Betrayed in the Keys

by Matthew Rief

  The fat guy laughed, then moved towards me and put a finger in my face. “Hey, who in the hell do you think you—”

  Before he’d even realized what was happening, I grabbed hold of his finger with a tight grip and twisted his arm forcefully in a direction it wasn’t intended to go. His finger cracked audibly as I hyperextended his arm and bent his elbow back. Stepping behind him, I brought his arm over my shoulder, bent my knees down and hurled him over my body.

  He groaned as his heavy frame did an unwanted front flip and his back slammed hard onto the pavement. When I looked up, Ange already had Skinny on the ground as well. She’d hit him with a roundhouse kick to his face, and blood flowed out from his nostrils as he rocked back and forth, his hands pressed to either side of his nose.

  That left only Polo Shirt standing, and as Ange and I closed in on him, he threw the girl to the ground and reached for something tucked into the back of his waistband. His left hand gripped a silver Springfield compact pistol, and just as he pulled it out, I tackled him hard to the ground, causing the handgun to rattle onto the pavement beside us. I threw a few solid punches into his face to teach him a lesson, then rose to my feet and grabbed his handgun from the ground.

  “You fucking asshole,” Polo Shirt said as he struggled to his feet. He wiped the blood from his face with the top of his hand, then grunted as he lunged towards me.

  Ange jumped in, hitting him with a strong side kick to his gut that caused him to gag and lurch forward. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she slammed him to the ground and put him in a reverse chin lock. Before the guy knew what was happening, a deep and powerful pain radiated across his body as Ange pulled him back, squeezing tightly with her arms forced into his neck. He wailed in pain as Ange turned over, knocked him unconscious, and rose to her feet.

  With all three guys on the ground and immobilized, I told Ange to help the girl while I checked the guys for any more weapons. After searching their clothes, the only other thing I found was a switchblade in the fat guy’s pocket, which I tossed into the ocean along with Polo Shirt’s Springfield.

  I moved over to Ange, who was cradling the woman, her forehead bleeding from being thrown to the ground. I crouched down beside the woman and gazed into her wide-open hazel eyes.

  “Can you hear me?” I asked, placing my hand softly against hers.

  Her body shook, and she breathed heavily.

  “She’s in shock,” Ange said.

  I moved in closer and said, “You’re safe now.”

  After a few quick breaths, she blinked twice and said, “They… they said they would kill me if I screamed.”

  Ange held the girl tighter and motioned towards the three bodies sprawled out in awkward positions beside us.

  “Don’t worry,” Ange said softly. “They’re not gonna hurt anyone anytime soon. What’s your name?”

  The woman slowed her breathing slightly and said, “Candace. I’m… I’m on the cruise ship Princess Louisa. I came ashore with my friends and those guys got us all drunk.”

  I stared deeply into her eyes. “Candace, everything’s going to be okay. We’re gonna take you safely back to your ship, but we need you to call your friends and let them know what happened. We need to make sure that they’re okay and didn’t get taken away as well.”

  She sat for a moment and her eyes grew wide. Clearly, she hadn’t thought that there might be more bad guys around. Reaching around her, she said, “My purse—it’s not here. I must have left it inside.”

  I rose to my feet. “What’s it look like?” I asked, and when she told me that it was small and light pink, I told Ange to wait with her while I went inside to get it.

  Fortunately, I managed to find both Candace’s purse and her friends within a few minutes and I explained the situation to them. Ange and I walked all four of them along the waterfront and down the pier towards the gangway to the Princess Louisa. After the cruise attendant had checked their tickets and effects, Candace turned to Ange and me.

  “Thank you,” she said, her face having become wet with tears after realizing how close she’d just come to being raped.

  Ange stepped towards her, wiped away a streak of dripping mascara from her face, and said, “I’m glad we were there to stop it.”

  When she looked to me, I added, “Be careful. There are islands in the Caribbean where this sort of thing is far more common. Enjoy yourselves, but just be aware that this kind of thing happens, so you need to be cautious.”

