Bitter Tide

by Jack Hardin

  While Ringo waited for Chewy to answer, he said, “You remember when I first met you?”

  “I do. It doesn’t seem so long ago.”

  “No, it doesn’t. You were angry back then, remember? Hot temper.”

  He did remember. And if Chewy was honest with himself—and his prophets of personal power told him that doing so was the first step to growth and change—Ringo had become the greatest influence in his life. Ringo had accepted him, even back when he was a twenty-five-year-old punk who was mad at the world. Ringo had seen something in him and gave him a chance, and there had never been a time when Chewy felt disrespected or untrusted by the man. Ringo had been good to him. Very good. “I had gotten a job down here as a trawler hand and got a drink at The Salty Mangrove one night. That one old man started making fun of me in my coat. He couldn't believe someone would be wearing a coat during a record breaking summer.”

  “Stu Dudley,” Ringo huffed. “I’m glad that bastard bit the dust. He was a mean old coot. Spent a lot of money at my bar though. You stood out. You and that wool coat of yours.”

  Chewy fixated on the edge of the desk as he stared into the past. “You offered me a job. I thought you were going to have me flip burgers.”

  “I have a confession to make,” Ringo said. “Something I’ve never told you. That first run that you made across the Glades. The stuff that was in the suitcases. It was baking soda. It wasn’t coke.”

  Chewy shrugged. “No matter. I delivered it. That’s what you asked me to do.”

  “I had to test you. You did well. But you need to know that there is no one I trust more than you. Not even Andrés. And I trust Andrés very much.”

  “Thank you, Ringo.”

  “You’re a good man, Jared.”

  Chewy paused. The nickname had developed during his time working for Ringo. No one had called him by his real name in years. It sounded good, personal.

  “We’ve come a long way, you and I, and I confess that it is due to my failed discernment that we have had a couple setbacks of late. But now that Eli Oswald is gone and César is out of the picture, we will be on the fast track to success. Wild Palm is working out better than I imagined.”

  “It is,” Chewy agreed.

  Ringo removed his fedora, the white one with the black band, and stood up. He set the hat on the desk. “My marina on Marco Island did not fare well. I’m going down there to monitor the cleanup. I’m not sure when I’ll be back. My schedule is quite off these days. I don’t like it.” He turned to leave and then stopped. “Oh, I almost forgot. Quinton will be back in a couple weeks.”

  At this, Chewy’s brows lifted. “That’s good. He’s been greatly missed.”

  “Yes,” Ringo nodded. “He certainly has. His return will be the dawn of a new era for us. It will be good.”

  “I’m sure he has much to share with us. Ringo, if I may, what are we going to do about your─”

  “Let me deal with that.”

  “She’s getting close, Ringo.”

  “Yes. I know. Leave that to me. I’m working on it.” He stared out the office window with a soberness that Chewy had seen only once before.

  “You love her,” Chewy noted.

  “Yes. I do.” More than you can possibly know, he thought. All three of them. And that was why, now, as he contemplated the heart-wrenching decision he had made this morning, his stomach soured. It was nearly unbearable, thinking about it, deciding to do it. But it had to be done. They were all now too close to what he was doing here, too close to the life he was leading as Ringo. For the moment, he brushed such harrowing thoughts aside.

  Chewy took notice of the sudden change in Ringo’s complexion. “Are you okay? You don’t look well.”

  Ringo nodded vaguely.

  “Is there something I can do to help?”

  Ringo was silent for a while, pondering a question he had not considered before in such a context. “Yes,” he mused. “Yes, I think there just might be.”

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  The cabin sat high up on the foothills and looked out onto Humphreys Peak, the highest natural point in Arizona. Before today, Ethan Bradford, known by his former teammates as Virgil, had never been to Flagstaff. Now that he was here, he was beginning to think that Cicero might be onto something. The high altitude and low humidity meant that the early evening air was cool and dry, and being this far out of town made one feel the good kind of isolation that came with being all alone in nature.

  Virgil turned off the winding mountain road and onto a gravel drive that led up to Cicero’s cabin. He had spent the last week trying to fill in knowledge gaps left wide open when Ryan Wilcox was killed. Ryan had been the one and only connection he had into the unsettling revelations developing around TEAM 99’s past. Pascal—Ellie—had known nothing of these recent developments. Perhaps Cicero would. Maybe Ryan Wilcox had reached out to him as well before he was murdered. If he hadn't, then Cicero and Virgil could work together to find answers. Cicero was brilliant with a keyboard and, given the right equipment and enough time, could research and uncover anything. Virgil recalled that Mortimer used to refer to Cicero as a digital archaeologist.

