“Well, yes.”
Megan twisted, checking the rear window. No headlights anywhere in sight as the road curved between Spanish moss laden trees. The occasional driveway or residential lane interrupted the tree line but no human activity. “Pull in there,” she indicated a narrow street that had only a few large houses, none of them with lights on. “We’ll be hidden from view and you can explain what’s going on.”
“I’ll explain once I have you safe on the mainland.”
“No, Mom. Do it now. If you’re going to ask me to abandon Mateo and his family, if you truly want me to be the kind of person who would betray a friend like that, then I need to understand why.”
Lucy sucked in her breath, slowed the car and backed them into the street, turning the headlights off. She hated it when Megan out-reasoned her. One of the many pitfalls of having a child smarter than she was—smarter than Nick as well, which was saying a lot.
“Dad calls it tactical awareness,” Megan continued. “Like when a soldier feels there’s something wrong so he steps left instead of right and misses an IED. He says it’s the sum of sensory perceptions and pattern recognition combining to create a quick-action reflex, instead of processing every decision step by step. But I need to understand, so take me through it the slow way, okay?”
Lucy took a deep breath and held it, looking inward, gauging her bodily responses. She wasn’t panicked. Urgency, yes, she felt that, but also the same calm she usually felt before entering a field of action during an operation.
Could she trust that? She’d read accounts of soldiers with PTSD suffering paranoid delusions where they’d acted with calm certainty that they were the only ones who saw the danger clearly. Could she have fallen into that trap without even knowing it?
If she had—and dragged Megan down with her—it was even more reason to get off this island as quickly as possible. Bottom line: if she couldn’t trust her judgment, she shouldn’t be carrying a gun.
“Okay,” Lucy finally said. “Here’s what I see. They have Mateo’s prints in Pastor Fleming’s blood on the knife, a full palm print on a piece of paper with the safe combination, and on the insulin pump. That pretty much makes Mateo one of the world’s most incompetent criminals, not even smart enough to wear gloves, so dumb he left the paper with his palm print and the safe combination there at the scene.”
“Mateo’s being framed—I’ve been telling you that all along.”
“Right. But the real question is: by who? Who stands to gain most?”
“Mateo’s family said it was a lot of cash—Pastor Fleming was getting ready to pay people who’d made loans to third world ministries. Maybe he was trying to fake his death so he could steal the money but Mateo walked in on it?”
Cash loans funneled through a church? That needed looking into. Had all the makings of a Ponzi scheme. Lucy added it to her list. But first priority was getting Megan to safety.
“I still don’t understand why we need to suddenly leave,” Megan continued. “It’ll take fifteen minutes to go grab our stuff from the hotel. How much danger could we be in if it was Pastor Fleming behind all this? He must be on the boat guarding Mateo, right?”
Good girl, filling in most of the blanks. Except the most important one. “When I was in Chief Hayden’s office, she had a photo of her and Shelly Fleming. That’s when I realized that I’d seen Chief Hayden in other photos—the Flemings’ wedding pictures in their house. And family photos from when they were young. I think she’s Shelly Fleming’s sister. Or at the very least, a close friend.”
“If the Chief of Police is involved, then we can’t trust anyone.” Megan shook her head. “I don’t buy it. All those other police are also here—the sheriff’s department and the crime scene techs from the state. The Coast Guard out searching for the boat.”
“Except I don’t think they are. I don’t think she actually called anyone.”
“There’s one way to tell for sure. Let’s go back to the Flemings’ house. You said yourself that crime scene would take days to process—that means the techs should still be there working.”
It went against Lucy’s instincts, but Megan had a point—there was little chance of anything happening, not in a public area. The most they’d lose would be some time. Still, if Megan hadn’t made her stop and talk this out, they’d be halfway to the mainland by now.
“If there’s no one there,” Megan continued, “then you can call the state police yourself.”
Except she couldn’t. “I have no standing here and can’t invite them into an investigation outside of their jurisdiction.” Lucy sighed. “Best I can do is plant the idea. It will take hours, maybe days to find someone to listen and take action.”
“Time Mateo doesn’t have.”