Tonton (A Hunter Kincaid Novel)

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Come on, then, lazybones.” He winked at her, and they returned to the gunwale as Randall inched the boat close enough for them to grab the man and pull him on board.

His right side was in shreds, and he was already dead. They turned to the others still in the water and pulled out three more who were unhurt.

Sharks were still there among the people. Randall cut the motor and used a boathook like a harpoon. He hit a bull shark in the gills. The fish slashed its tail, throwing water on Randall, and left the area trailing a red, two-inch wide stream fluttering in the water like a rose colored ribbon.

Hunter looked at the ship’s deck, where people still emerged from the hold and hurried off the vessel. How many people were on there? She thought.

A stocky black man, wearing finer clothing than the others on the ship, talked on a phone as he walked toward the bow. She pointed at him and said, “That’s a smuggler. Can you get me to shore?”

Randall steered the boat and said, “I’ll try, but its tricky here.” He inched forward several feet, then felt the boat’s bottom slide on sand. “That’s it.”

“Okay,” Hunter said, and hopped out of the boat into the waist-deep water. John followed her and they pushed through the water to the bank, climbing out by grabbing handfuls of grass to pull them up the four-foot high ledge. She looked for the short man, but didn’t see him.

John touched her arm and pointed, “There.” Hunter took off like a shot.

A midnight blue Lincoln stopped on the nearby street and the stocky man reached it in a quick jog. He opened the back door and turned to look at Hunter and John as they ran across the grass.

His eyes were black holes.

Hunter broke stride when she saw them. Then he was in the car and it sped away with a squeal of tires.

John said, “Did you get the plates?”

“No. Did you see his eyes?”

“Scared the crap out of me.”

“Me, too. He won’t be hard to describe to the police.”

Randall trotted to them and said, “I don’t know about you two, but that’s about all the adventure I want for today.”

~*~

They stayed as the Border Patrol, Fort Lauderdale Police, and Coast Guard went over the scene. Bob Redus, the Border Patrol Assistant Chief that John and Randall knew from a previous case, said hello, then said to Hunter, “Hey, Kincaid. How are you doing? You down here on vacation?”

“Yeah, these guys wanted to show me how to relax in Florida.”

“Some relaxing, huh?”

John asked, “You two know each other?”

Bob said, “We worked a couple of details together about five, six years ago. The last one was in Arizona, I think.”

“Yeah. That was a good one. Is ICE coming in on this?”

“Yep, they should be here in a few. A fellow named Bob Wallis is lead.”

“How’s he?”

“As good as they get. We’ve worked with him before.”

Redus looked over his shoulder and said, “Our guys have on their Hazmat suits, so I guess I’ll go board the freighter. You all want to come?”

“Sure,” Hunter said. “Why Hazmat suits?”