Read Online Aground on St. Thomas by Rebecca M. Hale - Free Book Online

to do was lose Bobo.
    Sanchez spied the rectangular exit sign above Gilda’s head. One last stretch of hallway to traverse and they’d be out the door.
    She reached into her briefcase, feeling around for her cell phone. She’d call her lawyer, have him meet her, and then . . .
    Bobo suddenly slid sideways into a recess created by a square column that jutted out from the nearest wall. Before Sanchez could object, she found herself yanked into the cramped space beside him. The Reverend’s repulsive hair oil once more clogged her sinuses as the linen sleeve of his tunic wrapped around her neck.
    “You have
got
to stop doing that,” she hissed, trying to pull free of his grip.
    “Shh,” he replied, spitting into her ear.
    The familiar squeak of rubber soles on tile emerged from an intersecting hallway—accompanied by a man’s gritty voice. He appeared to be speaking into a wireless device.
    “This is what we get for calling it Operation Coconut . . .”
    “Agent Friday,” Gilda greeted him with regimented formality. She tapped the exit door with her baton as if checking to see that it was secure.
    The man’s distracted reply was followed by the gradually disappearing squeak of his rubber-soled boots.
    Sanchez squirmed free of Bobo’s arm as Gilda jogged back to their hidden position.
    “You two are going to get me fired,” she sniped, signaling for the senators to come to the exit door.
    Sanchez noted the harried expression on the guard’s face. The game had lost its appeal. Another close call and she’d blow the whistle on them.
    “You’re on your own now,” the guard said as she dismantled the security alarm and ushered the pair through the opening.
    “Bless you, Gilda,” the Reverend intoned in his placating preaching voice. He leaned in, as if to kiss her on the cheek, but the guard adeptly evaded his overture.
    “Don’t touch me, Bobo,” the woman spat, wrinkling her nose from the acrid hair oil.
    As the guard pivoted back toward the building’s interior, she issued a last piece of advice.
    “Get off the streets, fast as you can.”

~ 14 ~
    Blessed by God
    THE WORLD OUTSIDE the Legislature Building was not the one Julia Sanchez thought she’d left a half hour earlier.
    How had she missed the navy vessel docked at the cruise ship terminal on her drive in to work? Had she been so focused on her upcoming committee meeting—and so worried by the fact that she was running late—that she’d missed the anomaly in the harbor?
    If so, she was one of the few. By now, the presence of both the navy ship and the FBI had been noted by almost everyone in Charlotte Amalie—along with the abrupt termination of the island’s cell phone service.
    Sanchez now joined in this last discovery. Still barefoot, she stood on the sidewalk outside the Legislature Building, punching buttons on her phone, trying to get a signal.
    Bobo shook his head. He pointed down the block to a couple of taxi drivers cursing at their phones. “Forget it. It won’t work. Best to turn it off. They’ll only use it to track us.”
    As Sanchez powered down her phone, she saw a pair of FBI agents, crossing at a streetlight not more than a hundred feet away. She sucked in her breath and instinctively stepped backward.
    Another duo in black clothing soon appeared at the next corner.
    Escaping the Legislature, she realized, was only the beginning of their ordeal.
    “This way,” Bobo said, jogging across the street to the rear of Fort Christian.
    Sanchez dropped the phone into her briefcase, tugged on her shoes, and scampered after the Reverend—immediately regretting her decision to follow when he hopped through the gap in the fort’s rear fencing.

    “IT’S A MIRACLE we made it here without getting caught,” Sanchez summed up from her position inside the fort’s courtyard.
    “Blessed by God,” Bobo replied, once more touching four points across his chest.
    “Right,” she replied, trying to keep the sarcasm from her voice.