****
"Have you figured out what's wrong with it?" Gerald asked as Nick studied the circuit board on the chart table.
Nick shook his head, rubbing his chin with his right hand. "Nothing obvious. I was hoping to see some corrosion on one of the board-edge connectors, or maybe a loose jumper, but it all looks okay."
"Can we keep on with just the magnetometer?" Gerald asked.
"Waste of time. We'd have to retrace our search grid again once we got the sonar working. Otherwise, we'd have to dive on every magnetic anomaly between here and Barbuda."
"Can it be fixed locally?"
"If I can get it into a lab with some decent test equipment, I might be able to fix it. At least then I can figure out what's wrong. Not sure a local technician would add much."
"Any idea where we'd find a lab like that?" Gerald asked.
"Yeah, maybe. I looked in one of the guidebooks." Nick indicated the bookshelf over the chart table with a tip of his head. "There's a place in English Harbour that services all kinds of radio and electronics equipment. They might have the stuff I need."
"Sounds like that's worth a shot," Gerald said. "I'll go up and talk to Dani about it, if you think that's the way to go."
"Might as well, I guess. The book said there are a couple of pretty nice resorts there; good place to look for some babes to help pass the time if we have to wait on parts or something," Nick said.
"I've seen you checking out Liz, you hound," Gerald chided. "Strike out already?"
"No, man. Too early in the game to start messing around so close to home. We gotta work with these two, maybe for a long time. Don't want to complicate things. Maybe when we're closer to done, ... well, ... you know."
Gerald nodded and turned to mount the companionway ladder. He was impressed with Nick; the guy knew his business, but he had street smarts, too. Gerald had the hots for Dani, but he hadn't considered the risk of pissing her off. Nick was right. It would be better to do his catting around a little farther from the workplace. He settled himself on the cockpit seat and grinned at Dani.
"Nick get it fixed?" she asked.
Gerald shook his head. "He wants to go to English Harbour. There's a repair shop there; he thinks they might let him use some of their stuff."
"This afternoon?" she asked.
"Right. That a problem?"
"No. Not at all," she said glancing at her wrist watch and then at Liz.
"I'll call about space on the quay," Liz volunteered. "Will you and Nick be staying aboard tonight?"
"Nick said there were some nice resorts there. You know someplace convenient?"
Liz thought for a moment. "The Admiral's Inn is right there in the national park at Nelson's Dockyard. It's nice, and you couldn't ask for anything more convenient. Want me to book you in there?"
"That would be great. Two rooms, please." He reached into his pocket and extracted a credit card, passing it to Liz.
Chapter 4
"I'm beginning to feel excluded," Liz said, sipping from her glass of chilled Sancerre. She and Dani were at the table in Vengeance's saloon, finishing dinner. Their guests had left as soon as Vengeance was tied to the dock. The two men said that they would be back around 8:30 the next morning.
"No kidding," Dani said. "It's easy money, but it certainly feels odd. It's like they're going out of their way to avoid staying aboard longer than they have to."
"Wonder what Nick's got in that watertight case he guards so carefully?" Liz asked.
"He keeps his laptop in there, but who knows what else?" Dani said.
"His charts," Liz said. "I just realized it. He's careful to keep them out of sight — only takes them out when he's working on them."
"You're right; he's quick to cover them any time I walk past the chart table while he's studying them. Guess they must have some wrecks marked that he doesn't want to share. He's careful about that laptop, too."
"Yeah, it's got all the data from his side-scan sonar and the magnetometer," Liz said.
"I suppose you can't be too careful in the treasure-hunting game," Dani said. "They must be doing their analysis in the evenings ashore."
"That's a pain for them," Liz said. "Makes me think you're probably right about Yates looking for something more valuable than family mementos."
"Nick told you he used to work for a treasure hunter, right?"
"Yes, but he acted like he wasn't sure whether the guy was legit. He thought the man might have been just fleecing investors."
