Lucky Break

by Mark Stone

  She rushed back through the door that led to her living quarters.

  “It’s in here,” she answered, but as soon as we entered the kitchen, we found the place filled with smoke. “What the hell?” she muttered. “The fish couldn’t have burned this quickly. I just put it in.”

  My eyes fell on the oven itself, cutting through the smoke as much as I could. “It could if the temperature is over 700 degrees,” I said, looking at the number flashing across the digital screen.

  “That’s impossible,” Mia gasped, looking at the screen herself. “It doesn’t even go that high.”

  My eyes widened as I watched it go from 700 degrees to 750 degrees in the span of a second. “I guess it’s had some upgrades,” I answered. Grabbing the woman’s hand, I pulled her away from the kitchen and out into the living room, where the smoke wasn’t nearly as thick. “Your entire house has been messed with, taken over. We need to get off this boat as quickly as possible because I’m thinking it’s not going to be too long until that oven explodes, and then not only will we be a bullet shooting through the middle of the water, we’ll be a bullet on fire speeding through the middle of the water.” I took a deep breath of mostly clean, smoke-free air. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the person who did this orchestrated a gas leak as well. One spark and I bet this entire place goes up in flames. We have to get off this boat.”

  “How?” Mia asked. “We have life jackets and an inflatable raft on here. That’s it. Jumping off the boat at this speed would kill us, even with the raft. That’s not mentioning the fact that we seem about ten minutes away from slamming into Marco Island and killing whoever happened to be unfortunate enough to be wherever we come ashore tonight.” She shook her head. “I can’t let that happen. I have to try to find a way to stop this boat. Even if it kills me, I’ll go out trying.”

  I looked at the woman, my body tensing as I realized she was right. “God, I sound like that half the time, don’t I? Davey was right. He is a saint for putting up with me.” I nodded at the woman. “Where’s the override system? If we’ve got ten minutes left, we’d better use them.”

  “Follow me,” Mia said, turning and heading through a door in the living room I hadn’t been down. A few steps behind her, I saw the door led down a flight of steps. Descending them, I found myself in a small room that didn’t have much in it aside from a big silver box-shaped mechanism with a screen.

  “I hope you know how this thing works,” I said, looking over at Mia.

  “Kind of,” she answered. “Though, honestly, it doesn’t seem to want to work with me right now.”

  Her fingers moved frantically along a keypad as I looked at the screen. An image that looked like something you’d find from inside a submarine showed across it, a blinking dot that indicated where we were and where we were going. Mia was right. We were minutes away from crashing into a large landmass that I had to assume was Marco Island.

  “We don’t have much time,” I said. “Are you going to be able to do this?”

  “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “Do you know anything about this kind of thing? Did they not teach you about this kind of crap in the Army?”

  “The Army,” I muttered, something clicking inside my head. “Remote detonators.”

  “What?” Mia asked.

  “In the Army, we use remote detonators sometimes, and that’s what that masked person was holding in their hand. Except it wasn’t to a bomb. It was whatever the hell is causing the ship to act like this.”

  “Okay,” Mia said. “What does that mean?”

  “Having a detonator means there’s something to detonate, or in this case, to implement,” I said. “If you disable a bomb, then there’s nothing to detonate. So if I find the device, there won’t be anything to implement.” I started back toward the steps. “Keep working with this. I’m going to try to find what’s causing this and tear it into a thousand little pieces.”

  “Okay,” Mia said as I rushed up the steps. “But be quick. We don’t have a lot of time left.”

  Chapter 25

  I rushed up the stairs and back out into the living room, my heart racing. Smoke had started to pile out into the room, and I instantly saw why. Looking forward, I saw the red and orange tendrils of fire that had poured from the oven and flitted their way across the kitchen. My heart skipped a beat, thinking about the gas that I was sure had been released on the boat. I must have been wrong, though. If there had been an intentional gas leak, this place would have gone up like kindling at the first spark. Since that hadn’t happened, I could mark it down as at least one thing I didn’t have to worry about. Taking a look around the room, I figured that was a good thing. With less than ten minutes before we slammed into a heavily populated tourist island like a flaming missile of death, I had more than enough to worry about already.

  Scanning the room, I thought about where this device might have been. Something like this, something capable of taking over an entire ship the way it had, must have been hidden. Though there were phones more powerful than computers that could fit in your shirt pocket, I had to imagine something like this would be big enough to be seen. That meant it had to be hidden. I just needed to figure out where that could be.

  Given that the fire started in the kitchen and that it was a deliberate thing, I had to imagine there was no way the device would be hidden there. Flames are destructive, and whoever put this here wouldn’t want to hide it in a place where it would be damaged before it accomplished its goal.

  No. It would be somewhere where the flames couldn’t get to it. Like the letters back at George’s house, it would be placed in something the flames would have a hard time eating through. It would—

  “The letters,” I muttered, turning tail and running toward Mia’s bedroom. There were letters here as well, letters that had been stuffed into a very similar metal lock box. The device allowing the masked person to control the ship must have been in there with these letters. It was the only thing that made any sense.

