The Insiders (37 page)
Finally, she spotted him standing with a group of twenty or so people in the store front offices of Montsweag’s Whale Watching and Sightseeing Excursions. Emily barely recognized him in the baseball cap and red plastic raincoat. She waited for him to see her, but he didn’t. Just as she began feeling conspicuous, he saw her. Their eyes locked for an instant. There was no mistaking Wilson’s nod of recognition.
Emily walked around the corner and down a narrow alleyway between two buildings toward the water, thinking there must be fishing boats for rent nearby. So much for their plan to avoid wasting time with boat rentals. Sure enough, there they were—three canopied catamarans and half a dozen twelve-foot outboards, all with the Montsweag’s name in blue and yellow letters. It was never too early in the season for fishing, thank God.
Emily hurried back up the alleyway and entered Montsweag’s through a side door. Wilson saw her. She turned to one of the clerks behind the counter and asked about the group of people. The woman informed her that they were about to embark on a whale-watching excursion and then asked if she cared to join them.
“Actually, I’m more interested in your twelve-footers,” Emily said, realizing that the best way to get out of there was to rent another boat and give Wilson the opportunity to leave the excursion group at the last minute. He obviously wouldn’t be acting the way he was, she thought, if he wasn’t afraid of being seen.
“The small fishing boats?” the attendant asked.
“Yeah. How much is the rental?”
“$75 an hour with bait and tackle, $200 a half day, $350 all day. $500 refundable deposit.”
“I’d like to rent one for all day.”
“Fill this out, please,” she said, handing Emily a clipboard with a renter’s agreement. “How will you be paying?”
“Cash,” Emily said, grateful for the $3,000 in one hundred dollar bills that Hap had placed in each of the escape bags. She hoped they weren’t marked.
“Fine, but I’ll need an imprint of your credit card for the deposit.”
Emily quickly filled out the necessary paperwork and read the accompanying instructions. She paid the clerk, who took an imprint of her American Express card for the refundable $500 deposit. Thankfully, Wilson had brought her purse from Venice. She watched closely to make sure the clerk didn’t process the credit card. They certainly didn’t need a transaction to show up on somebody’s computer screen. Noticing Emily’s watchful eye, the clerk reassured her that her card had not been charged and that she could tear up the imprint when she returned with the boat undamaged. “Take this to Sam on the pier,” she said handing Emily the key and a copy of the agreement, “He’ll help you.”
“Thank you,” Emily said, before timing her exit to coincide with the group of whale watchers leaving the office. Emily blended into the crowd, offering thanks for another small blessing. On the pier, she found Sam who led her to one of the twelve-footers. Sam pointed out a few things, and Emily got into the boat. At the last minute Wilson withdrew from the group and joined her in the small fishing boat. At first, Sam looked surprised at Wilson’s sudden arrival and was about to say something, until Emily smiled and gave him a thumbs up. Within seconds Emily and Wilson were crossing the bay through a cluster of anchored sailboats and schooners.
Wilson lay on the bottom of the boat telling Emily how two cars began following him outside Bath. “A dark blue Ford Taurus and a red Jeep Cherokee kept trading positions every mile or so. When I stopped at a gas station in Woolwich to put more air in the tires, the Cherokee stopped at a pottery barn across the road, and the Taurus kept going. After that, both vehicles kept their distance, but they continued following me. I stopped again in Wiscasset at an ATM, just to see what they’d do. Both cars passed me, but I saw them again when I turned onto Highway 27. After that they let me think I’d lost them.”
“How many men did Hap send?”
“That’s what scared me. There were six of them. Four in the Cherokee and two in the Taurus. Hap said he was sending three,” Wilson said, his eyes were full of venom as he looked up at Emily from the bottom of the boat. “When I got to Boothbay Harbor I stopped at Brigham’s Inn. A few blocks away from the pier. We stayed there once. Remember?”
“Yes, I remember,” Emily said, smiling. She swung her eyes back to the helm and the bay in front of them.
“I left the Range Rover in the parking lot next to Brigham’s and casually walked to the B&B. As soon as I got inside, I left through the back door into the garden and ran through the woods to a side street where I entered the first clothing shop I could find. That’s where I bought my new Red Sox cap and the raincoat.”
