The Cursed Read online

  Dallas started walking back along the docks, studying every boat as he went. Every captain and crew member on the dive boats now knew who he was, of course.

  He’d nearly reached his starting point when he saw a man walking down the dock toward him carrying a toolkit. At first, he barely noticed him; he had been looking for a big, strong guy with blue eyes.

  But then he remembered the pictures he had in his phone, pictures of Blade, Hammer and Pistol.

  Men who couldn’t be found at home or prowling the city’s hot spots—or even the down-and-out establishments that tourists seldom saw.

  The man looked up just as Dallas neared him.

  It was Blade, Billie Garcia, Martin Garcia’s cousin, the man who had enlisted Jose in Los Lobos.

  Billie looked up just as Dallas recognized him. He took one look at Dallas and knew.

  He was a thin, wiry man of about twenty-eight. He produced a knife seemingly from nowhere, and with it grasped tightly in his hand he lunged for Dallas, who moved in the nick of time. Garcia plunged past him and into the water.

  Dallas didn’t hesitate. He dived in after the man, blinking to clear his eyes against the water.

  Garcia was right in front of him, still wielding the knife. Dallas surged back, crashing into one of the pilings supporting the dock, and slipped to the side.

  Garcia drove his knife into the piling. As he tried to wrench it free, Dallas clutched him around the throat.

  The knife came free.

  Garcia knew he was caught, but he still had the knife.

  He raised it again, and Dallas realized Garcia wasn’t trying to kill him anymore, he was trying to kill himself.

  * * *

  Hannah headed up to the captain’s room again. She tried not to notice that Dallas Samson had somehow already made it his own. There was a light scent of some woodsy cologne in the air, something she’d missed when she’d been rescuing Valeriya, shoving the bed around and finding the key.

  The scent naturally made her think of him. She hadn’t realized it until that moment, but she was even familiar with his scent.

  And she liked it.

  Worse...she was drawn by it.

  The man was an enigma to her, she had to admit.

  Yeah, an enigma she wanted to sleep with again.

  She gave herself a mental shake and walked to the side of the room where a number of old books were carefully kept in glass-fronted bookshelves. Dark wood, of course, in keeping with the room’s resemblance to a captain’s cabin.

  She looked through the titles and found the two books she wanted. One was titled Spanish Treasure Ships and the other was Key West: Dirty Days of the Territory.

  Taking them both, she curled up on the bed. Petrie jumped up beside her, and she smoothed his beautiful fur.

  She thought she knew almost every legend about Key West and treasure that it was possible to know, but maybe some of her facts were rusty.

  She started with treasure ships. A fleet of twelve ships had left Havana, Cuba, in 1715, bound for Spain. A devastating storm had cropped up, and all twelve ships had gone down on July 31, 1715, off the east coast of Florida. Most of their silver and gold coins and other treasures had been discovered. But the Santa Elinora had headed out of port late, accompanied by one gunboat. They’d been behind the fleet by a day or two, so they’d been caught by the storm not long after leaving port. The Santa Elinora had gone down in the Florida Straits, not ten miles from Key West.

  She’d been discovered, as well, though not until almost a hundred years later, by one of Commodore David Porter’s ships.

  Porter had never been popular in Key West, despite the fact that he’d been the one to rid the island of pirates. Residents despised the man for his rigid rule; he was against alcohol and fun in general. Before his arrival, Key West had been claimed by individuals rather than nations, although at various times those individuals had been Spanish, British and American. Since it was only a small island, people mainly used it for fishing and birding, or as a stopover on a longer trip. Finally John Simonton had purchased the island from Juan Pablo Salas, who had owned it through a Spanish land grant. But everyone had lived reasonably happily together—until Porter clamped down.

  He was an interesting man, strong and determined, and intent on providing what profit he could to the United States government—at least at first. Later he would be court-martialed for demanding Puerto Rico return one of his men, who’d been sent there to retrieve a treasure he believed belonged to the U.S.

