Avenged in the Keys

by Rief, Matthew

  I nodded. It was a smart play, and as good as any strategy that I could think of. We kept talking and downing our coffee until Pete returned with a tired and hungry Atticus. He trudged into the saloon, tried his best to be excited to see us, then plopped down on the deck and sighed.

  I feel you, boy.

  We thanked Jane for everything, then led her topside.

  “You guys did good with all this,” she said. “Not that I expect anything less from you.” Her eyes scanned between me, Ange, and Pete, then focused out over the harbor. “But you can relax now. The police are on it, and I have no doubt that we’ll track these guys down. It’s just a matter of time.”

  She stepped back down the dock toward her police cruiser parked in the first row of the marina lot. After a brief moment of silence, Pete patted us both on the back.

  “Well, I say we head over to my place and get some grub. I’d intended to have a bit of a celebration tonight on account of finding the gold, but we can still enjoy ourselves.”

  The wise sea dog was right. No need to hang our heads and stress over things we couldn’t control. We locked up the boat, then headed for shore with Atticus leading the pack. We waited a few minutes for Jack to finish up some work, then the five of us loaded into my Tacoma and we drove over to Salty Pete’s.

  The place was packed, but Pete had called ahead, and Mia had saved us a table in the corner of the balcony. Scarlett and Harper met us there, and we all caught up, regaling the group with the story of how we’d tracked down the gold, dug it up, then how we’d been attacked unexpectedly by Lynch.

  Pete did most of the talking. He was by far the best storyteller among us. He was always telling sea stories—tall tales of ocean, adventure, and danger. He usually had to embellish his stories, liven them up a bit with a pinch of fiction, but not this time. The truth fit the cliché of being truly stranger than fiction.

  We ordered a sea of deliciously appointed plates featuring dozens of oysters on the half, pounds of steamed shrimp swimming in melted butter and coated in old bay, steamed clams, and freshly fried conch fritters. I ordered a few mojitos, the Cuban cocktail that had been my drink of choice for years. Ange downed a tequila sunrise followed by a mai tai, two of her favorites, and we all relaxed and savored the company and moments as the evening ticked away.

  We admired the sunset, able to enjoy the spectacle from the perched view on the balcony. When sol vanished, peopled all over our island paradise belted out their ceremonial conch horns.

  By the time we finished our food, we were all stuffed, barely able to nibble at the Key lime pie Mia dropped before us with a wink. We thanked our friends for the day, and the fun evening, then Ange, Scarlett, and I weaved our way down to the parking lot.

  Ange and I were both slightly buzzed, and though I knew I was well below the legal limit, I relinquished the keys to Scarlett. Having possessed her learner’s permit for just long enough to allow her to drive at night, she beamed, snatched them from me and jumped into the driver’s seat.

  “You know, this kid’s really starting to pay off,” I joked as I sprawled out on the backseat.

  They both laughed as Scarlett adjusted her seat forward a few inches, then started up the engine. I rolled my window down, enjoying the fresh, relatively cool evening air as she put it in gear and drove us out of the lot.

  She drove pretty good. She had a heavy foot and she got a little flustered at a busy intersection, but her improvement over the past month was obvious.

  “We’re terrible parents,” I said to Ange.

  She and Scarlett were chatting it up in the front, and they both stopped and chuckled at my words.

  “What are you talking about, babe?”

  “It’s too late,” I said. “We shouldn’t be keeping her out this late.”

  “It’s Friday, Dad,” Scarlett said.

  They both laughed again, and I shook my head, trying to remember how many drinks I’d consumed. More than I had in a while.

  One too many, I guess.

  We made it home without a hitch, then sauntered up into the house. After saying good night to Scarlett and thanking her for the ride, Ange and I headed into the master bedroom. Shutting the door behind us, Ange dimmed the lights, then switched on a noise machine that played a loop of crashing waves.

