The World Beneath (Joe Tesla) by Rebecca Cantrell

Author:Rebecca Cantrell [Cantrell, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2013-12-05T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

November 29, 9:18 a.m.

Vanderbilt Tennis and Fitness Club

Grand Central Terminal

Joe couldn’t stay much longer, but he didn’t know where else to go. He paced from one end of the small locker room to the other, closed laptop under his arm. Edison didn’t bother to pace with him this time. He had curled up on a pile of dirty towels to sleep. He’d clearly had a rough night, too.

Joe knew he had to act fast, but he didn’t know why. Rebar had told him that something big was due to happen by the end of the month, and that was the day after tomorrow. Obviously, something more important than Rebar’s life, and Joe’s.

He hadn’t found out anything about Ronald Raines that might indicate why he’d been murdered, much less why the CIA cared.

The information Joe had uncovered about mysterious deaths in Guantanamo Bay might be related. A few days after Rebar had been reported AWOL, one hundred and two soldiers and a doctor were lost at sea when the ship they were on went down halfway between Cuba and Florida. Pretty suspicious, but the Navy had done only a cursory investigation, blaming freak weather conditions. He’d checked weather satellite data for the period in question, confirming the weather had been calm and clear the night the ship was lost. It looked to him as if the boat had been sunk on purpose.

Had Rebar been involved in their deaths? Had he killed them?

Joe leaned against the wall and made a VoIP call on his computer to the number he’d memorized from Rebar’s file. The call might be traceable, but it wouldn’t be easy.

He settled headphones over his ears and listened to it ring once (cyan) and twice (blue).

“Raines,” said a woman’s voice. She sounded so tired and defeated that he almost hung up. He hated to worry her further.

“Good morning, Mrs. Raines.” He introduced himself and lied about being from the Navy. “Have you had any word from your son, Ronald?”

“Have you?” She coughed into the phone, a deep, retching hack. A smoker.

He didn’t dare tell her the truth. “I’d like to go over some facts in his file, ma’am.”

“Why?” she wheezed.

“The file doesn’t seem to support what Specialist Raines’s fellow soldiers had to say about him.” He had no idea if that was true, but it seemed like a good starting point.

“What’d they say?” She didn’t sound worried that anyone would say anything bad about her Ronald, and Joe wondered what he might have been like before the events in Guantanamo Bay.

She was asking more questions than he was.

“What would you like to tell me about him?” he asked.

“Ron’s a good boy,” she said. “Smart. Tough. He always wanted to be a soldier like his father, God bless him.”

“I see.” He kept his voice pitched low.

“He never would have gone AWOL. Never. That’s a mistake.”

“His file says—”

“I don’t believe it,” she said. “And I know him better than you do.”

Joe couldn’t argue with that. “What do you think he did?”

“I

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