by Matt Lincoln
Cayman Crackdown
Coastal Fury book 18
Matt Lincoln
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
2. Ethan
3. Ethan
4. Charlie
5. Ethan
6. Ethan
7. Ethan
8. Charlie
9. Ethan
10. Ethan
11. Ethan
12. Ethan
13. Ethan
14. Ethan
15. Charlie
16. Ethan
17. Ethan
18. Ethan
19. Ethan
20. Ethan
21. Ethan
22. Charlie
23. Charlie
24. Ethan
25. Ethan
26. Ethan
27. Ethan
28. Ethan
29. Ethan
30. Ethan
31. Ethan
32. Ethan
33. Ethan
34. Ethan
35. Charlie
36. Ethan
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Prologue
I wiped down the counters one last time, focusing intently on that one little spot right on the corner that I never seemed to be able to clean, no matter what I tried. Of course, this attempt ended up being in vain as well, as the tiny little green spot just wouldn’t budge, even now that the rest of the bar top was glistening and so squeaky clean that I could see my reflection in it.
“Just what the heck is that?” I grumbled as I took a step away from the counter.
“What the heck is what?” Rhoda, my head bartender and most reliable employee, asked as she walked by, her arms laden down with a crate full of electrical wires.
“That stupid little stain.” I frowned as I nodded toward the offending mark.
“Oh, that?” she hummed as she leaned down to inspect it. “Hasn’t that always been there?”
“Yes,” I replied. “And it’s driving me nuts. Seriously, what is it? It’s bright green! If it was paint, it would have come off, right? I’ve scrubbed this thing down with everything I can imagine. I had this place sparkling when I finally took it off of Mike’s hands. Everything shined up like a new penny except that.”
I glared at the mark as though it had just insulted me. Truthfully, it had been here since I could remember, all the way back when the Rolling Thunder was still the pink flamingo-tinged nightmare known as Mike’s Tropical Tango Hut. I’d noticed it back then, but I’d never paid it all that much attention. Until the bar was mine, of course, and I’d set out to turn it into something halfway decent.
“You know…” Rhoda set down the crate and rubbed her chin thoughtfully as she leaned down to look at the mark closely. “It kind of looks like it’s under the finish. Like something got onto the raw wood, and then they laid the lacquer on top without bothering to get it off.”
“Well, that’s just a horrifying thought,” I deadpanned as I stared down at the little green speck. If that was the case, there was literally no chance it would ever come out unless I wanted to sand down through whatever finish was coating the countertop to dig it out myself.
“Ethan, just relax.” Rhoda smiled at me as she picked the crate back up. “Everything is going to be fine. We’ve already done this once before, remember. We’ve got this.”
She was, of course, talking about the live music event we had planned for this evening. She was right. We had hosted this kind of event before, once, several months ago. We’d run into a few snags then, but the experience had made us wiser, and this time around, we’d been more practiced and better prepared for what to expect.
Nevertheless, when I did something, I preferred to do it right. No matter what it was, I took pride in my work, and right now, that meant making sure my bar and the events it held were successful.
Rhoda, Nadia, and the rest of the girls had done a fantastic job of getting everything set up. Without much else to do, I’d taken it upon myself to get the bar looking neat and polished. That was what had ultimately led me back to the speck.
We had three musicians on the roster for the night, and several of my regulars had cleared out in preparation for the rush that was certain to follow. Though some of them seemed to be looking forward to the rock bands I’d lined up to perform, a lot of my regular patrons were older, more laid-back guys—military retirees who just wanted to have a couple of beers and unwind. A bar full of rowdy, excited kids wasn’t exactly their idea of relaxing.
“The place is starting to get more popular,” one of the regulars in question remarked as he drained the last of his beer. He was a nice, older man who kept to himself and sometimes read a book as he enjoyed his drink. “Before, it was just those fans of yours that used to hang out here all the time. Now it seems like every day the crowd’s gotten younger and younger.”
He sounded like he was complaining, but there was a fond smile on his face as he looked around.
“You gonna stick around for the show?” I asked as I refilled his glass.
“Why not?” he shrugged before taking a sip. “Could be fun. It would be a shame to miss it, with all the work the girls are putting in to set it all up.”
“Well, I hope you enjoy it,” I replied as I moved to take another customer’s order.
People had been filtering in for the past half-hour or so, eager to start pre-gaming and grab good seats before the show started. So when the door creaked open once more, I didn’t bother to look up, assuming it was another excited fan coming to see their favorite band.
“When you said you were running a bar,” an oddly familiar voice called from the end of the counter, “Somehow, I didn’t picture it like this.”
I knew that voice, but I couldn’t place it. I looked up at the man who was speaking. Again, there was something familiar about him, about the dour expression on his face, but I couldn’t quite remember where I recognized him from.
“Are you just gonna stand there staring?” he deadpanned, his expression completely unchanged even as he spoke. It was at that moment that I realized who he was.