  Virgil parked his rental car next to a dark blue Pontiac Bonneville that had a sign on its roof reading “Albert's Pizzeria.”

  Virgil stepped into the crisp mountain air and walked up three porch steps before arriving at the cabin door. He knocked, and while he waited he turned to look at the view. Panama was great, but this...this was in a different class altogether. Getting no answer, he knocked again, but this time the door gave and creaked on its hinges as it moved back a few inches. His brows drew together. He pushed the door open and cautiously peered inside. No one, no sound. Instinctually, he brought out his 9mm from the back seam of his cargo shorts. He pulled the slide back, and the crisp sound of metal on metal followed as a round entered the chamber. He trained the gun out in front of him and went in.

  A framed poster of Jack Bauer—gun raised, face set as hard as a flint, Eiffel tower in the background—hung adjacent to the door. Had Virgil’s spidey sense not been tingling at this moment, he would have allowed himself a laugh. He went down a short hallway, and when he turned the corner he saw his old teammate lying on his side in a pool of blood. Virgil made small steps toward him, scanning up and across the cabin. Ten feet behind Cicero the back door was open, and long streaks of blood led out over the threshold as if someone had dragged themselves across it. His eyes followed the streaks until they came to rest on a body lying at the tree line ten yards off the back porch. Cicero had fallen where he had been injured. A clean pool of dark blood had gathered around his head and neck. A pepperoni pizza lay behind him, folded haphazardly like a taco, its box upside down on the other side of the room.

  Virgil put a knee on the floorboards, but his eyes kept scanning the house and the open back door. “Are you alone?”

  Cicero tried to speak, but the only thing that came out was a slow trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth.

  Virgil stood back up and spent the next minute clearing the cabin. Finding no one else, he rushed back to his old teammate and alternated his gaze between Cicero and the body outside. Assessing Cicero’s wounds was simple enough. His throat had been cut. That was all. He lay still with his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

  “Can you talk at all?” In response, Cicero, moving slowly, turned his head. It rolled only a few inches, and his eyes went the rest of the way. Virgil followed his gaze underneath a hutch. Something flat and shiny lay there. Virgil scrambled over and snatched it up. It was a phone. He came back to his old friend. “Hang in there, buddy. Hang in there. Is this yours?”

  Cicero slowly moved his eyes left and then back to the right. He gagged and tried to cough. Virgil surveyed the gash in his throat. He had to get his head up so the blood could drain.

  But suddenly, Cicero’s breathing became shallow, halting. He swallowed weakly and tried to speak with great effort. “V..V…” He left hand dragged along the
floor and stopped. “Vir….Vir…….” and then his eyes closed, and he was gone.

  Virgil called out to him, laid a hand on his head and called his name again. Nothing. He fought back tears and the urge to scream as a canvas of raw anger unfurled across his chest. He closed his eyes for a brief moment, and when he opened them tey were full of revenge.

  He stood up. The phone required a thumbprint to unlock. Cicero had indicated it wasn’t his. His weapon in one hand and the phone in the other, he cautiously made his way out the back door. He got down behind a thick porch post and listened while searching the forest and the scattered boulders on the hillside above. He heard nothing, saw nothing. Other than the high pitched screech of a mountain chickadee further in the trees, all was quiet. He quickly took the three steps off the back porch and followed the trail of streaked blood to the body at the tree line.

  It was a woman. She was lying on her back, her dead eyes staring blankly into a muted sky, orange with dusk. She wore a red “Albert's Pizzeria” polo on which a large button was pinned that read “Your Door in 33 or it’s Free.” She had three gashes in her abdomen from where Cicero had retaliated.

  In a flash of coherence, Virgil saw what had happened. The pizza delivery lady/ assassin had gotten the drop on Cicero, had sliced him before he could react but then underestimated his will to square up even after he was mortally wounded.

  Virgil brought out the phone and, grabbing the lady’s hand, pressed her thumb onto the lower section of the glass. Nothing. He grabbed the other thumb and tried that one. It worked, and her limp hand thumped onto her leg when he let it go. He held the phone in front of him and scanned the contents. His eyes stretched into wide, dumbfounded disbelief. He scrolled down, and his heart thumped in his chest as a nightmarish dread enveloped him.

  Then, with no warning at all, coming from somewhere deep in the woods, a bullet screamed into his shoulder, hurling him onto his back. The phone scattered across a carpet of pine needles, and Virgil writhed on the ground, the pain in his shoulder like a hot poker fresh off the fire.