  “You know, it’s been a few days,” she said seductively. She strolled right up to me, pressed her body against mine, and kissed me softly. “That’s an eternity for us,” she whispered.

  “Oh, I see,” I said, leaning back an inch from her cherry red lips. “You were trying to get me drunk?”

  “Trying?” she chuckled. “I did get you drunk, Dodge. And of course it was on purpose. You’ve been too high-strung lately. Release those inhibitions. You need to embrace your inner conch.”

  I pressed my lips back to hers, savoring the sweet taste and soft sensation. Bending my knees slightly, I wrapped my arms around her and lifted her off the floor. Diving deeper into our passionate kiss, I twisted her around, then dropped her softly onto our king-sized bed. We lost ourselves in each other’s arms long into the night. We finally passed out to the sound of wind dancing the palm fronds just outside our open window, our tired, sweat-coated bodies pressed to each other.

  THIRTY-NINE

  We slept in the following morning. I woke on my back with my head resting against the pillow and Ange’s body draped over me. Glancing at my nightstand clock, I saw that it was just after six. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept in so late. I tilted my head and admired Ange’s peaceful face and her chest as it rose up and down slightly with each breath.

  Worth it.

  Not wanting to leave her warmth, I stayed with her under the covers and fell back asleep, then we both woke up an hour later to the sound of Scarlett and Atticus playing in the living room.

  “I thought normal teenaged girls cherished their sleep,” Ange said, blinking and brushing hair from her face.

  I kissed her good morning, then slid out of bed.

  “Is anything about Scar normal?”

  I pulled on a pair of basketball shorts and a Rubio Charters T-shirt, then reached high over my head and stretched.

  “What are you thinking for breakfast?”

  “Surprise me,” she said.

  I moved into the living room, played with Scarlett and Atticus, then she and I whipped up my famous strawberry waffles. We ate out on the balcony, then spent the rest of the day doing tasks around the house. By midafternoon, we relaxed and played fetch with Atticus in the yard.

  “You took pictures, right?” Scarlett said. She was lounging in our hammock under the shade of a big umbrella. “Of the gold. You said you would.”

  I nodded. I’d completely forgotten. Sliding my phone from my pocket, I tossed it to her, testing her reflexes. She proved up to the challenge, making a Willie Mays–style basket catch.

  “Yeah, I snapped a few,” I said. “So you can see our momentary excitement.”

  I downed a big glass of water, my third in the past hour. I wasn’t hungover, but I was close. Eight years in the Navy had resulted in a near inability to get hungover—that was, unless copious amounts of alcohol was involved.

  “Hey, you guys look good here,” Scarlett said, peering at the screen. She tilted it our way so we could see. It was the selfie I’d taken of the four of us crowded around the buried treasure chest. “Even Jack looks decent,” she joked. “Who would’ve thought?”

  “Be sure and tell him that,” Ange said. “In that exact wording. I’m sure he’ll appreciate that.”

  She continued to slide through the photos as Ange and I closed our eyes and relaxed. Even Atticus had grown tired of fetch and lay sprawled out in the shade beside us and his water bowl.

  “What’s this?” Scarlett said.

  “What’s what?” I said, not bothering to open my eyes.

  “This,” she said, raising her voice slightly.

  I blinked my eyes open, glanced over at her, and saw that she wa
s aiming the screen of my phone at me. She pointed at one of my applications, a green spiderweb logo.

  “It’s a tracking program,” I said, turning my head back forward and closing my eyes again.

  “What do you use it to track?”

  “Different things.” I shrugged. “Murph, that hacker friend of ours, sent us a few of his tiny tracking devices. Most recently, we used it to follow one of Lynch’s guys by sticking it to the transom of their skiff.” She tapped her thumb on the screen to open the app and pulled the phone closer to her face. “It’s at the marina north of Turkey Point,” I added.

  I was just thinking that it might be a good time to call Jane for a quick update when Scarlett said, “Uh, this sure doesn’t look like a marina.” I looked over at her, watching as she used two fingers to zoom out on the screen. “Dad, this tracker isn’t at a marina. It’s nowhere near the water.”