  She nodded, then Ange and I hugged her and she headed across the gangway onto the cruise ship beside her friends. Ange and I stood beside each other on the pier, watching as they disappeared from view. It was almost 1100, so the pier was bustling with people heading back to their floating resort, some of them barely sober enough to stay on their feet.

  Ange turned to me and smiled. “Can’t we just have one normal night out together?”

  I laughed. “You and me? I wouldn’t bet on it.”

  We walked along the waterfront, heading north towards Conch Harbor Marina. The night was dying down a little, and Mallory Square was no longer filled with the loud, bustling crowd that it had been earlier.

  We decided not to call the police on the three guys who’d drugged Candace. For one, we both hated dealing with law enforcement, though in the months I’d lived in Key West, I’d had no choice but to work alongside them a few times. And secondly, we both agreed that the beating we’d given them would be punishment enough and would hopefully dissuade them from such behavior in the future.

  When we arrived back at the dock and stepped aboard the Baia, I grabbed a coconut water from my fridge, along with the old dagger, and sat out on the sunbed. It was one of my favorite places to just sit, relax, and stare out over the water.

  I stared at the dagger in my hands, reading the inscription once more and wondering what its story was. For hundreds of years, it had been resting beneath the waves, and now it was in my hands. I think the romanticism more than anything else is what draws me to treasure hunting.

  “Well?” Ange said. She moved beside me and stared down at the dagger, her sandy-colored eyebrows rising over her tropical-blue eyes.

  I laughed. “Well, what?”

  “Are we gonna find the rest of this girl’s treasure or what?”

  I nodded and grabbed the coconut water resting beside me, feeling the condensation on the ice-cold can as I brought it to my lips and took a few long pulls.

  “Good,” she said. “Then you and I can buy a big yacht and sail off into the sunset together.”

  I shook my head. “I thought you liked living in the Keys.”

  She frowned at me jokingly. “It’s a metaphor, Logan.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but anything we find in US waters is gonna be confiscated by Uncle Sam. And then Spain or whatever country feels entitled to it will step in and try to take it all. We got lucky with the Aztec treasure, even though we only got a one percent finder’s fee, but I wouldn’t count on it again.”

  She sat back down beside me, snatched the coconut water from my hands, tilted her head back and killed the rest of the liquid. Wiping her lips, she said, “You never know. We might get more than you expect.”

  I smiled. “Ever the optimist,” I said, then swung my feet onto the deck beside Ange and rose to my feet.

  Moving over to the console, I opened a small storage compartment and pulled out a few rolled-up maps. Unfurling them on the outdoor dinette beside me and keeping them down with a few mugs and my monocular, I focused on the area where Chris said his uncle had found the dagger.

  Ange moved beside me, and we spent an hour plotting out a grid to search the area.

  “He said his uncle had the net in the water for roughly twenty minutes,” I said. “And he was trawling at fifteen knots along this line here.” I hovered a pencil above the map. “That leaves us with a five-mile stretch, and I’d say roughly a quarter of a mile girth to play it safe.”

  “One and a quarter
square miles,” Ange said. “That’s eight hundred acres for you Americans.”

  I grinned. Though Ange had lived in many countries, she was born and raised in Sweden. After her parents had been killed, she had run away and had lived on her own ever since. We’d had an on-again, off-again relationship for a few years now, our jobs working as mercenaries making it hard to form a serious relationship. But for the past five months, she’d lived with me in Key West, and I’d loved every minute of it.

  “We should take it to Professor Murchison,” she said. “I’m sure he can help us figure out who this Beatrice was and what ship she was on.”

  I nodded. “And, Pete. Let’s head over to his restaurant tomorrow for lunch. See what he thinks.”

  Grabbing my iPhone, I sent a message to the professor containing a quick explanation of how the dagger had been found, along with a few pictures. Professor Murchison taught at Key West Community College and was probably the most overqualified guy on campus. He was incredibly smart, and he had been immensely helpful in the search and identification of U-3546, a lost German U-boat my dad had found off the coast of Islamorada the night he’d been murdered.