  Rumor was he also knew something about salvage, and what he didn’t know, his men did. One way or another, he managed to bring up most of the treasure of the Santa Elinora.

  But there was a rumor, which arrived in Key West via Cuban fishermen, that the Santa Elinora had also carried a sea chest filled with gold and the jewels belonging to the mistress of a high ranking official in Cuba. The poor woman, after being discovered by the official’s wife, had faced a trumped-up charge of treason and been hanged.

  The jewels the official had showered her with when he’d first been smitten were set to become gifts of atonement to the man’s wife. Among those jewels was a medallion known as the Zafiro de Seguridad, a huge sapphire set in gold and surrounded by a ring of diamonds and supposedly blessed by a priest to bring safety from all evil to those who wore it.

  The book contained a drawing of the piece, which was beautiful and looked as if it would have fit right in with Britain’s crown jewels in their tower.

  But though there were rumors about the chest, it hadn’t been on any official logs.

  The rumor sprang up among the navy men assigned to Commodore Porter that he had found it and was keeping it at Fort Zachary Taylor.

  Then, years later, rumors rose up again and claimed that it had been on the Wind and the Sea when it went down.

  That was the age of salvage, and the locals had done their job well before the ship finally sank beneath the waves. So questions remained. Had the treasure been aboard the vessel when she’d gone down? Had it been salvaged and secretly stowed somewhere in Key West once again? Or had there ever even been such a treasure to begin with?

  Hannah set that book down and picked up the other. Commodore Porter had reigned over Key West with a heavy hand. She’d known that. He’d basically hated the place, so there had been no love lost on either side.

  There was nothing about the treasure, though.

  Hannah closed that book, as well, and then remembered that Jose had told her about an article about the Discovery, the ship that had gone out in search of the remnants of the Santa Elinora and then gone down in a storm itself.

  “Hey, you okay up there?” Kelsey called to her from downstairs.

  “Yep, fine—just reading.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m coming down, though. I want to get on the computer.”

  Hannah stood and put the books back. The sun was streaming heavily into the room. In the interest of preserving the air-conditioning, she walked over to the window to close the drapes. As she did so, the cat made a mewling sound.

  “What’s up, Petrie?” she asked.

  He was staring at the windows as if he were looking out. As if he had seen something there.

  Hannah paused. She really hated it when he stared at things. He frequently saw the ghosts before she did. And sometimes he just stared when she didn’t see anything at all.

  Animal instinct.

  “Okay, Petrie. I’m looking.”

  At first, she didn’t see him. If it hadn’t been for the cat, she wouldn’t have kept looking.

  But she continued to search until, finally, she was certain she saw a man.

  He must have moved slightly, or else the breeze shifted the branches of the big old banyan tree beyond the sidewalk, and that had drawn her atten
tion. She still couldn’t see him clearly, though.

  But he was there. Looking up, just watching.

  “Kelsey!” she called.

  She heard her cousin coming up the stairs. But by the time Kelsey reached her, a horde of bachelorette partyers—the bride was wearing a headband with a veil—was walking by, giggling.

  Hannah blinked.

  And the man was gone.

  * * *

  Liam had done his work well, getting his officers to cover the docks and, Dallas was certain, the whole of the island.

  Five minutes after he’d dragged Billie Garcia out of the water and wrested the knife from him, there were officers on-site, ready to take him in.

  Dallas said he’d be along as quickly as he could get changed. He also asked one of the officers to call Liam and tell him to put Garcia alone in an interrogation room after getting him dry clothing. He was to be watched but left to sweat for a while, wondering what was going to happen to him.

  Once Billie was safely in a patrol car and being driven away, Dallas reached for his cell phone to make a call and then realized that it was as drenched as he was and didn’t work. He cursed the ruined phone as he drove quickly back to the Siren of the Sea.

  Since he couldn’t call to say he was there, he stopped at the patrol car. The officer had just come on duty and quickly dialed for him, too well trained to ask about Dallas’s condition. The front door opened as he approached the house, his feet sloshing in his shoes.

  Hannah stood there watching him approach, Kelsey right behind her.

