The Complete Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Collection

by David F. Berens

  He reached down and punched a button on the dash. The Bose sound system of the expensive car lit up and the speakers came to life. Tom Petty began to sing “Free Fallin’” and as Clarice pulled out of town, Troy found himself singing along.

  The man’s fingers clutched at the rocky sand on Coquina Beach. His face was red and cracked from exposure, and his hands shook from the shock of being recently shot. His gray braided ponytail had come undone long ago and his stringy hair plastered his cheeks as he crawled ashore. He rolled over on his back as he pulled himself up out of the surf. The sun was warm on his skin after drifting for so long in the cool water of the ocean. He took a slow easy breath. Luckily, the bullet hadn’t hit his lung. Best he could tell, it had gone clean through without doing much damage. The voices of a few nearby tourists began to get closer. They had obviously realized he needed help.

  And then the anger began to rise. Jamaica Jack Barron propped himself up gingerly on his elbows. He’d need some time to recover from his injuries, but he knew what he was going to do after that.

  He was going to hunt down the naked bitch and rip her limb from limb until she screamed for him to kill her. Then he would do some more. And when he was through with her, he was going to find that asshole in the hat and make him pay.

  He was going to kill Troy Bodean.

  THE END

  Shark Wave

  A Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller #6

  Troy’s found himself in the middle of a tiny little tank with a bunch of sharks. These sharks run Martha’s Vineyard and they’ve got a plan to run even more. Ain’t nothin’ or nobody gonna stop ’em.

  Part I

  Some Beach

  “Home alone, sittin’ by the phone,

  waitin’ on the tide to come and take me on home.”

  -Ronnie “Wayfarer” Hobgood

  1

  Quiet Vineyard Haven

  Troy Clint Bodean had been here over a month and he still couldn’t get used to the fact that he was lying on the beach in front of a 13.5 million dollar mansion. Tucked down into the sand beside him sat a cooler with three Coronas, half a dozen orange wedges, and three empty bottles.

  A football-sized speaker belted out a vintage tune that Troy had never heard before. Clarice had turned him on to a whole new catalog of Bob Marley songs. He missed that girl—or at least he missed the fact that she often walked around naked. His Outback Tea-stained Cowboy hat was perched back on his head and the sun warmed his skin to something just below sizzling. Life is good, he thought. He took the last sip of his tepid beer and reached into the cooler for another.

  He popped the top using a bottle cap opener cleverly engineered into the bottom of his Reef flip-flops and shoved an orange wedge into the bubbling beer. The beach was quiet today with only the distant sounds of children playing a few mansions down and a group of gulls diving into the surf.

  Farther out in the brilliant green-blue ocean, he saw a pod of dolphins jumping and turning in tall splashes and sprays of water. It made him think of Clarice again. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected from his relationship with her, but he’d needed something to fill the void left in his soul when Meira had died. His eyes still watered when he thought of her. She was something special and he wondered if he would ever find love like that again.

  As he watched the dolphins travel south and fade out of view, he raised his beer bottle toasting them.

  “Happy trails, fellas,” he said, taking a sip. “If y’all run into Clarice, tell her I don’t hold it against her.”

  He inhaled deeply picturing her pert, tan-line-free bottom running around the house. She’d done that with giggles and smiles until her old boyfriend Todd had called and broken the good news. Their ragtag band of activist millennials had been accepted on the next voyage of The Sea Shepherd.

  Paul Watson and his save-the-whales warriors were setting sail for another season of harassing the Japanese whaling fleet, and they needed a crew for a new boat they’d purchased for the trip.

  “It’s the opportunity of a lifetime,” she’d told Troy while packing her bags.

  Though he knew there was nothing between Clarice and Todd, he still felt small pangs of jealousy. But more than that, he felt the shock of suddenly being homeless again, because Clarice had chosen that time to let Troy know the house wasn’t really hers. It was an Airbnb.

  “The rent runs out on Saturday,” she’d said and pecked him on the cheek. “So you can at least stay till then.”

  As her Uber drove her away, he worked out that it was Friday.

  “Dangit.”

  2

  Prosperity Returns

  Warm hazy dawn light cascaded through the thin wooden slats that lined the cabana walls. Troy’s back screamed at him for choosing to fall asleep on the teak lounge chair without the cushion. Truth be known, he hadn’t chosen to fall asleep at all. The empty Corona bottles made it clear that he had passed out there.

  He sat up and stretched. The creaks and cracks in his back were nothing compared to the gritty grinding in his bad knee. He figured at some point, he was going to have to get the thing looked at by a doctor. For now, he rubbed it until it warmed up enough to let him stumble up to the house.

  He guessed it would take him five minutes to pack his things and vacate the rented mansion. That left him at least thirty minutes to shower and search the house for some Icy Hot to rub on his knee. He gathered as many of his bottles as he could and slogged up the sand to the wooden stairs. He turned around and took a good long look at the gently rolling surf. It was going to be a beautiful day. At least it was here. He wasn’t sure where he was going, or what it would be like when he got there.

  “Later, Troy,” he said to no one. “Let’s get these old bones in a hot shower and then we’ll figure that out.”

