Key Raiders Page 23

  “Hold it!” he cried, holding up his gun and aiming it squarely at one of the American men. The light from the other party’s own flashlights illuminated our way, and the rest of us lined up beside him and did the same, cornering the gangbangers in the side of the cave with the shipwreck.

  “Wait, what…” the man named Joe, who looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties with hair the color of sand, said, his mouth hanging open slightly.

  “Don’t move,” I said, but it was too late. Joe had panicked and pulled his gun, shooting it wildly in our direction.

  The sound from the shot echoed in my ears, and I heard Muñoz cry out in pain beside me and splash to the ground. Penny rushed over to tend to her, leaving Holm and me to square off against the goons on our own.

  No problem. It wasn’t anything we hadn’t done before.

  “You’re going to regret that,” Holm growled, his eyes narrowing at the men right before he shot back just in time to prevent Joe from opening fire on us again.

  The skinny man fell to the ground, blood pooling out around him in the shallow water near the long-dead Jamaican man. I couldn’t see him breathing anymore, indicating that he died instantly.

  “Go, go, go!” the remaining American man screamed, beckoning for the other two to follow him as he made a mad dash for the motorboat.

  He quickly discovered, however, that we had positioned ourselves right in between them and their ride home. Realizing this, the unnamed Jamaican man, who was at the back, whirled around and darted toward Penny’s sailboat, firing at us as he did so in an attempt to stave us off.

  I ducked just in time to avoid the bullet and shot back once, twice, three times, hitting him in the side as he turned to shoot once more. Then he, too, fell lifeless into the water.

  The remaining American man opened fire then, hoping to catch me off-guard as I was distracted with his companion. My partner was on the case, however, hitting him right in the chest before he could get to me.

  There was silence in the cave then, but for the dripping of water and the almost deafening ringing in my ears from all the gunfire.

  “Alright, then,” I said to the remaining Jamaican man, Davis, panting and slightly hunched over from the exertion of wading through the water in the middle of a gunfight. I was up to my waist in it by then. “What’s it gonna be?”

  I raised my gun again and trained it on the man, who looked like he was vacillating between panicking and being relieved that the other men had stopped firing. He glanced between Holm and me, both of our guns trained on him, and quickly raised his hands, plopping his own weapon down into the water in front of him.

  “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” he cried in an even thicker accent than before. “I am giving in! I did not shoot you! Not once.”

  “We know that,” Holm said, not unkindly. “And that will work in your favor. But you’re going to have to answer some questions.”

  “Yes, yes,” the man said, nodding eagerly at this proposition. “I answer whatever you want. Whatever you want.”

  “That’s a good choice,” I said, smiling grimly at him. “Where is our colleague, the agent those other men took? Is he still alive?”

  “Um, yes, I think so,” the man, Davis, stammered, his eyes wide as he laughed nervously. “I do not see much of him, and he looks weak when I last see him. But did not hear that anything happens to him. I did not. So think he is alive, yes.”

  “You saw him?” I asked sharply. “When?”

  “Oh, a couple of days ago, I think,” he said, looking up at the ceiling of the cave as he thought about this. “When they first bring him in. He is unconscious but alive, they say. Some kind of drug they give him, I think. Bruised, too.”

  “Bruised?” Holm repeated, just as sharp as I had. “What did they do to him? Where did they take him?”

  “I am sorry, I do not know this,” Davis said quickly, looking concerned that this would get him in further trouble. “I tell you if I know, I swear it. But I do not know. He just goes in the tent and doesn’t come out again.”

  “They put him in a tent?” I asked. “What tent? Where?”

  “In the campground,” Davis said, blinking at me as if this was obvious. “Where we stay.”

  “What campground?” I asked. “On Key West?”

  “Oh no,” the man said, shaking his head as he faltered slightly on his feet. “Not Key West. Pye.”

  And with that, his knees crumpled, and he fell into the water, blood billowing out around him on all sides.

