A white center console boat rounded the point and made directly for the shoreline where Angler paced beside the crippled airplane. The captain, if a tiny runabout like that had what you could call a captain, was a short, barrel-chested man wearing the coastal uniform: a long-sleeved cotton shirt, cargo shorts, a tattered baseball cap, and, despite the sun quickly setting behind him, wraparound sunglasses.
“Ahoy, there, friend!” The captain’s voice sounded like his entire throat was made of number four gravel. As the craft floated toward the shore, the man gave a quick reverse burst and it stopped just short of the shore as if it had brakes. The man waved to a tool chest resting in front of the console. “Need a hand?”
Angler glanced at his Timex. Triple rate or no, his guy wouldn’t be here for hours, and Angler needed to get some distance from the Otter. He waved his phone in the air. “I got a buddy on the way to fix her leg, here, but I wouldn’t turn down a lift to town.”
Angler waded into the gin-clear water and climbed over the gunwale near the idling motor.
The captain stretched a hand out. “Chuck Miller. Welcome aboard.”
He brought the little boat around and nudged her out into the center of the cove, then guided the boat back out into the rolling chop.
“You’ll want to get low. Gonna get rough, but we’re not heading far.”
As Angler made a seat on the sturdy tool chest, the man punched it, and the little boat climbed up on plane and zoomed toward the fading orange remnants of sunset and a string of lights at the edge of the horizon.
They sped past thick mangrove clusters, pelicans perched atop channel markers, and random sticks poking barely above the surface to mark the poachers’ traps scattered throughout the shallow waters. Angler had done enough business in the lower Keys. In contrast to the mercenary, every-man-for-himself culture on the mainland, the Keys felt like stepping back in time. With only one road in and the same road out, these folks had learned to rely on what they had, to watch each other’s backs, and to not depend too much on the underpaid and understaffed public servants of the sprawling county. With more than fifteen hundred islands stretching over a hundred miles, a fair share of his associates had called the Keys home for a stretch of their careers. It was the perfect place to set both his muscle and motor into motion. He had rendezvous scheduled with both.
As the plans formed in his mind, the boat approached a long, low spit of land stretching from the highway to meet them. Its eastern coast was dotted with flickering orange fires and twinkling lights draped around decks and awnings, offering just enough brightness in the twilight to see a string of campers stretched almost the length of the island.
“Welcome to Shark Key Campground and Marina.” The captain eased the throttle back and the boat settled back down into the water and drifted toward a sturdy aluminum dock. A few slips down, several people were climbing off another larger boat, carrying dive gear. Their excited chatter echoed across the water even with the strong breeze.
“That turtle was beautiful. So huge!”
“Did you see the two eels?”
“I saw three. There was another over by that really big coral head on the east side.”
The divers filed up the dock and onto the island. Angler took note of the dive boat’s slip, and watched as the crew of two began to clean and stow equipment. Always good to know where extra gear might be found.
“—get that looked at?” The captain’s voice tugged Angler back to the moment.
“Sorry, what?”
“I said, it looks like you got a bit of a knock to your noggin, there.”
Angler reached to his left temple. His fingers yanked away like a hot stove from where a tender knot had grown. He realized his head was pounding. He’d thought it was just the constant thunk of the boat’s hull against the choppy surface. And when he looked at his fingertips, they were coated with a mixture of fresh and dried flakes of blood.
“Mm, yeah. I think I must have knocked it. I came down pretty hard into that chop.”
“Hospital ain’t but a few miles up the road. Be happy to drive you there, if you’d like.”
Angler brushed the knot, testing it. “I don’t think that’s necessary. It’s just a bump.”
The captain tied the stern line to a cleat as a huge German shepherd raced down the dock, its tail wagging. Halfway down, it stopped short, frozen, its stare fixed on Angler. The hair on its back stood up and its lips curled up into a snarl.
“Whiskey! Down. Where are your manners, boy?” A short blonde poked her head through a gap in the seagrape hedge and recalled the dog. “Sorry about that. He’s usually better with new people.”
Angler followed the captain up the dock. Beyond the hedge, a crushed gravel parking lot stretched out to the left, bordered by another thick seagrape hedge on the opposite site. To the right, a low concrete cottage painted a bright yellow sat beside a big shop that reminded Angler of the old 1950s service stations, with a small general store and office in the front and service bays in the back. Beyond them, another stacked block building was surrounded by a massive deck, dotted with tables and chairs. And people.
As they walked toward the crowded deck, Angler spotted the dog, sitting at the edge with his attention locked on the men. He stumbled, skimming his fingers across the knot at his temple. “You know, maybe it’s not such a bad idea to get this checked out.”
The man who’d called himself Chuck waved toward an ancient, wood-sided Jeep Wagoneer. “Hop in.”
Ten minutes later, the truck eased through the emergency entrance of Lower Keys Medical Center.
“Would you like me to wait with you? Got a place to stay tonight?”
This guy was a regular Mother Teresa. Angler waved him off, adopting a casual ease he did not feel. “I’ll be fine. You’ve lost enough time on me already. Go enjoy your evening, and thanks for the rescue.”
“Well, you take care then, and come back anytime. Whether it’s for a day or forever, Shark Key’s always there when you need her.”
Angler forced a smile and waited in front of the glass doors of the emergency entrance, waving as the Wagoneer turned onto the ring road that circled the north side of Stock Island. As soon as its taillights disappeared, Angler walked away from the hospital’s parking lot, across the highway, and into the first dive bar he found.
* * *
The last diver eased her car down the lane. Kate waved, then spun and ruffled the fur on Whiskey’s head. He’d spent the last half hour sitting at the edge of the deck like a statue, staring at the parking lot without even seeming to blink.
