The Repo

Prologue

He had been sailing in New England waters all his life. But he had spent relatively little time off the coast of Connecticut, and had never sailed into Prescient Cove before.

To add to it, the wind was howling, and he was being pelted with sporadic raindrops that promised a great deal more any minute. The barometer had been dropping steadily all night. Storm warnings over the radio.

It was just past 3:00 A.M.

Under sail, the boat sluiced along at better than seven knots.
The chart said the water was good all the way in. Better still, the GPS was glowing on a bracket attached to the binnacle. The GPS was programmed for this cove right down to each channel marker.

The monitor blinked and a small tone sounded. He was reaching a way point, and there should have been a can to his port side. He picked up the flashlight and played the beam across the port bow. Sure enough, the light picked up a reflective band across the top of a buoy not fifty yards away.

“Jesus,” he said, under his breath. He wished there were other devices along the way to help get them out of this mess.

He started the engine and swung the bow into the wind. For the next few minutes, he worked at securing the sails. But he was a good sailor, and his boat was set up well for single-handing, with lazy jacks for the main and a good roller furling system for the genoa. He went back to the helm and began motoring along the new course. He looked for visuals. It was so damn dark that he could pick out only the expected lights as outlined in the harbor guide. He flicked on his flashlight and reread the approach instructions:

When making a landfall at nighttime, look for the lit steeple of the First Methodist Church to line up with and then eclipse the clock tower of a factory approximately one mile back. Once the tower is eclipsed, proceed directly toward the steeple. Take care to maintain course within the channel as Langley Point to your port is shallow at low tide to as little as three feet, with a rocky bottom. Once past the point, and inside Prescient Cove, the Chalmer’s Marina should be visible directly off your port beam.

Both the GPS and the visual cues agreed—something for which he was blessedly thankful. The entire thing could fall apart right here if he ran the boat aground. And there was too much at stake for that: a thought that had been in his head for the past two days now. Too much at stake.
To his port, he passed a mass of darkness that blotted out the lights of the town entirely. He supposed that was Langley Point, hoped it was. And then, minutes later, he was past.

The glow of a single fluorescent light over the gas dock at Chalmer’s Marina was like a welcome beacon. He put the wheel over slowly and brought the boat around to an open space on the gas dock. He backed her down, crabbing the hull up to the dock gently.

Immediately out of the shadows, a shape appeared.
He started. Even though this was what he had been expecting.

It was her.

She held on to the rail as he jumped off onto the dock and quickly tied the boat down. When he was finished, he put his arms around her. She was wearing a rain slicker too, and both of them were wet on the outside, insulated from one another.

“Thank God,” he said.

He leaned over her, their hoods meeting and hiding their faces for a moment. He kissed her, and he could feel the rain on her face and lips, and by the set of her mouth he knew she was scared or angry. Most likely both.

But she kissed him back, and then she pressed her head against his chest. “Thank God is right,” she said. “I’ve been here for an hour, and having a few things to say to you for being late.”

“I’ll tell you about it once we’re under way. Everything go all right?”

“No.”
“Why? What happened?”
She turned away from him and walked back into the shadows. When she returned, she was dragging the big plastic container. “I tried,” she said. “It just didn’t work. There was someone there. He saw me, and he asked questions. It wouldn’t have worked. I just left.”

“Ah, Christ. Now what?”

“Just what did you want me to do?”

He sighed. His wife was no baby. In truth, she was harder inside than he was, by a long shot. If she said it wouldn’t work, it wouldn’t work. It was just that they had been trying like crazy to throw this together, and neither knew what they were doing. Slapping this thing together, hour by hour. All with too little experience.

I wouldn’t invest in this company, he thought suddenly. Paul and Julie, Inc. He would have—did—every day of their previous life. The two of them had been a great bet. The thought made him smile. Not a happy smile, but a smile nonetheless.

“What?” she said.

“We don’t have a choice. And that simplifies things. So get onboard with me, and get into some dry clothes.”

She paused, silent. Thinking, thinking. And coming to the same conclusion he did. She smiled at him suddenly, still his girl inside this frightened woman. God, he wanted to take her where she could lose that scared look.

He heaved the plastic case into the cockpit, and then, on an impulse, he swept Julie up in his arms as if he were walking her across the threshold to their new home. As if they were just married, instead of eight years in.

She laughed, and that made him feel strong, in spite of being wet, cold, and scared himself. She said, “Are we going to be all right?”

“Sure,” he lied. “Everything’s going to be just fine. Let’s go pick up a mooring and spend the night.”

“I don’t want to stay here. I don’t think I was followed, but we can’t stay in case I was.”