  At the top of the stairs, he dumped the bottles into a recycling barrel. They probably don’t take glass, but neither do I, he thought. Let the rental people deal with ’em. He rinsed his feet with ice cold water from a green garden hose that sprayed water in random jets from the various cracks in it. One such jet hit him in the face and he jerked backward from it. His Costa Del Mar sunglasses flew off his face. Troy was happy to see that they survived the short fall but now they had a nice new gouge in exactly the center of the right lens. He wiped them clean and put them back on as he took the next flight of steps up to the massive back deck on the house.

  The screen door squeaked loudly as he entered the house, and the frigid air conditioning made him shiver as he wrenched the sliding door open. It was hard to pull, and when he closed it, it slipped suddenly and slammed onto his right pinky. Pain shot up his arm and he gripped it tightly, willing the sudden shock out of it.

  When it finally calmed down, he looked at it and saw his fingernail was dark red but other than that, it looked like it was fine. He wriggled it gently and decided it probably wasn’t broken.

  “Dang rich people.” He threw his hands up. “Thirteen million dollar house and they cain’t get a new hose, or a new screen door, or a new slidin’ door. Typical.”

  But the massive house had no answer for him, and his voice echoed off the tile floor making it feel emptier and lonelier than ever. He tossed his hat onto the white Italian leather sectional and laid his sunglasses on the glass table next to it. He stripped his khaki shorts off as he walked back toward the ridiculously extravagant master bedroom on this level—there was another equally impressive master upstairs.

  He turned on the water and stepped in when it had reached a temperature that wouldn’t be acceptable to any but those with military training—just above Antarctic cold. The stinging water jabbed at the sunburn on his shoulders and back. Trails of sand swirled off his body and drizzled into the drain at his feet. Slowly, the water began to warm until it filled the tennis court-sized bathroom with steam and the long wall of mirrors fogged. He picked up a generic bottle of body wash and emptied it onto his head. His black hair drooped down and lay on his back just below his shoul
der blades.

  “Time to get a haircut,” he mumbled, knowing he didn’t have enough money for that just yet.

  The thirty minutes he spent rinsing left him crinkly and prickly. He wrapped a white towel around his waist and used a second one to wipe a small circle away in the mirror. His face was ruddy, his beard was thick, and his eyes were slightly red.

  “Dadgum, Troy,” he said to his reflection. “You need to get away.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” a voice from the door surprised him.

  He jerked around to see who was there and as he did, his towel slipped and fell to the wet tile floor. A girl with a long, auburn ponytail stood in the doorway, a look of shock on her face.

  Troy looked down and realized that his lily-white midsection was exposed for all the world—or at least one red-headed girl—to see. He bent down and grabbed the towel covering himself.

  “Beg pardon, miss,” he said, struggling to keep his nether regions covered. “I didn’t know anyone was supposed to be here.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  Troy saw that she had a kelly green, polyester polo shirt on with a bright yellow logo that read: Martha’s Maids. And her arms were full of folded white towels.

  “You’re the maid, I reckon?”

  She nodded, her eyes still wide from the troubling situation. He could see that she was young, maybe college. Probably working to pay for school. There was a little edge of fear in her eyes and Troy raised one hand. That left his towel dangling precariously over his middle.

  “I was just gettin’ in a last shower before I took off. I’ll be gone before you can say, ‘lickety split.’ ”

  She glanced around the bathroom, found an empty marble shelf, and laid the stack of towels down. Troy took the few seconds of her looking away to secure his towel around his waist.

  “Doesn’t matter to me much.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m just doing the check-out cleaning.”

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. As she studied it, Troy noticed her eyes. Green. Almost as green as her shirt with a darker green ring around the outside. She looked up and saw him staring at her. A hint of a smile edged up on her lips.

  “Looks like the place is empty until next month.”

  “Oh, well, okay.”

  “Meaning, you could stay if you want.” She waved a hand around the giant bathroom. “Not like anyone else is using it. Hell, I’ll come by in a few days and clean it up again if you like.”

  As she spoke, Troy decided she was beautiful. He wondered what she would look like prancing around the house naked like Clarice. He shook his head.

  “I couldn’t,” he said. “I reckon I should be going.”

  “Well, take your time leaving.” She smiled a little broader. “I never like being here alone. You could keep me company, mister … um … ?”

  “Troy. Troy Bodean.”

  He stuck out his hand. She shook it with the softest hand Troy had ever felt. As he did this, his towel slipped again and he grabbed it just in time.

  “I’m Prosperity.” She grinned and put her hand up to shield her eyes.

  Of course you are, thought Troy.

  She looked at an invisible watch on her arm. “Why don’t you put some clothes on and I’ll be tidying up in the living room. I can clean up in here when you’re done.”

  “Good idea.”

  She turned to walk away and Troy felt his pulse quicken. She did have a nice backside like Clarice after all. She glanced over her shoulder and caught him looking at her. She rolled her eyes and disappeared through the door.

  Troy looked back into the foggy mirror that was just now starting to clear. He still looked pretty haggard, but his eyes were most definitely brighter. He wondered if his future had just gotten a little brighter too. It scared him that whenever he had that thought. It usually meant something really bad was about to happen.