“Hills!” I smiled at him as I walked over to where he was sitting. “I barely recognized you. You’ve started going gray.”
“Gee, thanks,” he replied flatly. “It’s nice to see you, too. And that’s what grandkids will do to you.”
“Grandkids?” I asked, my eyes going wide with surprise. “You’re married?” I couldn’t imagine Charlie Hills being married. In fairness, I couldn’t imagine Charlie Hills doing anything. The guy was as stony as they came, with a stoic, grumpy face and an unsociable personality to match.
“Nah,” he replied gruffly. “Amber’s son.”
“Right,” I replied. That made more sense. Amber was Hills’s niece. I supposed that would make him something like a grandfather to her kids.
“Anyway, I came here to see this bar of yours you kept going on about,” he grumbled as he looked around the interior of the bar. “I see you’re still obsessed with that pirate stuff.”
“I didn’t ‘go on’ about it,” I retorted. “I mentioned it one time. Maybe twice. And, of course, I am. Pirates are awesome.”
Hills snorted out a laugh in response.
“As I recall,” he scoffed, “we have a few interactions with a group of pirates that I sure as hell wouldn’t describe as ‘awesome.’”
“Well, not those kinds of pirates,” I retorted as I recalled the case that he and I had worked on together.
“So what have you got here?” he asked as he looked past me toward all the bottles on the wall behind the bar. I watched as his eyes drifted up past the shelv
es and toward the huge treasure map mounted above. “Look at that. Is that real?”
“Yep,” I replied proudly as I looked up at the map. It had taken me a long time to collect all of those pieces and an even longer time to track down all the locations and treasures marked on each piece. I had a lot of great memories connected to that map.
“Damn,” he whistled. “Guess that explains how you were able to buy this place.”
“You’re not entirely wrong about that,” I laughed. I had found quite a bit of valuable treasure during my adventures, some of which ended up netting me a nice profit.
“Anyway,” he changed the subject, “like I was saying. What have you got here?”
“Whatever you want,” I replied. “We’re fully stocked here at the Rolling Thunder.”
“Is that right?” Hills scoffed. “Well, let me just start with a beer. I’ve never been much of a drinker.”
“Coming right up,” I replied with a chuckle. All that buildup just to ask for a beer in the end.
“So what else in here is real?” Hills asked as he glanced around the bar. “I mean real, authentic pirate stuff?”
“Well, mostly everything,” I replied as I grabbed a glass for him. “A lot of it is connected to the Rogue, too.”
“You’re still going on about that thing?” Hills scoffed, shaking his head at me. “Well, I guess I have to hand it to you. Most people wouldn’t have even thought about doing something as crazy as chasing after some three-hundred-year-old boat. And the bar does look nice. Authentic, I guess.”
“Thanks,” I replied as I took an appreciative look around the bar myself. He was right. I had done pretty damned well for myself.
“So you’re still in touch with Chapman, then?” I asked as I slid the beer across the bar top to him.
“Oh, yeah,” he replied. “Wouldn’t be able to avoid him if I wanted to. He calls all the time, and he started visiting once he found out my hotel has a lake on the property. He and his kids come up every summer now.”
“Right, you bought that old hotel up in the mountains,” I murmured as I recalled what he’d ended up doing after retiring from MBLIS. It seemed fitting for a guy like Hills to become a hermit and retire to some isolated place up in the middle of nowhere.
“That’s right,” he replied after taking a swig of his beer. “And I came all the way down from Canada to see you. Aren’t you grateful?”
“Extremely,” I deadpanned.
“Junior really wanted to come and visit, too,” he remarked before taking another sip of his beer. “We were actually supposed to come down together, but something came up, and he had to work. I can’t believe he’s still working with MBLIS, he and Fiona both. Dunno how they have the time for a kid between all of that.”
“Workaholics,” I snorted.
“No kidding,” Hills snickered. “Just the other day, we got to talking, reminiscing about old times. We ended up talking about that old case we went on together, with the Colombian pirates? With—”
“Time to party!” A loud, familiar voice rang out from the open door of the bar, cutting him off mid-sentence. It was Jeff, one of my biggest fans, striding into the bar with a wobbly saunter.
“Seriously, stop,” Mac hissed at him as she yanked on his arm. “You’re embarrassing us.”
Jeff frowned like she’d just slapped him. Behind them were Ty and Charlie, the rest of the little crew of Air Force kids that had taken to hanging out in my bar for the past few months to listen to my stories about my old days with MBLIS and about the Dragon’s Rogue.
“Sorry.” Mac frowned at me apologetically as she guided Jeff onto one of the stools. “He’s excited about the show tonight. And he and Ty decided to play beer pong before coming down here, for some reason.”
“Hey, it’s not my fault he’s a lightweight,” Ty snickered.
“Why did you even do it at all?” Mac shook her head at him in disbelief. “We were about to come to a bar. Anyway, Ethan, it’s looking good in here. Way more crowded than I expected it to be.”
