Key Raiders Page 8

  “Well, it’s still good news,” Penny said, looking back up at him and giving him a small smile. “If the worst had happened here, there would probably be signs already.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Ethan said, his face brightening a little, lifting up his already handsome features. “My policy is to stay hopeful until we have reason to think otherwise. Past that point, even. It doesn’t pay to dwell on the worst-case scenario in situations like this.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Penny agreed, thinking back to more than a few times when one of her fellow officers had gone missing when they were serving abroad. It was a nerve-wracking experience, to put it lightly, to not know where someone you cared about was or what was happening to them in potentially hostile territory.

  Just then, Robbie and Sylvia crossed back over to them, and Penny realized that she had been so focused on Ethan that she failed to pay attention to where the other two MBLIS agents were while they were gone and what they were doing. This was highly unusual for her, especially in a situation as interesting as this one.

  Penny noted this information about herself and tucked it away to evaluate further later, along with all this talk about her being bored in retirement. She hadn’t considered herself to be bored, but maybe the agents had a point, considering how much she’d been paying attention to the strange events on the island as of late. She hadn’t even realized how much data she had informally collected until she was already relating it to the interested agents.

  “Find anything?” Ethan asked his two colleagues, placing his hands on his hips and looking over at them as they approached him and Penny on the end of the dock.

  “No,” Robbie said, his tone and expression both glum as he shook his head. “Not a thing.”

  “As I said, I already cased the area earlier and didn’t find anything. Same with the police,” Sylvia said with a shrug, though she looked disappointed, too.

  “Ready to go?” Ethan asked, turning his attention back to Penny and raising his eyebrows at her.

  “Of course,” she said with a nod, stepping up onto her small sailboat. “Follow me. Watch your step. It’s slippery.”

  She motioned for the MBLIS agents to come up after her, and they did so, filing in behind her.

  The boat was small, but not cramped, an elegant little sailboat with blue sails to match the sea and sky themselves, though they were a darker shade so that they would be detectable from a distance. The interior of the ship had sturdy, padded wooden benches stretching around its perimeter, alongside the sails. The steering wheel was up front, close to the benches so that Penny could talk to the tourists as they rode with her.

  She liked the calm life she’d built doing all of this, and though the tourists sometimes annoyed her, she enjoyed showing them the sights of the Little Torch Key, a quiet little island that she had grown to love quickly before she even moved there. It was the perfect site, with enough tourists to keep her business comfortable, but not so many that her retirement was stressful.

  Even so, a small part of her missed the action of her military career, even the quieter part of teaching new recruits in the second phase of her career. She couldn’t deny that the MBLIS agents’ presence there was exciting to her and that she’d jumped at the chance to help them out with their investigation, relished it even.

  That being said, she wasn’t about to give up the quieter life she’d built any time soon. As far as she was concerned, she was living the dream, getting to sail the ocean every day in one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

  “Alright, settle in wherever you please,” she called back to the MBLIS agents as she lifted the sails and then made her way over to the steering wheel and sat down in front of it. “I’ll assume you Navy types can swim, so I won’t make you put your life jackets on, but they’re right under the seats if you need them. Just pop the benches open, and there they are.”

  Sylvia checked to make sure this was true and then nodded to her in thanks.

  “I think we’ll manage,” Robbie chuckled, sitting down on the left-hand bench. He patted the seat next to him for Sylvia to join him, and she did so.

  Ethan, on the other hand, settled in right next to Penny, on the right-hand corner of the bench perimeter. Penny smiled to herself, liking the idea of talking to him some more.

  “Alright, hold on!” she called out in her characteristic beginning phrase for a sailing excursion.

  She usually enjoyed seeing the worried looks on some tourists’ faces as they took this to mean they were in for a bumpy ride, even though it was rare that such a thing actually occurred. The MBLIS agents, however, saw right through this, and all three of them laughed.

  “Get a lot of waves in this area?” Robbie asked with another laugh, gesturing out at the calm water.

  “Every once in a while,” Penny grinned as she sailed them out into the bay. “But not usually. It’s pretty peaceful around here, in more ways than one.”

  “So, where are we headed?” Ethan asked, smiling at her again.

  “Well, I’ve been out in the water a bit today, just trying to scope out the scene a bit for myself. Didn’t find anything, though,” Penny explained, realizing now just how curious she really was about this whole thing.

  How had she missed that before, even while collecting data on strange tourists, offering to stay with Agent Birn on his stakeout, and going out looking for the source of all the floating cocaine packets? She was worried about the missing agent, to be sure, but she had to admit it was also all pretty thrilling, compared to her usual days as of late.

  “You came out here already?” Ethan asked, raising his eyebrows at her. “Now, that’s dedication. I imagine that was valuable working time.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Penny said, giving a hollow laugh as they left the bay and headed off to the left. “I didn’t want to bring anyone out here today. I’d wager that the sight of all those cocaine packets would’ve scared some tourists off and led to some not so stellar Yelp reviews, at the very least.”

  “I guess you’re probably right,” Ethan chuckled. “I didn’t think of that, though I doubt many civilians would know what cocaine was on sight.”

