Finding Harmony (Katie & Annalise Book 3) (8 page)

I bit my lip, holding back tears. Now I would almost rather believe that Derek or Bobby was the reason Nick was missing. Even though it looked bad, I was certain Nick could explain when we found him. Still, it hurt. I could feel my heirloom gold band icy and hard around my finger. Had my mother’s faith in my father ever been tested like this? What about my grandmother? And if so, how had they survived this pain, this fear? I motioned toward the car and Kurt and I began to walk.

“Sounds like Nick had passengers with him and they were headed to Mexico,” I said. “And that someone was following them.”

I sat at Nick’s computer in our office less than an hour later, my blue notebook on the desk to my right. As the machine booted up, I noted the time: 9:55 p.m. Nick had left our house forty hours ago. By now, he could have made it nearly around the world, if he so desired. I wondered what it was he had desired, though. I couldn’t tell from the few clues I had, and I was fighting to remain positive that the main thing he wanted was me.

I knew he believed in me, and I would believe in him. Period. If he’d gone to Mexico with Elena and her mother, there had to be a good reason, a reason related to the Petro-Mex case. And I would figure that reason out, by God.

I typed in his password and accessed his email. I had read everything stored in his account during my initial panic the previous night, but I wanted to look again. What had I missed?

I saw a new message in his inbox, its header marked in bold. The name of the sender read “A. Friend.” How clever. I took a sip of my cinnamon spice tea for courage and opened A. Friend’s missive.

“We arrived safely but are still scared. I think you were followed. Thank you for delivering the package to Punta Cana. Good luck.”

What the hell? “We arrived safely”?
We?
Could “we” refer to Elena and her mother? And “they,” whoever they were, were still scared—of what? Who would have followed Nick—the guys that talked to the skycap?

And “Thank you for delivering the package”? Between ferrying passengers and packages, Nick sounded more like a FedEx deliveryman than a P.I. Where the hell was Punta Cana? I couldn’t even remember if I’d heard of it before.

I opened Google Maps in a new tab and clumsily typed in a search for “Punta Caba.” I corrected my spelling and tried again: Punta Cana.

Punta Cana was a city on the east coast of the Dominican Republic, one of two countries on the island just west of Puerto Rico. Haiti covered the western half of Hispaniola and the Dominican Republic was to the east, closest to Puerto Rico and St. Marcos.

I forced myself to slow down and go through the logic, step by step. To think like Nick would if he were investigating this for a client. To think like I would, when I wasn’t in this much emotional distress. Today someone had sent an email to Nick thanking him for delivering a package to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, and that person was scared and thought someone had followed Nick. If this person was correct, Nick had gone to the Dominican Republic yesterday. I knew that didn’t rule out flying to Mexico afterwards, but even if he’d just stopped over in Punta Cana, it gave Kurt and me a lead to follow. It gave us our first glimmer of hope. With printouts of the email and the Google map in hand, I dashed down the stairs to the main floor.

“Kurt? Kurt?” I called softly as I neared the bottom step, hoping he hadn’t gone to bed yet. I couldn’t yell with the three young ones asleep in the house.

Kurt’s head and shoulders rounded the corner and I nearly crashed headlong into him. Julie and Ruth, Taylor’s old nanny, nearly ran into his back. Julie had called for reinforcement while we were gone earlier. Three grandbabies and one tired, worried grandmother needed an extra set of hands, and who better than Ms. Ruth?

Kurt grabbed my upper arms to stop my forward motion.

I raised the papers in my hand and shook them in the air. “I have a lead. Nick went to the Dominican Republic. To Punta Cana.”

Everyone spoke at once. When we regained order, I explained the email from A. Friend to Nick. By silent accord, we walked into the dining room and sat around the glass-topped table that not so long ago had been piled high with a dead pig and a dozen bags of ice.

“You going to Punta Cana? You better book tickets and hotel. Morning soon come,” Ms. Ruth said.

“You’re right,” I said. I didn’t think my stress level could rise any higher, but it was climbing like a candy thermometer in Karo syrup. I added her suggestions to my to-do list in the notebook.

“For me, too,” Kurt said. “I’m coming with you.”

I nodded. “Absolutely, and thank you.”

“Did you answer the email?” Julie asked.

“No.” What a miss on my part. I felt a nauseating surge of adrenaline. Another add for the list. “I will, though. As soon as we’re done talking.”

“Maybe you can build some trust and get a real conversation going,” Julie said.

