Adrift on St. John (37 page)

Ham peeked around his mother’s chest.
“Slave Princess,”
he mouthed at me with an assuring nod.

After her flash appearance running through the woods near the old Danish fort, the Slave Princess had temporarily dropped out of sight. No one knew where she would show up next, but many were placing odds on the Freedom Memorial across from the ferry building.

Following that lead, the majority of Manto’s passengers disembarked at the outskirts of Cruz Bay, which was as close as he could get due to the gathering crowds.

The truck was nearly empty by the time we finally reached the resort. It had been several hours since Charlie had first picked me up there that morning. I was famished and long past ready to change out of my swimsuit.

I hopped from the cab and headed into the reception area, my thoughts firmly focused on picking up lunch and taking it back to my condo—unfortunately, food preparation was one of the many services temporarily on hold.

I ran smack dab into a confused and complaining mass of forty or fifty guests, none of whom I was eager to comingle with. By way of escape, I slipped behind the unmanned front desk. The following snippets of conversation reached me as I crawled along the floor:

“I called for clean towels an hour ago,” a woman snapped. “I don’t understand. It’s like there’s no one here.”

“I saw them all leaving,” a man replied. “The cleaning staff hopped onto the truck taxis and bolted out of here. I think it’s a strike.”

After keeping well below the counter to avoid being identified as someone who might be sought out to address these concerns, I made my way down the hallway toward the break room, where the few staff who hadn’t left for Cruz Bay had collected.

Vivian had beaten me there, wisely circling around through the service entrance to avoid the reception area.
She strode back and forth in front of the metal lockers, her face fuming in anger.

“How long is this supposed to last?” she demanded of one of the maids.

The woman shrugged her reply.

Vivian muttered something inaudible under her breath. She sucked in a huge volume of air and then slowly breathed it out.

“Where’s Hannah?” she asked firmly. “Hannah Sheridan. She’s got some explaining to do.”

Slowly, I backed out of the break room, trying not to draw attention to myself. Using the side service door, I returned to the front drive.

Recalling Hannah’s conversation with the real estate attorney at the concierge desk, I could guess her current whereabouts—and the location of the Slave Princess’s next appearance.

I just hoped she was the one who had run off with Charlie’s Jeep.

53

Manto’s truck was still outside the reception area, parked in one of the taxi slots near the front door. Manto had taken Hamilton over to the playground by the tennis courts to keep him occupied while Vivian sorted out the mess inside the resort.

I rushed over to the cab and peered in the window. As was customary among the truck-taxi drivers, Manto had left the truck’s keys on the dashboard in case someone needed to move it while he was gone.

Clearly, he hadn’t learned from my experience with Charlie’s Jeep.

With a brief flash of guilt, I climbed inside and grabbed the keys. A few moments later, I was bumping down the road that tracked the southwest shoreline. With all of the island’s traffic now concentrated in town, I reasoned, it would be far more expedient to detour around Cruz Bay to get to Centerline Road.

If I was a hazard driving Charlie’s Jeep, I was a menace in Manto’s truck. The side mirrors had been angled to suit
Manto’s much larger frame, and they were hopelessly out of whack for my shorter height. The wheelbase was so wide, it took up nearly three-fourths of the road—or, at least, that’s how it appeared from behind the steering wheel.

I felt as if I were piloting a tank. The big engine rumbled like a freight train as I powered up the hill toward Centerline; at its juncture, I turned east toward Coral Bay.

Just past the island’s crest, the afternoon sun illuminated the mounded tops of the surrounding islands, their dark green cones floating in a murky blue ocean. Storm clouds stretched across the horizon, raining out the sun above the boulders of Virgin Gorda. The next soaking would reach St. John within the hour.

As I thought grimly about the chance of lightning striking my intended destination, a static-laden voice crackled from the radio.

“Pin,”
Manto said with exasperation.
“Where have yu gone wit’ my truck?”

I reached for the handset and clicked on the receiver.

“Sorry, Manto,” I replied. “I’ll bring it back when I’m done. I promise.”

“Mek sure yu re-fill thuh tank,”
he said with a sigh.

By the time I reached the T-intersection at Coral Bay, much of the earlier chaos had dissipated. The majority of marchers had either returned home or convened on the Freedom Memorial in Cruz Bay. I waved off the few stragglers who tried to flag down the truck taxi for a ride.

