Walt Jenkins sat at the corner of the bar, shaded by fronds of a palm tree, and stared out at the ocean. A Hampden Estates rum rested on the bar in front of him, the slow-melting ice mellowing the 120-proof spirit. Still reeling from his trip to New York, where he came face to face with the woman he loved, Walt hadn’t been shy over the last few days about his admiration for single-batch Jamaican rum. He didn’t smoke pot, as so many of his friends here on the island did, and he had never ingested a pill stronger than ibuprofen. Rum was his cure-all antidote to anything life threw at him. He drank it in good times and bad, and it affected him differently in each circumstance. This time around, however, despite his best efforts, the rum was not providing its usual soothing balm.
Meghan Cobb remained on his mind. Despite the fact that he still loved her, Walt knew he couldn’t be around her for the simple fact that some part of him hated her, too. He took a sip of the Hampden Estate, stared out at the ocean, and cursed the universe like he always did in the days following his return from New York. Then he allowed his mind to drift back to the day he met her.
In his forties, twice divorced and with no kids, Walt Jenkins had stopped looking for the perfect life to suddenly appear before him. He was more than a decade into his FBI career, content with his status in the world, and approaching the middle of his life and carrying the normal regrets of a man who had never had children and now found himself mostly alone. These were his thoughts as he drove through the Adirondack Mountains. He had tacked a couple of vacation days onto either side of the long Fourth of July weekend, rented a cabin in the hills, and had been enjoying a few days of quiet isolation. He was headed into town to pick up a steak and replenish his beer when he saw the SUV on the shoulder. An obvious tilt to the passenger side suggested a flat tire. Although Walt had been an FBI agent far longer than he was ever a patrolman, his inner psyche would forever carry a sense of obligation when he saw a disabled vehicle.
The SUV had pulled onto the shoulder but was perilously parked just beyond a bend in the road where reckless drivers might not see it as they screamed around the corner. Walt pulled over and kept a good distance between the two cars so that his was visible to passing traffic. He turned on his hazards, climbed from behind the wheel, and walked toward the SUV, making sure to offer a wide berth. The last thing he wanted was to frighten the woman behind the wheel, who was stranded and alone on an isolated mountain road.
He waved from several feet away. The window came down and Walt saw an attractive woman smile nervously.
“Flat tire?” he asked.
The woman nodded. “I’m trying to get a hold of Triple A.”
“It’ll take me fifteen minutes to get your spare on. Twenty at most.”
“Thank you,” the woman said, still with her phone to her ear.
“I’m already in the queue.”
Walt sensed her trepidation.
“Years ago I used to be a police officer, so I’ve changed a lot of tires in my day. If you’d rather wait for Triple A, I’m happy to head back to my car and wait there to make sure they arrive. But way out here in the mountains on a holiday weekend, you’re likely looking at an hour or two wait until they dispatch someone.”
Walt pulled his wallet from his pocket and showed the woman his identification.
“FBI?”
He smiled. “I’m a field agent in New York. Walt Jenkins.” He extended his hand.
The woman reached through the open window. “Meghan Cobb.”
She smiled nervously. “Fifteen minutes?”
“Maybe twenty, but it won’t be a problem.”
A few minutes later, the jack tilted the car at an oblique angle. Walt was on his knees changing the tire. They talked the entire time, and then for thirty minutes more after the spare was in place. A getaway meant to be spent alone was instead spent with Meghan Cobb. She was untangling herself from a nasty relationship. He was three months post-divorce. By any stretch of the imagination, their relationship should have been a rebound for both of them. Instead, over the next year they fell in love. And then, on a hot summer night, just after his forty-fifth birthday, Walt was shot when he and his partner were on a routine surveillance operation. The bullets that found him had taken fortuitous paths through his body. The first entered through his sternum, exited through his scapula, and pierced his heart in between, miraculously missing his aorta. The second passed through his neck and had just as miraculously missed his spinal cord. No miracles, however, had been bestowed on his partner, who was sitting next to Walt in the unmarked car. The bullets that ravaged Jason Snyder’s body had found major organs and vessels. He was dead before the ambulance arrived.
After that, Walt learned what true loneliness felt like.
In the aftermath of his partner’s death, a shitstorm descended, the likes of which Walt had never before experienced, and Meghan Cobb was in the middle of it. To remedy the situation, Walt agreed to early retirement, secured his pension, and headed to the Caribbean where he limited his contact with Meghan to once a year—one night each June when he returned to New York to attend the annual survivors meeting. In the days leading up to the event he battled a combination of excitement and fear. In the days after, he suffered buyer’s remorse over what he’d gotten out of the trip and always wished for a do-over. He wished he had found the courage to confront her about her lies. He wished he had found the strength to express his anger about being placed in such a precarious position.
The regret passed. It always did. Then, just one dominant emotion lingered. At the bottom of every glass of rum, he found guilt. It was a dangerous spiral, and Walt Jenkins had no idea how to pull out of it.
CHAPTER 14
Negril, Jamaica Wednesday, June 23, 2021
HE TOOK ANOTHER SIP OF THE HAMPDEN ESTATES AND ENJOYED THE sweet burn at the back of his throat. A big catamaran crept into the cove. Drunken tourists dove into the blue waters and swam toward Rick’s Cafe. Like ants emerging from a hill, the red-shouldered, paled-faced travelers climbed the ladders and materialized from the rocks below to swarm the bar. Some staggered after having chugged too much rum punch on the sail over from the all-inclusives in Negril. The herd barked orders to the bartender as Peter Tosh and Bob Marley blared from overhead speakers.
“Rum Runner.”
“Red Stripe.”