Lost Key

by Chris Niles

  Lost Key

  A Shark Key Adventure

  Chris Niles

  Contents

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Also by Chris Niles

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Lost Key is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 Chris Niles

  All rights reserved.

  Visit the author’s website at chrisnilesbooks.com

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this eBook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use, please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author and the team of professionals who contributed their effort to this creative work.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without express written permission from the author. The scanning, uploading, or distributing of this book via any means without permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  The author appreciates your time to read this work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought this book, and please tell your friends who might also like it. The best way for a reader to find new favorites is still a recommendation from a trusted friend.

  Cover by Shayne Rutherford at Wicked Good Book Covers

  Edited by Staci Troilo

  For Adam

  I’m proud of you.

  Prologue

  October 1931

  Tommy and Gigi started making plans when the judge replaced the whole jury.

  For weeks, Al Capone’s crew had worked to guarantee every juror was on their side. Even if twelve brand new jurors sat in the box, the Outfit would find a way to win them over, too. The Boss would beat these charges. He always beat the charges.

  But this time was different. And Tommy and Gigi knew it.

  When the jury announced their verdict, runners sprinted down the streets of Chicago. Every boy in town wanted to be first to shout the inconceivable news. “Hey! The jury found him guilty! They’re takin’ him straight to jail. The Boss is goin’ to jail!”

  In the Lexington Hotel, a young boy’s breathless cries echoed through the sweeping marble lobby. Barrel-chested henchmen looked up from behind their newspapers, shook their heads, and waved the boy away. No one believed the feds could make anything stick to the great Al Capone.

  When Scarface walked the streets, children flocked to his side. He built schools so neighborhood kids could get an education. Later, after the market crashed, he built soup kitchens so they wouldn’t starve. He created jobs and protected his employees. Charmed the women, joked with the men. Paid his employees well for their loyalty. Chicago belonged to him.

  But as the news trickled in and people realized it was true, men gathered in twos and threes, then more. Working girls ran down to the lobby wrapped in robes — none of them would be doing any more business that night. Company cars filled the street in front of the building and the alley behind as Capone’s guards and enforcers congregated at the Lexington headquarters. The crowd grew louder, and everyone speculated about the future of the organization.

  In the chaos, Gigi slipped into the lobby wearing a simple dress. She clutched three small shopping bags in one hand and grabbed Tommy with the other, then tugged him into a narrow stairwell.

  “It’s time, baby. We gotta do it now, or we may never get another opportunity.”

  Tommy followed her down the steps into the basement. The two dashed through a maze of brick corridors. Mildew stank up the cool damp air, and Gigi stopped to sneeze.

  “Gigi, shh!” Tommy scurried around the corner into Capone’s storage vault. He pushed aside a stack of crates holding empty bottles. “It’s still here. Babe, there’s a latch beside that big mirror. Feel it? Up a little … yeah, there.”

  Gigi jumped as the mirror swung aside to reveal a hidden staircase. She climbed through the hole in the basement wall then ran up the steps, reappearing seconds later. “There’s a delivery truck right outside, and the alley is clear for now. Hurry!”

  Tommy handed her his Thompson machine gun, then Gigi stood watch in the alley while he rushed up and down the stairs, lugging crate after crate and stacking them in the vehicle. Finally, he slammed the alley door behind him. After flinging the last crate into the back of the truck, he ran around to the cab. “Get in!”

  Gigi leapt into the passenger’s seat while Tommy started the engine.

  They cleared the alley onto 21st Street then zig-zagged through the narrow streets toward freedom. The two drove through the night, Gigi singing songs to help Tommy stay awake. When they ran low on fuel, Tommy hid the truck down a wooded side road, and the two lovers curled together under Tommy’s jacket to wait for morning.

  “I think we made it, kid.” Tommy tucked a curl behind Gigi’s ear.

  “How much do you think we got?”

  “I dunno, but I know my arms are gonna hurt tomorrow.” Tommy peeked through the window, counting the heavy crates lined up on the floorboards in the back of the truck.

  “We can count it later, baby. Right now, I want to get some sleep. In the morning, we’ll get gas, then get as far away as we can.”