I turned to look at the interior of the bar. I’d been so focused on my conversation with Hills that I hadn’t noticed just how crowded the bar had already gotten. I’d noticed the door opening and closing, but I hadn’t paid attention to the number of people that had already piled inside. Pretty much all of them had gathered at the far end, where the chairs and stage were set up.
“There were a lot of people outside, too,” Ty noted.
“So, that’s why there are so many kids in here?” Hills suddenly spoke up. “That makes more sense. I thought it seemed different from what I had pictured in my head.”
The kids all turned to look at him curiously.
“This is Agent, er, former Agent Charlie Hills,” I introduced him. “He worked with MBLIS around the same time that I did.”
“Really?” Jeff asked a little too loudly. “You’ve never mentioned anyone named Hills.”
“That’s because I didn’t work at the same branch,” Hills replied flatly. “I worked for the Las Vegas Division.”
“Ooh, Vegas.” Ty grinned as he settled onto one of the other bar stools. “That sounds fun. What was it like?”
“It was alright,” Hills replied vaguely before taking a sip of his beer. He had never liked idle chit-chat.
“Oh, did we interrupt you guys?” Mac asked. “Sorry, we just came barging right through.”
“Wait!” Jeff exclaimed again, just a bit too loud to be appropriate while indoors, the alcohol already in his system clearly impacting his ability to regulate his volume. “What were you guys talking about? An old case?”
“Dude, chill,” Ty scolded him before turning to us. “But, yeah, were you talking about something interesting? You can’t be telling cool stories when we’re not here, Ethan.”
“We weren’t,” I retorted.
“We were just talking about how all the stuff in here is from the Dragon’s Rogue,” Hills interrupted me.
“You know about the Dragon’s Rogue?” Ty asked curiously.
“Of course I do,” Hills scoffed. “How could I not? Marston never used to shut up about it. I heard about it first-hand when he found the dang thing too. He was telling everyone he’d ever met.”
“Seriously?” Jeff gasped, his eyes wide and shining. “Tell us how he found it. Where he found it. Please, Ethan’s been teasing us with the story about it for months now. End our suffering.”
“Don’t you dare,” I shot a threatening look at Hills, who had just opened his mouth to reply.
“Don’t worry.” He snickered before taking another sip of beer. “I’m not going to spill your secrets. I barely paid attention when you talked about it, to be honest.” He turned to look at the kids with a smirk. “I was there when he got shot by that gun, though.”
“What gun?” Mac asked, her eyes burning with curiosity as she looked between Hills and me.
“Ah, that gun,” I parroted as I looked over at the antique pistol mounted behind glass on the wall. The kids followed my line of sight, and I could tell by the way that they all tensed up that they were itching to hear more. “Well, that’s a long story.”
“Come on, we have time,” Jeff pleaded. “The show doesn’t start for like two more hours. That’s plenty of time.”
“Well, it would be fitting, seeing as Hills is here and all,” I muttered as I turned to look at the man in question.
“It’s a story you want?” He looked at the kids, a small smirk forming on his face. “Then I’d better help tell it. Marston will probably change everything around to make himself seem like a badass. As I recall, you weren’t even conscious for part of this one.”
“Whoa, what?” Mac asked, an excited smile forming on her face. “Ethan got knocked out? Come on, tell us what happened!”
“Alright, alright,” I conceded as I pulled a chair up to the edge of the bar to sit down. “We can both tell it. It all started with a cargo ship off the coast of southern Florida…”
&nbs
p; 1
Captain Liwei Hueng stood at the helm of his ship, gazing out through the bridge’s window. He could see the deck from where he was. It wasn’t a pretty sight, not like some of the cruise liners he’d worked on as a younger man. Instead, all he saw were rows of neatly stacked cargo containers of various colors, like oversized building blocks. There was nothing luxurious or extravagant about it. Cargo ships were built for efficiency and practicality. His job was to ferry goods from one side of the world to another. That was it.
He sighed with boredom as he sank into one of the chairs on the bridge. The skies were clear, the water wasn’t choppy at all, and these days, technology had advanced so much that a computer did most of the navigating. Until they reached their destination of southern Florida, there wasn’t all that much for him to do aside from overseeing the rest of his crew.
Sometimes, he wished he’d stayed on one of those cruise ships. It certainly would have been a lot more enjoyable than the monotony of sailing the same route over and over. There was, of course, the money to consider. He made a lot more doing this, especially since he started taking on special orders.
He flinched a little as one of the crewmen suddenly approached him. Even though he’d been doing this for a while already, the paranoia never completely went away. He was always just a bit on edge, fearing that one of the crewmen not “in the know” would suddenly catch wise to what was going on and sound the alarm.
As it was, it was only Officer Lieu approaching. Hueng allowed himself to relax. Lieu, being the captain’s second mate, knew about pretty much everything that was going on. There was no reason to be anxious around him.