Ange and I showered and changed into fresh clothes, then headed into the backyard to relax and play with Atticus for a few hours. The happy yellow Lab loved pretty much everything, but I think his favorite was playing fetch. He relished the opportunity to show off his running, catching, and retrieving skills, especially when there was an audience.
We ordered a stack of pies from Duetto Pizza and Gelato at half past seven. The boxes of round Italian masterpieces arrived just before Jack and Isaac showed up, and we all ate out on the back patio while watching the sunset over the channel. Everyone had a good time, just relaxing and enjoying the food and company. It felt good to be back among family and friends. Even though Ange and I had only been gone for barely over a day, it had felt a lot longer.
We told them all about our encounters with the Aryan Order. My freedive in Jones Lagoon, the altercation on the Baia, the scuffle at Teddy’s Marina, and eventually the wild late-night boat chase.
“That’s a new use for a towfish,” Jack said with a laugh. “We’ll have to contact the manufacturer and let them know to add that to the product’s sales page. ‘Not only a prospector’s dream, but this baby’s excellent for stopping bad guys in their tracks!’”
We all laughed, then Scarlett and Isaac told the others about their visit with Professor Ashwood. The look in Jack’s eyes told me that the idea of us going after the gold lit a fire within him. But I wasn’t thinking about the gold or Lynch. I was just looking to enjoy an evening with friends and regale each other with wild sea stories, both factual and fictional.
We finished off the pizza as the last remnants of the sun sank into the palm trees and water. We washed the food down with Paradise Sunset beers and lemonade, then spent another half hour on the porch before heading inside.
While we tidied up, Harper fell quiet, then approached Ange and me.
“If it’s all right with you both,” she said, “I’d like to stay here another night… I just… I just don’t want to be alone right now. Not yet.”
Ange stepped over and wrapped an arm around her.
“Stay as long as you want,” she said. “Our house is your house.”
“Jack, you’re welcome to stay as well,” I said as he popped open the fridge for another beer. “We’ve got a few air mattresses if you’re tired of the couch.”
“And we’re watching a classic movie that I apparently need to see,” Scarlett said. “Harris Mueller.”
Jack stared at her, confused.
“It’s Ferris Bueller, Scar,” I said.
Jack’s eyes widened like he’d just seen a ghost.
“You’ve never seen…” He was at a loss for words. First time for everything, I guess. After a few seconds, he found some. “All right, I’m staying. Pop in the disc. Time to show this kid what a real comedy looks like.”
I was eager for her to see it as well. It’s funny how watching someone else’s reactions to seeing a movie for the first time is nearly as enjoyable as seeing it yourself for the first time. You get to re-experience and capture some of the original movie magic from their expressions. Their laughter, and their oohs and aahs.
We microwaved a few bags of popcorn, then settled around the television. After just five minutes, Scarlett was hooked, devouring piece after piece of popcorn while laughing hysterically and keeping her eyes glued on the screen.
Not only is the movie hilarious, but I’d figured that she’d identify with the lead. Like Broderick’s classic character, Scarlett had off-the-charts confidence and an excitement for life that was infectious.
When the movie ended with Principal Rooney taking the humiliating slog to the back of the school bus, Scarlett stood up and animatedly proclaimed that it was her new favorite movie.
Jack chuckled. “There’s hope for your generation after all,” he said.
After the movie, we cleaned up, then headed off to bed. Harper stayed with Scarlett in her room, and Jack and Isaac claimed the couch and an inflatable mattress in the living room. After the long day we’d had, and the broken hours of sleep the night before, Ange and I passed out quick, lulled to sleep by the sound of palm fronds swaying with the breeze just outside our window.
TWENTY-SIX
Deacon Lynch sat on a torn-up blue recliner in the small living room of his single-wide. In his left hand, he held a small glass half-filled with scotch. In his right, he held an open book. It was an old, faded copy of Mein Kampf that had belonged to his father. The pages were tattered, many of the corners folded over, and notes were written in the margins.
