Wood's Harbor Read Free Page B

quickly closing it behind him. Crossing the room, he stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window and stared out. 
    His room overlooked the Atlantic Ocean and he stared at the small waves lit by the moon, a sight most tourists paid extra for. Like everything else, tonight it did nothing for him. He closed the curtains, sat at the desk and opened the military-grade laptop. The computer started up and he entered his password. When his desktop appeared, he clicked the CIA portal and entered another password to access the main screen. He held his breath, hoping the world had remained intact since he had last checked, clicked the email tab and waited while the messages downloaded. There were several hundred, about average for two days, and he started to sort through them. Anything he was Cc’d on, he left for later, and started opening the emails that were addressed to only him. Anything with another name on it, unless it was the President, would be handled by someone else. Two messages stood out. 
    One had a satellite image of a fire on a small island. He smacked the desktop when he realized it was his accomplice Jay’s hideout. The refuge of the smuggler, hidden in the back country of the Keys, had been torched, and someone was taunting him with it. A glance at the sender confirmed the email was clearly from a fake address and rerouted through several internet providers. He knew he could task Alicia with finding out who sent the message. The over-eager analyst was constantly hinting that she wanted field work and would do anything to get out of the office, but her idea of ‘anything’ and his were most likely different. A shame, he thought, fantasizing for a moment about her. But that would take time, and though her skills were impressive, it would involve resources that didn’t need to know about the island and fire. In his two years behind a desk, he had made more enemies than friends in the halls of Langley and many would delight in ruining his career. His friends and allies were still in the field, where he wished he still worked.
    He deleted the message and looked again at the sender and subject line of the other email. It was sent through a Guerrilla Mail account, a private email server that erased messages upon delivery. Unlike the trash bin on a computer, for a small fee these messages were permanently gone. He opened the message, still unsure of the sender, but intrigued by the subject line: Key West to Havana Ferry. The message had no text, only 0600, which he guessed was a time, and two sets of numbers which he knew were GPS coordinates. After studying the numbers, he realized they were nearby. An uneasy feeling came over him. Whoever sent the message knew he was in Key West, something he had not told his office. He liked to be on the side, dishing out the intrigue - not taking it. 
    He wrote the coordinates on a hotel note pad, closed the email program and opened an incognito browser window where he entered the numbers and waited as the globe focused on the northern tip of a small Key to the west. Most people thought the Keys ended at the painted buoy marking the southernmost point of the continental US, but in fact the island chain extended another seventy miles to the Dry Tortugas. He had to assume whoever sent the satellite picture of the island also sent this email, and he had no choice but to go. In all likelihood, this was a one way email that would bounce any response. He could either show up or not, but the lure was too much to refuse. 
    In another window he googled the Key West to Havana ferry and scanned the first page in the results. The first trip, a landmark in the new atmosphere of cooperation between the US and Cuba, was due to depart in two days. The Obama administration had lifted travel restrictions to the island and the ferry was the first of several scheduled to run between Havana and Tampa, Ft. Lauderdale and Miami. But unlike many Cuban-Americans, he didn’t want the restrictions to be