Key Raiders Page 21

  “They’ve had a few run-ins over the years, though, right?” Holm asked to make sure, harkening back to an earlier conversation we’d had with Muñoz. “Small-time drug dealers, that kind of stuff.”

  “Yeah, but who hasn’t?” Muñoz asked. “Mostly weed, nothing they can’t handle. This stuff… it’s way out of their comfort zone.”

  “I imagine they get some partying spring breakers, too,” I murmured. “That usually lends itself to some harder stuff.”

  “Yeah, but I get the sense that most of the spring breakers who come down here are rich kids on vacation with their parents,” Muñoz said, picking at a piece of lint on her shoulder. “The instinct is still there, sure, that’s why that guy Derek was able to sell cocaine of all things to that teenager. But there are greener pastures for those dealers on the other islands, like Key West. Way more unsupervised kids to prey on there.”

  “I guess so,” I said, shaking my head. “But then that still doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Why this island, then, if it’s never made sense to have a big drug operation here before? This Chris Daniels guy was already on Key West. So why not just bring the bigger drug operation there? It seems like that would make more sense.”

  “You’re not wrong,” Muñoz said, furrowing her brows together as she considered this. “I haven’t been able to work that one out myself, either. On the one hand, you’d think it’d be harder to escape detection on Little Torch since it’s such a small island. But on the other hand, people are pretty complacent here for the same reason.”

  “But if the point was to stay under the radar, why sell here at all?” I asked, still confused by this. “Why set up Derek here and risk bringing attention to themselves by selling to these rich vacation kids? Clearly, that went wrong, and now we’re here, and whoever these people are have gone and abducted a federal agent. Now they’re in way over their heads, whether they want to admit it or not. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

  “And then there’s that guy from New Orleans from your last case,” Muñoz said, nodding slowly at Holm and me. “What was he doing in the middle of all this?”

  “That’s a good question,” Holm chuckled. “I guess we’re just going to have to find out the hard way.”

  “The hard way?” Muñoz repeated, raising her eyebrows at him.

  “By finding them,” he explained, and she nodded, swallowing hard.

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right,” she said, crossing her arms, and I could practically feel her nervous energy across the room. I felt it in myself, as well, and I was sure that Holm was feeling it too. We had to find Birn. Fast.

  I looked down at my watch.

  “I’d better be going,” I said, looking back up at my colleagues. “Penny will be expecting me. Be careful wherever you go this evening. I’ll check back in soon.”

  They nodded and waved goodbye to me as I headed back out into the hall.

  25

  Ethan

  Penny had picked out a nice restaurant. It was a small seafood place with outdoor seating right on the ocean that made you feel like you were actually on a ship. The restaurant had a patio that jutted out over the waves so that we could feel the evening ocean breeze as we snacked on biscuits while we were waiting for our orders. I couldn’t think of anywhere else I would want to be in that moment.

  She smiled at me as we passed our menus back to the server and crossed her hands in front of her.

  “So,” she said, a soft gleam in her eye that I found almost intoxicating. “How’s the rest of your mission going so far?”

  I quickly caught her up on everything we had been dealing with since we left her in her sailboat the previous night. When I was finished, she gave a low whistle.

  “Man,” she said, shaking her head and flashing me a half-grin that only served to illuminate further that pleasant gleam in her eyes. “You guys don’t waste time at MBLIS, do you?”

  “No, we don’t,” I chuckled, grabbing another biscuit from the basket between us. “You’d like it, I think. With your background, you’d be a shoo-in.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” she laughed, her face crinkling pleasantly around her eyes as she did so. “I’m enjoying my retirement too much. Just because I get bored sometimes doesn’t mean I want to give it up.”

  “Fair enough,” I said, though I really didn’t know what she meant by this. I could really never see myself retiring, even though Holm had been talking about it a lot lately. Sometimes I thought I’d just keep going until I dropped dead on a mission sometime, maybe even of old age. If they let me keep going that long, that was, without sticking me behind a desk.