That gave me another idea. “I think I can set up Nick’s email account to send and receive on my phone. That way I can read his email as soon as it arrives and keep up the dialogue with whoever A. Friend is when we go to Punta Cana.”

“Can we read the texts on Nick’s phone?” Kurt asked. “On the internet, I mean.”

To hear my father-in-law talking about texts would have entertained me on a normal day, but today it barely registered as novel. “I have no idea. But we should try.” Another thing to do. My neck tingled, announcing the certain appearance of red stress splotches.

“Whatever we do, we can’t assume he isn’t on St. Marcos and quit looking for him here,” Kurt said. “He could have gone missing after he got back from Punta Cana. Or maybe this email is a hoax, and he never left the island.” His voice was nearly an octave higher than usual.

I looked around the table. Kurt was ripping at his cuticles. Julie was biting her lip. Ruth was rocking back and forth, ever so slightly. They looked as close to a nervous breakdown as I felt.

And then Julie worked her magic. She’d always been able to round off sharp edges and soften hard knots. Her words were slow, and her voice was almost deep. “Let’s work together on this. I know I can’t sleep anyway, and it will make me feel better to do something. I’ll book the travel. Kurt, can you get on the AT&T website and research the texting issue?”

“I can.” Kurt might eschew the personal use of cell phones, but he was very computer savvy and had logged thousands of internet hours on call as a ship pilot.

Ruth chimed in. “I make some tea and a little bite to eat for we.”

My redlined pulse slowed to a survivable level. “I’ll work on the email issues with A. Friend and set up Nick’s email on my phone. And I’ll ask Rashidi to mount an exhaustive land search here, door to door and shore to shore, while we search in DR. And oh God, I almost forgot this one: I’ll make sure our cell phones have service in DR.”

Heads nodded. Ruth disappeared into the kitchen, Julie and Kurt headed downstairs to their computers, and I went back up to the office. I tackled the phone/email issue first. I knew it would be doable, but it wasn’t a task I could complete without finding and following step-by-step instructions. Fifteen minutes later, I had succeeded in messing up the process three times. Before I could try again, Ms. Ruth appeared with tea and chocolate chip cookies.

“Bless you,” I told her.

“Ah, child, bless you,” she said, and placed her hand lightly, briefly, on my shoulder. I tried to recall a single time she had touched me in the year she had worked for us, besides shaking my hand when she met me, but I could remember none.

“I’ve missed you, Ruth,” I said as she left the room.

She turned her head and smiled at me, then kept walking to the kitchen.

I threw myself back into the email issue, and within three minutes, I had done it. When I’d satisfied myself that I could receive and send email from Nick’s account on my iPhone, I opened A. Friend’s message again and hit Reply.

Dear A. Friend: This is Nick’s wife, Katie. I am checking Nick’s email from our house because he never made it home from Punta Cana. He is missing. Please help me find him. Email, text, or call with whatever you know. Anything. Please. Thank you, Katie Kovacs.

I added my cell phone number and email address at the bottom and hit send. Then I prayed.

Next, I got online with AT&T and scanned the countries included in their international call, texting, and data plans. Thank God—they covered the DR.

Finally, even though it was late, I called Rashidi, who promised to put together a team of trusted friends and relatives and scour the island for any sign of Nick and the plane. Then I told him about Tutein.

“Katie, we gonna have to take care of he when this over,” Rashidi said, his voice deep and clipped.

“Yes, he is a problem. But one thing at a time right now,” I replied.

Rashidi asked, “What you want me to do? Remember, I specialize in ‘who you know.’”

This, I could vouch for. Who Rashidi knew had resulted in most of the permits and laborers I’d needed for Annalise in my first year—much of it pre-Nick—on St. Marcos. Whenever I had trouble at Annalise, it was Rashidi to the rescue. He’d even camped on her floors armed with his machete after she was burglarized when Ava deserted her.

“We have to figure out the truth of what, if anything, lies below Annalise,” I said.

“Irie,” Rashidi said. “I have two old grade school partners that will help. Rob works for the museum as curator, and his wife Laura the librarian at U.V.I.”

“I also want to know what happens to someone who breaks this law? I’m really just worried about my responsibility from the Day of the Dead forward. I don’t think I can be held responsible for what the first owner did—I didn’t have any knowledge of it—so even if the government hassles me about it, I’m not concerned. Let’s just pray he wasn’t a desecrator and robber of graves in addition to his other illegal pastimes, though. You don’t remember any talk of old bones, do you?”

