Read Online Ivory by Tony Park - Free Book Online Page A

extracted the apology to Danni he wanted – albeit a surly and grudging one.
    Things hadn’t been the same between Alex and Mitch since that night, and Mitch had been against letting Danni in on the secret of the Island of Dreams and the odd mix of people who lived there. Mitch wanted her gone.
    Danni had asked Alex, on more than one occasion, how he was funding the slow-progressing renovations. Her curiosity was piqued when a barge laden with bags of cement, cartons of tiles, buckets of paint and a shrink-wrapped pallet of new power tools landed at the jetty two days after the island’s menfolk had been away on a fishing trip.
    Then Mitch had caught her in the boatshed.
    Alex hadn’t asked why the American had been following his girlfriend after dark, but in a way he’d been glad when things had come to a head. Danni had taken Alex’s keys from the bedside drawer and, while the others were in the thatched beach bar, drinking beer and watching the rugby from South Africa on satellite television, she had freed the heavy padlock and ignored the
Danger – do not enter
signs. Alex had told her there was only fuel and motors stored there, and that the monkey’s skull and kite feathers nailed above the doors were simply to deter petty thieves from the village.
    She’d found enough weapons and ammunition to wage a small war. As well as assault rifles and pistols, there were rocket-propelled grenade launchers, crates of explosives and hand grenades, and a rack of one-piece military flying suits. There was body armour and gasmasks, combat boots and, in the centre, two rigid-hulled inflatable boats painted in grey and black camouflage stripes.
    Mitch had dragged her to the bar. ‘She was in the shed.’
    â€˜What are you . . . mercenaries?’ she’d asked, shrugging the ex-navy SEAL’s hand from her forearm. ‘I know you’re all ex-military.’
    â€˜No.’ Alex had turned off the television.
    â€˜Drug dealers?’ Danni hadn’t sounded convinced. She’d seen Alex turn down a joint from Kevin and he’d told her himself, soon after she arrived on the island, that no one who worked for him at the hotel was permitted to use anything harder than grass or booze. ‘The boats . . . what are you, Alex? A pirate?’
    Mitch had glared at him, shaking his head, but Alex had said, ‘Yes.’
    He didn’t think she would turn him in to the authorities – not that the Mozambican police would have done anything, other than report back to him. The local police chief had been in his pay for two years. He had worried, though, that Danni would leave him. As she was finally doing now.
    Alex strode from the water, running a hand through his hair.
    â€˜All packed, I see.’
    â€˜Yes.’ She looked at him, then out over his shoulder at the endless seafor what seemed like a long time, as if imprinting the sights, smells and sounds of the beachside haven on her memory. ‘You’re going to miss having an accountant around,’ she said eventually.
    He smiled. ‘I will. I hope Sarah’s been paying attention to what you’ve taught her.’
    At the bar, after she’d found out his secret, he’d offered her membership of the crew, at the same cut as everyone else. His finances were a mess. She’d accepted and soon, via internet and phone, established offshore accounts for him in Jersey and the Cayman Islands, and produced a spreadsheet of incomings and outgoings. She’d had fun at first, she told him, working on the other side of the law, but things had changed.
    â€˜Sarah’s more interested in pistons than profit and loss,’ Danni said now.
    Sarah had shown up on the island one day, wading through the shallow aquamarine waters after jumping off a fishing dhow. She was freewheeling through Africa, catching local buses, trains, and even boats, in search of thrills of any variety. She told Alex