Hawaiian Thunder (Coastal Fury Book 4)

by Matt Lincoln

  “Maybe, I don’t know. I dented it really good before I got it open.”

  Liz Bell unrolled the sheet, and it appeared to be in good condition, as far as I could tell such things. A white sheet of paper sat atop the parchment. She moved it aside, and everyone in the room leaned forward to see why the stoic woman took a sharp breath.

  “Holeeee shit,” I whispered.

  The parchment was an exquisite, rust-colored drawing of the Dragon’s Rogue herself. She rode high on a swell with her sails full in the wind. The flag, which no one had ever seen fully depicted, was bold and glorious. Although the skull and crossbones wasn’t common until later, the Dragon’s Rogue had not only that but a dragon encircling them. The drawing was signed by Eva Finch in 1691.

  “What does the paper say?” Sadie asked after we all gawked at the drawing.

  Another look showed the paper wasn’t entirely white so much as it had looked snowy white next to the tea-colored parchment of the drawing. Liz Bell read the missive aloud.

  I, Jason Hatch, am hiding my family’s shame. While I cannot bring myself to destroy these artifacts, I cannot allow the celebration of the evils of piracy to continue down my family line. This drawing and Captain Grendel’s journal shall remain hidden until my lineage may be removed from this stain upon our moral fabric. Should anyone find this in the future, I beg of you to dismiss it as Satan’s lure to evil. May the Good Lord forgive me for not burning these items.

  “Wow, Jason Hatch was a bore,” Linda said. She turned to me. “And these people were your ancestors?”

  “The original owner, yes,” I said with a nod. “We think he joined the crew when Grendel took over the ship. It was usually that or walk the plank.”

  Nurse Hatchet had great or terrible timing, depending on one’s perspective, as she entered at that time and announced that the Holms’ room wasn’t an amphitheater.

  That evening, I took Sadie out for a proper date, after which she invited me home with her. Given the lack of work Meisha had for her, Sadie had a lot of time to spend over the next two weeks, and we drove that yellow Ferrari all over the island… on my dime. She gave up her seat once for the office’s next-door neighbor I’d promised to drive around.

  Over those two weeks, I dreaded my return to Miami more and more. It meant leaving Sadie half a world away, and I was going to miss her almost as much as I missed a certain photographer in New York City.

  Before the Miami crew left Oahu, we met with Meisha’s team in the dorm area.

  “We’ll keep tabs on Herman Jones,” Meisha told us. “If he doesn’t have connections to one or two of the New York families, I’ll eat a hat.”

  “MBLIS and the FBI are providing protection for Ben and Linda Holm,” I reported. Ronnie was in a seat next to Robbie. The two of them had more color in their cheeks, and Ronnie’s cough was almost gone. “There’s not a lot we can do that Ronnie can’t arrange, but we all need to keep our heads up. We haven’t heard of any threats, but it’s early yet.”

  “These people like their dishes cold,” Warner informed us. “We may not know it’s happening until it’s over.”

  “I’m sorry about all of this,” Ronnie murmured. “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Now my parents are selling their house and are going to Miami to be closer to Robbie and Ethan.”

  “It is what it is,” Davis said. “We’re going to keep on our toes, and we’ll let you know if we get intel.”

  I hated to leave it sitting at that, but it was the best of the few options we had.

  After that meeting, we had a potluck dinner to celebrate the new office, the Holm survivors, and new friends. Sadie took me aside. She had a gift-wrapped box and handed it to me.

  “You didn’t have to get me something,” I told her as I opened the packaging.

  “Sometimes a force moves you,” she said in a soft voice.

  The gift was stored inside a simple koa box. I set it on the table and looked at Sadie. The wood was polished in the way I’d come to recognize as her Uncle Oke’s work. With great care, I lifted the lid. There, resting in a red velvet bed was a tiki totem about twelve inches high. The figure looked fierce yet joyful. The areas not covered in symbolism and flowers had the look of a boat’s hull.

  When I stepped back, I realized it was not a traditional Hawaiian god, but a stylized, laughing dragon.

  “He carved it on the side while creating the Dragon’s Rogue model,” Sadie told me. “I asked him about it. All he’d say was he’d had a dream, and in that dream, I learned the meaning when it was time. Last night, I remembered that conversation.”

  Sadie wrapped her arms around my left arm as I eased the tiki into its protective box. My tongue felt thick and throat dry.

  “So you know what it means now,” I observed.

