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“What the hell are you doing?” Rainer slammed his hands on the rough concrete edge of the barrier.
“Do you have rope?” he asked.
“No, I don’t,” his friend panted. “Maybe the others do, but we split up when we lost sight of you.”
Then he couldn’t wait. No longer wasting time on words, he used careful handholds and every trick he’d learned in Auric’s climbing gym to make his way down to the kid.
He ignored the yawning void at his back, calculating their odds if they plunged down to the picture-perfect blue ocean below.
“Va estar bien,” he said, trying to reassure the boy, who was startled enough at his use of Spanish to stop crying. “Aggarate de mí.”
Reaching out, he snagged the child’s arm just as a black rope dropped onto his head. He looked up, silently thanking Rainer and Ian who had just appeared above him.
Leaning forward to hug the wall, he tied the rope into a swing, working it around himself and the little boy. Then he nodded to the pair above him, letting them pull him up, using his free hand and booted feet to help as best he could.
When they reached the top, the little kid broke away, running as far from them as he could.
“Wait,” Rainer called after him, picking up the discarded box of gum and chasing after him.
Knowing his friend, the kid would be caught and paid handsomely for every Chiclet pack. He turned his attention to the remaining man.
“Did you catch Folsom?”
Ian shook his head. “We caught up just in time to seehim toss the kid over. I doubled back for one of the bags of gear, expecting to have to trek back to Fletcher’s for it. But Juan Carlos was on our heels. He handed over one of our packs.”
“And Elias?” He hadn’t seen the other member of their quartet in a few minutes.
“The three of us separated a few streets back because we didn’t know which turn you’d made—he’s still looking,” he said, holding up his cell phone. “Rainer spotted you and Folsom first. I was one street over but came when I heard the kid yelling.”
A few minutes later Elias tracked them down, sweaty but not out of breath—a testament to his fine conditioning. “I think Folsom had a boat out here. Juan Carlos’ men saw one departing from one of the little piers fishermen use about half a mile down the waterline.”
“Are they sure it was him? Do they still have it in sight?”
He shook his head. “It was going fast and no, they didn’t see who was on it. We’re sending out boats in pursuit. And Juan Carlos is still looking on land, tapping his local network of informants.”
But hours later, they had nothing to show for their search. The small armada of boats they assembled found nothing as well.
Folsom was in the wind.
Dusk was falling when Garrett threw in the towel. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he told the others. “We’ll let your contacts continue the search and take Fletcher’s body for an autopsy. We’ll see what the exam says about the cause of death.”
In the meantime, his wife was waiting for him.
Chapter Seventy-Five
GARRETT
Elias was quiet on the boat ride back. He was at the wheel, staring off into the horizon with a pensive expression on his face.
“Did you have a chance to examine the body before the cops came?” Garrett asked.
“Yeah.” Elias fished out a scrap of paper with a bunch of numbers on it. “This will likely belong to the account Fletcher used to stash the money he stole. I took the liberty of texting these to Toya. She’s already tracking it down.”
“He converted some of it to cash,” Garrett said after thanking him. Folsom had been clutching on to that bag for dear life, but he must not have searched the body. He hadn’t found the account number.
“Not all of it. It would be too heavy,” Ian pointed out. “It won’t take Toya long. We told her to start with the usual suspects—the Caymans and Switzerland.”
It turned out to be both.