Death Mark by Nick Thacker

Author:Nick Thacker [Thacker, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Turtleshell Press
Published: 2017-10-24T23:00:00+00:00

24

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, IT’S your father?”

Joey was watching me towel off. I was fully clothed and dripping all over the brand-new floor in the main cabin, but I didn’t care. I wanted to move, to figure it out, to take action.

I was feeling the heat rising inside me, both a boon and a curse. It would help me focus, keep me laser-targeted on my mission. But if I left it unchecked it would get out of hand and I’d devolve into a state of rage-induced panic.

One of the benefits of my Army life and post-Army training is that I know myself very well. I know my habits, my reactions, my emotional state. I’m pretty in tune to those inner workings most people just allow to come and go and not really think much about, and I’m pretty good about understanding them.

And right now I didn’t know what to think. I was pissed, sure, but I also wasn’t sure if I believed it. Hell, I’d started this mission with the expectation that I’d be avenging my murdered father, and now the dead guy who’d tried to kill us was telling me that my father was the guy who’d set it all up.

It didn’t add up. None of it. The only thing that did add up was that if my father was involved, if he wasn’t actually dead, he was in over his head.

And that sounded like my old man.

I shook my head and watched the last few remaining droplets of saltwater flick off my hair and land on the carpet. I’d jumped from the sinking boat and swam back to the Wassamassaw, where I was able to reach the ladder on the side of the yacht and climb aboard. The water felt good, but nothing else about this moment did.

“I don’t know, Joey. I don’t get it either.”

“But he’s alive?”

“I don’t know, I said. I haven’t seen him.”

“But that guy said he was working for him. You think —”

“I have no idea what to think.”

Frey popped out the bridge again and joined us in the cabin. He looked at Joey, then me, as if wanting to ask a question. Finally he walked over to the bar in the corner and started looking around.

I watched him for a moment, then turned back to Joey. “This sucks.”

Joey nodded.

“We’re going to get her back.”

He nodded again.

“We’re going to get her back now, and then I’m going to have a word with my dead father.”

Frey walked over, carrying a glass of brown liquid. I raised an eyebrow, questioning.

“Rum,” he said. “Flor de Cana.”

I nodded. “Good choice. Mind pouring me one?” I asked.

“Me too,” Joey added.

We waited for our drinks, Joey taking a seat on the couch across from me, while I sat in one of the armchairs that had come with the boat. I liked the chairs, as they fit my larger frame well enough and didn’t force me to sit up perfectly straight.

“Who are you getting back?” Frey asked. His voice caught me off guard, almost as if I’d forgotten he was there.

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