Redemption in the Keys

by Matthew Rief

  He placed a hand on my shoulder and I turned back to him.

  “Look, I fought alongside him too,” he said. “But before I risk my career for him again, I need to know, how sure are you that he’s telling the truth?”

  I looked deep into his eyes.

  “I’m certain.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I headed back to the Baia, and we worked for a few more hours before Jack rose to his feet and headed to his house, saying that his nephew, Isaac, would be getting home soon. Ange and I decided to head over to Salty Pete’s for dinner. We were getting too deep into the situation, and sometimes the best thing to do is step away from a problem for a few hours and let your mind think about other things. Kyle was tired after practically pulling an all-nighter on the Baia during the crossing from Cay Sal, so he said he’d be hitting the sack soon. I told him I’d bring him back some food just in case.

  Ange and I sat outside on the second-story balcony of Pete’s. It was Friday night, so the place was pretty packed. In fact, most of the tables on the balcony were taken. Then I glanced over at the stage and saw that Pete had hired live music for the night, as he had been doing more and more lately.

  We sat at a corner table, the farthest one from the stage, and listened as a local guy with dreadlocks strummed his acoustic guitar and played his own songs. He sang about island living, about beaches, palm trees, hammocks, and crashing waves. I really liked it. He reminded me a little of Jack Johnson. Kinda looked like him too, aside from the dreads.

  Ange wore a nice-looking white shirt and jean shorts while I sported my navy cargo shorts and a plain gray tee shirt. She looked great in the glow of the hanging lighting overhead. We enjoyed the music and each other’s company as we scarfed down the fresh seafood. She told me all about California while we dipped and ate our coconut shrimp, washing them down with a mojito and a tequila sunrise. For our entrees, we ordered up a few blackened grouper sandwiches and three fish tacos.

  I saw Pete walk out through the sliding glass door. He smiled when he saw us, then strolled over to our table.

  “There you guys are,” Pete said. “You two hiding over here?”

  “They were the only seats available,” I said. “You run the hottest joint in town.”

  Pete smiled. “I have you to thank for it.” After a few seconds’ pause, he turned to me and added, “Jack told me you made a trip to Cay Sal. You run into any refugees?”

  I shook my head. “Not one.”

  “You’re lucky, then,” he said. “Some of the best fishing in the Caribbean around there, if you don’t mind the danger, of course.”

  Pete turned away from us and faced the stage as the guy went into the chorus of what I’d been told was one of his most popular songs.

  “This guy’s like Mozart,” he said. “Yep, the Keys attract some of the most talented people around. That’s for sure.” He tilted his head back, then winked at Ange. “And the most beautiful.”

  I was about to joke and tell the old conch to put some ice on it when the folded-up newspaper sticking out of his back pocket caught my eye. There was only a small portion visible, but I noticed that it was the front-page article of the Keynoter he’d been going on about a few days earlier. All I could see was part of a picture of a beautiful beachfront location, along with part of a short bold caption. One word, in particular, caught my full attention and made my eyes grow wide.

  “What?” Pete said, craning his neck and looking behind him. “Did I sit in cocktail sauce again? It always spills over on the chairs.”

  I shook my head slightly, then looked over at Ange.

  “Are you okay?” she said with a smile.

  I was silent for a few more seconds, my brain going to work, then looked back at Pete.

  “Is that the article you were showing me a few days ago?” I said, motioning towards the rolled-up paper in his back pocket.

  “That’s right,” he said, reaching back and snatching it. “Ridley was just doing her job writing it, but the front page of this issue serves only one useful purpose: swattin’ skeeters.”

  “Can I see it?” I said.

  He must have thought I was joking at first, but after seeing my expression, he handed it over.

  “Yeah, sure,” he said as I grabbed it. “But it’s really a depressing read. These big-time developers are gonna ruin this paradise.” I unrolled it and flattened it on the table, front page up. Pete continued as I read. “Mark my words. If the government doesn’t do something, it’ll be nothing but sterile buildings from Largo to here. Damn shame. A real damn shame.”

  Ange tried to block out Pete as she hunched over the table and peered at the article. After reading the caption, her eyes grew wide as well and she looked up at me.

  I smiled. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  It was an article about a brand-new high-end resort that was having its grand opening the following day. The article explained how the resort was located on an island off North Key Largo and that it was owned by Richmond Hotel and Resorts. The resort was also proud to announce that the company’s owner, Carson Richmond, would be in attendance. It was like fate had orchestrated things in our favor to place an opportunity right in our laps.

  Ange chugged the rest of her tequila sunrise, then wiped her lips.

  “Crashing a spoiled rich criminal’s party?” she said. “I can’t think of a better way to spend a Saturday night.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “Does one of you want to fill an old man in here?” Pete said, looking at both of us, confused.

  I glanced over at Ange, who shrugged as if to say don’t look at me. I thought for a second, then cleared my throat.

  “This Richmond woman is an old friend of Ange’s,” I said with a grin. “They go way back.”

  Pete looked back and forth between us.

  “Oh great,” he said sarcastically. “Well, maybe you can tell your friend to take her spray-tanned butt back up north where she belongs.”

