Free Ground Truth by Rob Sangster Page B

time they’re hunting.”
    A pod of killer whales cruised by, working together to corral a colony of seals. This must be the same pod she’d seen playing a few hours earlier—spyhopping and flipper-slapping. They were amusing then. Now their 30-foot torpedo shapes with erect six-foot dorsal fins looked ominous as they moved in for a meal of seal.
    Fernando rushed to her side with the binoculars. She caught his sideways glance and remembered she was topless. Well, what the hell. She could do whatever she wanted here. When she lost the pod in the sunlight glinting off the blue water, she eased back onto the chaise lounge.
    Fernando set a fresh piña colada on the small table next to her and backed away. As she reached for the drink, her gaze stopped again on the copy of Architectural Digest lying on the table. There it was, Ranchero Casacaditas, her dream house pictured on the glossy cover. Arches, deeply inset windows, vaulted ceilings, gourmet kitchen, gym, open-air spa, and a thirty-meter infinity pool that seemed to flow over the edge of the cliff into the Pacific. A hedonist’s paradise. She looked back over her shoulder at the actual house in the photographs. It might soon be hers, including the Wellington jet boat at the wharf. Renting the estate for five days had been one of her best decisions.
    The French owners were asking five million U.S. Only the guarantee of the income from her new venture would make purchasing this paradise possible.
    She reached for the cell phone and called the warehouse foreman she’d hired to supervise her new business. Pleased by the information he gave her, her next call was to the Christie’s International real estate agent who represented the sellers of Ranchero Casacaditas. After some serious negotiating on her part, the owners accepted her offer so long as she made a down payment of $300,000 before close of business and put $500,000, all of it nonrefundable, in escrow within seven days. She arranged that all paperwork would show Heureux Ltd, a Bahamian corporation, as the buyer. One more call and the $300,000 was wired to the Christie’s International account. She had done it.
    She sent Fernando for the $300 bottle of Dom Perignon ’90 she’d bought to celebrate the deal. After he removed the cork, she gave him a nod of dismissal, and he returned to the house— her house. She watched the mist of bubbles against the darker ocean backdrop, closed her eyes and took a long sip. Then she impulsively drained the flute. There’s fifty bucks down my throat. She drank again, this time to her courage at committing to $800,000 out-of-pocket. She needed to make her next call before she lost her edge.
    She entered her business associate’s private cell phone number. No answer. Then she remembered there was a code. Call three times. Three different numbers of rings. By the time she called and disconnected three times she was thoroughly annoyed. When he finally answered, she ignored his greeting.
    “How about coming up with a code that doesn’t waste half the afternoon before you pick up? Besides, you must have caller ID, so you know it’s me.”
    “Caller ID only tells me a call is coming from a certain phone. The code tells me whether it’s you who is calling. It’s a small price for what you’re getting out of this.” Having brushed off her complaint, he went on. “I take it the trucks have arrived.”
    “I just talked with my supervisor. The first three are there, stored in our Number 4 cargo building.”
    The delay was long enough that she wondered whether he’d heard her. Then he said in a tight voice, “They’re transferring the loads on those trucks without you?”
    “Calm down. I ordered my people never to touch those trucks without me present. I’ll be back there in three hours.” She would never tell him about buying the estate. The less he knew about her private life, the better. “Now, what about the cargo manifests?”
    “The cargo containers are locked. Each