Rolling Thunder

by Matt Lincoln

  “Yeah, Bonnie?” I finally said into the phone.

  “Ethan! Can you come down to the lab?” she said excitedly.

  I blinked a few times. At least this didn’t sound like bad news. “I will, but only if you answer a question for me,” I told her.

  She hesitated for a second. “Okay, what?”

  “What the hell are you doing in the lab at four in the morning?” I teased.

  A laugh responded. “Oh, you know me and Clyde. There’s always something to do, right? Besides, we had to make sure you guys came back okay.”

  “You could’ve done that from home, you know,” I said with a chuckle. “Any chance you could tell me why I’m coming down to the lab?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  “Good or bad?”

  “Really good,” she said. “And it’s not about the case.”

  I smiled. “I’m actually relieved to hear that. Be there in a few minutes,” I said before ending the call.

  When I replaced my phone and turned back, Holm was glowering at me. “Listen, I don’t know what that was all about, but my bed is not in the lab,” he said. “Unless you really, desperately need me down there, count me out.”

  “Go home,” I said with a smirk. “She didn’t tell me what they want. Whatever it is, I’ll fill you in tomorrow.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “I’m out of here.”

  He headed for the stairs, and Diane left as well, saying she had a few things to wrap up in her office before she headed home. That left me alone in the corridor with Tessa.

  Just what I’d been hoping for earlier in the day, but I was too wiped out to take advantage of it. Instead, I took her hand loosely and smiled.

  “Looks like I have a minor delay before we get out of here,” I said. “That is, assuming you want to stay on my boat again tonight? It’s safe to go back to the hotel, but it’s a little late.”

  “Plus, all my stuff’s on your boat,” she added. “Even if it wasn’t, though, I’d rather stay with you.”

  I was glad to hear that. “So, how tired are you? I do have to go downstairs for a minute. You can wait in the conference room if you’d like, but if you want to meet Bonnie and Clyde, you’re welcome to join me.”

  She smiled broadly. “You work with Bonnie and Clyde?”

  “Yeah. Not their real names, but it’s close enough.” I laughed. “I take it that means you want to come with me.”

  “Yes, please.”

  I brought her to the elevator, and we rode down in comfortable quiet. She looked around with interest as we walked down the hall to the lab, and when I brought her inside, her eyes widened in delight. “Wow, look at all this equipment,” she gushed, then flashed a grin at me. “I thought you said your job wasn’t like all those cop TV shows.”

  “Okay, well, most of it isn’t,” I conceded with a chuckle, “except maybe this part.”

  We’d only taken a few steps into the lab when Bonnie emerged from the back room with Clyde in tow. They were both smiling from ear to ear, and Bonnie carried a folder in one hand.

  “Oh, you brought company!” she called on the way toward us. “Hi, there,” she said to Tessa. “I’m so glad Ethan finally brought someone from the outside world with him. We don’t get out much.” She winked and held a hand out. “I’m Rosa Bonci, but you can call me Bonnie.”

  “Tessa Bleu,” she said happily as she shook.

  Bonnie gasped. “You mean Tessa Bleu with the National EcoStar? Oh my gosh!” she practically squealed. “I read you all the time, you know. Absolutely loved your piece on the Galapagos penguins. Oh, and the one on the Taylor oil spill? So insightful, and your photos are just fantastic!”

  Tessa looked stunned for a moment in the face of Hurricane Bonnie, but then she laughed and blushed slightly. “Thank you so much. I never really get to meet readers, and I’m delighted that you know my work.”

  “Know it and adore it,” Bonnie confirmed and then shot me a narrow-eyed glare. “Why didn’t you tell me that the Tessa Bleu took those pictures of your suspect?”

  “Er, sorry. I had no idea it was relevant to your interests,” I said. “Does that mean there’s more than one journalist named Tessa Blue?”

  Bonnie rolled her eyes at me and smiled again. “We’re not even finished with the introductions,” she said, gesturing to her partner. “This is Joe Clime, otherwise known as Clyde.”