“How did you wind up with the whale watching group?” Emily asked.
“I knew the men following me wouldn’t stay at the B&B for long, which meant meeting you on the main pier was not an option. Unfortunately, the only way to let you know was to not show up. Sorry. I knew you’d figure it out and come looking for me, so I tried to find a natural cover nearby. When the whale watching group started forming a few minutes ago, I bought a ticket.”
“Thank God you saw me.”
“My sentiments exactly,” Wilson said. “Your outfit was brilliant. I saw you standing there in the rain and didn’t think twice about it. Then, when you turned, I knew it was you. I’d recognize that graceful turn of your head anywhere, no matter what you were wearing.”
Glancing at him sideways, she said, “We’re getting better at this, and I’m not sure I like it.”
Wilson didn’t respond, except to raise his eyebrows, as the boat motored across the harbor to the pier where Emily had left the lobster boat. They quickly got out of the twelve-footer and into Paddie’s twenty-four-foot lobster boat. Emily charted a course around the eastern peninsula to Linekin Bay. When they reached Lobster Cove, they began looking for a secluded place to dock so they could survey what was happening back in Boothbay Harbor. No matter who was following them—Hap’s men, Tate’s men, the FBI—compromised or not, every local cop and state trooper along the coast would soon be looking for them, Wilson thought. Sooner or later, someone was bound to check the boat rentals, and then they’d have the coast guard after them as well.
When they spotted a small pier with no one around, they docked the boat and hiked up a narrow path through heavy brush past two secluded homes and into a small clearing, which was perfect for spying.
They sat sheltered by a large umbrella from the misting rain on one of the outdoor benches and took turns scanning the bay’s environs. Wilson was the first to spot the men who had been following him.
“The two cars that were following me just pulled into the parking lot at the main pier,” he said, his eyes glued to the binoculars. “Only five men this time. One must be waiting. Hold it. Here come two more vehicles. One of them is the Range Rover. The other one is a Taurus. Beige. Three more men. The two Fords have to be FBI. The Jeep Cherokee must be Hap’s.”
“What are they doing?” Emily asked.
“Talking. Just talking.”
“Now what?”
“Nothing.”
Emily squinted, but without binoculars she could barely discern the cars.
“One of them is pointing toward town,” Wilson said. “Looks like he’s giving instructions. They’re splitting up. On foot.”
“Whoever they are, it won’t take them long to check the rental records. I think it’s time to leave,” Emily said.
“I think you’re right,” Wilson said, handing the binoculars to Emily.
She peered through the lenses at the eight men who were now walking two by two into Boothbay Harbor’s commercial district. “At least we know they won’t be looking for us back on Bailey Island,” Emily said.
“Right,” Wilson said. “And, if these guys don’t already know we’re sitting here across the bay, it means that everything they used to track us is still in the Range Rover.”
They returned to the lobster boat and headed back toward Mo Bobicki’s loft. As they rounded the point into Mackerel Cove, everything seemed normal. They docked the boat at the gas pumps where Paddie was waiting for them. He’d been hanging out in the restaurant’s bar when he saw them enter the cove. It was almost two in the afternoon.
Back in the loft, they made up the bed and futon, pulled down the blinds on the windows, and tried to get some rest since neither of them had gotten much sleep in the past few days. Wilson was overjoyed to have Emily lying beside him again. As he closed his eyes to sleep, he wondered if the FBI or Hap’s men or the secret partnership would be able to trace a call if he used the pay telephone downstairs to contact Hap. He needed to make sure their families were safe. It was the last thought he remembered before falling asleep.
It was Rachel who smelled the smoke first, in the middle of hastily preparing to leave for a safe house. She yelled at Darrin, who had just arrived home from a job interview, to call 911. Then she ran upstairs to get her daughter and mother who were reading in the belfry library. “The house is on fire,” Rachel shouted running up the spiral staircase.
Her mother and little Mary met her at the top of the stairs with looks of astonishment on their faces. “What’s happening?” her mother gasped.
“The house is on fire. We’ve got to get out,” Rachel blurted before coughing uncontrollably. The three of them descended one after another down the spiral staircase into the hallway, toward the main staircase now filled with smoke.