  For the next three months, Gigi and Tommy wound a path throughout the eastern United States. Tommy taught Gigi to drive, and they kept moving, stopping in small towns along the way. He built a false floor in the truck to hide their cargo. Gigi counted the crates. She counted the gold coins and gemstones inside the crates. Then she counted them again, just to make sure.

  “We’re rich. Tommy. We’ll never have to work for anyone else, ever again.”

  Tommy kissed the top of her head. “I never liked you workin’ the way you did. But we need to be careful. We gotta hide this l
oot. We can’t go throwin’ it around. Boss might be in prison, but he still got a lot of friends in a lot of places.”

  “But babe, I want nice things. I want a big house and new hats. I want to ride the Queen Mary to Europe and meet dukes and princesses.”

  “You’re all the princess I need, Gigi. We need to watch our backs. If we dump these all at once, or even in big batches, we’ll be dead within a week. We gotta lie low a little while longer. Just be patient. When the coast is clear, I promise I’ll buy you the most beautiful house with the most beautiful view in the whole world.”

  Tommy sold off a few of the smaller stones one by one — for less than they were worth but more than enough to fill the truck with gas, pay for meals and rooms along the way, and build up a little cash reserve. But living on the run wasn’t Gigi’s cup of bathtub gin.

  One evening, in a hotel in Chattanooga, Tennessee, she pressed up against him. “Baby, you need to buy me a real home, or one morning me and that truck are gonna be gone.”

  “I should have never taught you to drive.”

  She wrapped her lips around his earlobe and teased it with her teeth. “Buy me a house and you’ll never have to worry about a thing.”

  The next day, Tommy found a buyer for ten coins — the most he dared sell at one time. He tucked $200 in his front pocket then drove south ’til the road ended.

  Chapter One

  Present Day

  Kate Kingsbury brushed a sopping hank of curly bangs from her forehead. Her sports watch beeped. She wouldn’t make the Olympic team, but the little screen showed her heart rate was right on target.

  A school bus idled with its lights blinking in front of Shark Key Campground and Marina. As children climbed off the bus and ran across the highway, the driver waved out the open door at Kate. She crossed in front of the bus then paused at the driver’s window.

  “You coming out for sunset?”

  “Not tonight, hon,” the driver replied. “Rick’s working late all week. Gotta take all the overtime we can get since the rent went up again.”

  She reached up high and patted the orange panel below the window, hot under the late afternoon sun. “We’ll miss you, but I understand. Do what you gotta do, Lily.”

  Kate jogged across the highway. After passing a little boy, she spun, jogged backward alongside him, then waved. “Good day at school, Colton?”

  “It was, Miss Kate! I had ’Panish today with Señora Royse!”

  “Oooh. Make sure to come by and teach me three new words at sunset, okay?”

  The little boy nodded before running to join the group of kids waiting beside the little resort’s faded sign. The bus’s blinking red lights extinguished, the stop sign folded back against its side, then it proceeded up the road.

  Kate turned and jogged up the lane. For a hundred yards, stands of mangroves crowded both sides of the narrow road like a runway to a magical land. Just as Narnia had its wardrobe, and Wonderland had its rabbit hole, the long stretch of nature separated the little island from the troubles of the outside world. The thick trees muffled the sound of traffic behind her, and the scent of the brackish water replaced the exhaust and blacktop of Highway One. Shark Key was Kate’s sanctuary.

  Where the mangroves gave way to open grass, the gravel lane serpentined left then right. A wooden gate hung open, worn by the salt air and wind, secured to a post with a frayed length of old gray dock line. Farther along, a couple travel trailers and a fifth-wheel that hadn’t moved since she’d been at Shark Key sat between widely set posts. The campsites ended where their low seagrape hedges met the shallow azure waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

  Across the lane, a series of narrower sites lined a small lagoon, and beyond it, another row of oceanfront spots stretched along the east coast of the long island. Palm trees dotted the low landscape. Shark Key was home to a few full-time residents, many with permanent decks, satellite dishes, and small storage sheds, but in the off-season, nearly two thirds of the sites sat empty. In another two months, after the heat broke and the snowbirds flocked south for the winter, it would fill to capacity until spring.

  A few minutes later, Kate jogged past the sturdy concrete shower house and laundry. A guy in his early twenties with shoulder-length dreadlocks was covering the little building with a fresh coat of bright white paint.

  “Justin!”

  “Hi, Kate!”