  “Pleased to meetcha,” Clyde said as he shook hands with Tessa.

  “There, now we’re all acquainted,” Bonnie announced, obviously in a hurry to get to her big news. “You’re never going to believe what we found, Ethan. I mean, my jaw’s still on the floor.”

  It seemed to me that her jaw was attached right where it was supposed to be since she had no trouble jabbering away, but I didn’t mention that.

  “You’re right,” I drawled. “I can’t believe it, because you haven’t told me what it is yet.”

  “It’s about your skeleton. Remember when I said we might be able to identify him through DNA if we could get a match to a modern person and trace the genealogy?”

  “Yes, I remember,” I said slowly.

  She thrust the folder at me. “Well, it worked,” she said triumphantly. “I managed to extract a DNA sample, and Clyde ran it through the usual channels. Let me tell you, we were both shocked when we got a hit almost right away.”

  I glanced at the folder without opening it. “Whatever’s in here, you know I probably won’t understand a word of it. How about you just tell me?”

  “Okay, fine,” she grumbled good-naturedly. “The DNA is a partial match to someone who’s already in our database.”

  “And that person would be…?” I said as I twisted my hand in wrap-it-up gesture.

  Bonnie’s grin practically swallowed her face. “Special Agent Ethan Marston.”

  “What?” I whispered as the breath left me. “Wait a minute, that doesn’t make any sense. I must’ve left trace DNA on something, and your samples got contaminated.”

  “You know, I thought that too, at first,” Bonnie said. “So I went ahead and processed another extracted sample from a different area, with completely sterile tools, and the same results came back.”

  I shook my head. “How is that even possible?”

  “Well, you’d know if you actually looked at the report I just handed you,” Bonnie shot back, still smiling. “The remains you found in that cave belong to Lord Addison Finch-Hatton, and you are his direct descendant.”

  Suddenly I felt a little light-headed but in a good way. This might have been one hell of a bizarre coincidence, but if it was true, I wanted to believe it. Finding Lord Finch-Hatton opened up a whole world of possibilities and unlocked more potential than I ever thought possible.

  In a nutshell, it meant that if I did manage to find the Dragon’s Rogue, I had a solid claim of ownership. I was related to the original owner.

  “It’s all in there,” Bonnie said, reaching out to pat the folder. “DNA comparisons, genealogy reports, everything. You should probably just take that home with you because you look dead on your feet.”

  I gave a weak laugh. “Thanks for noticing,” I said, and looked at her fondly. “Thank you. Both of you. I can’t believe this. You went above and beyond, and I appreciate it more than I can say.”

  “You can grovel tomorrow,” Bonnie said and winked. “Go on, get out of here.”

  After a round of goodnights, I walked Tessa back out to the elevator, half-dazed and almost too excited to sleep. At least it would keep me awake for the drive home, where I was sure I’d have no problems crashing, especially with such beautiful company.

  “This is really amazing,” Tessa said quietly as we boarded the elevator. “You know, maybe that’s why your grandfather was so fascinated by the ship when he heard about it, and why you were so enthusiastic when he shared it with you.” She lifted an awed smile. “It’s in your blood.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed as her words stirred something in me, thou
gh I knew I wouldn’t be able to truly process any of this until I got some sleep. “For now, I think we should both focus on dragging ourselves out of this building, into the car, down to the marina, and directly to bed.”

  Her smile turned suggestive. “I really like that last part,” she said huskily.

  I decided that maybe sleep could wait for at least a little while after I brought her home.

  Chapter 33

  The next morning found Tessa and me on the deserted beach where it all started, at just before eleven. She had her photography equipment, and I had a bag of gear and my grandfather’s old metal detector. I might’ve only gotten four solid hours of sleep, but I felt pretty great.

  After I coordinated the plan with Holm, I’d left a message on Diane’s cell phone informing her that neither of us was coming into the office today unless there was a life-threatening emergency, and if she didn’t like it, she could fire us. We both knew damned well that she wouldn’t, and the vacation days we’d taken were so few and far between that if we combined them, it’d add up to about a year off.

