Beyond Fearless Read Free

Consortium.
    He turned to stare out the window into the darkness, feeling the winter cold penetrate his now-fragile skin. All the way to his bones.
    In his previous life, his home base had been a converted mansion on the bluffs above the Potomac River, where he’d worked for the powerful Kurt MacArthur.
    Officially MacArthur had run a think tank with ties to Congress, the military, and the CIA. Unofficially, his consortium had taken on jobs no one else had wanted to touch—whether they were legal or not. Until one stupid decision had destroyed everything.
    When their headquarters building had gone up in flames, Jim had been lucky to escape with his life. And lucky he had the connections to take on a new identity. Now he was Jim Stone. And nobody knew he had been the Crandall Consortium’s most trusted operative.
    Too bad MacArthur’s secret records had been wiped out in the fire. If Jim had had a list of names, he could have proceeded more quickly. Instead, he was reduced to research—and probabilities. Which meant he might make the wrong call.
    But he’d long ago decided that it was better to kill ten innocents by mistake than to allow the guilty to escape. Like in the Middle Ages, when some sinless women had been burned at the stake along with the witches.
    The computer beeped, and he spun his wheelchair back to the desk. The message was from Bill Cody. Wild Bill. His operative on Grand Fernandino.
    While Jim ran the message through the decoding program, he poured a cup of coffee, then sipped the Kona blend as he read the text.
    By the time he was finished, he was 90 percent sure he would order a kill.
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    ZACH waited for a horse-drawn carriage and a motorcycle to clear the intersection. Then he stepped onto the cobblestone street, careful not to get horse manure on his deck shoes as he crossed to the row of shops and bars across from the city square.
    A rotund man standing next to four trained parrots on perches called to him.
    â€œYou wanna picture with Ozzie, Harriet, Ricky, and David?”
    â€œNo thanks,” he answered. He needed a drink, not a souvenir photograph.
    He’d intended to go back to the Blue Heron as soon as possible. But the day after the diving mishap, he’d quickly found that his plan wasn’t going to be so easy.
    José and Claude had both been busy spreading the Pagor story, in the island patois. But the message was clear in any language—“stay away from that American, Zach Robinson. He’ll get you on the wrong side of Pagor.”
    So was this whole thing a setup? Had someone paid off José and Claude to make sure he couldn’t hire anyone? And why? Had William Sanford been murdered? And the murderer didn’t want the Blue Heron investigated?
    He might have put José and Claude in the middle of a conspiracy—until he remembered the look of sheer terror in José’s eyes. The man hadn’t been faking his fear. He had been trying to escape the wrath of a supernatural being.
    Unfortunately, since then, José had been talking about it to everyone who would listen.
    With no other alternative, Zach had put in a call to his regular crew, but they couldn’t get there for a couple of days. So he was stuck until they made it to the island.
    Which was why he was looking for a dark, quiet place that matched his current mood, where he could have a few beers and silently curse the trio of José, Claude, and Pagor.
    As he passed a nightclub painted a garish green and yellow, a publicity poster in a glass case stopped him in his tracks.
    The top of the frame said, “Now Appearing at the Sugar Cane Club.” Below it, the picture showed a very attractive young woman with wavy dark hair that hung around her shoulders. She was holding a silver tray in one hand and stretching out her other hand toward him as though waiting for him to give her something. The caption at the bottom of the poster said, “Magic Anna: the woman