Lynch looked away from the page to think about a passage, then took a sip of scotch. Reading had been a favorite escape of his since childhood, and the autobiographical manifesto written by Adolf Hitler was his favorite.
He let the words sink in while trying to think up a solution for his current predicament. Lynch had been fascinated by the story of the Avengers and their lost Confederate treasure for years. He’d spent countless hours on online treasure hunting forums, checking every day and paying special attention to artifacts discovered in the Keys and Biscayne Bay.
After seeing the picture of the Confederate belt buckle on the forum and learning where the artifact had been discovered, he’d realized its importance right away and rallied two of his on-hand troops to make a move. With John Ridley out of the picture, he’d expected the lost Civil War gold to be theirs without much pushback. He and his men were rough, and ruthless. And they were no strangers to lurking under the eyes of the law and breaking rules, then slipping back into obscurity.
But something had gone seriously wrong with his plan. A local had risen up and stepped in their way.
This vigilante must be dealt with and taught a lesson. A brutal and painful lesson.
Lynch’s cellphone was on a coffee table beside him. He’d kept the old flip-style device within arm’s reach at all times over the past twenty-four hours.
Jake must have dealt with him by now.
But he hadn’t heard from his second-in-command since the previous evening. And Lynch had tried calling. Again and again he’d tried. But every time, he got nothing. Not even an attempted connection of a call. No metronomic humming, just silence and then straight to voicemail. Jake’s phone was turned off, and the fact caused Lynch’s heart to pound and a vein to wriggle its way out of his forehead.
He took another sip of scotch.
Twirling the remains of the ice cubes, he was just about to pull the lever for the footrest and stretch to his feet when a buzzing sound perked him up. It was his phone. He set the book in his lap, grabbed his phone, and checked the screen. He was receiving a call, but it wasn’t from Jake.
“Hello?” Lynch said in his gruff voice after flipping it open.
“Deke? It’s Nix. Holy shit, am I glad to hear your voice.”
Lynch let out a long sigh. “What the hell’s going on, Casper?” he barked. “Where’s Jake? And where are you?”
“All hell broke loose at the marina. I had to bolt. Barely made it out of there with my life, and I’m still injured pretty bad.” The man caught his breath. “I stole some supplies, including a charged phone, and managed to find a place on Old Rhodes with a signal.”
“Where’s Jake?” Lynch demanded.
“He’s gone, Deke. Long gone. Happened real early this morning. Around three, I’d guess. I heard gunshots coming from across the islands. It was a few miles off. Automatics, mainly. Sounded like a real shoot-out. Then I heard two loud crashes and that was it.”
“Did you see anything?”
“Not until later on. When the coast looked clear, I motored over. That pontoon boat was wrecked and sunk. So was the utility cabin cruiser. I saw two dead bodies. One was Jake.”
Lynch fumed. The white supremacist leader jerked from his chair and gripped his phone tighter. “Who did it, Casper?”
A short, wide-shouldered man who was barely in his twenties moved down the hall and stopped in front of Lynch. The young man had a shaved head and wore a white T-shir
t with a red swastika. He’d heard Lynch from the other room and knew that something was wrong.
“It was that guy from the marina,” Casper said. “The one I warned Jake about. I saw his boat the next day. I watched from the thick brush as he, the Coast Guard, and a local police boat descended on the scene that morning.”
Lynch couldn’t believe it. It was a nightmare, but one that he couldn’t wake up from. What was he going to do? He’d bet it all on finding that damn gold. Now, he had no gold and he’d lost his best man.
“Deke, you there?” Casper said, his voice laced with worry.
“I’m here.”
“What am I supposed to do, Deke? I’m stuck out here, living off scraps that I stole. I need you to help me out of here.”
Lynch thought for a moment. The foundation of a plan entered his mind, and Casper Nix wasn’t a vital part of it. He could care less what the backstabbing marina worker did next.