  He’d just wanted to go back to bed, but I had a lot more I wanted to do, and none of it had anything to do with the Black Mambas or the Congo Kings or crime in general. I was glad to put all that out of my head for the day.

  The temperature had already hit eighty degrees, and the air was heavy with humidity. Here on the shore, though, a steady ocean breeze kept the dampness circulating and cooled things down just enough to make the atmosphere close to perfect. Days like this, I was grateful to live in Florida.

  I breathed in the fresh air and sunshine as Tessa and I walked along the sand toward the entrance to the cave. She’d already explained that she had all the shots she needed of the exterior, and she only wanted me to wait until she’d gotten broad photographs of the inside before I tracked any footprints through. I didn’t have a problem with that.

  When we reached the cave, I dumped my stuff, plunked down in the sand near the entrance and gave her a little wave as she headed in. Before long, her camera was flashing away, strobing the mouth of the cave with brilliant white snaps of light. The tide would’ve come and gone by now to wash away any blood evidence that remained of the murder, creating the untouched scene she’d been trying to capture in the first place.

  Nature always reclaimed what humans destroyed, one way or another.

  The warm sun and the comforting breeze conspired against me, and my eyes started to dip closed. I actually nodded off a few times, and I had to stop myself from stretching out in the sand for a quick nap. I hadn’t been this relaxed in a long time.

  I gave myself a few more moments of lazing on the ground, and then pushed to my feet and stretched, jogging in place for a minute or two to get my blood circulating. I was brushing the sand off my backside when Tessa popped her head out and smiled at me.

  “You can come in now,” she said.

  “Thanks, boss,” I quipped.

  “Hey, this is my scene to protect now.” She beckoned, and I grinned as I hefted the backpack and metal detector before walking into the cave.

  Tessa was crouched next to the tide pool, flashing away. “I’ll have to get the micro-lens out and take close shots, but that can wait a while,” she said without looking up. “I want to see what you find.”

  “Probably nothing, but it’s worth a shot,” I said with a shrug.

  She popped off three more pictures, and then straightened and stowed the camera in her back. “So, how do we search a cave for pirate treasure?” she asked with genuine excitement apparent in her voice.

  “First,” I said as I moved past her toward the back of the cave where we’d found Lord Addison and his smashed pinnace, “let there be light.”

  I rested my bag on the cave floor, unzipped the main compartment, and pulled out two battery-powered lanterns. I switched them on, and a cheerful glow filled the space, casting twisted shadows on the walls behind groupings of stalagmites.

  Once I’d positioned the lanterns on either side of the long-dead English lord’s final resting place, I picked up the metal detector and powered it up, listening to the comforting whine I’d heard so many times as a boy.

  “Now,” I said with a grin, “we can look for treasure.”

  “How does it work?” she asked.

  I showed her the best way to hold the grip with one hand and the stem with the other, to allow for slow movements that covered every inch of ground without straining the wrists of the operator, and pointed out the LED bulb that would start flashing when the sensor was close to buried metal and glow solid once it was directly above.

  “It makes kind of a squidgy beeping sound when it lights up,” I explained.

  Her face crinkled in amusement. “I think squidgy is my new favorite word.”

  “Oh, so journalists have favorite words?”

  “Yep. My previous favorite word was ‘indubitably,’” Tessa said with a nod. “It’s just really fun to say.”

  “Huh, I guess it is.” I laughed. “Never thought about that.”

  I watched Tessa as she covered a sizeable area of ground in the vicinity of the old shipwreck. After several minutes of silence from the metal detector, she handed the metal detector to me and said, “I think you should try. I’ll bet this machine likes you better.”

  “Sure, it does,” I said with a smirk as I took over and positioned my hands. “Really, I doubt there’s anything else to find.”

  “But there could be,” she urged. “Keep going.”

  I shrugged and started passing the dish-shaped sensor across the ground in slow sweeps. The movement was familiar, comforting, and I smiled as my grandfather’s face flashed through my mind.