  Pushing into the room, I grabbed the lock box and dumped it over. The fake letters fell out, dropping to the floor. I knelt, laying the box beside them and rifling through the letters. I didn’t care what they said. They were all lies, all meant to incriminate us after our deaths.

  It was all very clear now. This ship was meant to crash into Marco Island. It was meant to be on fire when it happened. That way, when it was finally recovered, everything would be either too smashed or burned to recover, everything except love letters meant to tell a tale of Mia and me murdering George Jenson. It was a perfect coverup, and if I wouldn’t have found the letters, it would have gone off without a hitch. Now, with the letters outside the box, they’ll burn like everything else—unless I could find the device, that is.

  Moving my hands through the papers, I cursed out loud as I came up empty. There was nothing here, nothing but stupid letters. Standing and yelling, I grabbed the mattress with both hands, turning it over and throwing the flower print comforter and way too many pillows to the floor.

  The floor underneath was immaculate. There was hardly a thing under there. Hell, if anyone would have looked under my bed, even though I had only been in that house for a few weeks now, I shuddered to think what they would have found.

  That didn’t matter, though. The only thing that mattered was that I wasn’t able to find the device. There was no second box, and since the device wasn’t in the first one, that meant it was somewhere else.

  Of course, I didn’t have time to look anywhere else. We were minutes away from death, from going splat against an island. I had one shot, and it was over now.

  Swallowing hard, I sat down against the floor. I could still feel the speed of the boat as it traveled, still feel the pull. Soon enough, that pull would transform into something much more destructive. And that would be the end of it. It would be the end of me, the end of Mia. The worst part wasn’t the idea of dying. I liked life and all that. More often than not, it was a blast. Still, the idea of death never
frightened me. It was inevitable, like being afraid of sunshine or football season. It just didn’t make any sense. Nah, the thing that really irked me about this being the end was the fact that Jack was still in danger.

  I had no idea who was behind this, but whoever it was had a bone to pick with that little boy. If I were dead, I couldn’t keep him safe, and then what would happen to him?

  As these heavy thoughts sat unwanted on my mind, I looked down at the stupid metal lock box. If only the device had been inside it. If only—

  Something caught my eye, breaking the flow of my thoughts. Leaning forward, I saw what looked like a small latch. It was painted the same color as the inside of the box and was barely visible. Still, it shone just enough against the light overhead to allow me to see it there.

  Reaching in, I pulled at the latch. To my surprise, the bottom pulled right up and under it sat a long back bar with blinking green and red lights across it. My eyes lit up every bit as brightly as the blinking lights as I saw it. This long bar, this Christmas light-themed beauty, was exactly what I had been looking for. It was the device I needed.

  “Thank God,” I said, grabbing the bar and pulling it out of the box. Tossing it on the ground, I stood quickly. “Here goes nothing,” I said, taking a deep breath as I brought my foot up and then slammed it hard against the bar, cracking the damn device in two. Two wasn’t enough, though. As far as I knew, the stupid thing could work in two pieces. I had promised myself to break it into a thousand pieces, and while that didn’t seem reasonable given my current time constraints, I sure as hell could give it a try.

  Lifting my foot again, I slammed it down hard again and again, stomping on the bar. Finally, when I was heaving and breathless, I looked down. Mercifully, the lights had gone dark.

  But if that was the case, why were we still moving?

  I could still feel the force of the boat as it moved across the Gulf. But that didn’t make any sense. If the device was out of play now and the thrust was on stop, shouldn’t the boat be stopped now?

  Maybe it needed to be reset. Maybe I needed to throw it into gear, so to speak, and then move it back to stop. That might jostle the ship into obeying commands. It was a longshot, sure, but it was the only one I had.

  Rushing to the door, I saw the fire had spread into the living room. Shaking my head, I decided not to give it too much thought. Fire was serious and all that, but a burned leg or arm was nothing compared to what would happen if the boat crashed into the island. So, with that on my mind, I ran right through the fire. If it burned, I didn’t give myself time to feel it. Instead, I rushed through the kitchen and out onto the deck.

  My eyes went wide and my throat threatened to close as I looked at exactly where we were. The lights of Marco Island shone bright in the distance, but it wasn’t much of a distance. We had a minute, maybe less, before it was too late. I had one chance. All I could do was try to jog the throttle back to life. If that didn’t work, then nothing on this ship would be alive for much longer.

  “Maybe we should have moved to Miami,” I muttered, running toward the throttle. Hopping up the steps, I dove for the golden handle. Grabbing it, I pushed it up to full mast and then back down again.

  Nothing happened.

  “Oh, come on!” I shouted, looking up at the sky. “I’m supposed to be lucky. That’s my thing, right?” I tightened my grip around the handle. “Don’t fail me now.”

  I pushed the thing back up to full mast again. I felt and heard the engines react this time, roaring in response. With my heart jumping, I pulled the thing back again, more slowly this time.

  As I did, the engines slowed more and more. Finally, we were at a crawl. Blinking a few times in a row, I looked out at the lights of Marco Island. Now that they were no longer signaling our impending doom, they were actually kind of gorgeous.

  “You did it?” a voice asked from behind me. Turning, I saw Mia there, her mouth wide and her eyes glassy. “You actually did it.”

