Police Chief, Matt Osborne, stood with his mouth open. He watched as Ibis Island’s lead sea turtle conservationist dove in the Gulf wearing her bridesmaid dress. On the bride’s wedding day. Her arms broke through the waves. Damn, she was fast.
The only female in a group of four bystanders gawked, not at Raine as she swam out to the distressed sea turtle, but at him. “Aren’t you going in after her?”
How to explain to her that he would be more trouble than help. Raine wasn’t the dainty, organic conservationist type. She was introverted, bitchy, and might just be carrying. Nonetheless, he should have been keeping an eye on the lacey blue dress moving across the waves but instead found his interest in what was around the gawking woman’s neck. “Nah. She’s got this,” he answered. It was a coin necklace encased in yellow gold. It seemed ancient.
A man with short, salt and pepper hair, who stood closest to the woman yelled, “Whoa! She got him! She’s coming with the turtle!”
“Atocha,” the woman said.
Looking up to her eyes, he lifted his brows.
“My necklace. At least I hope that’s what you’re staring at. It’s booty from the famous Atocha Shipwreck. Surely, you’ve heard of it.”
No time to explain his role as island chief was both interim and new, but he did have a murderous treasure hunter to find and had enough detective experience to understand that murderous thieves everywhere generally had a need to show off their ‘booty’ as the woman called it.
Slipping off his shoes, he spoke into his walkie. “Confirmed sea turtle, over.”
Dispatch responded, “Ten-four.”
Even though the body reported floating in the Gulf turned out to be of the sea turtle variety rather than the human kind, Matt decided to stick around. He stuffed his socks in his shoes and rolled up his dress pants. Something he noted the others on the beach did ahead of time. So much to learn.
“Ohs and ahs,” resounded as Raine pushed the biggest sea creature he’d ever seen into shallow water.
When she stood, his breath caught. Her back was to him. The light blue dress clung to her. Not dainty at all. She was powerful and incredible.
The male in the group waded in.
Raine panted. “Take that side?”
Matt followed.
“Don’t need you, Chief,” she barked.
If he was going to be police chief, even in an interim role, he was going to have to work on their tumultuous relationship. Ignoring the jab, he stepped in front of her and grabbed the other side of the shell. The veins in his forehead almost exploded from the weight, but he and the man pulled it out of the water regardless.
Glancing over his shoulder, he found her collapsed, sitting on the backs of her heels, and clutching her thighs. Her chest heaved and her chin dug into her neck. The white flowers in her hair were gone and the dark, wet strands fell around and concealed her face.
He wasn’t distracted by the wet dress anymore or her smartass dismissal. He wanted to pick her up and hold her. He knew better than to try.
An orange fishing line wrapped around the creature’s front flipper and the head. Strangled? Drown? It was all senseless. “Thank you,” he said to the man and held out his hand.
The man took it, shook, and nodded.
A solemn stretch of deafening silence was broken only by the steady crash of waves as they rushed in and sunk Raine’s knees deeper in the sand.
She brushed the back of her forearm over her nose, sniffed loudly, then lifted her chin. One foot, then the other, she stood and rolled her shoulders as she marched with purpose to a cinch sac he hadn’t noticed before.
Pulling it open, she shoved in her arm and came out holding a large tape measure. She seemed to try and stick it to her belt loop before noting she didn’t have one and, instead, shoved it under an arm.
As she gathered the rest of whatever it was she was gathering, he looked over the turtle. The flippers were enormous, its head cocked unnaturally from the tightness of the fishing line. He didn’t care if it was stupid, it bothered him. He took out the Swiss Army knife from his pocket and started working at it.
Raine pecked away at a tablet, then measured the beast from head to tail. It had to be at least a yard long. The handful of barnacles couldn’t cover the incredible markings on the brown shell.
He asked, “What now?” as he cut piece after piece of the orange line.
“I measure, record, and report. Walter will come by and scoop him up.”
He would find out who Walter was later. For now, he asked the more pertinent question. “Him?”
“Big tail.”
It was enormous. Gross, really. “Scoop him up and put him where?”
Raine took a deep breath. “New construction hole, maybe. It’s nature,” she said matter-of-factly as if she hadn’t just been close to losing it.
There was nothing natural about that fishing line. He didn’t mention it, just kept cutting.
“Don’t you need to do an autopsy or something?” asked the necklace woman.
“Laparoscopy, and no,” she said as she did the same measuring for the width. “That will just piss me off.”
“Piss you off?” Matt asked.
This time she stopped and tilted her neck until it cracked. “Eighty-five percent of sea turtles have plastic in their digestive tracts. I hate plastic. Why are you still here?” she growled and pecked at the tablet.
He knew she wasn’t talking to the bystanders.
“My job?” he said as he sliced through the line.
“This,” she said as she measured the gross tail. “Is my job. Finding out who killed my brother is yours.”
Taking another glance at the necklace, he squinted and said, “Oh, I will all right.” He sensed movement under his knife and brought his head closer to the beast. A flipper moved. “It moved,” Matt yelled and jumped back, landing on his butt. “It moved. It moved.”
Discover more with