  28

  Ethan

  Holm, Penny, and I watched in stunned silence as the Coast Guard helicopter airlifted Muñoz, who had sustained a nasty shot to the shoulder, and Davis, who had apparently been shot by an errant bullet from Joe’s gun before he went down and hadn’t noticed it because he was in so much shock, to a hospital on Key West.

  “Pie?” Holm asked after several moments. “Why was he talking about pie? Was he just out of it or something?”

  “Is that what he said?” Penny asked, whirling around to face him. “He said that they’re on Pye Key?”

  “Pye Key?” I repeated. “There’s a Pye Key?”

  “Wait, so he wasn’t talking about pie?” Holm asked, looking a little bewildered.

  “No,” Penny said, laughing and shaking her head at him. “Not at all. He was saying that the gang has some kind of weird camping hideout on Pye Key.”

  “But where is that?” I asked, holding out my hands at my sides. “Is it near here? I thought these guys were camping out on Key West from what that ferry guy, Chad, told us.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know,” Penny said, furrowing her brows together as she thought about this. “It’s all pretty strange. But come on, it’s late. We should start heading back.”

  She waded out to her sailboat and then slowly made her way back to us inside it. When it was at the mouth of the cave where we were standing, Holm and I climbed aboard.

  “What were you saying about Pye Key?” I asked Penny as we sailed out into the open water from the mouth of the cave, Holm and I back in our usual positions on the benches on opposite sides of the sailboat.

  “Oh, right,” Penny said as if she had already forgotten in her eagerness to get her ship out of the cave safely. “That’s a really small island not far from here. It’s an easy journey. I sail past it all the time. Don’t go there much, though, except maybe occasionally to hike around with a particularly adventurous tour group.”

  “Adventurous?” I repeated. “I’ve never heard of this Key. What’s it like?”

  “I don’t imagine you would’ve,” she chuckled, and I noticed how her hair shined in the starlight, a bit haphazard from its usual strict ponytail from all the kerfuffle in the cave. “It’s a small Key, mostly used for Boy Scout trips. All camping, all the time over there.”

  “Does anyone live there?” Holm asked. “There has to be a town of some kind.”

  “You underestimate how small some of these islands are,” Penny laughed. “No, no one lives there, though it sounds like these guys have probably been setting up shop there for a while. I have to hand it to them. It’s not a terrible plan. It’s such a remote area that I didn’t even remember it existed until you mentioned it.”

  “Weird,” I murmured. “So I guess that explains why so many random campers keep showing up on Little Torch, but why are they hitching a ride from that ferry guy on Key West, then? Does he not stop on Pye Key?”

  “I imagine he probably does, just like I do sometimes,” Penny mused with a shrug as we passed the first, empty cave and headed back in the direction of the harbor. “Doesn’t get a lot of business there, though, I’d bet. And if all of a sudden he had a ton, especially foreign visitors, even Chad would’ve had to notice that that was weird and maybe take it to the police. With Key West, he’d be more likely to overlook it and take the bigger profit margins without question.”

  “They would have to take a boat to Key West, though, right?” Holm asked. “I
mean, if it’s that small of an island, I bet the highway doesn’t run through there.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Penny confirmed, shaking her head. “Not a chance. So yeah, they could take a small boat like that one they had back there, or an even smaller one, from Pye to Key West, easy.”

  “But then why not just take it here, then?” Holm asked, furrowing his brows together in confusion. “Why waste all that time going to Key West and then taking that ferry over to Little Torch?”

  “That’s a good question,” Penny said, humming as she tried to think of an answer. “If I had to make a bet, I’d say that it was for the same reason they avoided hopping straight on the ferry from Pye Key: to avoid detection. If there was a lot of increased small boat traffic to Little Torch, someone would notice. The Coast Guard, or someone like me, or the people who tend the docks where people anchor their private boats on the south shore. Key West, not so much. There’s already a ton of traffic headed in and out of there of all kinds, so who would question it or even notice that there was a change?”

