Free Beachcomber by Karen Robards Page A

Explorer that belonged to the Bureau, and he backed it out of the garage and pulled onto the narrow road with careful speed. The rescue vehicles were gone now, and except for a few porch lights this part of the island was dark as a hole.
    The way things were going, he was starting to feel like one of the Keystone Kops, Luke reflected savagely. His headlights speared a startled possum that froze for a second before scampering to safety in a stand of loblolly pines beside the road. Murphy’s Law definitely applied to this case: Anything that could go wrong pretty much had. Agents tracking organized crime used to command the best of everything: hot cars, hot gadgets, and hot chicks. Now investigations like this were the Rodney Dangerfield of law enforcement: They got no respect. Preoccupied with the war on terrorism, the Bureau had parked home-grown enemies like the mob at the rear of the lot. Still, a low-level eye had been kept on the usual suspects, and enough information had been gathered to wangle an indictment against Donnie Jr. When he’d flown the coop, Luke had beencalled in. The fact that Luke had been enjoying the first week of a well-deserved three-week vacation hadn’t mattered, either to Tom Boyce or himself. What had mattered was that he was way familiar with the players. In his first years with the Bureau’s Philadelphia office he’d tracked them exclusively. Since then, he’d also had to focus on a variety of higher-priority cases, but his determination to bring down DePalma, his father, his friends, and associates had never waned.
    That was the reason Boyce had tracked him down in Cayman Brac, where Luke had been scuba diving with friends. Upon hearing that Donnie Jr. had disappeared, Luke had immediately packed up his gear, abandoned his vacation, and grabbed a plane to Durham, North Carolina, from which he would travel on to Ocracoke Island, where, according to a snippet of cell phone conversation overheard by the Bureau’s electronic ears, a large sum of money was being transported by courier for some unspecified purpose. The unlikely locale—Jersey was DePalma and company’s usual turf, with satellite operations in New York and Philadelphia—that was nevertheless a known haunt of the DePalma family’s, the amount of money involved, the urgency, the timing, all pointed to a rendezvous with Michael DePalma, in Luke’s estimation. In Durham, at Boyce’s request, the local office had provided him with a car, equipment, and a temporary partner in the person of Gary. The car had been passable, the equipment something less than state-of-the-art, and Gary an absolute whiz with computers, as advertised, though unfortunately less than stellar at just about everything else. Justthat morning they’d gotten into Ocracoke and moved into the cottage that had been emptied for them the day before by agents posing as sweepstakes operators. Next door, Christy Petrino was already in residence. Luke had been surprised—no, make that flabbergasted—to discover that the bagman whose activities they were tracking was none other than Donnie Jr.’s sexy lawyer girlfriend. But it had served to reinforce his gut feeling that Michael DePalma was the intended recipient of the money. Why else would they use her, unless Donnie Jr., who’d had to split fast, meant to pick up both girl and money at the same time?
    But there were some problems with that theory, as he was discovering. Christy Petrino was scared. There was no mistaking that. By going with Plan B, which was to get close to her if possible and see what he could uncover by way of a few friendly chats, he’d seen her in a whole new light. As Donnie Jr.’s girlfriend, her image captured on dozens of videotapes, she’d seemed coolly confident, a brainy looker with her eye on the main chance. When he got up close and personal, she seemed—defenseless. Threatened. And, yes, face the truth, sexy as hell.
    That last part worried him. He was afraid that it might be