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These were some of the first words Serge had ever said to him. Dominique had thought him mad. Now he shut his eyes and shuddered.
The old fool had been right.
26
Phantoms
Three days. Three fucking days.
Jackson sat strapped to his seat in the helicopter. The muscles in his jaw and neck threatened to snap with tension, and the pounding roar of the rotors flayed his nerves and thrashed his patience. Samana Cay was still ten minutes out. Dusk only another hour and a half after that, tops, and then another night for Cassidy with the most dangerous creature ever to walk the earth.
Three days.
Jackson’s imagination ran wild with what all she had endured in the last four nights. His fist curled, itching to smash into something, anything.
Three days for Garrett to fly in from his South American hideout, to assemble their gear, organize their strategy—and find one lousy yacht. Between the two of them, everything but that last bit took less than a day. Finding Apokryphos should have been a simple matter of looking up her official tracking data, but anything named for its ability to remain hidden would, of course, not make it that easy for mere mortals to find her.
Nick had called Jackson the evening after his visit and railed at him—in both English and French—for, oddly enough, still being alive. “Are you truly so incompetent? This is over sixty meters of boat, very likely lurking very nearby. How can you not find such a thing, you imbecile?”
Normally they’d look up her AIS info and current coordinates, and be on their way. Apokryphos transmitted no such data. Or, if she did, falsified it. This search would take eyeballs. Coast Guard eyeballs, drone eyeballs, their eyeballs, even tourists-on-the-beach eyeballs.
“Where was all this eagerness to die when I had him in a cage?” Garrett said after the call disconnected. Jackson’s uncle hadn’t uttered a word during the conversation, which Jackson put on speaker for his benefit. Though nothing would have kept Garrett away from this ultimate of all hunts, he preferred his contact with their unlikely source to be as minimal as possible.
“You didn’t use the right motivation. It’s Cassidy he says he’s willing to die for.” That idea still brought him up short. Whether it was true for the vampire, would Jackson be willing to sacrifice himself for her? He liked to think he would, but…
Garrett snorted. “Right. He gave us a lead we can’t afford to pass up. As long as they all end up dead, I don’t care why.”
They had poured over the incomplete data about Apokryphos’s location, called in favors with patrols, and contacted Bahamian customs. There was no record anywhere of a vessel by that name or description. Apokryphos was a phantom.
“He may have gone straight out to sea and off the grid,” Garrett said. “We may need to wait until he surfaces for Nicky. Assuming this thing exists at all, of course. We only have his word on that and your…hunch that he’s telling the truth.”
“I checked. Cassidy really is MIA from work and from home.” Where he had found her father, of all unlikely people, believing that his daughter was out of town on business. “So I’ll follow every clue we have to find her.”
“Suit yourself.”
Jackson kept digging through the data. This morning he finally spotted an oddity among the hundreds of vessels plying these waters, a “fishing charter” that seemed to have no interest in deep water and instead loitered around the uninhabited Samana Cay in the far eastern Bahamas. It had to be Apokryphos. The situation smelled right, especially after he couldn’t get a hold of anyone on land connected with the mystery signal. If this wasn’t the traveling lair of the legendary Kambyses, Jackson would be as incompetent as Nick proclaimed him to be.
His headphones crackled and the irritatingly cheerful voice of the pilot said in a mellow island lilt, “Coming up on Samana Cay, gentlemen.”
It wasn’t the Striker corporate helo they were in, but the first available flying bucket they could hire out of Nassau, an old Bell 206 Jet Ranger he hoped had a better maintenance record than its exterior suggested. The pilot, looking as battered as his transport, was in high spirits the moment he saw the brick of cash Garrett tossed at him. Nor did he question the duffel bags they insisted on hauling into the cramped passenger compartment.
Though he might have, had he known what they contained.
Garrett fitted a pistol with a full magazine and handed it to his nephew. Jackson chambered a round, confirmed the safety, and slid it into a holster strapped to his thigh. His uncle did the same. Both of them had donned Kevlar vests over their black, long-sleeved shirts. The pockets of their cargo pants were stuffed with extra ammunition, charged full-spectrum lights and vials of silver dust. Each carried knives sharp enough to sever spines.
Garrett also had a small backpack hanging off one shoulder. Jackson tried not to think about the contents, which was Garrett’s idea of a weapon of last resort. There was enough C-4 in there to sink a small naval vessel in a matter of minutes. A yacht, probably in seconds. The thought made his nerves squirm. He was prepared to battle a vampire out to rip him apart, but would they really need to blow themselves up in the process?
No, it wouldn’t come to that. Garrett wasn’t that crazy. Right?
Jackson shook his head. This was no time to second-guess anything. He had to operate on instinct, and instinct dictated that he trust his uncle—with explosives.
He pushed the polarized sunglasses up his nose and cracked open the side window. Cool sea air blasted him as he angled for a better view. At the horizon, surrounded by dull blue water under a dull gray sky, was the dull green smear of Samana Cay, featureless and devoid of human life, remote to everything but seagulls and boats.
“And there’re your friends,” the pilot announced.
Jackson’s heart jumped. Where? He sat up straighter and peered between the pilot and empty copilot seats out the front window. “Fuck.”
Beside him, Garrett glanced up from reviewing the yacht’s schematics drawn up from Nick’s memory. “What have we got? The Queen Mary?”