Rain began to spit against the windshield as I swung the truck south onto the road that tracked Hurricane Hole’s outer rim. The dark blanket of the advancing squall line billowed over the harbor, smothering the afternoon’s bright sunshine.

I’d have to hurry if I was going to catch up to Hannah before the storm hit.

*    *    *

Past the shuttered grocery store that demarcated the end of Coral Bay’s sparse settlement, I pressed on the gas, pushing the truck as fast as I dared along the twisting, winding road.

A short stretch of humping hills rose up to meet the truck’s charging tires. Power lines looped from pole to pole, crisscrossing the road in a low swinging lattice. It was as if the truck were riding a roller coaster’s rails; I was merely a passenger, strapped in for the ride.

The island’s arid southeastern climate took over the landscape. The trees shrunk in size, giving way to multitudes of succulents—all manner of cacti and yucca plants that thrived in the hot, dry exposure. The harsh moonscape mirrored the blunt force of the wind whipping through the driver’s-side window as the untamed emptiness of my uninhabited surroundings joined me inside the cab.

The road crested near the entrance to a rough parking lot that served this lesser-known portion of the island’s national park. The trail to the Salt Pond and, beyond, Ram Head, was marked by the park’s signature brown and white signage, but little else.

The looming storm had chased off the few swimmers who had ventured out that morning. A couple of rental cars drove out of the lot as I pulled in, leaving behind just one other vehicle—a beat-up Jeep missing its front driver’s-side door.

54

I parked Manto’s truck in the widest portion of the lot in the hopes that I wouldn’t have to reverse it in order to steer back onto the road. I didn’t imagine I’d receive a lot of sympathy if, after having borrowed it without permission, I managed to get it stuck in the mud.

Meanwhile, the cloud bank swept in; its howling wind buffeted the cab as raindrops began to shoot across the windshield. The automatic daytime headlights switched off when I killed the engine, increasing the dim, dreary mood of the location.

I rolled up the driver’s-side window and stared out at the abandoned Jeep. There was something strangely amiss about this already odd situation.

Stretching my arm across to the glove compartment, I pushed the button that released its latch and reached inside, searching for a flashlight. In so doing, my fingers brushed against a worn paper bag containing a small glasslike object. Grinning, I retrieved both the flashlight and the bottle of rum.

“Manto, my friend,” I said appreciatively, “you prepare for everything.”

Unscrewing the lid, I gulped down a burning dose of the sugary brown liquid.

If I hadn’t just closed the window, I would have spit it out.

“Good grief, Manto,” I said, smacking my lips—at least that portion of them that hadn’t been numbed by the drink. “That’s horrid.”

Armed now with the flashlight and rum-weakened inhibitions, I stepped out of the cab and crossed the parking lot to Charlie’s Jeep.

It appeared to be empty, but I approached cautiously all the same. The dampening dirt caked the soles of my flip-flops as I aimed the flashlight’s narrow beam at the Jeep’s front seating compartment. Once I confirmed that it was empty, I turned the light’s focus to the tiny rear seat.

On the cushion lay a canvas toolbox—empty except for a pair of pliers and a scrap of cellophane wrapping. Leaning in, I picked up the wrapper, flattened it out, and held its surface beneath the flashlight.

Enough of the wrapper remained intact for me to read the labeling for the contents it had once held: a special kind of putty used to affix explosive devices.

I found the key beneath the front seat. Tucking it into my shorts pocket, I stepped back from the Jeep and scanned the scrub brush forest that surrounded the edge of the parking lot. I’d found the Jeep; that was the main purpose of my mission—but I still had questions for the mysterious Hannah Sheridan.

My eyes stopped on the trailhead sign.

*    *    *

It was a short five-minute walk to the beach, down a wide but steep and increasingly slippery trail of loose rocks and gravel. The path was built up on either side with a dense vegetation of spiny cactus, agave plants, and scrubby trees that, despite their short height, managed to further darken the muddy path.

Wiping the rain from my face, I gripped the flashlight’s metal barrel as the path sank deeper and deeper into the brush.

A few minutes later, the brush gave way to an enormous scallop-shaped cove. Low-rising hills on either side protected this picturesque stretch of sand, which was fronted by a shallow coral-filled bay.

Everyone on the island called this beach the Salt Pond, but that was a bit of a misnomer—the brackish, uninviting swamp of saltwater that leant the area its name was about half a mile off in the brush.