  I looked at her, confused, then thought about the events of the past few days.

  “Probably confiscated by police,” I said, waving her off. “The government took over that dump. Hopefully they’ll just raze it and clear it out of there.”

  “No,” Scarlett said. “It doesn’t look like it’s at a government property either.”

  I leaned forward, then rose from my chair, Scarlett having piqued my curiosity. Ange, listening in while reading a book, migrated over as well. Scarlett pressed the phone in my face when I reached her.

  “See?” she said.

  I focused on the screen, blinking a few times. Then my jaw dropped, and I snatched the phone and got a better look.

  “Holy crap,” I whispered.

  “What is it?” Ange said, rising onto her tippy toes and leaning in for a look.

  “Scarlett’s a genius, that’s what,” I said.

  Ange froze when her eyes focused on the tracker, the little blip of red indicating a position on the GPS.

  “Wait a second,” Ange said. “That’s the—”

  “The skiff I put the tracker on is the same one that you saw yesterday, flying alongside the jet skis across the bay,” I said, finishing her train of thought. “The same one that these guys used to transport the gold.”

  “That’s where Deacon Lynch is?” Scarlett asked enthusiastically.

  I gasped. “It sure looks that way.”

  Our daughter beamed and lifted her chin toward the sky. “You’re right, Dad. I am a genius.”

  Ange and I sat in shock at the newfound intel and huddled over the screen. We couldn’t believe that Lynch’s position had been in my pocket the entire time without us knowing about it. The tracking device, and the boat I’d attached it to, hadn’t crossed my mind since we’d beaten up the guys back at the marina.

  Could one of the guys I’d fought have escaped before the police arrived?

  It was a question that I didn’t have time to ponder, but the answer was clear. Someone had escaped with the very boat I’d compromised, and they’d managed to stay under the radar and pounce on us from behind in perfect synchronization with Lynch and his jet ski crew.

  Then, it all made sense. One of Lynch’s men had been watching us in Jones Lagoon. That’s how they’d known we’d found the gold in the first place, and how they’d known when to strike. My mind flashed back to the light that had caught Ange’s eye in the northern part of Old Rhodes Key when we’d brought up the gold, and I wondered just how long we’d been watched while searching for the treasure.

  I threw those questions out of my mind for the time being. We had pressing matters to attend to. There was a good chance that we had Lynch’s position, that the white supremacist leader was right in our crosshairs, and we needed to capitalize on it.

  We zoomed out, trying to get an idea of where the tracker was coming from. It was in the middle of nowhere, beside a long dirt road ten miles outside of downtown Homestead. Focusing around the tracker, we saw a cluster of buildings and strange-looking structures surrounded by thick forest and swampland.

  Ange and I rushed upstairs and flipped open the laptop in the living room, punching the coordinates from the tracking program into Google Maps. After a brief flash, the digital map indicated the position.

  “It’s an old alligator farm,” Ange said. She did a quick search of the farm’s name, then spewed out info. “It was closed down in ’07 due to the bank foreclosing on the owners, and the place was subsequently abandoned.”

  An abandoned alligator farm in a middle of nowhere swamp? Of course that’s where Lynch and his buddies are hiding out.

  I clenched my fist instinctively, then reached for my phone.

  “We need to pounce on this,” I said. “If Lynch’s still there, he could slither away at any moment.”

  I called Jane and gave her the info, telling her that we knew where Lynch went and sending her the address.

  “Are you sure about this, Logan?” she said.

  “Positive. If Lynch isn’t there, then he was recently.”

  She told me that she’d inform the Homestead Police Department and thanked me again, and we hung up. Sliding across my applications, I clicked on the tracking program once more and looked at the beacon on the map.

  Ange smiled when I looked away and locked eyes with her.

  “I think it’s time to start giving Scarlett an allowance,” she said. “With all she’s done to help us over the past week, she’s sure earned it.”