  “Alright, easy,” I said, raising a hand. “I know it’s your swatter, but you mind if I keep this?”

  He raised his hands in the air. “Fine. Go right ahead. I’ll be just fine if I never read another thing about it.”

  As we finished up our food, I ordered a few items to go. When the bag of boxed food arrived, I handed the young waitress, who I hadn’t seen before, a fifty and told her to keep the change. She smiled and turned on her heels, and before she was able to take two steps, Mia barged over and stripped the bill from her hands.

  “Nice try, Logan,” she said with a smile. “But Pete won’t have it. And you better not leave cash on the table like the last time.”

  I smiled. It was like trying to pay for a meal when I used to go out with my dad. No matter how old I was or how much money I was making, it didn’t matter. He never let me pay.

  I shrugged playfully, not wanting to argue with her. She nodded triumphantly as Ange and I headed in through the big sliding glass door, past rows of glass cases containing various artifacts from around the Keys, and down the open staircase to the first floor. Dreadlocks hadn’t finished, and we could hear his voice and guitar chords as we crunched our way towards my Tacoma in the seashell driveway. He was good. Any other night and I’d have stayed until the mike got cold, but it wasn’t any other night. We had a lot of work to do the following day.

  When we reached the marina, I parked and we headed down the dock to the Baia, food in hand. After stepping aboard, I unlocked the salon door, stepped down, and realized that Kyle was asleep. Atticus had been asleep too. He was lying beside the dinette, and his head and ears rose as I entered.

  “There’s some for you too, boy,” I said, riffling around in the bag of food and pulling out a box for him. It had a few unseasoned hogfish filets inside, his favorite. I opened the lid and, after I gave him permission, he dug in. As I set the rest of the food in the galley, I heard Kyle shuffling in the guest cabin, then the door opened.

  “It’s really good,” I said.<
br />
  He was wearing black sweatpants and nothing else. I could see his heavily tattooed upper body by the dim light overhead. His eyes were slits.

  He looked at the food and nodded. “You have a house, right?” he said.

  “Yeah. About five minutes from here.”

  “You should go,” he said. “Don’t worry about me.”

  I smiled. He’d read my mind.

  He walked over and opened one of the boxes of food, savoring the smell. I reached behind me and pulled out the folded-up Keynoter Pete had given me back at the restaurant. Flattening it on the table beside Kyle, I pointed at the article. After a few seconds of reading and eating, he stopped chewing and looked up at me, his eyes wide.

  “We’ll be here early tomorrow,” I said.

  He nodded, and I patted Atticus on the top of his head. He’d already finished his food and looked ready to go back to bed.

  “Stay,” I said.

  I moved aft and up through the salon door. I locked it, then, after switching on the security system, Ange and I headed back down the dock to my Tacoma. Just a few minutes later, we pulled into my driveway off Palmetto Street. My house was two stories, the second being propped up on stilts like many homes near the water in southern Florida. I parked underneath beside my hanging heavy bag and a row of kettlebells. Before I’d even switched off the engine, Ange leaned over the center console and pressed her sweet, soft lips to mine.

  We couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Eventually, I managed to twist the key back and turn off the truck lights, and we both sauntered out and up the stairs while embracing. She’d stripped me half-naked before we’d even made it through the side door. We were usually very passionate when it came to our intimacy with each other, but this was another level. It was a powerful and overwhelming case of absence makes the heart grow fonder. We couldn’t control ourselves, and we didn’t want to.

  I shut the door and locked it, then Ange pulled me and we stumbled across the living room towards the master bedroom. We didn’t flick on a single light. We rolled onto the king-sized bed, kissed passionately, and smiled back at each other. Wrapping my arms around her and feeling her warm body pressed against mine was indescribable.

  TWENTY-SIX

  I’m not sure what time we eventually passed out. The evening had been a blur. An amazing and deeply satisfying blur. I awoke around 0800 with Ange lying on her side beside me. She looked incredible in the morning light that glowed in from my bedroom windows that looked out over my backyard and the channel beyond it. I spent a few minutes just watching her sleep. I wondered how such an amazing woman could even exist, and why she’d ever chosen me.

  I kissed her on the forehead, then made my way quietly into the kitchen. I put on a pot of coffee and whipped up some pancakes and a smoothie comprised of frozen strawberries, banana, orange juice, and vanilla yogurt. Ange walked out from the bedroom wearing nothing but one of my old tee shirts. She smiled at me seductively as she leaned against the door frame, then peeked over the counter to see what I’d prepared.

  It was a slightly overcast day, but it was already in the mid-sixties, so we ate out on the back patio. I brought out a tablet and we both did a quick search of the new Richmond resort. If what Scott had told me about her security was true, and I was sure that it was, getting into the party without an invitation wasn’t going to be easy. I also gave Scott a call and told him I needed all the intel he could scrounge up on Carson Richmond and her new resort. He said he’d do what he could, then told me he’d be by the marina that afternoon to discuss what we were going to do.

  After a few minutes, Ange leaned back in her white wicker chair, then looked up at me and smiled.

  “What is it?” I said, smiling back at her.