“Just stay hidden for now,” Lynch said. Then he added a lie. “I’ll come up with something to get you out.”
“That’s what Jake said. Then that something he came up with got him killed.”
“I said, stay hidden.”
Lynch ended the call, flipped the phone shut and hurled it onto his recliner in frustration.
“What happened?” the young man asked.
Lynch snarled. “The bastard killed Jake.”
The young man’s jaw dropped. “What does this mean, Deke?”
Lynch paused a moment, his hands squeezing into tight fists. “It means that you’re promoted, Titus.”
“No, I mean what are we gonna do about this?”
Lynch knew what he had to do, and he didn’t like it. With his numbers so low, he couldn’t take the fight to this stranger’s turf or go looking for the gold. He needed to run and replenish his numbers.
“We’re going to the farm,” Lynch said.
Titus shuddered. “I hate that place. It’s creepy as hell.”
“Everyone hates that place. That’s why it’s perfect for our purposes. Contact the others, make sure that they know where we are. We need to regroup. Have the northern faction sell their on-hand supply of heroin and come down.” Lynch strode down the hall, then looked over his shoulder and added, “Pack up the truck. We’re leaving. Tonight.”
The young man did as his leader instructed. He and the other two remaining local members of the Aryan Order loaded up all their stuff, including crates of guns, ammunition, and explosives.
Lynch stepped out with a bag over his right shoulder and a shotgun in his left hand. He paused a moment, watching as his men finished loading up. He figured that later that evening, police would realize where they’d been hiding out, but no one would ever find them where they were going.
His enemies took him for an idiot, but Deacon Lynch was much smarter than people thought. He was far from the brainless white trash trailer park hillbilly the press made him out to be.
I can use that to my advantage. Solidify in their minds that I’m not to be worried about.
But Lynch was to be worried about. And he vowed that sooner or later, the local who’d screwed up his plans would learn that the hard way.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I awoke early the next morning following the relaxing evening and a restful night’s sleep. To shake the morning fog away and get my blood pumping, I liked to start each day off with a run. I rolled out of bed just after 0400. Forcing myself to wake up early and run was more of a mental battle than a physical one. The last thing my mind and body wanted me to do was to slip out from underneath the blanket, rise up from the soft bed, and willingly step away from the warmth of Ange’s body.
“Doing things that are good for you, especially when you don’t feel like it, builds mental toughness,” my dad always used to say. “And those little things add up to make all the difference in a person’s life.”
So I slid on my shorts, threw on a cutoff T-shirt, then laced up my running shoes and kissed Ange on the forehead. I slipped out the door to the balcony and stretched while looking out over the backyard and channel. It was still dark, but the clouds overhead left the moon alone, so the scene was tinged with a silver glow.
I did my usual run, taking off south until I hit ocean, then cutting west through the edge of downtown. I passed by the famous buoy marking the southernmost point, cut inland, then caught my breath when I reached my halfway point at the Key West Amphitheater.
I gazed out over Fort Zachary Taylor, its fifty-foot brick walls rising up from its limestone-and-granite foundation. The fort and surrounding landscape looked nothing like it had during its heyday. In old pictures I’d seen, the fort had originally jutted up from the ocean, making it an intimidating presence for passing ships. In its early days, it had been connected to mainland Key West by a twelve-hundred-foot causeway.
I tried to imagine Union captain John Brannan rounding up his forty-four men in the dead of night and sneaking across town to take control of the fort. It’d been a bold move. No doubt viewed as a seemingly reckless move at the time. Brannan had taken the initiative, followed his gut, and secured a vital asset for the Union cause.
I liked to think that if I’d been in Brannan’s shoes, I’d have done the same. It was admirable. The kind of behavior to aspire to.
While performing a few more stretches, I also tried to picture a boat full of Confederate Key Westers sneaking into the fort in the dead of night. I did my best to imagine them slipping into the fort somehow and loading up gold bar after gold bar, then creeping away as fast as they could.
