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Rain fell in a steady stream outside as I waited for Lockwood to log in to Dan's GPS unit. The radio weatherman said the showers were the beginning of Tropical Storm Wanda, which he predicted would move across Key West, heading northwest. The storm would make a slight turn due west where it would grow into Hurricane Jackson and bear down on Mexico. Hunkered down in Treasure Adventures’ yacht room, I admired the silver bar under the glass. Lockwood grumbled as he pressed various buttons on the GPS unit.

“I'll be right back,” he said.

I wanted to hold the silver bar in my hand but doubted Lockwood would allow it. Wanted to know what it felt like to hold something like that. But, instead, I went to the refrigerator and grabbed a Corona Light. Someone needed to do a little shopping and class up the joint with some good hooch. Pickings were slim at Lockwood’s joint.

Lockwood returned with another man.

“Lee, this is Hank.”

“How's it going?” Hank asked.

“Great. Thanks for asking.” My sarcasm was lost on Hank.

Hank nodded and the two of them went over the GPS unit together. I drank my beer and watched the rain fall. It was late afternoon, and the sun would soon set, along with the city. If the rain kept up, there would be nothing to do but wait and think. And when I sit around thinking and drinking, I see boogeymen in every corner. I hate waiting. Lockwood and Hank talked quietly, pressed buttons, and shook their heads.

Finally, Hank said, “I don't know, boss.”

“All right. Thanks.”

Hank left and Lockwood sat back in his chair and sighed in frustration.

“No luck,” he said. “I thought we could bypass the personal settings and get to an archive, but without his password, there's nothing we can do.”

“Can't you hack it?”

“I'm just a pirate, man. Hank barely knows Microsoft Office and how to reboot a modem. And he was our best bet.”

I picked up the unit and pressed some buttons like I had a magic touch that would fix our problem.

“Maybe we should let the police figure it out,” Lockwood said.

I put the unit back on the desk.

“Shit, they'd probably have to send it to someone at County. That could take weeks.”

“So, let them do their job.”

“I don't like trying to cut through red tape. Rather avoid that as much as possible.”

Nor could I announce to Ramirez I was out of lockup and working on nailing the pillar of the community.

“You sure there wasn't a logbook of some kind?” Lockwood asked.

“Well, then you're shit out of luck until someone can get into that thing.”

I mulled my stalemate over, not happy with getting to the edge only to be told I couldn't jump. Hopefully, Meadows had better luck. We needed the claim file for more than evidence. We needed the coordinates Jankowski had laid claim to.

“I need to use your phone.”

Lockwood motioned to a wall phone. I pulled the business card Meadows gave me from my pocket and dialed her cell.

Meadows sounded tired when she answered. She had spent the day tracking down a claim that Peter Jankowski may or may not have filed at the U.S. District Court Clerk's Office in Key West. She hadn’t had any luck and was stuck there longer than she had hoped. Jankowski's friends were indeed in high places.

“Did you grease them?” I asked.

“No, I didn't bribe them. I'm a Key West police detective.”

“Minor inconvenience. You can always make it official later. We need that file, Meadows.”

“And we talked about the old days, how she's been married twice, and—”

“The claim, Meadows.”

“She couldn’t find it.”

“So, Jankowski didn’t file a claim?”

“Doesn’t appear so.”

Maybe I was crazy, wasting time. Maybe I was everything everyone had ever said about me. A beautiful loser.

“But then I had a thought,” Meadows said. “What if he filed it under a different name? What if Peter Jankowski wanted to make sure he covered his ass in case everything went sideways? So, I had my old friend check for new claims filed in the last three months. Figured there couldn’t be that many. How many sunken treasures are actually found in a given time?”

“There was one.”

“Who filed it?” I asked.

“Carl Polk,” Meadows said. “You were right, Cutter. Something is going on.”

“Meadows, you a bad bitch, baby.” I could hear her smiling on the other end. “Good job.”

It appeared my pal Carl was more than a hired hand. He was also a patsy. The poor dumb bastard had no idea what he was getting into. Jankowski was a diabolical son of a bitch.

“Are there coordinates?” I asked.

“Of course there are. I think.”

“Can you fax the claim to me?”

“You have a fax machine on your boat?”

“No, I’m at Lockwood’s. We’re trying to hack Dan's GPS to peek at the archives.”

“Where did you get that?”

“His boat. By the way, why didn’t you take it when you were gathering evidence?”

There was a brief pause on the other end, then she finally said, “Honestly, I didn’t think of it.”

“Pretty important oversight, don’t you think?”

She exhaled, frustrated.

“I guess so,” she said.

“Relax. You didn’t know,” I said. “Fax the claim file over.”

I motioned to Lockwood, and he handed me a business card from his wallet. I read off the fax number for Meadows.

“What's your plan, Cutter? I need to know.”

“I'll let you know if I come up with anything.”

