzzle? He didn’t know, and supposed they would have to wait for one of them to show his face again. In his experience, waiting for a bad guy to act was dangerous. The better choice would be to draw one of them out.
“Would you be up for a field trip?” he asked.
Pearl and his wife exchanged troubled looks. The house was their sanctuary, while the outside world was a frightening and unpredictable place.
“Nicki was nearly kidnapped the last time we went out,” Pearl reminded him.
“She was actually kidnapped in your backyard,” he replied. “We can’t just sit here and wait for another attempt to be made. I want to grab the bull by the horns and confront one of these guys.”
Nicki lay on the carpeted floor beside the dog. The conversation was upsetting her, and she pulled the dog closer and gave him a protective hug.
“Where do you have in mind?” Pearl asked.
“I was thinking of a little shopping excursion on Las Olas, followed by lunch. I’m going to tail you, and see if I can catch one of these creeps.”
“You want to use our daughter as bait,” Pearl said.
“In a manner of speaking, yes. If I can get my hands on one of these jokers, I should be able to make him talk.”
“Do you plan to hurt him?” Melanie asked, sounding alarmed.
“I want to put the fear of God into him,” he said. “The law doesn’t look kindly on adult males who stalk teenage girls. Most guys who do this stuff know this. If I catch one of them, I’ll threaten to have him locked up, which should scare the daylights out of him. Then I’ll offer to make a deal. I’ll let him go, provided he tells me why he’s stalking your daughter.”
The Pearls again traded looks. They were gambling, and the stakes were high if things went wrong. They needed more convincing, so he said, “My goal is to find out why Nicki is being targeted. There has to be a thread that links these creeps together. If I can discover what that thread is, I can get to the bottom of what’s going on here, and keep your daughter out of harm’s way.”
Nicki rose from the floor and took her parents’ hands. She gave them a smile that was best described as courageous. “I want to do it. I want this to stop. Please.”
Melanie let out a deep breath. “You sure about this, honey?”
“Positive, Mom. Jon won’t let these men hurt me, will you, Jon?”
“No one’s going to hurt you, Nicki,” he said.
“I’m okay with it, if your father is,” Melanie said.
Pearl frowned. As a doctor, he knew that there were no good choices in bad situations. Leaving the house was a scary proposition, but staying inside was equally nerve-racking. The time had come to take action and deal with the situation head-on. “I’m in,” Pearl said.
Each fall, the King Tides swept across South Florida, turning coastal roads into rivers as the full moon swung closer to the Earth than normal. This year’s flooding was particularly harsh and had pushed water onto lawns while threatening coastal businesses.
The hand-painted signs were in nearly every yard: NO WAKE ZONE! At least people had a sense of humor about it. If the meteorologists were to be believed, this would one day be a regular event, as gravity and rising sea levels ravaged the coastline. So far no one was screaming too loudly, so the natives just figured out a way to cope.
Lancaster coasted down the flooded streets as he followed the Pearls to Las Olas. On the corner he spied a kid in swimming trunks with a bamboo fishing pole. He lowered his window and stuck his head out. “Catch anything?”
“I caught a shark, but my mom made me throw it back,” the kid said.
He waved and drove away. That was the cool thing about living in Fort Lauderdale. The locals had a sense of humor. Except for the occasional evil soul, the natives were friendly, and easy to get along with.
The Pearls drove a white Infiniti SUV that gleamed like a freshly minted coin. It occurred to him that everything in their lives was brand-new. New life, new home, new car. They’d probably thought they’d died and gone to heaven when they’d moved here. Then the problems with Nicki had started, and it had all gone to hell.
The Infiniti braked at a stop sign. Pearl glanced in his mirror at his tail. The good doctor looked scared, and Lancaster wondered if his original assessment was wrong. Abductions were about money, and Pearl obviously had plenty of it. Was Pearl the real target and Nicki just leverage? He had a feeling that he was about to find out.
They drove past palatial Mediterranean-style homes so tightly squeezed together that it was impossible to see the ocean. The streets were quiet, and he used the Pandora app on his cell phone to play a Jimmy Buffett song, “Cuban Crime of Passion.” During his first trip to Key West, Lancaster had crashed on the couch of the song’s composer, a genial barkeep named Tom Corcoran. Lancaster had been right out of the military, and Corcoran’s hospitality had gone a long way to help him get adjusted.