Unlawful Chase

by C J Schnier

  Unlawful Chase

  A Chase Hawkins Novel (#3)

  C.J. Schnier

  The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and no not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.

  Pursuing Chase (A Chase Hawkins Novel)

  All Rights Reserved

  Copyright© 2021 CJ Schnier

  V1.0

  CJ Schnier

  S/V Spirit

  1110 3rd St S

  St Petersburg, FL 33701

  www.cjschnier.com

  Cover Design by Corey Barker © 2021

  This book may not be reproduced, transmitted,or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Most locations herin are also fictional, or are used fictitiously. However, I have made efforts to depict the location and description of many well-known islands, locales, beaches, reefs, bars, restaurants, and marinas in the boating world to the best of my ability. I've tried to convey the cruising attitude in this work.

  Dedication

  For my father, who always ecouraged my talents and endeavors, no matter how they differed from his own.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  EPILOGUE

  BOCA CIEGA CHASE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  The combination of sunlight and the god-awful crowing of a rooster dragged me, protesting, from my sleep. I attempted to open my eyes, but my eyelids protested as I squinted against the light. I worked my jaw, feeling the familiar cottonmouth and numb tongue. The curse of a night of heavy drinking.

  Ignoring my impending hangover, I rolled over to my side and looked at the body of a woman laying next to me. Fire-red hair lay splayed across her naked back, spilling over onto the sheets in knotted clumps. Her chest rose and fell in a constant cycle of rhythmic deep breaths. I reached out for her, but paused, searching my mind for a name, and came up empty.

  Who was this person sleeping beside me? And how did she get here, of all places? A wave of pain settled behind my forehead, and I decided I no longer cared. She was just another body to keep myself warm, a brief escape from the tragedy of life. She meant nothing to me, but not knowing her name bothered me. These blackouts were getting worse.

  Letting her sleep, I slid myself out of the bed, smirking at my nakedness. At least I had gotten lucky last night. Tiptoeing out of the room, I made my way to the galley of my boat, Paramour, careful to avoid any creaky floorboards. Hazy thoughts, little more than fragments of memories, drifted through my mind. I grasped at them, but they stalled and evaporated into nothingness. The mystery of the woman in my bed would have to wait.

  The floor of the main cabin looked like a modern art masterpiece. Beer cans and trash littered every surface of the salon. An unbroken trail of rubbish led all the way out into the cockpit. Our discarded clothes added splashes of color anywhere they had landed. On the table, an empty bottle of scotch rolled back and forth, keeping time with the gentle movements of the boat. I couldn't remember drinking any of it, but the pounding in my head was proof enough I had.

  "Way to go, Chase," I thought to myself, "it looks like a frat party exploded in here."

  I tossed a few cans into the trash and made enough room on the counter to prepare a pot of coffee. I put my battered and dented kettle on the stove, and dumped coffee grounds into an equally battered French press. While waiting for the water to boil, I searched my memory, trying to remember anything. Occasional flashes would come back to me, as if the neural pathways in my brain were reconnecting one by one. But the memories became jumbled and disjointed.

  I plucked one memory out of the darkness and recalled going to shore in the afternoon. I was already several drinks deep at that point. There had been a bit of trouble getting out of the dinghy. I had slipped but saved myself from falling between the boat and the dock. That had happened earlier in the day, long before I would have met the woman in my bed. Straining harder, I struggled to remember more, but I couldn't.

  Emptiness. Utter emptiness. The feeling of loss, of nothingness, was harrowing at first. But, over the last few months, I had gotten used to it.

  The kettle whistled, and I snatched it off the stove. Coffee would help. Coffee helped everything.

  I poured the steaming water into the press and waited. While the brew steeped, I looked around the small, disheveled cabin. Something here had to help jog my memory. It took two passes of looking through the mess, but I found my shorts draped over the back of one of the twin settees. A search of my pockets revealed twenty-seven dollars, and a handful of receipts.

  Uncrumpling the first receipt, I discovered I had amassed a sixty-dollar bar tab at the Overseas Pub and Grill. That made sense. The bar was located a short walk from the dinghy dock, and I was well known there. I checked the time-stamp on the receipt. 5:23. It may have been a contributing factor, but a sixty-dollar bar tab was not what had gotten me blackout drunk.

  The second receipt cleared up the issue. Bold letters across the top read "The Brass Monkey", and the time-stamp was 03:55. My eyes scanned the crumpled piece of paper, but I had to force myself to look at the total listed at the bottom. I winced when I noticed I had spent over two hundred dollars. I was confident I had found the source of my blackout. The Brass Monkey was the most dangerous place in the town of Marathon. At least as far as your liver and standards in people were concerned.

  I can't say it surprised me. For weeks I had found my way there, as if by muscle memory. The drinks helped to both hide the horridness of the bar and to drown out the ghosts who haunted me. The Monkey was the sort of joint where cigarette smoke settled in a permanent halo around the bar, and the floors were sticky enough to catch flies. None of that mattered much to me. The drinks were cheap, and the food was decent. Best of all, they stayed open until 4 am. The combination of cheap booze and later hours might be dangerous, but it was the best place to forget about life for a while.