How had they managed to get close without being spotted? How had they snuck into what had to have been the fort’s most protected area? And how had they loaded up the bars and hightailed it out of there without being pummeled by one of the fort’s cannons?
It was a crazy story. But I’d learned over the years that just because a story was crazy, that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t true. And if it was true, that gold was still out there.
I smiled as I thought about one of my favorite quotes by one of my favorite authors.
“To those of you who seek lost objects of history, I wish you the best of luck. They’re out there, and they’re whispering.”
I glanced at my watch, took one more look at the fort, then turned and headed back in the direction I’d come.
If anyone knows about lost objects of history, it’s Cussler.
Fifteen minutes later, I crunched onto our seashell driveway and came to a stop under our stilted house. My heart pounded and my body was coated in sweat. After catching my breath, I completed a thirty-minute circuit involving a heavy bag, pull-up variations, various kettlebell exercises, and battle rope slams. By the time I was done, I fell onto my back. I was exhausted, but I felt great.
Once upstairs, I showered, changed into fresh clothes, then hung out with Ange for half an hour before the others began to stir. We whipped up some mango french toast, along with bacon and eggs, and ate them out on the balcony. After breakfast, Ange and I dropped Scarlett off at school, then cruised over to meet up with Jack and Pete at the marina.
The Conch Harbor Marina is located in “Old Town” Key West, on the northwest part of the island. Its two mooring docks are just down the waterfront from the Key West Express, a ferry terminal that shuttles people back and forth from Fort Jefferson in Dry Tortugas, and Fort Myers. The marina is just a short walk from the bustling downtown streets and some of the best and most historic restaurants in town. It’s also just a few blocks from Mallory Square.
We met up with the guys at the marina office, a small structure that was built into the dock and extended over the water. Jack showed me the status of a project he’d been working on for the past few weeks: a pavilion on the shore that had a few benches and, when finished, would display memorabilia from the marina’s history along with a statue of Gus Henderson.
The popular local marina had been founded and operated by the Henderson family since the early 1900s. Just a few months earlie
r, Gus, the most recent owner and a good friend of ours, had been murdered by a former comrade of mine who’d wanted to provoke me. With no living kin, Gus had left the place to Jack in his will. Jack had only taken control of the marina for a few days when he’d decided to pay a special tribute to the man who’d helped make the place what it was.
We spent the morning measuring and sawing pieces of cedar for the railing. The structure was nearly complete; we were just adding the finishing touches. The statue was being sculpted by a local artist up in Fort Pierce and was scheduled to be delivered the following week. Jack planned to hold a party in Gus’s honor once the memorial was finished.
At noon, we gathered in the office for a meal of lobster rolls that Jack’s girlfriend, Lauren Sweetin, had prepared. Lauren had moved to Key West from Tennessee years prior after a nasty divorce. She’d been running snorkel and sunset cruises ever since. When Jack took over the marina, he knew he’d need help. The conch beach bum was a hard worker and had operated his charter company since he was in his early twenties, but running charters and a marina proved too much. Lauren agreed to head up marina operations, and the two made a great team, working with each other’s schedules to allow Lauren to continue taking wide-eyed tourists out on the reefs on her catamaran Sweet Dreams.
Fortunately, it was summer, so the two had a whole slow season to figure things out before the northern cold fronts swept over the States and the real crowds showed up.
Ange and I fell back into our normal island “routine” for a few days. Most of our time was spent helping Jack at the marina, spearfishing, and going out on the Baia and exploring our island paradise. Though we’d lived here for over three years, there were still many new coves, inlets, islands, and reefs that we’d never seen.
Three days after taking care of Jake Shaw and his little band of wannabe neo-Nazis, I was walking back to the marina after enjoying a sunset celebration at Mallory Square when my phone buzzed in my pocket. Sliding it out, I saw that I was receiving a call from Jane.
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