He told her about the storm.

“We can’t stay,” she said. “We can’t.” The edge of panic in her voice.

He hesitated. “All right, then. We’ll go.” He placed her on the broad cockpit coaming, and he kissed her once more, gently on the lips. He felt her smile, and relax into the kiss, and in that moment, he really felt they could make everything work out.
He untied the boat and shoved her away from the dock. He climbed onto the stern, and already his wife was at the wheel, slipping the idling engine into gear.
They motored off into the gathering storm.

Chapter One

Jack Merchant was drifting.

At the moment, he didn’t care.

The outboard to his inflatable raft was silent, but nothing else was. Around and above him, machinery roared. He was drifting just inside the Charles River Dam, in what he thought of as sort of an industrial lagoon underneath the construction of the Big Dig.

Around him, everyone was working hard at the fantastically expensive construction under way. Beneath the girders of the overpass, a half dozen bright yellow boxcar-size containers were stacked like building blocks. A battered aluminum powerboat—presumably used by the work crew—looked like a kid’s toy underneath all the serious construction. Billions of dollars were being poured into an enormous hole in the ground, the most expensive public works project in history. Or so Merchant thought he’d read.

It was early morning, and already the smell of diesel was in the air, the whine of car tires on the bridge. A construction worker was poised on the edge of a beam. He lifted both arms wide when signaling to the crane operator. For a moment, his body almost mirrored the shape of the new cable stay bridge behind him. Merchant raised his Nikon, got it. It was a digital camera, so he took a moment to look at the LCD on the back, cupping his hand around it so he could see the picture without the glare.

“Yah,” he whispered.

It was a decent shot, the man being aped by the glittering tower of concrete and cable steel. His arms were a bit low, however.

Merchant had played the role of a photographer, so he knew the details mattered.
But Merchant wasn’t a photographer. Not a real one. Or not yet, anyhow.
If he had been a sniper, he would’ve had a hell of a shot, too.

But Merchant wasn’t a sniper, either. He’d known plenty during his time in the Drug Enforcement Administration, but that was over now.

His raft started to drift around in the wrong direction.

He let it. Didn’t matter really, not if drifting was your goal. He thought awhile about whether “drifting” and “goal” together constituted an oxymoron.

He decided not.

He put a wider lens on his camera and began to take some shots of the locks and pumping station. Two huge brick buildings connected by a glassed-in walkway over the three locks. The pumping station on the left, the State Police on the right. The three locks were closed now, the retractable pedestrian walkway continuing over each of the three massive gates.

He often walked to Boston from his marina over the locks. He’d go through the Paul Revere Park, over the pedestrian bridges into Boston. It wasn’t even a ten-minute walk—assuming the warning lights didn’t start swirling and one of the little bridges retract to let a boat into the lock. If it did, well, these days, Merchant was usually content to check out the boat or read the Plexiglas-encased facts posted along the walkway. By now, he pretty much had them memorized:

Six pump engines that can each displace 630,000 gallons of water per minute…alewife and blueback herring are attracted to the fish ladder by the flow of fresh water and make their way up the Charles to lay their eggs…the main purpose of the locks is to keep the Charles River at eight feet above low tide, and a haven for recreational boaters…

Merchant took another few shots, trying to ignore the fact that his inflatable raft was leaking again.

He looked down and swore softly. Pushing at the sides, feeling that they were soft. His boat was soft and his butt was wet. “Damn,” he said. “Damn, damn.”

He’d patched the inflatable with a bicycle tire repair kit, and he could see from the bubbles along the inside floorboard that the patch was worth about as much as the nickel or so he’d paid for it.

He looked over his shoulder and saw that the construction worker had moved. Merchant raised the camera again.

This time, the composition was even better. The construction worker’s arms were out completely now, waving to the crane operator, who was bringing in another I beam.

Merchant released the shutter, took several quick shots.

He stared at the LCD again, and scrolled through the pictures he’d taken that morning. None of the shots of the dam did it justice. He erased them. Of the construction worker shots, two were just OK, but two were pro quality.

He studied them both and decided one was perfect.

Merchant deleted all but the best shot. Figured someday he’d get around to printing it. But not now.

He had some skill, some talent. But not enough money to waste
on a high-quality print that no one wanted to buy.

Definitely not a pro yet.

He knelt in the stern and started the outboard. It was awkward to do with the camera bag strap around his neck, trying to keep the bag balanced on his back. With all the water in the boat, he couldn’t just set it down.

