Page 78 of Triple Threat

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When I woke again,the sun was well up, and I was by myself. Sadie was out on the beach, basking. She was topless, in all her glory. I sighed, brushed my fingers through my hair and made brief use of the hut’s mock bathroom. The lack of a true shower was one of the few things I regretted about the location, besides the tactical ones. I needed to talk to Roan, to make sure that this was just a coincidence.

She sat up, saw me watching, and blew me a kiss. I walked down to where she was sitting, the surf rolling up to her toes in the sand. “I’ll have to move soon; the water is getting closer.”

“The tide does that. Do you want to cruise the island in a bit, see the sights?” I asked.

“I do, but what happened last night?” she asked.

“Nothing, the line at the dispensary was long,” I said, remembering the impact of flesh on flesh, the crunch of bone and cartilage. “There are always people who come down here and think every island in the Caribbean is a haven for hashish. They pester the dispensary people for it,” I shrugged. “Tourists.”

“Aren’t we tourists?” she asked.

“Yes and no, we aren’t bad tourists. No fanny packs, no shouting loudly and slowly in English, and we’re respectful of local customs,” I said. “There is a spa up the hill, I understand it’s quite popular.”

“I’ve never been to a spa.” She giggled.

“Top notch, we’ll remedy that. The full Princess package.”

“What’s in that?” She stretched and then put her top back on.

“No idea, but I am one hundred percent sure that they have something like that.” I wasn’t wrong. Not quite an hour later, after something not unlike tapas, we were at what was a French fort, or monastery, overlooking the bay, while a troupe of dark-skinned men and women were vigorously doling out decadence and pampering to a small number of wealthy tourists. I used what conversational French I could manage and rounded her up a top-tier package. Manicure, pedicure, stone massage, a facial, and they would do a few other things, stuff that was outside of my expertise.

Yesterday, I would have joined her in the preening but that was before the attack last night. I pulled out my phone and waited for the connection, and then Roan was there. “What’s up, mate?” he asked.

“So, I am looking at a princess package at the Mont St. Henri spa, and they’re asking about hair, do you have any suggestions?”

“Sadie doesn’t know?” he asked.

“She doesn’t and you’ve always had better taste in such things. I’m certainly no cosmetologist.”

“You had an opinion when she had blue hair,” he said.

“The blue hair was fucking awful, and you know it.” I felt a moment of tension as a police officer pedaled up to the gate of the spa on a bicycle, but it was short lived. The conversation was brief, and topical. The man rode away, and the woman who had met him at the gate watched him go. Lovers? Spouse? Everyone had their own intricate and rich lives, that we were oblivious to. Just as they were unaware of mine, or Sadie’s.

“Victoria Lake peek-a-boo,” Roan said. “It’s classy, clean, and Sadie has the mane for it.”

“Isn’t that a place in Africa?” I asked.

“Lake Victoria, yes. Victoria Lake was a 1940s film star and was a pin-up model for WWII artists.”

“Oh, pin-up, that’s classy,” I said.

“It will keep the hair off of her neck and might keep her a bit cooler. Probably a bit warmer in the islands than it is here on the bay.”

“Speaking of heat, I had a King Kong,” I said.

“Is Sadie okay, are you okay?” His tone changed. King Kong was a code phrase, Kong was a gorilla, and that was almost the same as guerilla, an insurgent. It had only happened a time or two before, someone coming back around after a job, looking for revenge.

“Yes, on both. She saw none of it, knows nothing about it.”

“Did you recognize him?” he asked.

“I did, vaguely. He was a big black guy, dreadlocks, said that I did a hit on his brother, burned down a warehouse and sank a ship,” I said.

“You think that would narrow things down,” Roan said. “You’ve only sunk three ships. But, the Martinique Job.”

“Martinique! Oh, I remember her, big hair, big breasts, had a problem with her cousin muscling in on her turf,” I said.

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