  “I guess that makes sense,” Holm said, running his hand over his stubble as he took this all in.

  “Yeah, they’ve definitely gone to a lot of lengths to avoid detection already, so that explanation makes as much sense as any,” I murmured.

  My phone beeped, and I looked down at my messages, breathing a sigh of relief when I saw who it was.

  “It’s Muñoz,” I said, turning to Holm. “They’re already at the hospital, and she’s getting patched up. They’re going to hold her overnight, but she’ll check back in with us tomorrow.”

  “Thank God,” Holm sighed, his shoulders slumping as he released a lot of pent up tension. “The last thing we need is losing someone else down here. I’m starting to think the Keys aren’t as great as I thought they were.”

  As I gazed at Penny and out across the water, I couldn’t help but disagree. Yes, I was worried about Birn, and I had been worried about Muñoz, but I had to admit that I was enjoying this mission on some level. Maybe a little too much, if I were honest.

  We sat in silence, enjoying the water and the night until we reached the dock again. Then we just kind of sat there for a while, none of us wanting to get up.

  “We’re glad you were here,” Holm told Penny gruffly. “You really helped us out. Who knows what would’ve happened to Muñoz if you hadn’t been there, or to any of us last time for that matter.”

  “Yes, thank you very much for accompanying us,” I said, giving the sailor my warmest smile.

  “Oh, the pleasure was all mine,” she said. She flashed me one of those half-grins of hers, her eyes twinkling right along with the stars. Yes, I was definitely enjoying this trip, whether I wanted to admit it or not.

  “Would you have any idea how we could get over to Pye Key tomorrow?” Holm asked, running a hand through his hair as if he didn’t even want to think about tomorrow yet. I shared that sentiment.

  “Yeah, I guess we’re going to have to head over there and see if we can find Birn, with or without Muñoz,” I sighed, not liking that idea one bit. I’d grown accustomed to having Muñoz around even in the short time we’d been working together on this case, and I didn’t like the idea of possibly walking into a wide-open outdoor drug den without her to back us up.

  “I can sail you right on over there,” Penny suggested, sounding more than eager to jump on this opportunity. “I’m sure you’ll need some more backup.

  I exchanged a worried look with Holm but was surprised and a little perturbed to find that he seemed just as keen on this idea as Penny was.

  “That sounds like a great plan,” he said, flashing her a grin of his own. “You definitely know your stuff, and it’d be great to have a guide who knows the area.”

  “Well, you did say that you don’t make it out to Pye Key very often,” I said quietly, already knowing that I was on my way toward losing this argument. It’s not that I didn’t think highly of Penny and her skills, but she was a civilian. And this was going to be a whole other level than just a single stakeout in a little cave of the coast of Little Torch.

  “I do know it well, though,” she chuckled. “Not all that often adds up to quite a bit over the years.”

  “Come on, Marston, you said yourself how good it is to have someone on our side who knows the area,” Holm pleaded. “We let Alejandra come along with us most of the time in Haiti for the same reason, and she wasn’t even military, was she? Pretty resourceful herself, though, I’ll give her that.”

  He chuckled at the memory of this last part, and I had to admit that he was right, even though I really didn’t want to. Alejandra, the Dominican president’s daughter, had been the diplomat who called us down to the Dominican-Haitian border in the first place. It’s not like we could’ve said no to her since it was her case, too. And she had been useful—more than useful. Holm was right that Penny was probably even more useful, too, with her background.

  “Alright, alright,” I relented, holding my hands up in defeat. “But if this gets us in trouble with Diane when we get back, you’re taking the fall for it, you hear me?”

  “Done,” Holm laughed and began to climb off the boat. “You coming?”

  For some reason, I didn’t follow my partner. I hung back on the boat with Penny instead.