  3

  Room To Room

  Prosperity Spartanburg had been a maid for three weeks when she bumped into the man named Troy for the first time. It was not a strange meeting, except for the fact that he’d been a strange man in a house that was supposed to be empty. Oh, and also the fact that he was naked at the time. Other than that … normal, totally normal.

  It was probably less shocking because she was running on three Monster energy drinks and two donuts with pink icing and sprinkles. Saturday mornings were always tough. Oddly, her classes at the Cape Cod Community College ran late into the evening. Odd because they were classes in Funeral Services during which they were often studying cadavers under the malodorous influence of various embalming fluids.

  Whoever thought it was a good idea to schedule those courses at night was an idiot. She lost track of the times she sprinted across the parking lot to her Volkswagen Bug, fumbled for her keys, and slammed the door on her seat belt trying to escape the imaginary zombies chasing her out of the building. Idiots.

  The longer she spent with the dead, the more she wondered if she’d made a horrible mistake choosing that particular career path. But this was her last year and soon she’d be out … so she could spend the rest of her life around more dead bodies. Who’s the idiot now?

  The maid gig was decent money and she could work pretty much whenever she wanted. A nice feature when exams or labs came up. Twenty bucks an hour paid for her gas and some of her rent. Last month had been slow and she wasn’t able to make the payment, and they kicked her out. No grace period, no warning, no nothing. Boom. Out on the street. With her car stuffed solid to its rag top, she drove around mindlessly, trying to work out where she could crash.

  Her phone had brought her not only a message reminding her of this Airbnb cleaning, but also a plan. There weren’t any guests scheduled to be in the house for over a month. No one would notice if she just spent a couple of days there while she got her current living situation worked out.

  A good weekend at her second job at the Tail Spinner would get her back in the black. It disgusted her that she had to get nearly naked, serve watered-down cocktails, and let a bunch of old white men with cigars and whiskey grab her butt—among other things—for money. But when times were tough, she did what she had to do. That’s what her mama always told her to do.

  Typically, once a month in the skimpy waitress get-up the club provided was all she needed or could stomach. But this month she would have to add a weekend. Just one. Lately she’d been adding more and more second weekends … it made her gag to think about it. Some nights when she watched the genuine strippers counting their huge wads of cash while snorting lines of white powder, she thought about going all the way ... just once. The coked-up dancers pulled in five times what she did on a good night, three times as much on a bad night. It was almost enough to bend her morals until she saw the way those girls looked in the light of day. She shivered at the thought of the strung out, worn down, zombie-fied faces that haunted the Tail Spinner strip club when dawn ran off the last of the vultures. No, that was a bridge too far, for now.

  Her plan to crash at the Airbnb almost came to a screeching halt when she found the naked man showering in the bathroom. The initial shock had been seeing someone else in the buff while she still had her clothes on. She’d become so accustomed to the reverse at the Tail Spinner strip club that this felt strange. But that strange feeling had changed into who the hell is this guy? There isn’t supposed to be anyone here.

  That’s when she saw his eyes. She had become a good judge of character working at the strip club, and somehow she saw immediately that this was a decent man. Worn, weary, and probably hungover, but decent.

  While the man in the shower finished up, she played at dusting the furniture and rearranging the various generic beach house tchotchkes scattered about. She saw what must be his hat on the couch and flipped it over to inspect it. Interesting. You don’t see many of these on Martha’s Vineyard, she thought.

  “You like it?” His voice startled her and she threw it back down on the leather s
ectional.

  “Hey, hey, hey.” He held up his hands. “You don’t have ta be so rough with her. She’s been through a whole heap of crazy times with me.”

  “Oh, sorry.” She picked it up, dusted off the top of it, and handed it to Troy. “My bad.”

  “No problem, darlin’.”

  He put the hat on his head and smiled. His shirt was linen and wrinkled as if it had never ever seen an iron. He wore khaki shorts and flip-flops, and she wondered if those had ever been washed. This guy was a beach bum in every sense of the word. Prosperity was surprised at the flutters that sent her heart racing and her pulse thrumming in her chest. Thankfully, his smile looked well-cared for and his teeth were all there.

  Good teeth, good man, her mama always used to say.

  He was a little bit Magnum P.I. and a little bit Matthew McConaughey to look at, but his Southern drawl was all McConaughey.

  “Well, little lady, if you’re gonna stare that long, might as well take a photo,” he said and pulled his hat brim down slightly.

  “Oh, uh,” Prosperity stuttered and started dusting the side table furiously. “Just tidying up a bit.”

  Troy nodded. “I’ll just grab my things and—”

  “You don’t have to. Why don’t you stay?”

  She mentally slapped her forehead at how quickly she had blurted that out. High school crushes had been ruined on less desperate sounding appeals. The man named Troy arched his eyebrow and showed her dimples in his cheeks she hadn’t noticed before.

  “What I mean to say is ... like I said before ... um ... the place is empty for a while.” She imagined that she was slowly drowning, every word she spoke dumping more and more water on her. “I’m staying for a few days and I uh…”