  He winced through the agony and grunted as he forced himself to stand back up. He ran for the tree line and weaved around trunks, cradling his elbow in a hand to keep his shoulder from jostling. He had been foolish. Of course they would send two people; one to fulfill the primary engagement, one for backup should something go wrong. The backup would have seen Virgil’s car coming up the road and waited for his moment. Seeing Cicero like that had messed Virgil up, clouded his thinking.

  A muffled snap sounded through the woods. Virgil didn’t feel the bullet, only its effects. His left knee exploded, and he tumbled forward, his forehead just missing a large rock as he came down. He bellowed out a muffled, frustrated scream through clenched teeth. It felt like someone had detonated a bomb behind where his knee cap had just been. His breathing was now coming in ragged gasps. He glanced down. The top half of his shirt was soaked in his blood, and his left leg was slick and shiny with red. His head started swimming, and he focused on controlling his breathing. Shock was setting in, and when it rose into its fullness, he would lose his will to press on. He swiveled onto his stomach and brought himself up on his right elbow just as another bullet slammed into the boulder on his right, missing his skull by an inch.

  He had to keep moving.

  He’d been wrong, what he told Ellie. He told her they were being framed. But that wasn’t right. The remaining members of TEAM 99 were not being set up.

  They were being exterminated.

  What he had just seen on that phone called for the systematic elimination of the remaining members of TEAM 99. Cicero had been first on the list. Virgil, the fourth.

  He scrambled forward, shredding his elbow on skree and pine cones for twenty yards before he stopped abruptly. The forest before him descended into a sharp decline, filled with boulders and trees and scrub. He swiveled his gaze. Whoever was behind him would keep advancing. His phone was in the car.

  He had to alert the others, warn them before it was too late, before they ended up like Ryan and Cicero. But right now his only thought was to warn the next one in line, the one the exterminators would come for next.

  Pascal. Ellie’s face was pulsing through his mind like an ambulance siren.

  He had to tell her.

  And so, with his sight beginning to blur and his chest heaving in great ragged breaths, Virgil pushed off and tumbled down the ragged slope just as another bullet ripped into his shoulder and exited through his collarbone.

  Vacant Shore

  Read on for an excerpt from Vacant Shore, book 4 in the Pine Island Coast Florida Suspense Series

  * * *

  Ellie had watched Major drive off two minutes ago. Now, she knew he would have stayed had he known what had been waiting for her.

  She peered cautiously around the wall of the fishing shack. Her breathing hijacked when she saw the man who was standing against the far wall, facing the doorway, a gun trained in her direction.

  “Hello, Ellie.”

  She stepped into the doorway and couldn’t speak for several moments, just stared at him, blinking. Ordinarily, she would have ducked back behind the wall for cover. But she was too stunned to do that. For a brief moment, she thought this was some kind of inappropriate joke. But his eyes held a coldness she had never seen in them before, silently telling her that this was the furthest thing from a joke she had ever experienced.

  Her brows lowered and drew together. “I...don’t understand.” She searched all that she knew for a rational explanation. Some surfaced, but they all disappeared before his frozen disposition and the gun he had on her. Up to this point she thought she had pieced together who was behind everything, who was calling the shots. Now, she wasn’t sure of anything at all.

  He flicked the muzzle toward a side wall and told her to sit down against it.

  She had never felt as disoriented as she did in this moment. Not even that fatal, misguided afternoon when Assam Murad and his family were murdered by God knew who. At least in that situation there had been the possibility that something could go wrong. But this? She hadn’t planned for this at all. Her thoughts swirled, muddled, like they were caught up in a tornado intent on sucking the coherence out of everything it touched.

  She did as she was told and slid to the floor, pressed her back against the wall. “Why?” she whispered, half to herself and half to him. But it all ran deeper than that. Deeper than a simple ‘why’ and even, for now, even superseding the ‘how.’

  She looked at him, her confused eyes searching his, “Why you?”

  Vacant Shore

  Will be available in August

  Gratitude

  I want to thank author Don Rich for his help with the Bertram scene. Any errors, of course, are mine. I’m working as fast as I can to get book 4 (Vacant Shore) ready for you.

  In the meantime, head on over to Amazon and get to reading Don’s Mid Atlantic Adventure Series. You can grab them up HERE.

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  Author’s Note

  Pine Island and Matlacha are truly a paradise of their own. But, as with any good fiction, I have taken certain liberties with the local culture and location, while doing my utmost to stay true to it. In Bitter Tide, I took the most license with Mango Mania, which occurs in July rather than late August, and is hosted in Cape Coral, not the southern tip of Pine Island.

  Contents

  Untitled

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13r />
  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52