  “You could have a nightcap,” she murmured to me so that only I could hear her. “In my studio. I can drive you back to your hotel later if you want.” She nodded in the direction of the small building next to the dock from which she operated her business.

  “I think I’ll meet up with you later,” I told Holm, reaching into my pocket and tossing him the keys to my car. “I’ll see you in the morning if you’re asleep already when I get back.”

  “Oh, I will be,” Holm chortled, shaking his head knowingly in my direction as he made his way back down the dock and toward my car. “You kids have fun!”

  Once Penny had anchored the boat, she led me back to her building next to the dock and poured us each a drink from a whiskey bottle.

  “I like your taste,” I said, raising my glass to her before taking a sip.

  “I thought you might,” she said, giving me a sly smile and sitting down on a small couch off to the corner of the leisure room behind the main business area. She patted the seat next to her, and I joined her, scrunched close in next to her by the size of the couch.

  It was a nice little place. The front area was just a desk and a cash register where tourists could buy tickets, and this back area was a place for her to relax. There was a small kitchen, the couch, and some stuff piled in the corner to help with her boat, old sails and ropes and anchors and the like.

  “Nice place,” I murmured, but before I could say anything else, she had leaned over and kissed me.

  I kissed her back, enjoying that her lips were soft and warm against my firm, warmer ones. It was just as I’d imagined it would be.

  When we finally broke apart, she grinned up at me.

  “I just wanted to get that out of the way before you ran back off to Miami on me,” she said.

  “Well, I’m here now,” I said, leaning in and kissing her again.

  Yeah, it turned out that I was a big fan of the Keys, after all.

  29

  Ethan

  I didn’t end up returning to the resort that night, and when Holm arrived at the dock the next morning to find me already there with Penny, he cast me a sly grin and shook his head.

  “I should’ve known,” he murmured in my ear so that the sailor wouldn’t hear, rolling his eyes. “Honestly, Marston, do you never let up?”

  I ignored him but couldn’t help feeling a little pleased with myself.

  “Anything from Muñoz?” I asked him as Penny prepared her sailboat for our excursion to the Pye Key. I’d checked my phone for an update and texted her several times to no avail, and I was starting to get worried.

  “Not since last night,” Holm said, his brow furrowed together in worry now, all traces of his previo
usly mocking tone now vanished.

  Almost as if on queue, Muñoz herself came running down from the small parking lot up above Penny’s small corner of the bay at that instant, hollering out to us as she went.

  “Wait! Wait!” she cried, waving her left arm in the air furiously. “Don’t leave without me! I’m here.”

  “Muñoz?” I asked, staring at her. She looked fine to me. “Why aren’t you still at the hospital?”

  “Oh, they released me hours ago,” she said when she came to a stop in front of us on the dock. “I made them let me go as soon as the doctor patched me up and was done with his mandatory supervision period, or whatever he called it. Then I got an officer to drive me back here.”

  “Why didn’t you call?” Holm asked, a bewildered and slightly annoyed expression on his face. “You said that you would call.”

  I was with Holm. I’d been worried about Muñoz all morning, and she had promised to call, though I decided not to pile it on.

  “The damn hospital lost it,” she said, pursing her lips, and it was her turn to look annoyed. “They lost everything in my pockets. My badge, too. And I couldn’t remember your numbers to call you from someone else’s phone. Good thing you guys are here and can vouch for who I am.” She gave a dull chuckle at this.

  “Oh, jeez,” I said, shaking my head. “Seems like you’ve had a time of it.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” she chuckled, wincing and rolling her right shoulder slightly. I noticed that it looked rather larger than the other one under her shirt and remembered that that was where she had been shot the night before.

  “Are you sure you’re okay for this?” I asked, meeting her eyes with genuine concern. “It doesn’t sound like you got much sleep, and we don’t want you getting an even worse injury the next time. Is your arm stiff?”

  “I don’t think you got much sleep either,” Holm quipped, giving me the side-eye, but I continued to ignore him.