  “I pulled it out last night after you fell asleep.” She squeezed my arm. “I smelled the tobacco Uncle Oke loved, and I knew he was there. He made this for you. I’m sure of it.”

  “I never met him.”

  She shrugged. “Does it matter? Maybe he knew it would be you from that dream. Maybe he suspected someone related to the Dragon’s Rogue would show up someday. Either way, this is meant for you.”

  I swallowed. “Thank you, Sadie. This means more than I can express.”

  We kissed long and deep until someone cleared their throat.

  “They’re cleaning up now,” Robbie announced. “Ronnie and I are taking the folks to their hotel.”

  Our flight was scheduled for the next day. For as badly as Holm was beaten by Volkov’s guys, he was doing well and already cleared to fly back to Florida. I had a feeling that was pushing things, but the guy needed to be home with his reunited family, as did Ronnie.

  Sadie and I spent the last night out on a hill watching the stars and making love. Neither of us knew when or if we’d see each other again. We made the most of our time before a difficult goodbye then next day.

  After the time in Hawaii, colorful Miami seemed almost dull. That didn’t last long, though. Life is funny. Right when you start getting comfortable with the little things, or back then, the straightforward cases, something happens to shake everything up. Before we knew it, those of us who worked in Miami’s MBLIS office learned how much shaking we could take.

  EPILOGUE

  “Damn, Ethan, you never told me the whole story,” Mike complained from behind the bar. “I remember the stuff that happened after you got back, but I didn’t realize all those connections.”

  “What do you mean?” Charlie asked as he fiddled with this football helmet. He’d removed it sometime during the story. “Are you talking about the funding stuff and the crime families?”

  “Dude, were those families behind the money issues?” Ty’s voice was less muffled since he rearranged his Cthulhu tentacles so he could get to his beers easier. “I mean, like, if they wanted to do business in the Caribbean, they’d have to get past you.”

  I studied Mackenzie and Jeff. Mack tended to go deep on the questions, and Jeff, well, I never knew what he might point out.

  “That’s too obvious,” Mack said at length. She stretched and sipped at a mint julep Mike had made for her. That used to require being shot at. Apparently, his requirements for free mint juleps now included injuries that occurred at my bar. “Sometimes coincidence is just coincidence.”

  Jeff shook his head. “There’s such a thing as too much coincidence,” he countered. “I say they’re connected.” He turned to Davis and his mystery reporter. “Were they?”

  Davis snorted. “That’s Ethan’s story, not mine. Well, the Miami part of the story.” His smile faded, and I understood why. “It was a tough time.”

  “Hell yeah, it was,” I affirmed.

  Ty bellied up to the bar with those tentacles, and hell if I wasn’t tempted to tie them into knots.

  “Okay, Agent Davis,” he said, “I gotta know. What about the helicopter? The Magnum P.I. one. If I were that guy’s dad, I would’ve been super pissed about that
.”

  Davis chuckled. “That kid, Kaden, he helped me find a better replica than the one his dad had. We took up a collection because his insurance didn’t want to cover the exact nature of the events.”

  I leaned forward. “I never heard about this.”

  “Oh yeah.” Davis grinned. “Kaden and I talked a lot. He ended up joining the Navy. I didn’t tell you?”

  “No. Good for him.”

  “He’s a SEAL now, and he’s in charge of his own squad. That kid stepped up in a big way once he saw what life was like off of that island.”

  “Hooyah!” I yelled.

  Half the bar yelled back, “Hooyah!”

  Davis and a few others answered, “Oorah!”

  Once the laughter died down, the questions continued. By then, I was used to it.

  “Mr. Marston, did you ever get to dive the Arizona?” Charlie wanted to know. His eyes glowed, and I knew it had to do with his aspirations. “That would be so cool. Sad, but cool.”

  “They do a lot on those dives,” I told the gathered sailors and civilians. “I’ll tell you about it sometime.”

  I shook my head a little. Then, I looked at a small painting on the other end of the shelf with Uncle Oke’s tiki. An interior designer might have chosen something to balance out the view of the special honors shelf.

  “What’s that painting?” Mack asked as she followed my line of sight. “It’s so small, but look at all that detail.”

  The painting was of a bubble under the sea. A family of two parents and two children stood within the bubble and watched the reef life around them. If my guests had lived in Miami at the time that painting was created, they might have recognized it.

  “A visionary with a pure heart created that,” I said loud enough for the people nearest me to hear. “That painting is worth more than a thousand words, and I’ll tell you a few of those words the next time.”

  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.

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