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  Scott tensed, folded his hands into fists against his thighs. DeCristo was the drug lord responsible for his father’s death. It had been ten years, and while the pain had ebbed, it never completely went away.

  And the need for revenge? Would he ever stop feeling it?

  He’d been in college when it had happened. Messing around instead of taking his academics seriously. He had wanted to enlist in the Coast Guard as soon as he graduated from high school. Ninety percent of the Coast Guard were enlisted. But his dad argued he would have more opportunity if he went to college. So he’d gone and majored in girls and good times. Then his dad had been killed and that had changed everything forever.

  Scott had gotten serious about his studies. He’d changed his major to criminal justice and graduated with top honors from the University of Florida. The next day he joined the Coast Guard. They’d welcomed him like the prodigal son. He’d risen up through the ranks, working in various positions from San Diego to New Hampshire where he’d met Amber. Ironically, she’d left him just two weeks before he’d gotten the desk job in D.C.

  “DeCristo is still alive?” He had to force the words through his constricted throat.

  “Unfortunately. He—”

  The waitress returned with their breakfast.

  Carl paused, thanked her. He waited until she walked out of earshot before he resumed his story. “DeCristo was in a South American prison for a while, but his interactions there seemed to have only made him stronger. He met people. Curried favor. He’s got powerful connections.”

  Scott picked up his fork, but he’d lost his appetite. He knew how the story went. He worked the coastal borders between California and Mexico. Understood all too well the uphill battle of preventing illegal drugs from reaching American soil.

  “We’ve had an influx of high-grade cocaine coming into the Keys. Users aren’t accustomed to such a pure product and there have been a half dozen overdose deaths.”

  Scott inhaled a slow hiss of breath.

  “With government cutbacks, we’ve been in a staffing crunch. Add to that our patrol boat operational gap and we’ve got big trouble.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s rumors that DeCristo has gotten his hands on the latest stealth technology.”

  That stunned Scott. This was the first he was hearing about it. Then again, D.C. was something of an ivory tower. He needed to get out on the seas more often, check on the local sonar. “But how?”

  “Spies? A government mole? Hell, he could have gotten in from Russia. You’re in on high-level security. You know there are leaks. Money talks and it’s estimated DeCristo is worth over a billion dollars.”

  Scott pushed eggs around on his plate. “How substantial are these rumors?”

  “Substantial enough that I’m bringing this to you.”

  “Details.” Scott pushed his plate away, steepled his fingers, leaned in closer. “What have you heard?”

  “We arrested a tourist last week who had two grams of the high-grade coke on his boat. He was looking for a plea deal and claimed to have gotten the stash from a young woman working for DeCristo.”

  “How credible is the guy?”

  Carl shrugged. “Typical small-time drug dealer, but his story is just outlandish and detailed enough to have credibility.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He says that the woman told him DeCristo is using a stealth drone submarine to transport the drugs and he’s using her and other young American women to help him.”

  “How does the operation work?”

  “Supposedly, DeCristo is dropping the submarine into the water off Cuba. It’s got a navigational camera that can get it through the open water, but it needs help maneuvering through obstacles in the mangrove channels. According to the source—which I admit is not terribly reliable—these young women go out in the estuaries at an appointed time, usually in the early morning or just after sunset, in skiffs with homing beacons on them and they guide the drone into shore. We haven’t picked up a damn thing on our radio, but if it is a stealth submarine, we wouldn’t.”

  If what Carl was saying was true…

  Scott’s gut tightened. It was possible. A savvy drug lord with the right connections might indeed be able to get his hands on stealth technology and make his own drone. And if he was hiring young American women to guide his drone in, no one would be the wiser. Key West was an open port just waiting to be abused.

  A rushing noise built in Scott’s ears, low and insistent. The hairs on his forearm lifted.

  Jackie Birch.

  Part of him said, no way, but another part of him, the suspicious part that had a degree in criminal justice and had worked drug interdiction on the high seas knew better. Anyone was capable of being a drug mule. From junior high school kids to grandmothers.

  Jackie Birch.

  It could explain why she’d been so unfriendly. Why she was in the estuary alone at dawn. Could she be a courier for DeCristo?

  Disgust hardened a knot in his stomach. How could he have been so stupid? So led around by his dick?

  Six months without sex, that was how.

  He felt like a damned fool. Your father’s murderer is turning the Key West mangrove channels into a devil’s playground and he’s using gullible young women to do it.

  Except Jackie hadn’t seemed the least bit gullible. She struck him as focused and very capable. A woman who knew exactly what she was doing. His stomach soured. The eggs smelled gelatinous.

  “We need to seriously look into this,” he told Carl.

  “I was hoping you’d say that, but I don’t have a budget for supposition. I have no proof beyond this small-time dealer who’s looking for a plea bargain. It could all be bullshit.”

  “But you feel it’s got a ring of truth to it?”

  “Considering DeCristo’s connections? Yeah, I think it’s not only plausible, but possible.”

  “Let me do some digging.”

  “But you’re on vacation.”

  “You know there’s no such thing as a Coastie on vacation.”

  “Your sister is getting married. You’ve got tuxedo fittings and rehearsal dinners—”

  “Next week. That’s all next week.”

  Carl shook his head. “I told you because you have pull in Washington and I thought that maybe you could get us a bigger budget for interdiction.”

  “In order to do that I’ve got to have something stronger to go on than a rumor. I’ll put my ear to the ground,” he said. “You just leave this to me.”

  3

  I will ensure that my superiors rest easy with the knowledge that I am on the helm, no matter what the conditions.

  —Surfman’s Creed

  WATER.