  “So what’ve you got planned for the rest of your mission?” Penny asked, her brow now furrowed with concern. “I hate to say it, but it’s now been almost forty-eight hours since your guy went missing.”

  “I know,” I murmured, knowing that Penny and I both knew exactly how bad this was. “We’re trying not to think about that.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said honestly, reaching out and pressing her hand on top of mine briefly before pulling away, though I found myself wishing she had stayed. “I hope you find him soon. And anything I can do to help, really. I mean it.”

  “Thank you,” I said, giving her a small but genuine smile. “And actually, we were planning to head back out to that cave tonight and stake it out before the Coast Guard clears it out. We have it on good authority that the gangbangers have been looking for their lost stash every night since it went missing.”

  “What was that, a week ago?” Penny asked, and I nodded. “I suppose they have to come across it, eventually. It’s as good a plan as any. How are you planning to get out there?”

  “Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” I said with a low chuckle, just as the waiter was coming up to us with our orders.

  “Thanks,” Penny told him as he set her seafood chowder and my shrimp linguini in front of us. Just smelling it, I knew that it was going to be amazing.

  “This was a great choice, Penny,” I told her, dipping the remaining half of my last biscuit into the shrimp sauce and savoring it. “Thanks for inviting me.”

  “Any time,” she chuckled, blowing on a wide spoonful of her soup. “I knew I had to catch you before you left.”

  “Well, I’m glad you did,” I said earnestly, dipping my head so that I could slurp up some noodles. Sure enough, I could already tell that this was one of the best meals I’d ever had in my life. Maybe there was something to this retirement thing, after all.

  “You were saying you wanted to talk to me about your stakeout tonight?” she prodded gently, smiling at my enthusiasm with the meal.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said quickly, wiping some sauce off my mouth with the cloth napkin in my lap. “I almost forgot. I was going to ask if you knew where we could borrow a ship for the night to get out there. We didn’t see any rental places when we were driving around today.”

  “Yeah, I’d bet you didn’t,” she laughed, washing her soup down with a sip of water. “Not many people who vacation here want to go out on their own, and if they do, they already own property or rent it from people who have boats themselves on the south shore.”

  “So the tourists mostly go out on the water with people like you and that ferry guy I told you about,” I said, nodding. I kind of got that sense from the air of the place. It took a certain kind of tourist to want to get their hands dirty on a boat themselves, and this island didn’t strike me as all that appealing to that sort.

  “That’s right,” she laughed. “Though I don’t know that many of them go see Chad. He mostly gets tourists from the other islands who want to see Little Torch for the day. And drug dealing campers, apparently, but I can’t make heads or tails of that myself.”

  “You know him?” I asked, and she nodded. “You don’t think he knew there was something fishy going on?”

  “Oh, goodness, no,” she said, shaking her head and laughing some more. “Chad’s a good guy, but he’s not the m
ost inquiring mind if you catch my drift. He just likes showing families the ocean and making a little money while he’s at it.”

  “I got the same impression,” I chuckled, spinning some more of the linguini and shrimp around my fork. “So do you know where we could get a ship, then? There are no rental places around the island at all?”

  “No, not that I’m aware of. I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. Then, flashing me another, fuller grin this time, “I could take you, though. On my sailboat, just like I did last night. We could make another night of it.”

  Somehow, I had been hoping that she would suggest this, though I still didn’t love the idea of bringing a civilian with us on a stakeout, even if she was former military and had already saved our skins at least once on this mission.

  “I don’t know…” I said, and I knew that she could sense my hesitance.

  “Oh, come on,” she scoffed, her eyes sparkling at me now. “I can take care of myself. You’ve seen that already. And I’ve been itching to help you out some more ever since we left that cave last night. Plus, I’m not letting you take my sailboat on your own, and that’s the only other option.”