  “I was just thinking how this is a very formal event,” she said. “That means I get to wear that new maroon dress I got last month. And I get to see you in a tux.”

  She eyed me up and down. If she was in any way nervous about what we were planning to do, she didn’t show it in the slightest. She has nerves of steel, that woman, and more confidence than Pete Rose.

  After breakfast, we showered, changed, and drove back over to the marina. When we entered the Baia, I saw that Kyle was sitting in the salon with my laptop open on the table in front of him. Atticus was lying beside him, but he jumped to his feet and ran over to greet us as we stepped down. You’d think I hadn’t seen him in a week the way he spun, wagged his tail, and jumped up to lick my face. I glanced over at the counter and saw a half-empty pot of coffee. There was a map unfolded beneath the laptop along with a notepad with scribbles all over it. It looked like Kyle had been up for a while.

  I poured a mug of coffee, then we sat down beside him and went to work. We checked over every inch of the island resort, making written and mental notes of every path, structure, hill, patch of trees, and just about everything else. We wanted to know the place by heart so there would be no surprises. It was a relentless attention to detail that had been hardwired into our brains during our time in the SEALs. A facet of our characters that had become as natural as breathing.

  Scott showed up around 1300. When he knocked on the door and stepped down, I welcomed him into the salon. He was no longer wearing his professional attire. Instead, he sported a faded pair of blue jeans and a thin flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. In his right hand, he held a leather satchel. Kyle fell silent at the sight of Scott, and his face contorted with anger. Scott nodded towards each of us, then his gaze froze on Kyle’s.

  “It’s good to see you’re alive,” Scott said. “I’m sorry about everything.”

  Kyle shook his head. “You’re sorry. Well, that’s great to hear.” He paused a moment, then continued, “Logan, how could you bring him here?”

  “That’s enough,” I said, raising my voice. “I trust Scott more than just about anyone alive. He’s saved my ass countless times and he tried to save yours! Like I told you before, having your back lost him his career in the Navy. He would never be looked at by his superiors the same way again.” Kyle began to rise, and I stepped towards him, placed my hand on his chest, and pushed him back down. “He’s trying to help, Kyle! And we need him if we’re going to pull this off, understand?”

  Kyle was fuming. I knew that it wasn’t really Scott that he was angry at; it was the government as a whole. The government that he’d fought for, bled for, and in the end, the government that had turned its back on him.

  Kyle raised his hands in the air as if to say, “Alright, well, get on with it, then.”

  I glanced over at Scott. “What did you find out, Scott?”

  He paused a moment, then said, “As you all know, Carson’s good, really good. It’s hard to find a chink in her armor. She’s an anomaly when it comes to her privacy. The woman doesn’t even have a cellphone, so far as I know. But I may have found a way to hack into her files.” He reached into his leather satchel and pulled out a file. Inside the file, he showed a few pictures of Carson from different places around the world. “Wherever she goes,” Scott continued, “her aides bring along a secured case that contains her private, personal computer. The bad news is she only takes it out of the case when she needs to make a private conference call. We also won’t be able to tell where she’s keeping it on the island. Lastly, if she was smart, and she is, she’d be unlikely to have any information on her computer that could tie her to illegal activity. Though if we were able to hack into her online database somehow, that would be a different story.”

  There was a short silence that followed as we each processed the information. The odds were most definitely stacked against us, but we hoped to at least have the element of surprise. After our encounter, Carson would likely suspect Kyle and I would split up and go into hiding. That was what her enemies usually did. But we weren’t the hiding type. We were both more of the face the mountain of a problem head-on type.

  “Well,” I said, after letting out a deep breath. “One way to find out for sure wh
ether her computer is there or not is to call and try and get ahold of her.” I paused for a moment. All three of them were looking at me for an explanation. “I’d say the grand opening of a five-star resort deserves the recognition and congratulations of key figures within this state. That would include high political representatives.”

  Scott smiled. “That could work.”

  “And if the computer isn’t there?” Kyle said.

  I sighed. “Then we improvise. Maybe even get her to say something to instigate an investigation against her.”

  I’d planned to bring along my top-of-the-line pen recorder, just in case either Carson or someone in her circle slipped up.

  “You’re forgetting,” Ange said, “that none of us are hackers. I’m sure each of us in this room has basic knowledge, but Carson won’t have basic security. She’ll have the best.”

  Kyle nodded and grinned slightly. “That’s why we’ve got Murph.”

  The room went quiet. Scott had reacted slightly to hearing the name.

  “He’s a tech guru and hacker,” I explained before the question popped up. “We knew him back in the Navy. He did private contract work and was brilliant at hacking into enemy systems. He’s been working on his own for a while now, though.”

  “He left the service less than a month after the plane crashed,” Scott said. “You’ve been in touch with him all these years?”

  “Not me,” I said, then looked over at Kyle.

  Kyle nodded. “A little.”

  He was still being short, not wanting to disclose too much. I was the only person in the room, one of the few in the world, that he trusted.

  The room fell silent and I nudged Kyle’s shoulder softly. When he didn’t want to say any more, I took over as best as I could.

  “Murph created a device that will help us hack her computer,” I said. “All we’ve got to do is get to it without anyone knowing we’re there.”