  Stirring sounds, followed by a soft groan, wafted out from the v-berth. It must have been the smell of the coffee that woke her, I realized. I poured us both a cup and went in to meet my guest.

  "Good morning," I said, "I've got coffee here if you want it."

  She was reclining against the bulkhead and snatched the blanket up, holding across her bare breasts. I couldn't help but look at the constellation of freckles scattered across her skin from her chest all the way to her cheeks.

  "Thanks," she said with a sheepish smile as she took the mug I offered her. I noticed she had
all of her teeth. You never could tell with those Brass Monkey women. That bar didn't always have the highest caliber of clientele. The combination of beer-goggles and dim lighting had led to more than one awkward encounter the following morning.

  "About last night..." I said, gathering my thoughts.

  "Don't worry about it," she said. "You had a lot to drink, it happens to everyone."

  "I'm sorry, what? What are you talking about?" I asked, taken aback by her insinuations.

  "You don't remember?" She asked, a knowing smile on her face. "I wouldn't worry too much. You were pretty wasted."

  My mind raced for an explanation. Don't remember what? Hell, I couldn't remember anything. "Um, no, I don't remember much of anything about last night." It was my turn to sound sheepish.

  She diverted her eyes to her cup of coffee. "You could barely keep it up. At first, I thought it was me. Like, I wasn't good enough for you, but after a while you passed out. That's when I realized you were just too drunk."

  So that was it. I guess I didn't get as lucky as I had thought. I looked her over, seeing her for the first time. Or at least for the first time I could remember. She was younger than me. Less than thirty, if I had to guess. Her freckles stood out against her pale, translucent skin. She was beautiful in the same way a Greek statue was beautiful, real, yet mesmerizing and otherworldly.

  When she looked up at me again, verdant green eyes shimmering with gold specks met my gaze. A mixture of embarrassment, vulnerability, and loneliness played across her features. I had no doubts those eyes had attracted me to her. I once loved someone who had those same eyes. Someone who had been ripped from my life without warning. Someone I desperately needed to let go of, but was too afraid to try.

  I looked at the girl in my bed and banished the ghost from my mind. "Darlin' if I had a problem last night it certainly wasn't you. I had way too much to drink. In fact, if I had been sober, I would have had the opposite problem." I said, giving her a disarming wink.

  Her pale face flushed red, but a genuine smile crept across her lips.

  "You don't remember anything?" she asked.

  "Honestly, No, I don't. This is going to sound horrible, but I'm afraid I can't remember your name."

  She stared at me for a moment. Her face contorted into different expressions as she worked through what I had told her. I figured she was trying to decide if she should be angry or if she should take pity on me.

  "My name is Anna," she said at last.

  "Well, Anna, it is, um, nice to meet you. Again."

  Anna favored me with a pitying look. "What now, stud?" she asked after an uncomfortable moment of silence.

  "I vote we drink our coffee. After that, if you want to go back to shore, I'll be glad to take you."

  "That sounds good," she said.

  We drank together without saying a word. Small wavelets caressed the outside of the hull, the sound amplified by our awkward silence. Neither of us knew what to say, and when our mugs were finally empty, I jumped at the chance to wash them.

  "Chase?"

  "Yeah?" I called back from the galley.

  "Could you bring me my clothes? I don't know where they're at."

  It took me a few minutes, but I found all our clothes. I bundled up Anna's and brought them to her. She ushered me out of the v-berth so she could get dressed. I found her modesty misplaced considering I had slept with her last night. But I knew better than to question the eccentricities of women.

  I pulled on my own clothes, a ratty pair of board shorts and a ragged t-shirt, before heading out onto the deck. Squinting against the harsh sunlight, I looked over the mooring field. Boot Key Harbor bustled with activity. Two hundred boats of all shapes and sizes filled the entire harbor. They sat arranged in neat rows, resting patiently, while their occupants shuttled back and forth from shore. It was another beautiful sunny day in Marathon, but I couldn't enjoy it. My headache screamed against the sun's blinding attack on my eyes, and I retreated to the shade of the cockpit.

  My dinghy, a hard-bottomed inflatable, floated abreast of my boat. "At least you remembered to tie it off last night" I thought to myself. Several beer cans littered its fiberglass floor, mirroring the salon and cockpit. It had been pure luck that the water cops had not stopped us.

  The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, or FWC for short, was the state-funded extortionists of the waters and woods. They did not play games when it came to any perceived infraction. It wasn't uncommon for them to levy massive fines for minor infractions. Nor was it uncommon to turn a blind eye to major offenders. The entire organization appeared to be in the pocket of the highest political bidder.