  FORTY

  Deacon Lynch sat at an old wooden table in the run-down, dimly lit center of the alligator farm’s former main building. The windows of the abandoned structure were boarded up, the has-been attraction left to its own devices years earlier. It smelled of mildew, and bugs and various critters scurried in the corners. But Lynch didn’t notice, or care to.

  By the light of his lamp, he admired the Civil War–era gold bar in his hands. His eyes lit up as he gazed and ran his fingers over it. He’d never seen anything so beautiful.

  Scattered across the room, and the rest of the compound, were the remaining members of the Aryan Order. A small handful had recently arrived from upstate, and the rest were part of the crew that had hightailed it into Jones Lagoon, taken the gold, and vanished seemingly into thin air. The plan had worked to a T.

  He looked over at Casper, who was counting the stack of gold bars for the fifth time. He was like a kid on Christmas morning. Lynch had nine men in all. Most were in their twenties, and only a third of them had graduated high school. They were a group of misfits, outcasts from society looking for a place to belong. They’d found it with Deacon Lynch and the Aryan Order.

  For the past four years, Lynch had been peddling drugs all across Florida, using the men at various scattered locations to transport, drop off, and sell their product. It was an ever-shifting complex network, and it had funded Lynch’s growth and ammunition stockpiling.

  But admiring the gold bar in his hands and glancing at the stack behind it, Lynch knew that their operation was on the brink of exponential growth. Instead of traveling across the state with drugs and returning with wads of cash, his loyal followers were gearing up to deliver much more valuable commodities in exchange for bags of cash. They’d finally begin to realize Lynch’s ambition. They’d finally make a more powerful dent in the liberal status quo of the twisted modern American nation. And it was all thanks to an old group of ragtag Floridians who’d risked everything to fight against Lincoln and the Union oppressors of the North.

  ~ ~ ~

  Outside the decrepit structure with a faded sign above it that read “Wild Glades Alligator Farm,” Titus Fleming was making his rounds down the driveway. Trees lined both sides of the long, pothole-riddled dirt road, blocking out the sun’s light and drowning him in shadows.

  He stopped when he reached the base of the ten-foot chain-link gate at the entrance to the property. The fence ran the full length of the farm, boxing it in on all sides. Though originally installed to keep the park’s residents inside, it offered their temporary operation additional security.

  Not th
at it matters, Titus thought. The order to stand roving watches was a waste of time in his book. No one knows we’re here. And people rarely come out this way.

  As he turned to walk back up the driveway, he heard a foreign mechanical groaning sound in the distance. It got louder, and he quickly realized that it was an approaching vehicle.

  Titus stepped casually off the driveway and into the tree-and-shrub-littered shadows. The vehicle slowed as it approached the gate. Its tires crunched gravel as it veered off the main road, and it squeaked to a stop just outside the gate.

  Titus peeked over the shrubs and caught a glimpse of the vehicle. It was a police cruiser. His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared.

  What in the hell are the police doing all the way out here?

  Titus watched and waited as the police car idled. After a minute, the driver put the vehicle in park and shut off the engine. The doors opened and two officers stepped out. They both surveyed the scene through sunglasses as they sauntered straight for the gate.

  “Why exactly are we out here?” the younger of the two officers asked.

  “Our office got a tip, Blake,” Sergeant Brian Tate shrugged. “Supposedly, this is where good old Deacon Lynch ran off to. The police chief up in Key West says she heard it from a trustworthy source.”

  The two officers examined the area.

  “Looks like someone’s driven in recently,” Officer Blake said, kneeling and looking at the faint tire tracks.

  Titus cursed to himself. These guys were good. Not detectives, but still experienced patrol officers.

  “Looks like a newer lock, too,” Tate said.

  He touched the big industrial padlock securing the gate.

  “Should we break it free?” the younger officer inquired.

  “Not yet. We will when the rest arrive.”

  “They already got a warrant?”