“What’s up with you tonight, boy?”
As a highly trained police K-9 retired after a traumatic attack, Whiskey sometimes had an overactive threat response, perceiving every iguana and squirrel as a hardened criminal and chasing them down with about as much mercy. But he’d been on permanent leave for years now. These days, he was usually content to curl up on the deck and take pets from anyone who’d give them.
Kate slid into a chair across from her friend and neighbor, Michelle Jenkins. “What’s his deal? Has he been like this all day?”
“No. He was pretty normal until maybe an hour before you guys came in. Spent most of the day curled up in the shade in front of the kitchen door. Tripped Babette a couple times before she banished him to the end of the bar. But then a seaplane came across low and put down just the other side of O’Hara. Chuck went out to see if he could help, and then… this started.” She dipped her chin at the dog, staring across the lot at the headlights coming up the lane.
“Typical male. Thinks we need him to protect our fragile selves…”
“Fragile? Who’s fragile around here?” A woman built like a linebacker and dressed for the New York club scene dropped into the chair between Kate and Michelle. Whiskey finally left his post at the edge of the deck and rubbed up against the newcomer’s bare leg. He was rewarded with a strong scratch to his ears, responding with a deeply satisfied groan.
“Hey, Kara.” Kate shook her head at her blissed-out dog. “Apparently, we are. Or at least he thinks so. He’s been guarding the women since the last man left. Speaking of which…”
The red brake lights of Chuck’s Jeep lit up their faces as he parked in the scrubby grass in front of his cottage, then sauntered up and scratched the dog. “Good boy. Thanks for watching the place for me.”
“You know you have humans to do that for you?”
“Just cutting out the middleman. Or middlewomen as the case may be. You watch the place, he watches you. Or he just watches the place. Simpler that way.” Chuck laughed, deepening the wrinkles around his eyes, then reached behind the bar and filled a bucket with beer and ice and dropped it on the table.
“I’m pretending to be classy tonight.” Michelle waved her wine glass at him, while Kara pulled a beer from the bucket and twisted the cap off with her bare hands and passed it to Kate with a wide grin.
“So what’s the story with the seaplane guy?”
Chuck grabbed himself a beer and frowned. “Not much of a talker, that one. Clearly came down hard. Float strut collapsed in the landing and he took a bonk to the side of his head, so I ran him over to the ER. Said he has a guy coming to tow the plane out to repair it, but beyond that, I didn’t get a word out of him. Not even a name.”
Kate set her bottle on the table and swiped at the condensation forming around it. “He came across really wobbly maybe a mile to our east as we were surfacing from our last dive. Justin pointed it out. Said he saw something fall from the plane, but I didn’t see it. Gotta be the same guy, right? Bigger plane, single prop, blue stripes?”
“Yeah, that’s the one,” Chuck confirmed with a nod.
“De Havilland Beaver. Or maybe an Otter.”
Three heads turned to face Michelle, eyebrows raised.
“You don’t stay married to a plane freak without learning a thing or two about them. William was looking at one a few years back after I sold my first app. Took all I had to talk him out of it. So of course that’s when he bought the Cirrus instead.”
“Boys and their toys…” Kara groaned.
“You’re one to talk. What’s your wig and shoe and purse collection looking like these days?”
“That’s all for work. Every last Balenciaga. Ask my tax guy. He’ll tell you.”
“As long as he tells the IRS.” Chuck drained the bottle, then pushed up out of the chair with a groan. “Anyway, I’m gonna check in on the kitchen, pop some ibuprofen, and turn in early. This old bag of bones can’t take the chop like it used to.”
The women raised their bottles and glass as he made his way back to the bar with Whiskey on his heels.
* * *
Deek flicked his brights on just in time to see a pair of glowing eyes. He slammed the brakes, instinctively glancing in the rental car’s mirror. The car skidded to a stop a few yards before a small deer, roughly the size of a Labrador retriever, who stood frozen in the center of the road.
The animal stared at Deek.
Deek stared back.
His phone’s ringtone startled him back to attention as the little deer broke the stare and meandered off the shoulder and into the tall grass beside the highway. Deek tapped the answer button.
“Good news and bad news, my friend.”
Story of my life.
“Give me the bad.” Deek knew it was always best to know the worst.
“Bad news, your plane-that’s-not-the-plane has gone ghost. No signal.”
“And the good?”
“Looks like they put down on an uninhabited island in the middle of nowhere. No roads in. Too far out to row the life raft to shore. If it even has a life raft.”
“That’s the good news?”
“Well, it’s good from the right perspective. It means these guys can’t have gotten too far. They’re probably stuck on that little clump of trees waiting for first light.”
Deek eased the rental car back onto the road and continued west. “Where are they at? What’s the closest… anything?”
“You’re in luck. There’s a narrow little island called Shark Key. It’s a campground and marina, and your guys took a path directly over it right before they went down. It’s definitely the closest point of civilization. I’ll text you the number.”
“Thanks, man. I owe you one.”
“Yes, you do. Remember that next time I’m getting overrun by orcs and you want to turn tail and run.”
Deek rolled his eyes and hit the end call button. A few seconds later, his phone beeped with an incoming text. A three-oh-five phone number. He tapped the number and the ringing filled the car’s speakers.
“Shark Key Campground and Marina. This is Chuck Miller.”
“Hi, Mr. Miller. My name is Deek Morrison. I’m looking for a place to stay tonight, but I’m still an hour or so out. How late will you be open?”
Deek could hear the man’s smile bouncing from cell tower to satellite to cell tower and into his vehicle. “We’re always here. Just knock at the little yellow house at the end of the road if you’re late. I’ll leave the light on.”