  “You decided to go for a swim?” Hannah asked casually, but he saw the concern in her eyes and heard a deeper question in her tone.

  “Hey, it’s a beautiful day, right?” he asked drily. As he stepped inside, though, he set his hands on her shoulders. “We’re getting closer. I found Blade.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m going to clean up and get down to the station. I have him on hold until I get there,” he said.

  “So you caught him in the water,” Kelsey said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Hand me your phone,” Hannah said. “I’ll put it in a bowl of rice right away to dry it out. Believe it or not, it usually works.”

  He produced his phone—and then his wallet and keys. She smiled as she took them.

  “Thanks,” he told her briefly.

  “Anything else we can do?” Kelsey asked him.

  “Have you heard from Logan?” Dallas asked.

  Kelsey nodded. “He’s fine. He’s on his way back. He says you should go up there with him tomorrow.” Kelsey inhaled deeply, then let her breath out in a sigh. “Also, I got a call from Mark Riordan, Yerby’s boyfriend. He wants to know when he can have her body.”

  Dallas paused, frowning. He’d been so intent on the hunt that he’d forgotten about Yerby’s boyfriend, along with Judy and Pete Atkinson. As far as he knew, Shelly Nicholson and Stuart Bell were back in Miami, and none too anxious to return to Key West anytime soon.

  “Mark Riordan called you here?”

  “He tried the police station, and all they told him was that she was still at the M.E.’s office up in Marathon, and they would provide more information in a timely manner. Then they referred him to me and gave him my cell number. He sounded pretty broken up. Yerby’s parents died when she was a baby, and she bounced around from foster home to foster home. He’s all she had.”

  “I’ll talk to him. Not a bad thing to talk to him anyway,” Dallas said. “He and the Atkinsons are still down here, I take it?”

  Kelsey nodded.

  “Would you mind giving him a call and telling him I’ll see him in the morning? Right now I’ve got to get back to the station,” Dallas said.

  He looked at Hannah again. She seemed grave and quiet. He wanted to hold her and tell her that everything was going to be all right.

  He didn’t touch her.

  And to be honest, he didn’t know if things really would be all right. The Wolf had been operating Los Lobos for quite a while, and they hadn’t so much as laid a hand on him.

  But they were getting closer.

  Maybe the Wolf was finally losing control and they would get the break they needed.

  “Are you all right?” he asked Hannah.

  “Yes, of course,” she said, and offered him a smile. “Go get changed, and I’ll go take care of your phone.”

  She turned away, and he hurried up the stairs to shower and find clean, dry clothing. As he got dressed, he noticed the books on his bed. Someone had been doing research.

  He couldn’t stay; he needed to get to the station before Billie Garcia bashed his head into a wall or injured himself in some way so he wouldn’t be able to talk.

  Hurrying back downstairs, he found Hannah and Kelsey in the kitchen. “Was that you doing research earlier?” he asked Hannah.

  “I’m looking for any clue I can find, but so far I haven’t found anything that gets us any closer to solving Jose’s death. There may or may not have been a treasure. It may or may not have been found by Commodore David Porter. It may or may not have been kept at Fort Zachary Taylor. It may or may not have been on the Wind and the Sea when she went down. Oh, I did find out that part of the treasure is supposed to be a medallion called the Zafiro de Seguridad. A massive sapphire set in gold and surrounded by diamonds. Priceless, I imagine.”

  “That means something like sapphire of safety, doesn’t it?” Dallas asked.

  Hannah nodded. “Didn’t do much for Hagen Dundee, assuming they were both aboard the Wind and the Sea,” she said drily. “But I suppose if it was going to protect you, you probably needed to be wearing it.”

  “A priceless gem of protection that did nothing against a curse,” Dallas said.

  “No object can guarantee your safety,” Hannah said. “Not even a gun.”

  “Or a knife. And speaking of knives...” Dallas glanced at his watch, glad it was a diver’s watch and his recent dousing had done it no harm. “I’ve got to get going and talk to our buddy Blade. I’ll be back as soon as I can, and I’m sure Logan will be, too, but even with both of you here, no one for the ghost tour comes in until we’re here, okay?”