  “They’d know it was something suspicious,” she said. “And it only takes one to set off a panic in the whole boat, and then where would I be?”

  “Fair enough,” Ethan said, still laughing. “So, where are we headed? Any ground you didn’t cover before?”

  “Yeah, there are a few caves off to the side here that I meant to check out before but didn’t have time. And I didn’t really want to be out alone once it got dark, just in case I ran into anything suspicious.”

  “Probably a good idea, though I’m more than certain that you can take care of yourself,” Ethan pointed out, and Penny felt a swell of pride despite herself at this.

  “Thank you, and you’re probably right,” she said, smiling back at him. “But it’s always best to be smart, as I’m sure you’d agree.”

  “You should see some of the messes these two get into,” the woman, Sylvia, pointed out with a small laugh, and Penny was glad to hear her express some levity. “I’m not sure that ‘better safe than sorry’ is a policy that they tend to abide by.”

  “Is that so?” Penny asked, raising her eyebrows and glancing back between Ethan and Robbie. “Sounds like there are some stories behind that.”

  “Oh, there are,” Robbie chuckled. “Many of them. We spent our last two cases chasing zombies and jumping off of exploding ships.”

  Penny blinked at this.

  “Zombies?” she repeated, more than a little skeptical as she assumed that the agent was pulling her leg. “Is that a euphemism for something I’m not aware of?”

  “Kind of, but not really,” Ethan clarified. “We were chasing down a new drug out of Haiti that made people kind of act like zombies. Kind of.”

  Out of the corner of her eyes, Penny caught him shooting a pointed look in the direction of his partner on the second ‘ki
nd of,’ and she couldn’t help but laugh. She decided she liked these guys.

  “That makes a bit more sense, then,” she chuckled. “Sounds like you two are full of stories. I always knew MBLIS did good work, but I never knew how exciting it could get.”

  “Trust me, these two find a way of making their own trouble,” Sylvia laughed. “The rest of us usually don’t get to have nearly as much fun as they do.”

  “Why do I not find that hard to believe?” Penny asked, shooting Ethan a sly smile.

  “Hey now, it sounds like you’ve got quite a life story of your own,” Ethan said as Penny maneuvered the ship off to the side in the direction of the caves she was pursuing. The first one was coming up on them now. “What made you decide to retire and settle down in the Little Torch Key to start your own business?”

  “We know a guy who did something similar with a bar back home after he resigned from the federal service,” Robbie added. “I’ve even thought about doing something similar myself when the time comes.”

  “I doubt either of you could ever throw in the towel,” Sylvia scoffed. “You love the thrill of the chase way too much for your own good, the both of you.”

  “Somehow, I don’t find that hard to believe, either,” Penny laughed as the ship came upon the first cave. “As for your question, I always wanted to retire at some point. Teaching was great, but my life was always so busy. I always romanticized the quiet life, to a degree, though I could never imagine not doing something with my time at all. After I’d lived in the Keys for a while for work, it became an obvious next move.”

  “Is the quiet life turning out as you expected?” Ethan asked with a kind expression on his face that only served to enamor Penny to him further.

  “Oh, I’d say so,” Penny said with a long sigh. “I can’t say I don’t miss the thrill of my career sometimes, though. I like to have a little excitement in my life every now and again.”

  She flashed Ethan a grin, and he returned the gesture as she turned the ship into the first cave.

  “Here we are,” she murmured. “There are flashlights under the benches, too. You might want to pull them out and shine them around, see if we can find anything.”

  She got up to adjust the sails, and the MBLIS agents did as she suggested, grabbing large black flashlights from beneath the benches and shining them into the cave, which was a small, dark, sandy area along the shoreline.

  The cave was small, and the light from the three flashlights illuminated everything fairly quickly. It was empty.

  “Are there more?” Robbie asked, sounding more than a little disappointed.

  “There are two more,” she assured him. “The next one’s not too far away.”

  “I haven’t seen any of the cocaine packets in a while,” Sylvia pointed out. “Not for about ten minutes at least.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” Penny explained as she sat back down and maneuvered the ship back out of the small cave. “I know the water seems calm around this area, but it still flows. If a shipwreck happened a few days ago, it’s not inconceivable that the packets floated into the harbor since then.”

  Penny brought the ship back around, and they continued to glide across the water beneath the great blue sky as she headed northwest toward the second cave.

  “This is a nice ship you have here,” Ethan said. “I bet the tourists love it.”

  “Some of them do,” she chuckled, rolling her eyes. “There are always complainers, and people who are afraid of the water, but seeing a kid’s face light up who’s never been at sea before, or on a boat like this, makes it all worth it.”

  “I can imagine,” he said, and he really did seem impressed.

  “Maybe that’s a way you can retire, Marston,” Robbie called over to him. “Stay at sea, but without all the stress of work.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Ethan chuckled. “I’ve told you a million times that I’m only retiring when they won’t let me work anymore.”

  “The quiet life isn’t for you, huh?” Penny asked, not at all surprised by this, either. He certainly seemed like a man who was married to his work. The others, a little less so. She knew the type well.

