Page 45 of Weston’s Treasure

My eyes were crossing. I’d spent hours going over a month’s worth of the canal roster and schedules. Every ship that went through the canal was documented: time, date, crew, shipping manifests. Personal crafts were the same, save the cargo lists.

I’d flagged the ships I thought were worth looking into. But one stuck out. It was a personal craft, one that did not require a pilot to board to captain the boat. It was a sixty-foot Hatteras power cruiser. I was familiar with the vessel, I’d lived on one similar. The main deck was the salon, galley, and a head. The lower deck had two staterooms and a head. The sky deck had a lounge and a sky bridge.

In other words, it was a nice motor yacht. Not just luxury but mega-luxury. There was also no reason for the vessel to travel the C&D Canal four times a month. It wasn’t that kind of boat. It was meant for cruising. Fuel was expensive, there was nothing especially beautiful about the canal, and further, no one who had a one-point-eight-million-dollar yacht would waste their time cruising the canal. Even if they had the money to blow.

I gathered the papers I needed and headed down to the conference room to show Weston what I’d found, briefly stopping to poke my head in McKenna’s office asking her if she was ready for lunch. After ascertaining she was and what she wanted me to have the guys order, I went downstairs.

I was wondering how in the world I’d missed the Serafina’s numerous trips, when I walked into the conference room and was surprised to find Holden back.

The look on his face stopped me dead. He didn’t look like a man who’d just had a three-day vacation, he looked like a man who just found out his dog was run over.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“Yeah. Come in,” Nixon offered.

Everything was not okay. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to interrupt whatever conversation had put that kind of devastation in Holden’s eyes.

“Hey. Welcome home,” I chirped.

“Yep.”

Oh, boy, I was right. Something had happened. Though it wasn’t my place to ask, so instead I went about telling the guys what I found.

Weston was looking over the logs when Nixon’s phone rang.

“Swagger,” he clipped, and not for the first time I thought about how cool his last name was. “What the fuck?” His question to whoever was on the other end of the line had Weston standing. “Christ. How big of an issue is this gonna be?” There was a pause then. “Right. I’ll tell her.”

Nixon disconnected and Weston immediately started, “What happened?”

“That was Alec. Silver’s dad filed a missing persons report.”

“What?” I screeched.

“And went to the media,” Nixon finished.

“Fuck,” Weston growled. “Babe, there a reason your dad would freak out and file a report?”

“No,” I answered. “I barely speak to my dad. He wouldn’t have any idea if I was missing or not. Sometimes we go months without connecting.”

Why would my father think I was missing? Last I spoke to him he was setting off for the Galapagos Islands. That was almost four months ago. He said he’d be gone five and not to expect any calls. That was my dad—always on the move, always out of communication, always thinking of himself and the adventures he could take.

“You need to call him,” Nixon instructed.

“I can try. But last I heard he was in the middle of the Pacific. Can I use someone’s phone?”

My phone was not in my purse—the only thing that had been stolen out of it. My cash had been untouched, my credit cards, I’d even had my expensive watch tucked in the inside zipper and that was still there, too.

When I’d been taken captive the first thing the men did was take my work phone and toss it overboard.

We hadn’t replaced my phone, mainly because there was no reason. I didn’t need one when I was never without Weston and we were either at his house or the office.

“Sure.” Weston pulled his phone out of his back pocket and handed it to me.

Still remembering his code, I unlocked his phone and dialed my dad.

Surprisingly it rang—normally it would go to voicemail when it was out of range. And more shocking, he answered.

“Dad?”