by Matt Lincoln
“Oh yeah,” Jeff replied as he hastily gathered up the cards and got to his feet. “Poison Nights. They’re pretty good. They’ve been pretty popular on social media lately. I actually like a few of their songs.”
“Well, go in and join the rest of the kids then,” I insisted as I pointed my thumb toward the door. “The four of you should do something other than sitting around, listening to old guys talk.”
“Your stories are fun, though,” Mac replied as she got down off the table to follow the other three into the bar. The moment they opened the door, the music grew intensely loud. I could hear the crowd inside yelling before the sound was abruptly muffled as the door fell shut again.
“Well, this was not how I expected this visit to go,” Hills muttered as he looked at the door the kids had just disappeared through. “Fun, though. It was nice, getting to relive the past a little.”
“Yeah, it’s always a fun time when they stop by.” I smiled before pushing off the wall. “Anyway, I’d better get inside and help the girls man the bar. It sounds kind of crazy in there, and they might need some help.”
“Alright,” Hills replied as he stood up. “I’ll be heading out then. Maybe I’ll bring Junior by next time. He’d love a chance to tell some stories. Probably stay up all night talking, too.”
“That would be nice,” I replied as he turned to leave. It had been a pleasant surprise to see him here, and he had definitely helped fill in the gaps of the story that I hadn’t known about, considering I was out cold.
I braced myself for the chaos as I stepped back into the bar, but it seemed like, other than the volume level, everything was pretty calm. Rhoda and the other bar girls seemed to have things under control, but I still stepped behind the bar to lend a hand and ease their load.
As I did, my eyes unconsciously flitted to one of the photos tacked to the wall back there. I smiled as I looked at it. I guessed it had been a little mean of me to tease the kids with the gun when it didn’t have all that much to do with the Dragon’s Rogue. Not like the thing that was prominently displayed in the photo.
I pulled it off of the wall to examine it more closely. I could still remember the thrill I’d felt when I’d found it, one of the biggest discoveries regarding the Rogue that I’d made in a while up to that point.
Originally, I’d wanted to put it somewhere in the bar, like the rest of the things I’d managed to collect. Ultimately though, it had just been too big to fit anywhere in here reasonably. Being almost twice as tall as I was, it just wasn’t practical for me to keep the figurehead from the Dragon’s Rogue inside the bar.
The next best thing was the photo that Holm and I had taken standing in front of it the day I’d found it off the coast of Aruba.
Author’s Note
Hey, if you got here, I just want you to know that you’re awesome! I wrote this book just for someone like you, and if you want another one, it is super important that you leave a review.
The more reviews this book gets, the more likely it is there will be a sequel to it. After all, I’m only human, and you have no idea how far a simple “your book was great!” goes to brighten my day.
Also, if you want to know when the sequel comes out, you absolutely must join my Facebook group and follow me on Amazon. Doing one won’t be enough because it relies on either Facebook or Amazon telling you the book is out, and they might not do it.
You might miss out on all my books forever, if you only do one!
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