Page 4 of Beachcomber Enemy

She looked at his blue-as-the-ocean eyes. With a shaky hand, she took the phone back.

The signature line had been another cartoon. The Joker. She knew who’d sent this text. She knew who’d exploded their house. She didn’t need a mirror to know she’d blanched because she could feel the blood leaving her head, felt faint, swayed a little.

Dane gripped both of her shoulders tight, keeping her from falling.

“Who sent this, Shana?” Dane’s voice still sounded calm, but it was low, for her ears only and vibrating with deadly seriousness.

“It’s someone I—we arrested back in Sydney. Whitey Nash.” Dane’s eyes were unyielding, his hands hot on her shoulders then slipping down her arms. But he waited for her to continue, remaining quiet.

“There was trouble. The arrest didn’t go as planned. Nash got cut on his face in the fight when we tried to arrest him and he . . . lost an eye. He ended up incarcerated for a long stretch. He should still be in prison. In Australia, far away from here…. We need to check.”

Her heartbeat was frantic with the urgency to find out, to call the prison in Sydney where Nash had been locked up. She needed to confirm that he was still there.

Vendi called to them and gestured for them to come down the stairs.

Dane led Shana down the stairs. Vendi went through a door and flipped on the lights.

“You can use the computers in here to check whatever you need to check,” Vendi said.

Vendi had heard her and whether or not he had made out what she said, she felt mortified at how scared she must have sounded, at how she’d lost her cool. It was time to buck up.

* * *

Dane pretended that he hadn’t noticed her fear, didn’t call attention to it. He knew she’d be mortified to show weakness in front of someone like Vendi, someone who thought she was a badass. The thing was, Shana was a badass. Which made her palpable fear of this guy, Whitey Nash, all the more concerning.

“Someone with sophisticated telecom skills is tracking us because they got Shana’s very private cell number. They’re checking to see if she survived the explosion. It’s not necessarily this Joker. Unless they allow prisoners to make international calls back in Sydney.” he said. “But very likely whoever sent the text is our mad bomber. The one who exploded our home.”

“Guess our attempt at playing ghosts went down the shitter,” she said. She gave him a full scowl.

“Not at all. Whoever sent the text doesn’t know for sure we received it. We can get past this test. But you’ll have to give up the phone. You have a backup of your contacts?”

She lifted her chin. “Of course.”

“Where is it?”

She turned white then pink and he shouldn’t enjoy the look, but he was a bastard at heart.

“On the computer back at the shack?” he said. She turned away.

“Don’t you have your data on the cloud?” Vendi asked.

“Not exactly,” Dane said. “But we do have remote data backup.” He didn’t want to tell Vendi that their remote storage and all other things data and computer system related were taken care of by Acer, his old special ops unit buddy turned IT security expert. He would need to contact Acer, but not in the usual way. And not right this minute.

Shana darted him a glance as if she’d read his mind.

“We can trust Vendi,” she said. “You can tell him about Acer’s system.”

Vendi stood there, arms folded, giving him a look that was just short of challenging, the kind that said, you ungrateful prick—I should throw you out on your ass. Or maybe that was Dane’s spotty conscience talking.

“Give me the phone,” Dane said.

She handed it over, heaved a sigh and turned away as if she didn’t want to see her best friend executed.

Dane dropped it on the floor. Lifting a chair above the phone, he took aim and smashed it down on the phone, cracking it open and exposing its guts. He gave it a few more cracks, then picked up the pieces.

“You have a toilet down here?” he said to Vendi. Vendi pointed. Dane wasted no time moving across the conference room and tossing it into the bowl. He pressed the flusher. Twice.

Returning to the windowless conference room, he saw Vendi powering up one of the computers. Shana stood with him.