Chapter One

For almost two days, the wind was with me, and I made good time sailing the west coast of Florida from Tampa to Key West, the Last Resort. The Hold Fast had lived up to her name. She was a used CAL-39 Mark II, a sailboat with a keel-stepped mast and roller-furling mainsail. And when the wind kicked hard, she cruised like she was on glass. The Hold Fast may have been old, but she was sturdy and quick.

I’d bought the boat on eBay for a song from some joker in New Orleans who was in the middle of a divorce. He couldn't bear the thought of his soon-to-be ex getting the boat. She was ugly—the boat, not the wife—and needed some tender loving care. But the timing was right, so I’d moved in and made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Anyway, I highly doubted his wife would’ve gotten the boat or anything of much value in the divorce. I’d heard the marshals seized everything he owned the day I sailed away from the Big Easy and headed for the Florida Keys. I had impeccable timing and sometimes, all the luck in the world.

So, how did a former Detroit cop get so lucky? Early retirement and a little side hustle. I had laid down the cash with the help of an insurance check for a boating accident I had with my last vessel at the Detroit Yacht Club a few months back. And by accident, I mean two assholes had decided to set my houseboat on fire with me in it. I’d made it out with just some bumps and scratches, but the boat was toast. One of the firebugs went down with the ship. The other one met an unhappy ending after I hunted him down a week later. He didn’t have an easy exit.

But I had still lost my boat. And I loved that boat. I loved it for many reasons, but mainly because it was where I’d lived. I might have deserved a lot of bad juju in my life, but that boat never did anything to anyone. Just a string of bad luck, I guess. And that was what you got when you had all the luck in the world. You got the bad with the good. All of it.

Losing my boat all started with a simple missing girl case that turned out not to be so simple. Following my mutually agreed-upon early retirement from the Detroit Police Department for reasons I'd rather not get into, I got my private investigator's license. Part of my lifelong pursuit of living my later days in a perpetual state of leisure. I figured insurance scams and wayward spouses were a way to make fast cash without breaking my back. Much simpler than being a peace officer on the streets of Detroit. Although being a peace officer in the Motor City was like being a fat kid on a diet in a candy store. No matter how hard I’d tried to be a man of peace, the streets always had different plans. I was surprised I’d made fifteen years.

Happy to leave DPD for greener pastures, I’d opted for a lump-sum buyout instead of half of a problematic city pension. Take the money and run. Better to take my chances all at once than hope and pray the pension system continued to function in a struggling city. Unfortunately, as John Lennon once said, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

I didn’t want to eat up my nest egg quickly and needed a steady flow of income. But making any real money was far and few between. The missing girl case had come at a time when I was thinking about putting up body parts I could live without for sale. The case was good money, and I was broke, so as the saying goes, money talks and bullshit walks. With nothing better to do, I’d taken the case without much thought. Piece of cake.

The missing girl had been a decent payday, of which my partner and lawyer, Stan Martin, took the lion's share. He's the man in the office that keeps my affairs in order and my debts at bay. As for me, I’d gotten the bad memories of a crazy broad jabbing a knife into my chest. Perks of the man on the street. Just had the stitches removed last week. Feeling pretty good, too. Though I’m sure there was some permanent damage inside somewhere.

And I’d found the girl. But it was Detroit, not Hollywood, so there was no happy ending. Let me put it this way. I wasn’t sailing to Key West because of a sudden outpouring of love from my many admirers in the Motor City. Happy endings are fairy tales and fairy tales are for dimwits and dreamers. I’m neither.

Let’s just say I had to get out of the city, get as far away from everyone and everything I knew. Somewhere out there was my little slice of paradise, my happiness. And you know where you find happiness? Reunions. And that was part of the reason why I was now sailing to Key West. An old Navy buddy, Dan Yarnall, sent me a postcard a few weeks before my houseboat went down in a fiery blaze to the bottom of the Detroit River. He’d written on it, tongue firmly pressed in cheek, “Wish you were here.” It was a phrase we used going back to our days in Afghanistan. It meant he needed assistance. With what, I didn’t know, but that didn’t matter.

I took Dan’s postcard as a sign from the universe and bugged out as soon as the insurance company cut me a check. Sometimes, the stars and planets, or whatever silly superstition you’ve attached yourself to, align and you just have to damn the torpedoes.

Fifteen years had passed between Dan and me. Far too long and far too wide for pals to go without laying eyes on each other. Most of it had been my fault, but Dan wasn’t the kind of man to hold a grudge. With him sending an SOS, there had been no question of what my next move was. So, with a new used boat and a little money in my pocket, I’d officially retired from all things laborious and surrendered myself to a life on the water. Why the hell not? Everyone needs a vacation.