"Nick learned to use that equipment somewhere. He seems to know what he's doing."
"The Navy," Liz said.
"Oh, yeah. Seems like an odd skill for a special ops type, but I guess you never know what they're up to."
"He said he couldn't talk about most of what he did," Liz said.
"If I told you, I'd have to kill you," Dani said, in a mocking tone.
"Something like that," Liz agreed.
"They all say that. Jerks; it means he didn't do anything worth knowing about."
"Why do you say that?" Liz asked.
"You ever hear Phillip say anything about his time in the military?"
"No. Did he have a special ops background? I didn't know that."
"My point, exactly. He's typical of the ones who really did stuff that nobody will ever know about. This guy's a poseur. He might have gotten through the training, but my bet is the only action he ever saw was in the bars."
"So what're we going to do tomorrow? Sounds like we've got at least a day to kill before he gets the sonar working again."
"I'll give the brightwork a little attention; we've got a few thin spots in the varnish around the cockpit coaming and the gunwales. Want to help?"
"I might as well. I sure don't need to go grocery shopping. Wish we had known they weren't going to be taking their meals aboard. I'm over-provisioned."
"I can tell; if you keep cooking like this, I'll have to start jogging or something."
****
"I'm in love," Gerald said, staring at the tall, deeply tanned woman sitting by herself on the other side of the dining room. Her honey-blonde hair cascaded in waves over her bare shoulders, and he'd caught a glimpse of flashing emerald-green eyes when she glanced up from the book that held her attention. He watched as she shifted her long, well-muscled legs, the short, white skirt riding up on her thighs.
Nick smirked. "Lust."
"That, too," Gerald agreed.
"Why don't you buy her a drink?"
"She's avoiding my eye; I can't get her attention."
"Wimp," Nick said. "Whaddaya got to lose?"
As Gerald considered his response, the waiter approached.
"Here's your chance. C'mon, go for it," Nick needled him.
"Excuse me, Mr. Yates," the waiter said as he handed Gerald an engraved calling card. "The gentleman over there asked me to give this to you."
Gerald looked in the direction of the waiter's discreet gesture, spotting a small, well-groomed man with shiny black hair drawn tightly back into a long ponytail. The man had on a linen jacket with dark slacks and a sport shirt that was open at the neck, the collar spread over the lapels of the jacket. His feet were in a well-worn pair of deck shoes, and his ankles were bare. He gestured with his head for Gerald to follow him as he stepped back into a dimly lighted corridor. Gerald looked down at the card. "Marcus Aurelius Jackson," he muttered, a chill running down his spine. There was nothing on the card but the name, engraved in a classic typeface.
He slipped the card into his pocket as he stood up. "Wait for me," he muttered as Nick raised his eyebrows in curiosity.
The man was waiting in the gloom, smiling in a way that made Gerald's skin crawl. As Gerald approached, the man nodded and turned, opening a door that led outside. Gerald followed him uneasily. When the door clicked shut behind him, Gerald saw the man with the ponytail stop and turn to face him, looking past Gerald and nodding, his sick smile still in place.
"What ... " Gerald stopped as he fel
t his left arm being swept behind him by someone with a feather-light grip. He moved to snatch his wrist away, but he was slammed into the rough stone wall of the Admiral's Inn with stunning force. He felt himself being turned, almost as if by a dance partner, to face the smiling man with the ponytail. His left arm felt numb, and he realized that he was completely at the mercy of whoever was behind him.
The man with the ponytail extended his left hand, grasping Gerald's right wrist and lifting his hand, holding it midway between their faces. With his right hand, the man grasped Gerald's little finger, his thumb on the knuckle, his index and middle fingers locking the digit in place. He applied pressure with his thumb, bending the knuckle backward. Gerald's eyes filled with tears of pain.
"Mr. Jackson wanted us to say hello," the man said, still smiling. "He worries that you might forget him."
"N-no!" Gerald protested.