  “You got it,” Kelsey agreed.

  “Come with me and—”

  “Lock the door,” Hannah said. “I know.”

  He smiled at her, but she didn’t notice. He knew something was disturbing her, and he didn’t think it was him. Unfortunately, he had no idea what it was. No matter, it had to wait. First things first.

  He drove back over to the station.

  Liam was watching Billie Garcia through the one-way glass.

  “Has he said or done anything?” Dallas asked.

  “He tried to take the table apart. Maybe he thought he could skewer himself with a leg, I don’t know. He gave the guards hell when they got him into dry clothes. He doesn’t have a belt or shoelaces or anything, so we’re pretty sure he can’t hurt himself. For the past fifteen minutes he’s just been sitting there as if he’s catatonic. But there’s nothing wrong with him.”

  Dallas nodded. “Thanks.”

  He walked into the room and sat down across from Billie, who looked back at him warily. Dallas smiled. Then he leaned forward. “Want to talk?”

  “I have absolutely nothing to say to you,” Billie said.

  Dallas shrugged. “You might as well talk to me. Your cousin has already fingered you for enough crimes that we can put you away for years.”

  Dallas knew instantly that word of Martin being picked up by the cops hadn’t reached Billie yet. He paled to the color of ash.

  “Martin is a sniveling liar,” he said.

  Dallas shrugged. “Maybe, but Martin will probably live.”

  “Martin is already a walking dead man,�
�� Billie told him.

  “We can protect you.”

  “No one can protect anyone from the Wolf. He has eyes everywhere.”

  “The Wolf is a man—just a man. And he only has power because he keeps secrets and convinces other people to keep them, too. People start telling those secrets and he won’t have any more power. We’ll pick you off, you know, one by one. And we’ll get to the heart of Los Lobos. We’ll get to the Wolf.”

  “Fuck you! I’m not saying nothing.”

  “That’s a double negative, but whatever.” Dallas smiled again and said icily, “You are responsible for the death of my friend Jose, Blade. You led him straight into an ambush. Now, you can help me, or I’ll do one of two things. I’ll let you out on the street and make sure the newspapers print something about you being a snitch—”

  “I’m not a snitch!”

  “Ah, but will the Wolf believe that?” Dallas mused. “Or I’ll see to it that you spend years and years—the rest of your life—in prison for conspiracy to commit murder, at the very least. What I won’t do is let you die easily. You’ll help me now, and if you don’t, you’ll spend every minute wondering how and when the Wolf will get to you. I know the way he works, and it won’t be pretty, I can promise you that much.”

  14

  “You’re going to learn how to fire a gun,” Kelsey told Hannah.

  “I don’t own a gun,” Hannah said.

  “And I’m not giving you one—not right now, anyway. But you need to learn how to use one in case there’s ever a need.”

  Once, Hannah thought, she would have argued. She’d never been fond of guns—not even spear guns. She dived for pleasure, to see fish, not shoot them. Not that she didn’t like to eat them, too; she just wanted them on her plate, a nice filet, or maybe some sushi.

  “All right,” she agreed.

  “This is my service weapon,” Kelsey told her, placing her gun on the table. “It’s a Glock 19. It uses a magazine. Right now it’s loaded, but I’m going to unload it. To do that, you push the little button right here, on the side, by the handle.” She demonstrated. The magazine fell into her hand. “Okay, you can’t be certain at this stage that there isn’t a round still in it—that it’s really unloaded—so you bring the slide back. With the magazine out, you should be able to look in the hole and see clear through the gun—unless there’s a round in it. If there is a round, once you hit the slide, it will empty. It’s crucial that you always make sure.” Kelsey demonstrated, and the bullet emerged. “Okay, my mags have fifteen rounds. That’s a new one, and I want you to put it back in the gun. That notch goes forward. The number on the back goes to the rear. Now you take it.”