  In Marathon, the FWC seemed to take an inordinate amount of pleasure in harassing the tenants of Boot Key Harbor. As corrupt as the organization was, I had to obey their laws. I couldn't afford to get arrested and risk losing my captain's license. It was all I had to put money in my pocket. And right now those pockets were empty.

  Letting out a sigh, I pulled the dinghy closer and hopped in. I flung a few beer cans into the cockpit of Paramour. I stepped on the loose life jackets and heard a muffled crunch. Underneath them I found my sunglasses, bent but intact. I straightened the frame and slipped them on. They rested a little crooked on my face, but they gave my eyes a much-needed break from the merciless sun.

  Anna came up on deck as I finished cleaning out the dinghy. When the sun hit her hair, it caused it to glow like hot embers. She was much prettier than I had realized, and I cursed myself for drinking so much last night. Lithe, with curves in all the right places. It occurred to me that in a town like Marathon, a place full of tourists and dirty old sailors, she probably got hit on constantly. My pride swelled, as did something else. And to think, she came home with me.

  "Are we ready to go?" she asked.

  "Sure, I was just cleaning up my mess from last night. Where did all these beer cans come from?" I asked, holding one up, "I don't even drink Modelo."

  "You did last night. A friend of yours gave you an entire case when we got to the dinghy dock. He was as drunk as you were. He said something like his wife wouldn't let him have them."

  I rubbed my temple. "I wish he hadn't," I said. "Now hop in, let's get you back to shore, I guess."

  Anna squatted to climb down into the dinghy, but hesitated. A small cuddy-cabin fishing boat rounded one of the nearby sailboats. Its dull blue hull headed straight for us. I knew the boat at first glance. I had spent countless hours on it over the last few months.

  "What are you up to, Jeff?" I yelled out as the power boat glided to a standstill a few feet from Paramour.

  "About five foot four," came the reply from the covered helm station. A sharp wolf-call whistle followed. "But never mind, that. Who is this gorgeous lady you've got on board?"

  "Anna, this lowlife is Jeff. Jeff, this is Anna. Now don't go getting any ideas, you dog. I was about to drop her back off on shore."

  "Who me?" Jeff asked, trying his hardest to appear hurt before breaking into a smile and giggling. "Damn. You know me too well, Chase."

  "What brings you around this early?"

  "I have the day off from shuttling tourists to the reef, so I thought I'd do a little fishing. Would you like to come along?"

  "Above or below the water?" I asked, noticing the absence of fishing rods on the boat.

  "Underwater, of course! Why would anyone want to sit up on deck and bake in the sun when they don't have to? And besides, it might do you some good. You're looking a little green around the gills. Did you two have too much of a good time last night?"

  "One of us did, at least," Anna said with a giggle of her own.

  "Yeah, yeah, yeah," I grumbled. Part of me wanted to hide in the dark v-berth and be lazy. Another part of me yearned for the sense of peace and serenity spearfishing gave me. In the end, it was my anemic wallet and empty pantry that convinced me to go. "Sure, I'll come. I could do with some fresh fish. My cupboard is a little bare at the moment. But first, I need to drop Anna
off on shore. Would you mind giving us a ride to the dock?"

  "No problemo, Chase. Grab your gear and get onboard."

  I nodded and climbed back out of the dinghy. I tied the little boat off to my stern cleat and let it drift behind Paramour. Jeff maneuvered his boat so we could both board by stepping onto his stern. While he was lining up his boat, I opened up one of the cockpit storage lockers and withdrew a long black mesh bag. It contained all the dive gear I would need.

  Once we were aboard and settled, Jeff piloted his boat to the city marina's docks. He found an open section, and we helped Anna onto shore. She took a step toward the parking lot, stopped, and turned back. Her breathtaking long red hair flipped over her shoulder in a cascade of flames.

  "Chase?" she mewled, barely audible over the idling diesel in the boat.

  "Yeah?"

  "I hope I see you around. Take care of yourself," she said. And then, almost as an afterthought, she added, "You'll never find what you're looking for in the bottom of a bottle."

  I considered her words and nodded my head. She was right, but hiding in the confines of a bottle was much more appealing than reality. "See ya," was all I could say as she walked away.

  Jeff and I watched her walk down the dock into the crushed shell parking lot before pushing off from the dock and heading out to one of Jeff's favorite reefs.

  ◆◆◆

  My lungs screamed for air while my throat and diaphragm convulsed viciously, desperate for oxygen. I embraced the sensations, ignored their warnings, and continued to take my time, creeping through the cobalt blue water a hundred feet below the surface. I picked my way through the mass of coral, stalking my prey, waiting for the right moment to attack.

  My target, a large mangrove snapper, lazily snaked its way through the rocky outcroppings, seemingly unconcerned with my presence as I followed it. The tip of my speargun tracked it effortlessly, poised to deliver its fatal blow in an instant. But the fish refused to present me with a shot. My need to breathe was becoming more urgent, and I knew if I did not get an opportunity soon, it would force me to resurface empty handed.