"No. Of course not," the man agreed. "You know, Mr. Yates, you're a lucky man."
Gerald was unable to speak as the pain built in his finger. He moaned.
"Do you know why I said you're lucky, Mr. Yates?"
"Why?" Gerald whined.
"Because for every week that a marker goes unpaid, Mr. Jackson has us break a finger. It's a sort of interest payment, you see." The man blinked, squeezing both eyes shut.
Gerald noticed the trail of blue-green teardrops tattooed from the corner of the man's left eye down his cheek. He moaned again.
"But Mr. Jackson told us you're special. He don't want us to break no fingers, because he said you gonna need them for scuba diving, or some shit like that." The man blinked again, and worked his tongue around in his mouth. He opened his eyes and spat in Gerald's face. "So you're lucky. For now, anyway. We jus' gonna bruise you some, so you remember that Mr. Jackson, he knows where you are." Without releasing Gerald's finger, the man kneed him in the crotch.
Gasping, Gerald felt a small hand grip his hair from behind, pulling him upright. His numb left arm was still trapped. The man with the ponytail dropped Gerald's right hand and hit him with a pile-driver of a punch in the solar plexus. Gerald's knees buckled, but whoever was behind him kept him upright. The smiling man methodically pummeled Gerald's ribs. Each blow was measured, delivered with enough force to bruise the ribs without breaking them. Gerald lost consciousness long before the beating was finished. As he slipped to the ground in the alley behind the Admiral's Inn, a diminutive Asian man, no bigger than the average 12-year-old, stepped from behind him. He and the man with the ponytail, walked away, whispering to one another.
****
Marilyn Muir watched the man at the table where Gerald had been sitting, careful to avoid his notice. She wondered where Gerald had gone; she had expected that he would appear at her table moments after he got up, perhaps with a drink, or perhaps just to introduce himself and wish her a good evening. She would have been cool toward such an unsolicited approach, but only cool enough to provoke a more serious attempt. After she decided he wasn't coming back, she began to pay a little more attention to the other man at the table.
He wasn't bad looking, she noted, if you went for Mediterranean good looks. He had thick, crinkly black hair, cut close to a well-shaped head. His dark eyes and olive skin were set off nicely by his white polo shirt, which displayed his muscular physique to its best advantage. He wasn't her type, but he wasn't hard to look at, either. He was almost too carefully turned out to be having dinner with another man.
Given the way Gerald had been checking her out before he left, it could be that the two men were on the prowl for women. That could account for his careful grooming, and it would be in keeping with Gerald's reputation.
She knew now that the man who was traveling with Gerald was named Nick Thompson, and that he had been making a living recently as a salvage diver. As best the investigator had been able to learn so far, Thompson had no police record. His former employer had been hesitant to provide much information beyond saying that he had hired the man based on his Navy training, and that Thompson had resigned for reasons of his own.
It had been too late in the day for the investigator to follow up on Thompson's Navy service, but he indicated that he would not have much difficulty with that, given a day or two. Marilyn believed in thorough preparation; she would not leave anything to chance if she could avoid it. She intended to know exactly what Gerald was up to before she embarked on her campaign in earnest. Based on what she already knew about him, she doubted that he brought Thompson to Antigua to share his vacation.
With Thompson's background as a salvage diver, she thought it was possible that Gerald hired him to recover the gold. She knew that Gerald's family had handed down the location of the wreck from generation to generation. She also knew that the location they had was inaccurate by miles.
End of the excerpt from Bluewater Bullion – learn more, click here.
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A Note to the Reader
Thank you for reading Bluewater Stalker, the sixth book in the Bluewater Thriller series. I hope that you enjoyed it. If so, please leave a brief review on Amazon. Reviews are of great benefit to independent authors like me; they help me more than you can imagine. They are a primary means to help new readers find my work. A few sentences can help others find the pleasure that I hope you found in this book, as well as keeping my spirits up as I work on the next one. If you would like to be notified by email when I release a new book or have a sale or giveaway, please click here to subscribe to my email list. I promise not to use the list for anything else; I dislike spam as much as you do.