He pulled the rope, and the small motor growled to life. He sounded his air horn, two long blasts and two short, and waited while the lock operator up in the glassed-in walkway opened the gate of the smallest lock. Smallest, maybe, but able to handle a yacht. Several of them, in fact.

Merchant twisted the throttle and his eight-foot dinghy entered. Water was bubbling up around his legs now, and he squirmed a bit, and put the camera bag on his lap.
The high cement walls rose on each side. He puttered slowly toward the second set of gates. Once the water level matched the harbor, the gates would open and he could head out into the harbor.

Big production for such a small craft. He felt a bit silly, sitting in a small waterlogged boat plinking pictures that no one wanted. But the lock operator up there presumably had nothing else to do. The way Merchant saw it, they were giving each other some reason for being.

At last, the gates swung open.

Merchant twisted the throttle and headed to his marina. Not a long journey, it was all of about two hundred yards away. He saw the yard owner out near the sliding doors of his office. Merchant kept looking straight ahead, hoping they could leave it like that.

But the owner came onto the deck outside the office, his hands on his hips. He had a face like a hawk, with a nose to match. Just staring.

Merchant had paid his dock fees every month on time, but the owner seemed to be reading how close it was all getting.

Merchant kept the outboard puttering along, trying to look like a guy who could pay his bills. Shouldn’t have been hard: he’d paid his way all his life without a problem.
But with the water sloshing around the boat bottom, the outboard overdue for a tune-up and coughing up a small cloud of blue smoke, he didn’t look the part. He nodded to the owner, and the owner nodded back and went into the office.
Merchant brought the inflatable up to the dinghy dock and killed the engine. He put the camera bag on the dock and tied the boat off. He was relieved that the marina owner didn’t come out to talk with him, and that pissed him off.

The lawyer had pretty much wiped out his savings. Even so, Merchant had thought he’d be all right when he came back to Boston. He had taken on some boatyard work just to pay the bills. Mindless stuff, scraping hulls and docks and painting. But it was summer now, and the regular crews had everything under control. And Merchant hadn’t yet figured out a new career. Not even close.
He slung his camera bag over his shoulder and started for his boat, The Lila. She was a forty-foot sloop, bought during his very different life, which had pretty much ended about three months ago. He loved having her, but she consumed money, digested bales of it. Just last month, a minor engine repair had turned out to be a major overhaul. Nevertheless, Merchant wanted to keep her. He wanted that very much.
He thought quite a bit these days about how the boat was a gift from his past. A gift from a different person, almost. He wondered if maybe everyone’s life was like that, full of pieces and tools that could be taken and reshaped for something new.
The photography maybe. There might be something there. He had the equipment, and it seemed like he might actually have some talent for it. Maybe a pro photographer with an emphasis on marine life? Highly competitive field. Every yahoo with a nice camera thought he could do it. And that was all he was at the moment, a yahoo with a nice camera.

He wondered what gift he’d find in Boston.

Charlestown, actually. The marina was a stone’s throw from Boston proper and yet so insulated and clannish it might as well have been a thousand miles away. A place where a lot of very dangerous people had good reason to hate him.

Early in his career with the DEA, Merchant had spent a year undercover in Charlestown chasing down a major cocaine and PCP distribution ring. People were being killed, and yet no one dared speak. With his black hair and weather-burned skin, Merchant could pass for Black Irish. He had thrown himself entirely into his role, making trafficking-weight buys and sells to small-timers until he could bust them and turn them out. That done, he’d send them in wired. On a few occasions he got in himself. He was able to bring down a half dozen men, who each found time during their defense to meet his eyes across the courtroom, to let him know that he had made an enemy for life.

Back then, he didn’t care. It was worth a promotion and a new assignment in the Virgin Islands.

Now it gave him reason to look over his shoulder.

He couldn’t even explain to himself why he’d decided this would be his new home; maybe it was a perverse sense of entitlement that, even if he had been drummed out of the DEA, at least he could go wherever the hell he wanted to go.

A perverse sense of entitlement.

He liked the sound of that.

He was busy with the steady mental debate about what he should do with himself now that he was flat out of a career when he saw through one of Lila’s cabin portholes something move.

There was someone on his boat.

His overwhelming feeling at the moment was sadness. Even as he started back to get behind another boat on a finger dock. Sadness. Even as he was checking to see if there was other movement, if he was already surrounded.
Sadness that some aspects of the life would never change, no matter how much he wanted them to.

Automatically, he reached into his camera bag for his handgun. It was always there, a nine-millimeter SIG-Sauer.

He came up empty.

This was a change, another gift from his recent past—he no longer carried a gun.

It almost made him laugh.

Almost.