  “What can I say?” I asked, slumping against the railing. “I’m good under pressure. Speaking of,” I added, running an exhausted hand through my hair. “Do you have a couple of extinguishers on board, because your boat is sort of on fire.”

  Chapter 26

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked, looking over at Mia from across the front hood of my car, where Mia and I both sat right now. It had been almost an hour since we’d put the fire out on her boat and sailed it back to the spot we’d launched off from. In that time, we’d just sat there, our heads spinning and our minds racing, looking up at the stars and trying to figure out our next move. Still, we weren’t hurt, at least not physically.

  “Other than the fact that my house is unlivable, I think I’m as well as can be expected,” she answered, running a hand through her hair.

  “You could stay with me,” I said seriously. “Until you get everything sorted out.”

  “I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” she answered, pursing her lips together.

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” I said, shaking my head. “I just meant that you have nowhere to live, and I feel partially responsible for that. I hate to admit it, but I think you might have been right. I think I brought trouble into your little circle here, Mia.”

  “I wasn’t right,” Mia said. “Whatever is here, it’s been here a lot longer than you. I was stupid to blame you for it.” She looked over at me, and for the first time, I saw her eyes free of any sort of animosity or contention. “All you’ve done since you got here is help. I can see that now. I can see a lot of things now. I just hope it’s not too late.”

  “It isn’t,” I said, looking at her the same way she was looking at me. “You’re a good detective, and I’m not useless. We can figure this out. The answer has to be right here in front of us. It has to be staring us in the face, and we just can’t see it.”

  “You’re far from useless, though if the answer is staring us in the face, that wouldn’t make me a very good detective.”

  “You’re as good as any I’ve ever seen,” I answered, letting a smile start across my face.

  “Have you come across a lot of detectives in your day, Mr. Lucky?” she asked, smiling back at me.

  “More than I’d like to admit,” I conceded. “Earnings of a misspent youth, I guess you could say.”

  “I did say you were a troublemaker, didn’t I?” she mused, chuckling lightly.

  “See, you’re already proving yourself as a detective,” I replied, which pulled a hearty laugh from the woman. Here, against the moonlight, still draped in her red dress with her lips painted and her once-taut hair draping her neck and shoulders, she looked more like a debutante than a detective. She looked soft, almost fragile, and dangerously inviting. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay at my place for awhile? Just until your boat is fixed up and livable, I mean.”

  Mia rolled her eyes and bit her lip. A weird sound, something like a purring, came out of her as she rolled on her side toward me. “What I want is beside the point,” she replied. “Whoever is doing this is trying to tie us in together. They’re trying to make it look like I had a relationship with not only with George, but with you too. They’re trying to make it look like we were going to kill George together. Having me move into your house, even if it is a nice and innocent gesture, would send the wrong message. It would lend credence to the story whoever this is was trying to weave with those letters.”

  “Those stupid letters,” I muttered. “We should burn them.” I looked over at the stack. Since we’d managed to put the fire out before it reached the bedroom, the letters survived. Of course, they were all lies. Or, at least, one of them was. I hadn’t actually read the others.

  “No,” Mia said, sitting upright on the hood of my car. “They’re evidence.”

  “Evidence meant to frame us,” I answered.

  “Which is a crime,” she said. “When we figure this out, this evidence will help convict whoever is responsible.”

  “It
might,” I conceded. “Or it might convict me. Either is possible, especially considering the fact that this looks to be in my handwriting. I mean, who could even do that?”

  “Someone who knew what it looked like,” she answered. “This is more than anything I’d be able to find online about you. I mean, who even writes in longhand save for a signature anymore?” She swallowed hard and looked at me. “You don’t think Davey—”

  “Don’t you dare,” I said, sitting up quickly to meet her. “He’s my best friend in the entire world. I’d trust him with my life. Hell, when we were in the Army, I did trust him with my life.”

  “I’m just saying,” Mia said. “He disappeared in the middle of the party and he would know how to kill someone, even someone as big as George.”

  “Except he wouldn’t,” I answered, trying to keep myself together, though it was hard, what with Mia coming at my friend like that. “He wouldn’t kill a man in cold blood unless he absolutely had to, unless his life or the life of an innocent person was in immediate danger.” I shook my head. “And let’s say he would do that. Why would he want to? What possible reason could he have for wanting to kill George and kidnap Jack? It doesn’t make any sense. And if you don’t believe me, you can ask your sorority sister about it. I had Davey sit tight with Alexis and Jack while I came out here. She can verify his whereabouts all night. So can Parker, for that matter. I just called to check on things and he stopped by too. So, Davey couldn’t have been the person who tried to kill us. Not that he ever would,” I mumbled.

  “I'm sorry,” Mia said. “I’m just grasping at straws.”

  “Well, don’t grasp at that one,” I said.

  “I’m just trying to figure this out,” she said. “For someone to be able to copy your handwriting, they’d have to be able to study. They’d have to be able to see it. When you came into our orbit, when all of this started to happen, I did a deep dive for you online. The only bit of your handwriting I could find was your signature splashed across that giant check.”