If you haven't read the other Bluewater Thrillers, please take a look at them. If you enjoyed this book, you'll enjoy them as well. I write another series of sailing thrillers: The Connie Barrera Thrillers. Connie had a key role in Deception in Savannah, my first book. I enjoyed writing about her so much that I wrote her into the Bluewater Thrillers. She plays prominent parts in both Bluewater Ice and Bluewater Betrayal. The Connie Barrera Thrillers are a spin-off from the Bluewater Thrillers, and feature some of the same characters. Dani and Liz taught Connie to sail, and they introduced her to Paul Russo, her first mate and soon-to-be husband.
In October of 2015, I released Storm Sail – a Connie Barrera Thriller, the fourth in the series. Now I've turned my attention back to Dani and Liz for the tenth Bluewater Thrillers adventure. You'll find progress reports and more information on my web page at www.clrdougherty.com. Be sure to click on the link to my blog posts; it's in the column on the right side of the web page. Dani has begun to blog about what's on her mind, and Liz and Connie are demanding equal time, so you can see what they're up to while I'm writing.
A list of my other books is on the last page; just click on a title or go to my website for more information. If you'd like to know when my next book is released, visit my author's page on Amazon and click the "Stay Up to Date" link near the upper left-hand corner. I welcome email correspondence about books, boats and sailing. My address is [email protected]. If you'd like personal updates, drop me a line at that address and let me know. Thanks again for your support.
About C.L.R. Dougherty
Charles Dougherty wrote quite a bit of fiction before publishing Deception in Savannah, his first novel. Most of his earlier fiction works took the form of business plans, written to secure funding for projects and startup ventures during his corporate and consulting work, but he put all that behind him when he wrote Deception in Savannah, a tongue-in-cheek crime novel.
Since Deception in Savannah was published, he has written a number of other books. The Bluewater Thrillers are set in the yachting world of the Caribbean and chronicle the adventures of two young women running a luxury charter yacht in a rough-and-tumble environment. The Connie Barre
ra Thrillers are also set in the Caribbean and feature some of the same characters from a slightly more romantic perspective. Besides the Bluewater Thrillers and the Connie Barrera Thrillers, he wrote The Redemption of Becky Jones, a psycho-thriller, and The Lost Tourist Franchise, a short story about one of the characters from Deception in Savannah.
He has also written two non-fiction books. Life's a Ditch is the story of how he and his wife moved aboard their sailboat, Play Actor, and their adventures along the east coast of the U.S. Dungda de Islan' relates their experiences while cruising the Caribbean.
He resides with his wife aboard Play Actor, sailing wherever their fancy and the trade winds take them.
Other Books by C.L.R. Dougherty
Fiction:
Bluewater Killer
Bluewater Vengeance
Bluewater Voodoo
Bluewater Ice
Bluewater Betrayal
Bluewater Stalker
Bluewater Bullion
Bluewater Rendezvous
Bluewater Ganja
Bluewater Jailbird
Bluewater Drone
Bluewater Thrillers Boxed Set; Books 1-3
Love for Sail - a Connie Barrera Thriller
Sailor's Delight – a Connie Barrera Thriller
A Blast to Sail – a Connie Barrera Thriller
Storm Sail - a Connie Barrera Thriller
Running Under Sail - a Connie Barrera Thriller
Sails Job - a Connie Barrera Thriller
From Deception to Betrayal - an Introduction to Connie Barrera: a boxed set
Deception in Savannah
The Redemption of Becky Jones
Short Story:
The Lost Tourist Franchise
Non-fiction:
Dungda de Islan'
Bluewater Stalker: The Sixth Novel in the Caribbean Mystery and Adventure Series (Bluewater Thrillers Book 6) Page 23
