Read The Night Charter for Free Online

then soaked in the shower for twenty minutes. She dressed and took her bike to the diner. She arrived ten minutes early and got a booth without Parker, ordering two iced teas and telling the waitress to hold off on taking their order until she was sure she would stay.
    “Blind date?” the waitress asked.
    “Something like that,” Camaro replied.
    He came right on time and spotted her through the front window. If he’d worn a hat he would have held it in his hands as he approached the booth, but instead he was shamefaced and timid, and it made Camaro want to knock him over. She pointed him into his seat.
    He started immediately. “Thank you for seeing me,” he said.
    Camaro looked at her watch. “It’s one minute past one,” she said, and she turned the bezel to mark ten minutes. “When we hit eleven minutes, I walk out that door unless you have something amazing to tell me.”
    She expected an argument. He gave her none. “Okay,” he said.
    “Start.”
    “I’m not a business consultant,” Parker said.
    “No kidding.”
    “I had to tell you something .”
    “How about the truth?” Camaro said.
    Parker began to tear open sugar packets, one after the other, and dump them into his tea. “The truth is that I’m thirty-four years old, and I’m a convicted felon. Now I don’t know if you know what that means exactly, but if you’re a felon in this state, you have about zero things going for you. People don’t hire you, you can’t vote…all of that.”
    “What were you in for?” Camaro asked.
    “Motor vehicle theft. I did five years. That’s when Matt and I crossed paths. He was on his way out, and I was on my way in. We did some time together.”
    “Tell me about your daughter.”
    “My daughter’s name is Lauren,” Parker said, and the name sounded like a plea. “She’s fourteen. Just like I said. With her mother out of the picture, I worked my ass off to get custody of her after I got out of prison. She was living in foster care, but now she’s with me. She’s everything I have.”
    Camaro thought of the little girl in the photograph. The laughter and the gusting wind that caught her hair. She leaned forward, and she saw Parker withdraw the same distance. “I’m gonna tell you something,” Camaro said. “I have a history of getting caught up in things that end up going the wrong way, so I don’t need to get involved in some ex-con’s scam, whatever it is. You worked hard to get your daughter back? I worked hard to get what I have, and I’m working hard to keep it. So if you’re looking for someone to run drugs or something, you can stop talking right now and go.”
    Parker chewed the inside of his lip. “It’s not drugs,” he said.
    “But it’s a crime,” Camaro said.
    “Not really. Not when you think about it.”
    Camaro slapped a hand down on the table and made the glasses jump. People looked their way, and she glared at them until they turned back to their own business. She spoke quietly. “I said no bullshit. It’s a crime or it’s not. Which is it?”
    “Okay, it’s a crime. But it’s not what you think. We’re not smuggling drugs or guns or anything like that. We’re bringing in a person. It’s an escape from Cuba. This guy is desperate, and he has to get out of the country. Some people are willing to pay us good money to get him out of there and back to Miami in one piece.”
    “Cuba,” Camaro said.
    “That’s right.”
    “Why not just leave on a plane? People can do that now, right?”
    “It’s a whole thing. The government has a say in who’s allowed to come and go. They’ll never let him leave.”
    “So he has to go out in secret.”
    “That’s right.”
    “How much are they paying?”
    “A hundred thousand dollars. We got fifty up front, and we get the rest on delivery. So you’re getting ten percent just for driving the boat. It’s in and out. We don’t see anybody, and nobody sees us.”
    Camaro caught the waitress’ eye and nodded. She