  You treat that machine like she’s your lover now, Ethan. Baby her real good, and she’ll reward you and give up her treasures.

  I’d been twelve the first time he said that to me, and it took me a few years after that to fully grasp the double entendre.

  “So,” Tessa said after I’d been sweeping for a few minutes, “how do you think Lord Addison ended up here? I mean, pirates stole the Dragon’s Rogue before he ever reached his first destination, but somehow, he ended up in their ship-to-shore boat, so apparently, they didn’t kill him.”

  I was pleased that she remembered so much of what I’d told her. “You know, I’d been wondering the same thing,” I mused. “I can think of a few scenarios.”

  “Ooh, investigative guesses. Let’s hear them,” she enthused.

  “The first thought I’d had was that he escaped in the confusion when the ship was boarded and managed to shove off in the pinnace without anyone noticing,” I conjectured. “It would’ve been possible, though not likely, with a night raid. That theory doesn’t pan out, though.” I glanced over my shoulder at her. “Know why?”

  She thought for a moment and brightened. “Because the pirates burned that brand into the smaller boat, so it wouldn’t have been there if he escaped right away.”

  “You got it.” I smiled. “So that leaves the second most likely scenario, and the one I believe is true.”

  “Which is?”

  “Lord Addison joined the crew.” I nodded to myself as I completed a full-length sweep of the cave floor and moved a pace ahead to scan the next strip of land. “It was pretty common for pirates to keep captives around and use them for labor, provided they acted docile and cooperative. If the captives ended up trying to fight back later, they’d just shoot them.” I shrugged. “Chances are he was on the ship the whole time, until it went down.”

  Tessa gave a delighted laugh. “That seems like a smart choice. Between ‘swab the deck’ and ‘die,’ I’d take the mop every time.”

  I decided not to tell her that there were a lot less pleasant duties than pushing a mop that pirates liked to have their captive labor perform.

  I’d almost reached the far side of the cave with the metal detector, and I was about to inform Tessa that the treasure hunt was being called in favor of relaxing for the rest of
the day when the machine let out a little burble and the green light flashed weakly.

  Tessa gasped and rushed over. “Did that just make a noise?”

  “Yeah, I think it did,” I said with faint surprise as I moved the sensor even slower than before. It was probably just a metal bottlecap washed up by the tide. At best, it could be another piece of the shattered pinnace with a few rusty nails in it.

  Nothing happened when I eased the detector to the left. When I swung it to the right, the light flashed stronger and the warble-beep lasted longer.

  “So that’s what squidgy sounds like.” Tessa laughed.

  She kept her hands on my shoulders as I moved the dish of the detector around until I pinpointed the place where the beeping drew into a solid note and the light stayed steady. I scuffed a divot into the sand with a foot, then carefully set the machine aside on the ground.

  “It’s a strong signal, so whatever it is shouldn’t be too deep,” I told her as I knelt on the ground and started scraping sand away.

  Tessa hunkered down beside me to watch. I dug a hole with my hands, sifting the sand through my fingers with each shallow scoop. Less than a foot down, I brushed something rough and damp.

  I cleared out enough sand to uncover the surface of what I’d felt. It looked like burlap. Very old burlap.

  Both of us held our breath as I dug the object out of the ground. It was a small, worn sack about the size of a sandwich bag, pulled closed with a threadbare drawstring… and it was heavy. Several objects inside it shifted and clinked together as I lifted it.

  There was a cigarette burn-sized hole in the side of the bag, and something gleamed mellowly behind it.

  “Oh, my God,” Tessa breathed. “Is that…?”

  I couldn’t speak as I eased the drawstring opened gently, trying not to break the material any further. I peered inside and sucked in a shocked breath.

  The sack was full of gold coins. Actual pirate treasure.

  “I don’t believe it,” I said, a slow grin spreading on my face as I reached in and plucked out one of the coins. “Think this was Lord Addison’s retirement package or what?”