Broken Stern_An Ellie O'Conner Novel

by Jack Hardin

  It was a large picture that looked to have been taken from a CCTV camera and dated last Thursday. Three grainy figures were huddled together in what looked like a subway car. They wore thick trench coats and fur papakhas on their heads. Russians, Ellie thought. She leaned in, and her eyes scanned the faces.

  Then she fell apart.

  She gasped, touched her lips with her fingertips while her confused eyes began to fill with moisture. “It can’t be,” she whispered out loud. A thousand questions poured into her mind, like a school of fish being dumped on the deck of boat. It wasn’t possible.

  Ellie grabbed the sides of the table and struggled to breathe.

  The photo was grainy and the lighting poor, but the image of her father’s face was unmistakable.

  A lizard, a pelican, a seagull, a stray cat, all sat along various points of the Norma Jean pier. The darkness was warm and quiet. A low hum hung in the atmosphere of the dark, early morning hours and steadily grew louder. The lizard scattered, the pelican stared, the seagull darted off, and the cat hissed as the airplane pitched toward the ocean-end of the pier and slammed into it, hurling fiberglass, pilings, fire, diesel, a cat, and one ton of Colombian-picked, Mexican-processed cocaine across a two-hundred-yard radius, all of it spraying into the sky, riding on flame.

  Black packages filled with white powder bobbed along the settling wreckage, and a battered and unbreathing body floated among them.

  READ ON FOR A SNEAK PEAK OF

  SHALLOW BREEZE

  Book 2 in the Pine Island Coast Florida Suspense Series

  AVAILABLE JUNE 4th, 2018

  Ellie O’Conner stood near the end of the Norma Jean pier, her belly button nuzzled against the yellow crime scene tape that prevented curious onlookers from proceeding any further. She ducked beneath it for the third time this morning and took a few steps towards the end of the charred and fractured wood, all that remained of the last thirty feet of the pier. Three strong pilings stood almost naked out of the southern waters of Pine Island Sound and splintered wood jutted out like broken bones. The last of the Coast Guard’s 32 foot Transportable Port Security Boats were moving away in the distance, leaving the DEA and the Lee County Sheriff's Office to handle the investigation.

  Late last evening, as Ellie was trying to drift into sleep, a heavy sound popped through the still evening air, the vibrations of which were felt two miles up Pine Island. She had slipped on a tank top and a pair of shorts and ran a half mile to the southernmost point of the island. Gloria and Fu Wang were already there, gathered up with a handful of locals that lived a couple streets closer to the pier than Ellie did. As it turned out, an amphibian aircraft carrying a large load of cocaine had crashed into the pier and splintered into thousands of pieces. Its cargo had hurled out to every direction on the compass. One of the plane’s wings had ended up in the bottom floor of the Berenson’s home, the home closest to the pier. Other than that, the debris seemed to be contained to the water. Government boats had trolled the waters for the last seven hours, searching the fringes of the mangroves and shoreline for rogue kilos of cocaine. The pilot’s body was found lying upside down in the water, washed up under the front half of the pier. So far, no identification had been made. No one was optimistic that it would be.

  Ellie set her hands on her hips and scanned the water twenty feet below. Mark Palfrey, her partner with the DEA, drew his twenty foot Angler close and shouted up. “See anything else?”

  Ellie kept her eyes on the water beyond him. “No. I think we got everything that stuck around here. Anything else would be out to current by now.”

  “I’m going to check the perimeter of Cresent Island again,” he said. The Angler’s outside revved up and carved a wide arc away from the damaged pilings before shooting out through the channel markers.

  “Hello ma’am, I’m gonna have to ask you to step back behind the tape please.” The heavy Texas accent gave him away. Ellie turned to see Tyler Borland grinning at her and holding two cups of coffee. In the last eight months since Ellie had left her role as a case officer for the CIA Tyler had become a close friend, with tiny sensations occurring every so often that Ellie thought could be the harbingers of something more. He owned Reticle, a shooting range in north Cape Coral and could generally be expected to make Ellie laugh. After a night of no sleep his face was a welcome reprieve. She walked toward him and dove back under the tape.

  “This one’s for you. Straight up.” he said.

  Ellie reached out and took the paper cup. “Thanks, Tyler.”

  “I guess you’ve been out here all night?” he asked.

  She nodded and took a sip. “Yeah. We’re about wrapped up. We have the side of the plane and the engine so we’ll see if the serial numbers show anything.”

  “Think they will?” he asked.

  “I doubt it. That plane probably came from Cuba, owned by someone far from there.” They started walking down the pier towards The Salty Mangrove bar. “The Coast Guard spotted him on radar coming in from the southwest ten minutes before he crashed. With as much as he was bringing in on that plane I’m sure he’ll be a ghost where any identification is concerned.”

  “Why would his flight plan include crashing into your uncle’s pier? Sounds goofy if you ask me.”

  Ellie smiled but ignored him. Something else was bothering her. “The fact is, he was flying around here. Here, Tyler. Not Miami or New Orleans. Seems that our miles and miles of coastline have become favorable to the wrong kind of tourists. Gas being stored near the north end of the island, Pete Wellington gone missing, and now a plane loaded with blow crashing into the pier. Folks are already furious about Adam Starks’ murder. This place is known for being laid back and quiet, not for shipments of illegal drugs by the plain load.”

  “Yeah, I can see the brochure now,” Tyler said. “‘Beautiful, iconic pier to crash into. Take advantage of this offer before it’s gone forever,’ How much do you think was on there?”

  ___________________

  Shallow Breeze will be up for grabs on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited on June 4th, 2018.

  The 3rd installment of the Pine Island Coast Florida Suspense series, Bitter Tide, will be available 3 weeks after that, on June 25.

  The 4th, Vacant Shore, on July 16th, and will wrap up all the plot arcs that began in Broken Stern.

  All books in the series thereafter will be standalone and...super awesome.

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  Gratitude

  I want to thank my wife Rebekah and our kiddos for giving me the time to daydream and put these characters on the page. They’ve sacrificed much. Thanks to Wayne Stinnett for the motivation to take on a project like this and, without whom, what you have in front of you would certainly not exist. Sometimes you just need for someone to give you a shot of motivation, even if they don’t know it. Thanks, Wayne.

  I have done my best to remain faithful to the remarkable culture of both Pine Island and Matlacha [“Mat-luh-SHAY”] Like any author, I’ve had to take liberties in certain areas, most of all with the location of The Salty Mangrove Bar and Marina.

  I want to thank Whitney over at The Perfect Cup on Matlacha (yes, it’s a real plac
e) for a unsolicited sample of his incredible chowder. Seriously, you guys. If you’re ever down that way stop in and say hi to him, grab a cup of coffee. You won’t find a nicer guy. Plan to have brunch there and come in the late morning hours to avoid the crowds in the winter time. Maybe give him a thoughtful review on Yelp while you’re at it.

  Life is short, live it well.

  Jack

  May, 2018

  About Jack

  Jack Hardin currently lives in the Arlington, TX, with his stunning wife and five kiddos.

  He grew up in an Army family and spent half his childhood living in Germany, traveling all over Europe prior to the fall of the Iron Curtain. At nine years old he walked through Checkpoint Charlie and into East Berlin just one year before the Berlin Wall came down. He holds a 2nd degree black belt in Taekwondo, is proficient with bo staff and nunchucks, and has taught women's self-defense.

  Those alone do not make him awesome, but it all sounds really cool.

  He does Facebook Live often, letting you know what he’s working on and what crazy ideas are currently floating through his head. He also fields live questions during those times. So, come on, and join the fun. You can ‘Like’ the page right HERE.