  Well, she had me there. I had to admit that. And I had told Holm and Muñoz that my sailing skills were rather rusty…

  “Alright,” I relented, and she grinned even wider now. “But if we get into any more trouble, you stay back and let us take care of it, okay?”

  “Okay,” she chuckled, and I could tell she was just humoring me, but I’d take what I could get.

  It would be good to have her along, given how well she knew the area. And given her skill set, civilian now or not.

  “I’m glad you’re coming, whether I want to admit it or not,” I said, meeting her eyes across the table.

  “I think you just did,” she said, meeting my eyes and raising her eyebrows.

  “I guess I did,” I said, smiling at her and then turning back to my plate because I was afraid of lingering my eyes on her for too long.

  “So what was all this about this old pirate ship that you and your partner were talking about last night?” she asked. “And you just said something about Nick the bartender overhearing some guy from New Orleans talking about it?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said, remembering that I had already related that part of the story.

  I went on to tell her all about our missions to Haiti and New Orleans and about the search for the Dragon’s Rogue that my grandfather had passed down to me. When I was finished, Penny just kind of stared at me for a moment, rendered speechless.

  “Well, I’ll be,” she muttered, narrowing her eyes at me with a healthy dose of skepticism. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that you were pulling my leg. But then again, that other MBLIS agent, the woman, she seemed to corroborate all this last night.”

  “That’s right,” I chuckled, piling some more of the linguini onto my fork. “Everyone at MBLIS is pretty well acquainted with my little obsession by now.” My plate was diminished now, getting closer to empty. Penny’s bowl was close to empty, as well. There were no biscuits left in the basket.

  “Well, now I’m more excited than ever to figure out what’s going on here on Little Torch,” Penny said, slurping up the last of her soup and giving me another one of those half grins. “I’d like to see one of these pirate ships of yours.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” I laughed. “I doubt we’ll find another one any time soon.”

  “Well, I’d at least like to see what all the fuss is about and help you get the bottom of where it came from in the first place,” she said, smiling at me.

  “I was wondering, have you ever heard any weird legends about pirate ships here in the Keys?” I asked, placing my elbows on the table in anticipation of her answer. “Anything about Jean Lafitte?”

  “Oh, nothing about Jean Lafitte,” she said, furrowing her brows together as she thought this over and pushing her empty dish and spoon away from her to signal to the waiter that we were finished. “That’s always been a New Orleans thing, as far as I ever knew. That’s why it’s so surprising that you think someone found it here somewhere. Though I suppose it’s not impossible.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I agreed. “You would’ve thought that if it was here, someone would’ve figured it out by now, or at least come up with some legend that’s been floating around the islands for years. Not just randomly found by some idiot gangbanger from the bayou.”

  “Hm,” Penny said, pursing her lips as the waiter gathered up our empty dishes. I passed him my card to pay the bill, on MBLIS’s dime, of course. It was technically a work meal. “I don’t know. I know that old slave ship from the 1700s turned up here a while back, but that’s the only big one I know of. There are always rumors, but nothing about Lafitte. As you said, if it were true, I would’ve expected there to be legends, at the very least.”

  “These other rumors, do you know anything about them?” I asked as the waiter promptly returned with the receipt. I tipped him as he left.

  “Oh, I don’t pay much attention to that stuff,” she said, shaking her head. “There are rumors about pirates on every island, especially Key West. I couldn’t pick any of them out of a lineup.”

  “Interesting,” I said, clapping my hands on my knees and rising. “Well, I suppose we’ll find out soon enough. Muñoz and Holm will be waiting for us by now. I texted I’d meet them down at the docks by your sailboat.”

  I quickly checked my phone to make sure neither of them had sent me a message. There was nothing there.

  “I’ll follow right behind you,” Penny said, that gleam in her eye now brighter than I’d ever seen it before.