  “I don’t think so,” he confirmed with a small smile. “Though as of late, I’m starting to see the appeal of a low-stress lifestyle.”

  Penny maneuvered the boat around the corner and into the next cave, and the agents got their flashlights at the ready.

  “It sounds like there might be a story behind that, too,” she said, glancing over at him.

  “You could say that,” he chuckled, but the smile vanished from his face as the light from his flashlight illuminated the broken carcass of a small ship inside the cave.

  11

  Ethan

  I froze when my flashlight beam landed on the ship. It was a small cargo ship, white and sporting wooden crates that had been strewn across the cave in the crash. Some of them had fallen overboard, sending soaking cocaine packets to blanket the floor of the small cave.

  I glanced back at Penny from where I still stood next to the bench on the ship.

  “Was there a storm a few nights ago?” I asked.

  “There are always storms around here,” she said with a shrug, also making sure to keep her voice low. “I don’t remember a particularly bad one lately, but that doesn’t really mean much. I’m used to it at this point.”

  “Thunder kept me up a couple of nights after Birn and I got here,” Muñoz said, leaning in close to me as she spoke. “It was pretty bad.”

  “See? I didn’t even notice that,” Penny said with a low chuckle.

  “That would’ve been about a week ago, then,” I said, nodding slowly. “Which would’ve given enough time for the drugs to float into the harbor since then. The question is, where are the sailors who were on this thing?”

  “Come on, let’s go check it out,” Holm hissed, waving us all forward, one hand gripping his flashlight and the other his firearm.

  I followed close behind him in a similar position, stopping only to let Muñoz and Penny go in front of me so I would bring up the flank. Penny had a weapon of her own at the ready in no time, in classic ex-military fashion.

  Cautiously, we exited the sailboat and made our way along the side of the cave opposite the crashed ship, where there was a thin ledge we could walk on without getting wet. Other than this, the cave was full of water, though it was probably only about shoulder deep.

  We all beamed our flashlights across the shipwreck as we passed it, including Penny, who had been carrying a flashlight of her own somewhere in her tool belt along with her firearm. There were piles and piles of the cocaine packets all over the place, many of them stacked along the side of the cave where they had fallen out of the ship, and a few others spread sporadically throughout the water bed. Most of those that weren’t stacked had probably already floated down to the bay where Penny and the pelicans had found them the day before.

  Finally, Holm’s flashlight beam stalled on what looked like a piece of fabric floating atop the water at the edge of the cave, near the rear of the shipwreck. Cautiously, my partner took a step or two forward to get closer until he was about knee deep in the water. Whatever was floating out there shifted from the ripples this movement created, bringing it into better view.

  It was the body of a dead man, his skin and limbs bloated and almost inhuman-looking from the extended time seeping in the water since he died.

  “Does he look familiar to you at all?” Muñoz asked Penny quietly, practically whispering in her ear. “Like any of those strange guys you’ve seen walking around lately?”

  “Hell if I know,” Penny scoffed, shaking her head as she peered down at the body. “I doubt his own mother would even recognize him now.”

  “That’s not a bad point,” I whispered, prying my eyes away from the warped corpse just in time to see something shifting out of the corner of my eye to my left.

  There was an accompanying scuttling noise that ca
me with the noise.

  I exchanged a look with Penny, and I could see my own expression mirrored on her face. There was someone there in that cave with us and the sailor’s corpse.

  I rested my flashlight on my wrist and placed both hands on my firearm. The other three followed suit.

  “You’re surrounded,” Holm called out, his voice calm and measured as we all squinted as hard as we could to try to see who was in there with us. “You make any false move, and we shoot. You’ve got three federal agents and a naval officer in here with you, so I would choose your actions carefully if I were you. Come out and show yourself with your hands in the air.”

  I squinted again, trying to make out any more movements. But I couldn’t see anything. Whatever had flickered across the corner of my vision was gone now, hidden behind the shipwreck itself.

  “It would be hard to believe someone would last a week in here alone,” Muñoz muttered. “That corpse looks like it belonged to a Jamaican man, which lines up with what Penny was saying about seeing Caribbean men in the area. That’s not a very long journey from here, so they can’t have packed that many supplies. And even if they did, a week without shelter, especially in a bad storm, can’t have been good for him.”

  “You’d be surprised what some people can handle,” I murmured, thinking back to some things I’d seen in my time with the SEALs. “But for the most part, you’re not wrong. It would be very difficult to survive all that.”

  “It might just have been an animal,” Holm suggested, though even he didn’t sound convinced of this.

  “It would be even less likely for an animal to make its way out here than it would for a passenger to survive this long,” Penny said, putting a swift end to that idea.

  “Are you sure you guys saw an actual person?” Muñoz started to ask. “It could’ve just been a piece of the ship shifting or falling or…”

  But her voice was cut off by the earsplitting sound of gunfire in the enclosed area, and I instinctively grabbed Penny’s arm and pulled her down to the floor of the cave with me, turning off my flashlight quickly as I did so as not to draw attention to us.