Nio threw a wave to the old man working the marina and eased away from the dock. He had never driven a boat before but it didn’t seem to matter, the handling as simple as his Honda back home.
The vessel was a seventeen-foot Tracker with a standard V6 engine strapped to the back of it. Onboard was every gadget conceived for the sport of fishing; an outboard trolling motor, depth gauge, and fish finder lining one side while Iggy sprawled out on the other.
Nio sat behind the wheel in a pair of board shorts and a backwards trucker’s cap. The dark skin of his chest and shoulders was bare to the mid-day sun as he draped his left hand over the wheel and dropped the throttle with his right.
The boat responded to his touch and picked up speed, soon cutting a comfortable pace across the gentle waves of the Atlantic. Overhead the sky was clear, just a few lazy gulls floating by. Along the shoreline Nio could see small clusters of ducks, none looking their way as they passed.
The transaction had been easy enough, the Garcia’s posing as a couple in town for a few days looking to do some fishing along the coast. The old man behind the counter had been hesitant at first to rent to someone from out of state, but their offer to pay significantly more than the going rate had forced back any inhibitions easily enough.
In total the entire transaction took less than twelve minutes, most of that time spent with the man pointing out all the equipment on board and giving Nio a thirty-second lesson behind the wheel.
For the first twenty minutes of the trip Nio hugged the coastline, letting the engine run at full throttle. In front of him Iggy lounged in the sun, her dark skin offset by a white bikini.
As best either one could tell, the plan was simply to head north and snoop around for a bit. Neither had any expectations of seeing much, just wanting to get a look at what they might be up against. With each passing day it became more apparent that their father had been lost forever, but the more answers they could ferret out, the better both would sleep.
Drawing his cell phone from his pocket, Nio checked their location against the coordinates he had lifted from Thorn that morning. On screen he could see a red dot where their destination was, below it a blue marker indicating current position.
Keeping the phone out and accessible, he held the boat on course for another four minutes before throttling down, the craft lurching as the front end lowered itself. White sea foam spread around them in a wide arc, the low rumble of the engine sounding out.
“Ready to do some fishing?” Nio asked, allowing the boat to come to a complete stop before shutting off the engine. For a moment they were adrift on the waves, the gentle lapping pushing them toward the rocky shore thirty yards away.
“Do I have to?” Iggy asked, letting out a groan as she rolled onto her backside and sat upright.
“Can’t very well watch for much while staring down at the bottom of the boat,” Nio said, climbing past her toward the raised fishing seat on the front end. Unsnapping the clasp, he settled himself down atop it and lowered the outboard motor into the water. Once it was positioned, he rifled through the foot controls a few times to get the hang of it before aiming them at an angle from the coast and pushing forward.
Rousting herself to life, Iggy rolled from her perch and opened the fishing pole compartment she was seated on. From it she lifted four poles, a pair of spin reels and a matching pair of bait casters.
“You have any idea how to use these things?” she asked, laying them out side by side.
“Well enough. If all goes to plan, we won’t have to use them much.”
Sliding the phone from his pocket, he tracked their position, seeing the two markers almost draw even. Tucking it back away, he took up one of the poles, unfastening the lure from the third eyelet on the pole and letting it swing free in front of him. He examined the oversized jig before arching the pole back over his head and casting toward the shoreline.
Thirty yards of line fed out from the reel as the bait landed with a tiny splash.
“Huh, nicely done,” Iggy said, no small amount of surprise in her voice as she grabbed up the second spin reel. Settling herself onto the opposite end of the boat, she unfastened the lure and hefted it back behind her head. Trying to match the same motion she’d seen her brother use a moment before, she snapped it down toward the horizon with excessive force.
The lure slammed into the water three feet in front of her, salt water splashing up into the boat. She cursed several times, Nio stifling a snicker behind her.
For the next fifteen minutes the pair sat in silence, Nio casting every so often, using the mirrored sunglasses to hide his eyes as he scoured the shoreline. Six feet away Iggy did the same, giving up on casting and allowing her lure to drag behind.
The nose of the boat moved forward in a serpentine direction as the gentle waves and the outboard motor fought each other for control. The current seemed to gain steam as they moved on, the rocky outcropping of the shoreline rising ever higher out of the water.
High above, the sun began its slow trudge toward the horizon as Nio said, “Iggy, three o’clock.”
Not once did he change his movements as his right hand steadily reeled in his line, his attention on the sheer wall beside them.
At the sound of his voice Iggy stood and stretched, raising her hands high overhead and twisting at the waist to get a full view of what he was describing. “Not very inconspicuous, are they?”
“Unless somebody was in a boat looking for them, nobody would ever even notice,” Nio replied.
Halfway up the wall were two large clusters of tree branches jutting out from the rock wall. To a commercial trawler inching its way past, the items would look completely natural.
For a pair of people in a fishing boat, they couldn’t have been more obvious.
The branches looked to be made from aluminum, the stock of them painted light brown. A smattering of green plastic leaves was attached at odd angles, fluttering in the breeze, doing a poor job of concealing cameras pointing in either direction.
“Any idea what they’re watching?” Iggy asked, finishing her stretch and dropping back into her seat.
“Not yet,” Nio replied, sending his lure hurtling toward the base of the wall. “I’m going to keep pushing north and see what we find.”
Iggy grunted in the affirmative and dropped her line out behind the boat, watching as the purple and green jig descended into the water. The silver spoon attached to it glittered in the sun for several seconds before disappearing from sight, the dark water swallowing it up.
“Hey, Nio.”
“Yeah?” Nio responded without turning back, moving the reel extra slow as he scanned the wall.
“The ocean floor just dropped away beneath us.”
“Could be a hidden port,” Nio guessed, spinning around in the chair. He slid his sandal from his foot and pressed on the depth finder with his toe, a topographical readout of the land beneath them appearing on screen.
“Looks like we went from eight feet to twenty feet deep pretty quick,” Nio said, turning back to the outboard motor. In the deeper water the current was much stronger, Nio angling the nose of the boat away from the wall at a forty-five degree angle to keep them moving in a straight line.
Alternating his gaze between the wall and the current, he abandoned casting as he fought to keep the boat in line, watching for any sign of what they were looking for.
On his third glance over he spotted it, a thin line running perfectly vertical down the sheer cliff and dropping into the depths of the water below.
“Got it,” Nio whispered. He waited in silence, pushing the nose of the boat out to sea and taking up his rod, pretending to check the lure. “See it?
“Looks like a damn granite garage door,” Iggy muttered behind him.
Nio grunted in agreement, pushing them a bit further away from the wall and resuming his casting. “Keep fishing. If we stop now it’ll be too obvious.”
“And then what?” Iggy asked, dropping her lure back into the water and lettin
g it spool out behind them.
“We got what we came for,” Nio said. “Once we’re out of sight, we’ll loop around and head home.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Liberation Day - A Thorn Byrd Novel Page 38