  We spent a few more hours looking over charts, conducting internet searches and letting our imaginations run wild. We both downed a few beers, and by one in the morning, we fell asleep on the sunbed, the gentle breeze off the ocean keeping us relatively cool and fending off the bugs.

  THREE

  I woke up naturally the next morning to a beautiful sunrise. Ange’s body was draped over mine, and I did my best not to disturb her as I crawled out from under a colorful thin cotton blanket and onto the damp fiberglass deck. I moved barefoot down into the salon and whipped up my usual breakfast, consisting of freshly sliced mango, banana, and a warm pot of Colombian medium roast. Feeling hungrier than usual, I warmed up some leftover lobster and made a few rolls using a baguette Ange had bought from a bakery just down the waterfront.

  We sat together, propped against the cushions and enjoying a delicious breakfast that was made even better by the artistically painted sky, which elegantly displayed every color on the spectrum between yellow and red.

  While eating, I heard footsteps approaching our position from just down the dock. Glancing up, I saw Benjamin Kincaid striding towards us in his short-sleeved dark blue police uniform. Ben was a young deputy who was about my height and had short blond hair and blue eyes. Though we’d disliked each other at first, a friendship had grown between us, mainly due to our shared love of guns, and we went shooting over at the Big Coppitt Gun Club a few times a month. He also owned a pair of top-of-the-line jet skis and would invite me to go racing around the islands every now and then.

  I was surprised to see him down at the marina in his uniform, as he usually only came by when he was off duty.

  “Morning, Logan,” he said with more of a serious tone than usual.

  “Hey, Ben,” I said. “What brings you by this early?”

  He paused a moment, then glanced at Ange and said, “Good to see you, Angelina. You two mind if I come aboard and talk to you for a few minutes?”

  “Not at all,” I said.

  “Are you thirsty or hungry?” Ange asked. “We’ve got some good lobster rolls here.”

  “For breakfast?” He stepped onto the swim platform, then sat across from us near the helm. “You two are becoming more conch like every time I see you.”

  I laughed. “Says the guy from Miami.” I paused for a moment, then handed him a coconut water and added, “What’s up?”

  He grabbed it, popped it open, then looked off into the distance through a pair of dark sunglasses. After taking a sip, he glanced back at us.

  “Look,” he said, “I got a call last night while on patrol downtown. It was a 911 call from a guy just outside of Tipsy Turvy. He said there was a fight and a lot of guys were injured. But by the time I got there, the alley was empty.” He paused for a moment and took a drink of coconut water. Ange and I looked at each other, then back at Ben. “Look, there’s a security camera outside the bar, so I know you guys did it. What happened? What was the deal with the woman?”

  “They were planning to rape her,” Ange snapped. “They’d drugged her in the bar. She was barely coherent when we took her and her friends back to their cruise ship.”

  Ben nodded, listening intently.

  “I figured as much,” he said. “That’s what I assumed when I saw the footage. I just wanted to stop by and let you guys know that I’ve got your backs if anything comes of it.”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “Well, there haven’t been any charges filed yet, but don’t be surprised if those guys do eventually.”

  “They were trying to rape that girl,” Ange said.

  Ben raised his hands in the air. “Look, I just want you to be ready just in case. But I’m confident that with the footage, and if we can track down the girl, they wouldn’t have a case. But I’m not working on it anymore. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a closed case.”

  Ange and I both nodded.

  “Thanks for letting us know, Ben,” I said.

  He took another drink, patted his knee and rose to his feet.

  “Well, I best be getting going,” he said. “Thanks for the drink.” After stepping onto the dock, he added, “And thank you both for protecting that woman.”

  “We didn’t have a choice,” I said, stepping towards him and shaking his hand.

  “I’ll see you guys later,” he said, then disappeared down the dock.

  I moved back to the dinette and sat beside Ange.

  “It’s nice to see we’ve earned the complete trust of the law here,” she said. “Those guys are just lucky we left them in such great shape.”

  I grinned. She was right. In other parts of the world, I’d seen the limits of Ange’s mercy when it came to dealing with scum. Usually, Ange wouldn’t leave a rapist breathing.