“Nah, meh son. I didn’t hear a thing,” he replied.

“OK. So, Rash, I need to know the penalties. Are they monetary? If there’s a cemetery, do I have to move it? Could they do anything to Annalise? I know you told me they can do anything they want to me, according to your lady friend in the government, but I can’t imagine this could result in any long-term jail time.”

“Yah, mon, I take care of it. But I gonna focus on Nick. I get Rob and Laura to help on finding out if there anything below Annalise. Now, you may not like this, but I need more help. I bring Ava in, too.”

He was right; I didn’t like it. Singing together was one thing, but I hadn’t been able to count on her before when I needed her. I didn’t argue, though. “Do what you have to, Rash. I trust you.” I thanked him, and we hung up.

I walked downstairs to check on the others’ progress. Julie reported in detail on the itinerary she had arranged, as was her way.

“The earliest I can get you to Punta Cana is 1:35 in the afternoon, and to do that, you and Kurt have to catch a 6:45 a.m. flight to San Juan, then you connect there to Punta Cana.”

“That sounds great.” The sooner we started our journey, the better I would feel.

She continued. “You’re staying at the Puntacana Resort, about a mile and a half from the airport. The rooms are only ninety-five dollars per night. I had heard the DR was inexpensive, but, wow.”

A resort on the beach for that price? Nick and I should go there sometime, I thought. If we find him. When we find him. We will find him.

“You’re awesome. Thank you.”

“Do you want a car?” she asked.

“I don’t think so. Our business is at the airport. And the hotel is close.”

“I agree,” Kurt said. “Now, let me tell you what I found out.”

Kurt had had mixed luck. He confirmed that the content of Nick’s messages was not readable online. But he learned that AT&T’s system showed up-to-the-minute message logging by phone number for both sends and receives. He had handwritten a list of the numbers, which included mine and three others. I hated that the last one Nick had sent to me had been at noon the previous day, and that I had forgotten about it. However, that did shorten the length of his disappearance by seven hours, from the time he left my side at five a.m. to the noontime text.

And Annalise had sent me a message at one p.m. yesterday. I shivered. That suggested the window was shorter by yet another hour.
Oh, Annalise
.
If only you could speak.

The big hand on the old wood-framed clock above the great room’s mantel was nearing midnight. Kurt and Julie trekked back downstairs to their apartment. Ruth had tucked in half an hour ago in the guest bedroom on the main floor. I scurried around shutting off lights, locking doors, and packing for the trip. I doubled back to the office twice, once for my passport—where I noticed for the first time that Nick’s was gone—and one time for my laptop charger. I stopped in to kiss Taylor and the girls before I retreated to my own room. Nick’s and my room.

I settled into our bed, cell phone and list of numbers in hand, still wearing Nick’s black t-shirt that I’d thrown on before Tutein hauled me off into the bush to threaten me. Had that really only been today? It seemed like weeks ago now.

My eyes wanted to close, but first I typed the same text message to each number on Kurt’s short list from AT&T:

“Hey, this is Nick. I got a new cell phone. Just checking in.”

If that didn’t yield results, I’d switch tactics in the morning. I prayed to God to keep Nick safe, and I closed my eyes.

A hand touched my shoulder, then pushed it. “Katie?” Nick said. “Katie, wake up. It’s me.”

I fought waking, but my eyes opened after he shook me a few more times. “What time is it?” I asked.

“It’s three a.m. I know it’s late, but I need to tell you something.”

“Where have you been?” I asked.

“Don’t you remember, silly? I went shopping for presents to make you smile.”

“Oh, yeah. You told me that.”

My eyes closed. His hand shook my shoulder again.

“Katie, wake up, listen to me, because I can only talk for a moment. I need you to know I am all right. Don’t stop looking for me. Take the picture with you. I’m counting on you.”

“Wait! What? Nick?” I jumped up and the cotton sheets slid to the floor as my feet hit it. “Nick?”

Nick was not there. Of course he wasn’t.
You’re dreaming
, I thought as I climbed back into bed, tears falling.
It was just a dream.

I heard a crash and jerked awake. Annalise’s agitation was sparking in the air around me and I realized she had hurled something to the ground. I got out of bed again and flipped on the light switch. The sound had come from Nick’s closet. I opened the door and found his tackle box sitting upright on the floor, five feet down from its shelf above Nick’s hanging clothes rack.