“You know there’s a tropical storm blowing in.”

“Does the clock stop for the storm?”

“I’ll fax this over right away.”

I hung up the phone. Lockwood and I went to his office and waited for the file. Wind gusts blew the rain sideways and rattled the windows.

“I thought they said this storm was going to hit tomorrow,” I said.

“Thought you said the police wouldn’t be any help.”

“So far, they haven’t been.”

“This is just a precursor. The calm before the storm. Ever been in a hurricane before?”

“It’s a tropical storm.”

Lockwood smiled at me and said, “Yeah. Tropical storm.”

I didn’t like the way he said that and wasn’t in the mood for Mother Nature to spew her carnage all over the Keys. With trying to solve a couple of murders and save my ass at the same time, not to mention Detective Jo Meadows’s career and reputation, I didn’t need any extra drama.

The fax machine rang, and four sheets of paper were printed off. Lockwood took them and sat at his desk. He pulled a chart from a drawer, unrolled it, and mapped the coordinates from the file. I watched from over his shoulder.

“Meaning anything out there would belong to us.”

“You mean it could belong to Lockwood’s Treasure Adventures?”

“Not could. Would. Our claim is for the wreckage, not the location. That field spreads for a few miles.”

“You think Peter Jankowski is trying to jump the claim by saying it was a separate site?”

“Not site. Ship. But I don't know which ship he could claim. Besides, he can't be that stupid. It's easy to test.”

“But if he can convince the powers that be that the treasure is not from the Atocha or Santa Margarita, then… I mean, he had a hobo file the claim under his name. He’s not an idiot, and he’s got friends.”

“Doesn’t matter. The government would call us in to run the tests on the artifacts. We’re the testing authority in this area. Peter knows that. He was one of my original investors. He still makes money off me. We'd eventually figure out his find wasn’t part of any shipwreck. Doesn't make any sense.”

“None of this does.”

“Anyway, this is just paperwork. It doesn't do anything for us. All you have is a claim under review. Peter can’t salvage anything without approval from the government, first.”

“But he hired Dan to work it.”

“Nothing ties Chief to the site. And you won’t be able to as long as that GPS unit is locked. I’m afraid you’ll have to give it to the police and wait.”

“Who the hell password protects a GPS unit?”

I slammed my hand against the wall. All I had was the word of a drunk with a criminal record that may or may not be dead. And there was no way I was going to convince Ramirez to put Carl Polk in protective custody. Especially after he discovered I wasn’t rotting away in his jail awaiting arraignment for hitting him.

“I mean really. Why a password?”

“Chief wanted to protect his fishing holes,” Lockwood said. “You think treasure hunting is competitive, you ought to see the charter business. These guys are always tracing each other's locations, especially the big-game fishers.”

I was missing something, and it was right in front of me. Was driving me crazy. I went to the window and watched the rain. As sheets of water blew in gusts across the gray sky, I saw a break and was hopeful.

But nothing is ever easy, which is why I always try to find the easy way, my holy grail of the good life. I’ve lived too long and too hard. It was frustrating, to say the least, but I knew if I sat back and thought long enough, I'd find what I was searching for in the spaghetti bowl. Something to connect the scattered dots. Often, the answers are obvious, but because people are so busy looking at the details, they miss the big picture. And it’s the big picture everybody wants to see. That’s where a good team comes into play. I was still being selfish. Meadows was the lead on the case, even if Ramirez had pulled her. I was too territorial. Always had been. But the shit had become personal. But I also knew I couldn’t lift this weight alone, and needed a spotter, needed Meadows.

“Wait,” I said. “What's that again?”

“What’s what?”

“That thing you said about big-game fishing.”

“They're always stealing locations, coordinates.”

“Yeah, yeah. How?”

“Following each other, stealing charts, GPS units. Hell, they even sneak tracking devices onto boats.”

I turned from the window, and the look on my face made Lockwood sit up in his chair.

“SPOT Trace,” I said.

“Yeah. I got one in my truck. Got it after some bum from Christmas Tree Island decided to take my brand-new F-250 for a joy ride to Miami. Now, I know where it is every time…”

The proverbial light came on in Lockwood’s head.

“Holy shit,” he said.

“There was a bill for SPOT Trace on Dan's boat. He had the Extreme Tracking service. Ninety-nine bucks a year.”

“Two ways to get tracking messages. One is email. The other”—Lockwood pulled his phone out, swiped the screen and showed it to me—“is through text messages.”

A list of coordinates on Lockwood’s phone was sent to him from SPOT Trace. I grabbed the desk phone and quickly dialed Meadows’s cell. She answered on the second ring.

“You still at the office?”

“I’m driving. On my way to you. Why?”

“You have Dan's cell phone in evidence, right?”

“Yeah, but we don't have the official call records, yet. There's the call log on the phone, but he could've deleted some. We should have the records no later than tomorrow.”