  “Well, let’s not worry about it,” I said. “It’s a beautiful day in paradise.”

  Once we were finished, we decided to cruise over to the area where the dagger had been found. It wasn’t quite 0700 yet, and the ocean was as smooth as glass, without a whitecap in sight as far as we could see. There were only a few sporadic clouds on the horizon as well, and the weather report called for sunny with a high of seventy-eight degrees.

  We took a quick shower and, after drying off, I slipped into a pair of black swim trunks and a gray tee shirt. I filled a silver thermos with what remained of the coffee, put on a pair of Oakley sunglasses, then moved back into the cockpit and started up the twin six-hundred-horsepower engines. Ange appeared a second later, wearing a white bikini bottom and a maroon tank top.

  I handed her the helm, then jumped onto the dock and disconnected the power line and freshwater hose and untied the nylon ropes securing the Baia to the cleats. Hopping aboard, I gave her the okay and watched as she expertly brought us away from the dock. A few minutes later, just after we’d cruised out of the marina and between Wisteria Island and Sunset Key, Ange glanced over her shoulder at me and grinned.

  “You ready for this, Dodge?” she asked, her eyebrows raised behind a pair of silver-rimmed aviator sunglasses.

  Before I replied, she punched the throttles, roaring the massive engines to life and accelerating the Baia with a powerful jolt. I gripped the corner of the hardtop just beside Ange, and she laughed as our wake grew from a small cluster of bubbles into a large cloudy vortex in a matter of seconds. I watched the odometer just over her shoulder as she crept our speed up over fifty knots, shooting us through the calm water. We flew through the Northwest Channel and around Calda Bank, Ange putting us on a course due northeast and bypassing the Lower Keys.

  The surface was a little bit choppier in the open waters of the Gulf, but it was no match for the Baia. It wasn’t until halfway to our destination, while we were passing Big Pine Key far in the distance over the starboard bow, that Ange eased her down to her cruising speed of thirty knots. We both glanc
ed back and forth from the surface ahead of us to the GPS screen displaying our destination. By 0830, we’d reached the spot where Chris’s uncle had pulled up his net and found the dagger, and Ange slowed the Baia to an idle.

  The water around us was crystal clear and only about ten feet deep, allowing us to see the bottom easily. We decided to make the one-and-a-quarter-mile run using only the depth gauge, the fish finder, and our eyes, just to see if there were any distinctly unique formations. Ange kept the Baia steady at four knots, and I stood up on the bow, staring down into the ocean below and feeling an overwhelming sense of excitement. I knew that the waters we were searching weren’t exactly remote, and if there was anything to be spotted by the naked eye it would have already been found, but I couldn’t help it. After finding the Intrepid and the Aztec treasure she’d carried, and after finding the lost U-boat, I guess you could say I’ve got the bug.

  “Stop!” I said, raising a hand in the air as I bent over the bow and peered down into the clear water below.

  Ange eased back on the throttle.

  “Did you find something?” she asked, her voice overflowing with excitement.

  “Yeah. Can you hand me my mask?”

  With the Baia in an idle, she stepped across the cockpit, hinged open a storage door and pulled out my frameless Cressi dive mask.

  As she grabbed it, I added, “And my gloves and tickle stick.”

  She paused and looked up at me. I grinned and she just shook her head, then reached back into the compartment.

  “I’m gonna get you back for that,” she said. “Just so you know.”

  I laughed as she grabbed the gear I’d requested and handed it to me around the starboard edge of the windscreen.

  “Hey, you wanna eat, don’t you?”

  She smiled as I slid the mask over my face, then put on the gloves. Reading my mind, Ange had also given me a small net, which I strapped to my left wrist. Holding the tickle stick in my right hand, I thanked Ange, then turned around, took a long powerful stride and launched facefirst into the warm air. A second later, I splashed into the water and sank like a torpedo all the way to the bottom. The water felt good on my body, which had felt the wrath of the hot Southern Florida sun all morning. I’ve always loved being in the water and often found myself looking for any excuse I could find to take a dip.