Darrin came running from the kitchen, scooped his daughter into his arms, and grabbed Rachel’s hand. Rachel’s other hand held onto her mother’s. As the four of them ran together down the wide hallway toward the front door, there was an explosion in the east parlor. Flames shot across their exit path, engulfing the front door in fire and smoke. They quickly turned around and ran for the French doors at the back of the house, but before they could reach them, there was another explosion. All four of them were thrown to the ground by the blast.
Disoriented and coughing as she lay on the floor, Rachel could barely discern the sirens and breaking glass before she lost consciousness. When she regained awareness, she had a plastic oxygen mask over her nose and mouth and was being wheeled into the back of an ambulance. She raised herself up from the gurney to see where her family was, but all she could see was Darrin wrestling with one of the paramedics.
“What’s wrong?” she screamed, managing to remove the plastic mask from her face.
The paramedic attending her replaced the mask and pushed her back down onto the gurney, telling her that her mother and daughter were fine. Then she heard gunshots and immediately raised herself up again, just in time to see her husband fall to the ground. She ripped the mask from her face and tried to get up, but the paramedic shoved her back down and stuck a gun in her face.
Rachel screamed as she rolled off the gurney onto the floor of the ambulance. There were more gunshots with blood splattering everywhere inside the ambulance. The bodies of two paramedics dropped beside her, one of them pinning her arm to the floor.
Gunfire continued outside the ambulance for several more seconds. When it stopped, Rachel drew her arm out from under the lifeless body and scrambled out of the ambulance to find her husband who was lying unconscious on the ground. He’d been shot in the shoulder and was being lifted onto a gurney by one of Hap Greene’s men and another man she’d never seen before.
“We need to get you to a hospital,” said the man she’d never seen before. He motioned to another ambulance that was coming up the driveway. “Your husband’s got a minor shoulder wound and a nasty bump on his head, but he should be fine. Your mother and daughter are already on their way to the hospital. They’re fine. Just suffering from a little smoke inhalation and a few bruises like you.”
“Who are you and what happened?” Rachel said as she walked beside her husband’s gurney, clinching his hand.
“Sorry, ma’am. Special Agent Frandsen, FBI,” he said. “I think you know Johnson here.”
Rachel nodded as she acknowledged Hap Greene’s man who was keeping pressure on Darrin’s shoulder to reduce the bleeding.
“The crew of paramedics that arrived after the fire broke out weren’t real paramedics. They tried to kidnap your mother when Hap Greene and your husband intervened.”
She felt dizzy, almost losing her balance as they loaded her husband into the ambulance.
“Get this woman a gurney,” Special Agent Frandsen shouted as he grabbed Rachel around the waist to keep her from falling.
Rachel began losing consciousness as scenes of an apocalypse ran through her mind. How had things gone so terribly wrong? Where’s my daughter? Mother?
As the paramedics loaded her into the ambulance, Rachel began coughing uncontrollably, throwing her body into convulsions.
“Will we ever be safe again?”
Wilson woke up bathed in sweat. He immediately looked at his watch. It was fifteen minutes after five o’clock in the evening. They’d slept for more than three hours. Montsweag’s would be closing in fifteen minutes. Wilson bolted down the stairs to the pay phone on the wall outside the marina store. It was raining hard.
After punching the numbers into the pay phone, he heard a woman’s voice, “Montsweag’s Whale Watching and Sightseeing Excursions.”
“We rented a boat this morning. It’s in my girlfriend’s name Emily Klein. We left…”
“Let me get Mr. Montsweag,” she interrupted.
As Wilson waited on the line, he wondered what Carter was doing.
A few seconds later, a deep gruff voice came on the line. “Son, the police have been here looking for the two of you.”
Wilson’s heart sank as he looked around him in the pouring rain, trying to discern if anyone was watching. “What did they want?” Wilson asked, looking at his watch and trying to remember how long it took to trace a call. It had already been twenty seconds or so.
“Some kind of emergency at home. They didn’t say anymore than that.”
Wilson braced himself against the wall of the marina store to keep his balance and hung up the phone. Then, he called the number, again, “Sorry. I was cut off.”