  26

  Penny

  The other MBLIS agents were waiting for Ethan and Penny when they arrived, and they seemed more than a little surprised to see her but pleased.

  “I thought you said we had no business taking a civilian on a trip like this,” Ethan’s partner, Robbie, teased, knocking him in the shoulder playfully when they met the other agents by the dock.

  “Oh, is that right?” Penny asked, raising her eyebrows at Ethan and sending him a wink to let him know that she was only playing at being offended. She could’ve sworn that she noticed a slight pink tinge to his cheeks in the setting Florida sun.

  “Har, har, har,” Ethan shot back sardonically, rolling his eyes as the group made their way down the dock toward Penny’s sailboat, which was right where she had left it when she docked it that afternoon. Not that there were ever any other boats on this particular plot of land. Penny had paid enough herself to make sure of that when she moved up to Little Torch from Key West.

  “We’re going sailing again, then?” the woman, Sylvia, asked brightly, but Penny could tell that this disposition was all for show. The tone and expression did not meet her eyes, and the former naval officer felt a pang of sympathy for the MBLIS agent. It must be more than difficult, not knowing where her partner was or even if he was still alive.

  “Yep,” Ethan quipped as Penny climbed aboard the small sailboat and motioned for the others to follow her. “Figured you guys were right after all, and it might be best to have a local to guide us. Especially one with the kind of background that could be an asset.” It was the agent’s turn to wink at her, now, and Penny couldn’t help but feel pleased with herself at this.

  “Sure,” Robbie chuckled, and the way he looked at Ethan, Penny could tell that there was some kind of inside joke in there somewhere that she wasn’t privy to. Probably to have to do with her. But either way, she got to go with them, and that was that.

  The MBLIS agents all climbed aboard and assumed their previous positions on the sailboat’s benches, with Sylvia and Robbie on one side, to Penny’s right when she was facing the steering wheel, and Ethan to her left, closer to her. She was secretly glad about that.

  “Everybody ready?” she asked once the sails were up and everyone seemed settled.

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” Robbie said, saluting her in an ex
aggerated gesture. Sylvia burst out laughing at this and rolled her eyes.

  Yes, Penny decided as she steered the ship out of the dock. This was way better than sitting at home reading as she usually did around this time of day.

  “So what did you guys do while we were at dinner?” Ethan asked his fellow agents as they headed across the bay in Penny’s trusty little sailboat.

  “Well, we talked to the waitstaff like we told you we would,” Sylvia said with a shrug. “Nothing much came of it, just like that guy at the restaurant at the resort across town.”

  “That must’ve been Steve,” Penny chuckled, knowing exactly who she meant. “Yeah, he wouldn’t have noticed anything even if it slapped him across the face. Great guy, though. Happy-go-lucky.”

  “Does everybody know everybody in this town?” Sylvia asked, bemused.

  “Just about,” Penny laughed. “You kind of have to, in a town this size. Otherwise, you wouldn’t talk to anyone at all. Well, except the tourists, and who wants that?”

  Everyone laughed at this.

  “So nothing at the resort, then?” Ethan asked when the laughter died down. “That bartender hasn’t called, has he?”

  “Oh, he’s called,” Sylvia assured him, rolling her eyes again. “A couple of times. But not with anything worth noting.”

  “Figures,” Ethan chuckled, and Penny had to admit she really liked that sound. It was guttural but still kind of boyish. Like him, in a way.

  “That one busboy did say a group of those campers came in a while back, though,” Robbie said, pointing at Sylvia as he said this to jog her memory. “Said they dragged mud all over, made a real mess of the place. Then got really drunk and left food all over their booth.”

  “Sounds about right,” Penny said dryly. As much as she was enjoying the agents’ company and a little spark of excitement in her otherwise dull retired life, she would be glad when this was all over, and she got her island back from these creeps who had been encroaching on it. It made her anxious, having her home practically invaded in this way. And it felt good to be doing something about it now.