He blinked the cobwebs from his eyes and saw a syringe.
He was lying on the carpet, Larks still dead in the bed. Light washed in from the outer room. His right leg hurt where something had pierced his skin, which he assumed was the needle from the syringe. His left leg remained sore from the helicopter drop. He rubbed his temples and sat up. Whatever had taken him down had worked fast and left a lingering punch.
He checked his watch. 5:20 A.M.
He’d been out a few hours.
He stood and steadied himself on the wall. His clothes were finally dry, but still reeked of the lagoon. He’d certainly managed, in a short while, to find a fair amount of trouble. The only difference this time was that by accepting Stephanie’s job offer, he’d actually gone looking for it. He shook his head, tried to clear the fog, and allowed himself an empty minute.
He heard movement beyond the open doorway and cocked his head toward the noise. A shadow preceded someone’s entrance. A woman. She was lean with a narrow waist and long, straight red-gold hair that swept around a middle-aged face. Three dark freckles formed a triangle on otherwise unblemished cheeks. Her blue eyes seemed dulled by a want of sleep—and given the hour, he could understand—but were otherwise focused and intent. She carried the oddly anxious look and feel of a personality he’d seen too many times to count.
Law enforcement.
“I’m Isabella Schaefer,” she said. “Treasury Department.”
“You have a badge?”
“Do you?”
He felt his pockets and feigned a search. “No, guess not. I assume you know who I am.”
“Cotton Malone. Once with Justice, at the famed Magellan Billet. Now retired.”
He caught the sarcasm. “You don’t approve?”
“I want to know what a bookseller from Copenhagen is doing messing up three months’ worth of my work.”
More news. Neither Stephanie nor Luke had mentioned anything about others being at this party. Which made him wonder if they knew. It wouldn’t be the first time the left hand of the intelligence community had no idea what the right was doing.
He motioned to the bed with the syringe. “Who killed him?”
“Looks like you did.”
“Yeah, let’s go with that.”
“Who said someone killed him?”
“Okay, I like that one, too. That’ll be the story. He just died.”
“You don’t get this, do you? I ask the questions, you answer them.”
“You’re not serious? Pulling rank? You’re just a Treasury agent a long way from home, way outside your jurisdiction.”
“And what the hell are you? A damn bookseller. What authority do you have?”
“I have my International Antiquarian Bookseller membership?”
“I see you truly don’t get it. I found you here with a dead man, holding a syringe that, I’m sure, is the cause of death.”
“And how did you just happen by?”
“I was doing my job and saw the door propped open by the latch bolt.”
“You understand that was all by design. Whoever killed Larks wanted me found with him.” He tossed the syringe onto the bed. “You’ve obviously been waiting for me to wake up. My bet is I’ve been snoozing from whatever killed Larks. Probably a sedative of some sort. There’s a hole in my leg where the killer injected it.”
She nodded. “I checked and found it.”
“Gee, I feel so violated. And we hardly know each other. What does Treasury want with Larks?”
“He copied some classified documents. We want them back.”
“Must be important stuff.” Now he was trolling. But this woman refused to take the bait, so he asked, “Have you been on this cruise the whole time?”
He could not recall seeing her. And he would have noticed her. Truth be told, he had a weakness for redheads.
“I’ve been here,” she said. “Waiting to take Larks into custody. Which I would have done tomorrow, as he left the ship. Unfortunately, now he’s dead and the documents are nowhere to be found.”
“They were inside the black Tumi case?”
She nodded. “That was my guess. The old fool hasn’t gone anywhere without it.”
She really had been on board.
“I need to call my boss.”
“Don’t bother,” she said. “My boss has already contacted Stephanie Nelle. Which is why you’re here with me, and not in police custody.”
Finally, some interagency cooperation.
Treasury and Justice. Together again.
“I need an aspirin,” he said.
She’d actually done her job. Contain and control. But he decided to try one more time. “What are these documents? Why are they so important?”
“Let’s just say that they contain information the U.S. government would not want on public display.”
“You mean Wikileaks missed something?”
“Apparently so.”
“Then why didn’t you take them from Larks when the taking was good? Why wait?”
He could see she was done answering.
“You need to go home,” she said.
“No argument from me. First, though, a shower and change of clothes would be good.”
A shave, too. Patches of stubble itched on his neck and chin.
“You do stink. Where have you been?”
“Rough night in town.”
“I know about the money transfer, and that you were sent to the mainland to observe.”
She truly was informed. More so than him, in fact. “Let’s just say that meeting didn’t go as planned.”
“Then definitely go home, and leave this to us.”
Not bad advice, actually. “What about Larks?”
She retrieved the syringe from the bed. “Not our problem. Like I said, he just died.”