  She pointed to the eastern sky. “That storm’s gonna wash all your paint off.”

  The young man shrugged. “Nah, it’s just a little pop-up cloud. It’ll blow off to the south. Besides, I’m almost done.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  She crossed the crushed coral parking lot then bounded over the seawall onto an ancient wooden dock. With each footfall, her steps echoed off the still water below. The marina’s owner, Chuck Miller, had been planning to update all the marina’s docks to aluminum planks, starting with the bigger, deeper slips on the sunrise side of the island. Eventually he’d get to Kate’s on the cove side, but she was glad hers was last on his list. There was something about the weathered wooden planks that felt peaceful, like a secret refuge — a haven from a bygone time.

  Most of the empty slips would stay that way for another couple months, just like the campsites. A sixty-foot Hatteras named Tax Shelter gleamed at the end of the long dock. In the two years she’d lived at the little marina at the tip of Shark Key, the Tax Shelter had only left its slip twice. She’d heard the owner was a developer from West Palm, but no one she knew had ever seen him. A few slips closer, a pile of dive gear sat on the dock. Steve Welch was scrubbing the deck of his flats skiff, which he had tied up beside a bright white catamaran that had arrived a couple days earlier. Steve normally kept the skiff alongside his custom dive boat on the deeper side of the island, but the water was calmer in the western cove.

  Kate waved at Steve, then trotted toward Serenity, her 46-foot steel-hull houseboat. Not long after she’d arrived in Key West, she used most of her savings to relieve a disillusioned midwestern couple of their little money-pit. She’d lived onboard ever since. Her slip was nearly impossible to pilot a boat into, so shallow the boat’s hull rested on the bottom at low spring tide. But with Serenity’s blown engine, sailing those waters wasn’t even an option. She’d had to have her new home towed into the cove, then Steve and Chuck had helped her pull it into the slip with ropes. But the upside, as Kate saw it, was she only had to do it once. And it helped that Chuck refused to take any slip rent.

  She hurdled the low gate to the boat’s stern deck. Whiskey, her seventy-pound German Shepherd, rose from a shaded spot by the door to nuzzle her, tufts of his loose hair sticking to her sweaty belly.

  “Hi, buddy. Let’s get you some dinner, okay?” Kate grabbed Whiskey’s empty bowl from the deck and slid the glass door open with her foot. No need for locks with Whiskey aboard.

  Watching intently, he waited as Kate shredded fresh meat from last night’s rotisserie chicken then mixed it in with his kibble. She set the bowl on a stool in front of him. He held her gaze. She waited until she saw a good puddle of drool on the vinyl tile below him, then she nodded once. Whiskey tore into the bowl like it was a delicious, coconut-covered criminal while she wiped his slobber from the floor.

  Kate grabbed a Modelo and a slice of lime from the fridge, packed two more in a small cooler, then climbed to the roof deck. A single zero-gravity lounge chair sat near the port rail. She pulled a tattered Travis McGee paperback from the dry box beside it before settling in. A soft breeze rustled through the mangrove leaves behind Serenity’s stern, carrying the familiar briny sea scent in off the flats to the north.

  Home.

  She smelled Whiskey’s dog food breath as he climbed the bow stairs. He ambled to the back of the deck, spun around three times, then settled beside the rail with a clear view up to the parking lot and down the dock. Whiskey had never really taken to retirement.

  Kate sipped her beer and read until the sun dropped low on the horizon. As the
sunset blazed and the shadows lengthened, her dog jumped to attention, barking once at the sound of footsteps approaching on the dock below.

  “It’s okay, Whiskey. Just me,” Steve said. “Ahoy, Captain! Permission to come aboard?”

  Kate laughed. “Come on up! You boat people are so formal, I might never get used to it.”

  “Only pirates and police board without the captain’s permission. I’m neither.” He climbed the stern ladder then leaned against the west-facing railing over Serenity’s bow. “You might have the worst slip, but you’ve got the best sunset view in this blessed place.”

  “I knew you had an ulterior motive, stopping by like this. Beer?” She opened the cooler beside her chair.

  “Don’t mind if I do.” He popped the cap and took a long pull. “Got a charter on Wednesday, if you wanna work it.”

  “Will I want to?”

  “Long day. Starting at the Vandenberg. Photographers, and they want to take a few lobsters when they’re done.”