Unlawful Chase, C.J. Schnier [best book clubs TXT] 📗

in front of her. Curiously, she picked it up and peered inside at several specks of gold.

"What's this?" She asked.

"I'm not buying you a new plane, but maybe you can use this to start looking for a one."

"Where the hell did you get this?" she muttered.

"I came across a stream full of flecks like this when I was following you to the cave. I threw a few in my pocket just in case you got the idol before I did."

She shook the vial and then deftly slipped it into her pocket. "Well, that's a good start to paying off your debt," she said.

"I'm not giving you my money, so is there some other way I can work off my debt?" I asked, giving her my best wink.

A sly and cunning look overtook her face. "I can think of a few things you could do," she replied, returning my wink.

"When would you like me to start 'repaying' you?" I asked, playing along.

"How about right now," she said, grabbing my hand and leading me towards the exit.

BOCA CIEGA CHASE

An excerpt from the next Chase Hawkins novel

I wasn’t on the run from the law, but I didn’t have any use for it either. My life for the last few years had taken some wild and expected paths. Most of which put me on the wrong side of right. And now? Now I was heading back to where it all began. Gulfport, Florida. Things were going to change. I just thought it would be me that would change and not the town. I was wrong.

After two perfect, sunny days of sailing from The Keys, I anchored my boat, Paramour. She bobbed happily in the emerald green waters of Boca Ciega Bay, a couple hundred feet outside of a brand new mooring field. The city must have installed it recently. It wasn’t there when I had left. Boats occupied less than half the spaces in the field, perhaps ten in total. Around the perimeter, like an armada blockading a port, were dozens of anchored boats.

It was Saturday, and the bay was busy. Powerboats zipped through the mooring field at full speed. Behind them, they left a sea of rolling masts in their wake. To the east, a handful of two-manned sailboats zig zagged across the bay. They dodged anchored vessels while they engaged in some friendly competition. Over to the west, I could see the Starlight Princess, a dinner cruise boat, plowing its way through the ICW.

Gulfport’s town dock was in total chaos. A mass of powerboats circled like buzzards, waiting for one of the town’s free slips to open up. Roughly every half-hour, a boatload of beer clutching drunks would stumble out of the bars. They would make their way down the long pier, back to their boat, and speed off across the bay. Their vacant space taken by whichever boat could force their way in the fastest.

Darting through the boats were the liveaboards and their dinghies. They came and went from the overcrowded floating dock on the backside of the boat slips. The dock resembled a never-ending game of bumper boats as they came and went. The overcrowding had forced me to climb through two other dinghies to get to shore. Now, by the looks of it, there were even more small boats jammed against each other now. This was not the place to be if I needed to make a quick getaway. That much was obvious.

Except for the same patrol car cruising the main strip along the waterfront every five minutes, I hadn’t seen a single cop. Half a dozen potential BUIs left the docks every hour. Dozens of boats, one after another, broke the no-wake laws. Yet there was no police presence on the water. Even the FWC was absent. It was a far cry from Boot Key Harbor in Marathon, where I had based myself for the past few years.

I watched the chaos from a newly constructed and elevated brick walkway. Like the mooring field, it had not existed since the last time I was here. It ran the length of the beach from the Casino pier in the center of town to the municipal pier. A distance of a couple thousand feet. It spanned the entire eastern side of the waterfront bar district. A stainless steel guard rail prevented access to the beach. But, it served as a fantastic leaning post. It was here that I watched the shit-show that was the town docks.

I turned my thin plastic cup up, killing the rest of my drink. It was time to get a refill from one of my favorite old haunts. Except, like so much of the town, it wasn’t the same either. Manatees was gone. In its place was Caddy’s. It looked almost exactly the same as Manatees, except the  beautiful mural of a family of manatees on the side of the building was now little more than an ugly advertisement for the new establishment.

It was early still, and the band was carrying in their equipment when I walked through the roll-up metal doors on Caddy’s ground floor. Brushing past a few patrons, I elbowed my way to the packed bar. The bartender was swamped, and I knew it was only going to get worse once the music started. I waited my turn as she mixed drinks and poured beers, working her way around the bar.

Someone bumped into me hard, knocking me off balance and taking my place. A stench of stale beer and body odor followed him, assaulting my nose. His face was as rough as his smell, pockmarked and covered with an unkempt, patchy beard. Greasy black hair drooped to his shoulders, hiding some scars on his cheek.

He slapped two crumpled dollars and a fistful of change on the bar. I let his transgression slide and tried my best to ignore the smell. Just another drunk looking for his