Keane (The Mavericks #9) - Dale Mayer
Chapter 1
A week later, Keane Lytton walked down Fisherman’s Wharf in Seattle. The place was jam-packed with people, and he wondered what the hell he was doing here. Surely there was a better place for a meeting. Of course, if you want to get lost in a crowd, this was the place to be. It was overcast with a threat of rain. Still, he couldn’t, for the life of him, imagine why he was here. But somebody with greater wisdom had decided this, and so a meetup was needed. He walked down the pier where he was expected, and, as he found the spot, he sat and turned his back on the crowd behind him.
Charlotte and Nico had holed up in Charlotte’s house for the last few days, and Keane had been more than happy to take a break. He was eager to join the Mavericks with his own mission to head up and had listened to stories about many other ops from the others who had gone before him. He was okay with that. He was just waiting for it to happen.
When a hand landed on his shoulder, he turned in surprise and looked up to see Lennox staring at him. Keane’s eyebrows shot up. “Man, am I glad to see you.”
“Good,” Lennox said. “Are you willing to work with me too?” He held up an envelope. “We’ve got orders.”
Keane and Lennox sat on the side of the wharf, while the noise of the crowd around them completely faded away. Keane said, “I was given very little information on it.”
“That’s because very little is to be had,” Lennox admitted. “I’ve never been on a mission with less information.”
“So, what do we know?”
“A group of people went out for a day of sailing. Two of them were washed overboard.”
“And the coast guard didn’t find them?” Keane asked, staring at Lennox in surprise. “Not terribly unusual, I suppose, given the size of the search area.”
Lennox replied, “The coast guard and private yachts haven’t seen any sign of them.”
“The currents, depending on where they were at the time, could have taken the bodies to any number of places.”
“Well, they went missing in Puget Sound,” Lennox said.
“Seriously? Puget Sound is interconnected to multiple waterways and basins, not to mention the Pacific Ocean. The currents can change and can run really deep,” Keane said. “A search like that involves any number of issues. They may never be found.”
“Exactly,” Lennox said. “In this case a special request has been made for us to look for them.”
Keane gazed at the long lampposts that dotted the pier. “Are you serious?”
Lennox gave him half a grin. “Never more so.”
“What? We’re in the business of looking for bodies now?” he asked incredulously. “I was expecting to go up against a serial killer or work in the midst of a civil war in a dictator-ruled country or God-only-knows-what, but you’re saying my mission is to look for two bodies?” Turning, Keane stared at the water. “Not only that, it’s almost impossible to succeed at a job like this.”
“Only a couple reasons explain why we’re doing this,” Lennox said, lowering his voice.
“Of course,” Keane said. “It’s got to be the daughter or niece or nephew to somebody pretty high up the line.”
“An admiral,” Lennox said. “His daughter and her friend.”
“Has he been looking personally?”
“No. He’s out on the Baltic Sea, but he’s been calling in every favor he could.”
“And so a special black-ops mission team of two is to go out into Puget Sound, and possibly beyond into the Pacific Ocean, and look for them?”
“Yes,” Lennox replied.
Just then Keane’s phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out to see Nico was calling. Keane lifted the phone to his ear. “Hope you have a better explanation as to why I’m supposed to look for two bodies,” Keane snapped.
“So Lennox already told you about the admiral’s daughter?”
“Absolutely, but what does this have to do with us? What’s wrong with search and rescue, the coast guard or a private recovery company?”
“Because,” he said, “they went missing from the same area where two other people went missing just one week ago. Both pairs somewhere in the same area. Plus, we received a distress call from one of those first two who went missing, saying they’d been captured.”
Chapter 2
Keane slowly straightened. “Captured?”
“Yes,” Nico said briskly. “Bodies showed up a few days later, both shot. So we don’t know exactly what the hell we’ve got going on here.”
“What islands are around their last-known locations? How about