  It stirred Jackie Birchard’s soul in a way nothing else did. She’d been born in March, a Pisces. Sign of the fish. Not that she believed in anything as unscientific as astrology. Her father would never have stood for it if she had exhibited a budding interest in horoscopes.

  She sat cross-legged on the dumpy old sofa that came with the apartment she rented, her notebook computer nestled in her lap while she monitored the readout from her equipment submersed in the estuary. The conditions were perfect. She was determined to prove that her hunch was right.

  Up until a year ago, Starksia starcki, aka the Key blenny, could be found in only one location in the world. Just South of Big Pine Key. But then suddenly, the Key blenny had started disappearing from that area.

  Dr. Jack Birchard had been of the mind the Key blenny was on the road to complete extinction and he attributed it to a number of cumulative environmental factors in that region. Even though he cared deeply about the ecology, her father was also the most unsentimental man on the face of the earth. Stoically, he moved on to other more salvageable creatures, leaving the Key blenny to its fate.

  This was when the crack in their relationship—that had been there from the day she was born—expanded into an unbridgeable fissure. She could
n’t forgive him for writing off the Key blenny.

  Particularly, when he looked her in the eye and said, “It’s just one species of fish. We have to focus on the bigger picture. Let it go, daughter.”

  And she’d made the mistake of bringing up an old emotional argument that had no place in the discussion. She raised her chin, met his challenging stare with a razor-sharp glare of her own. “Just like you did with Mother?”

  He didn’t fight with her. He never fought. Just issued edicts and expected them to be obeyed. If you were rebellious enough to disagree with him, he froze you out.

  His eyes turned to glaciers. “You’re never to mention her name again. Do you hear me?”

  Okay, she shouldn’t have brought up her mother. Ancient history. Water under the bridge. It wasn’t as if they knew what had happened to her, although if Jackie had been truly interested, she could have called her half brother, Boone. But it had been easier to let things lie.

  “You’re wrong,” she said, dropping the whole issue of her mother. It would always remain a sore spot between them. “About the Key blenny.”

  “Wrong?” He arched a skeptical brow, sent her a glower that made her wish for an overcoat. He adjusted his glasses, narrowed his eyes.

  “The fish isn’t extinct.”

  “You have empirical data to support this assertion?”

  “No, not yet—”

  He dismissed her with a curt wave of his hand. “The Key blenny is a lost cause and our time is too valuable. Let’s not bawl over spilled milk.”

  “They’re not dead,” she insisted. “I’ve tracked the current and the minute changes in temperature and I think they’ve simply migrated to Key West.” She’d pointed to the ocean map on the wall of his research yacht. “I believe they’re here.”

  He burst out laughing. “Starksia starcki has never migrated. They are not an adaptable subspecies, which is why they’re virtually extinct.”

  Jackie gritted her teeth. Her father’s arrogant belief that he knew best in matters of the sea grated on her nerves. Impossible to believe that a prestigious scientist, the oceanographer second only to Jacques Cousteau, could be so irrationally stubborn. But that was her dad. He was brilliant, yes, but his ego was the size of the sun.

  “Desperate circumstances call for desperate measures and the Key blenny has risen to the challenge,” she said.

  He shook his head violently. “There’s no coral in that area. Starksia starcki is a reef dweller.”

  “They’ve adapted in that regard as well and they’re using the mangrove mangles for their food source.”

  “Doesn’t happen.”

  “I think it is happening.”

  “Based on what?”

  She explained her theory.

  He made a face. “Pseudo science. I thought I taught you better than that. You’re allowing romanticism to sway your critical thinking.”

  She’d tried to defend her position in a calm, rational manner but he kept cutting her off. That’s when Jackie knew that if she wanted to save the Key blenny, she was going to have to do it on her own. So she’d packed her things, left MIT, where her father taught, and transferred to the University of California where she was welcomed with open arms.

  From a political standpoint, snagging Jack Birchard’s disenfranchised daughter as a doctoral candidate was a colorful feather in the university’s cap. They embraced her theory on the Key blenny, loaned her equipment for her independent study and even gave her a monthly stipend. She felt giddily liberated and wished she’d left her father’s direct sphere of influence a long time ago. No more kowtowing to his diktat. She was free to explore the sea on her own. A bright future awaited her.

  Now, all she had to do was prove her theory.

  The hardest part was going to be keeping people away from her instruments. She hadn’t fully realized that this was going to be a major issue until Scott Everly had shown up.

  One minute she’d been totally isolated in the estuary, just her and nature. The next minute there had been the handsome man in the kayak. If he could appear out of nowhere, so could others.

  Disgruntled, she settled the computer on the coffee table and got up to walk out onto the balcony. Sunset came quickly in the Keys and she wanted to catch it before it was gone. By dawn, she’d be back on the water. Not because she needed to go out there again so soon, but simply because she worried about Everly returning to muck with her equipment.

  She entertained the idea that he might not be the simple kayaker he seemed. He could be spying on her. A competitor bent on stealing her research. Hell, her father could have sent him.

  That thought was unsettling, but it was the sort of stunt her father might pull. Jack Birchard could say one thing and then do the exact opposite. The interest that the University of California had shown her project would be just the thing to make him change his mind. Except, his hubris would never allow him to admit he was wrong.

  You’re letting your imagination run away with you. Everly isn’t after your research. He was just a good old boy out in his kayak.

  Jackie leaned on the railing and took a deep breath of the sultry summer air. Duvall Street was not far away and she could hear the sound of revelers stumbling in and out of the bars that Hemingway had once frequented.

  She wondered if Everly was a tourist or a Conch and then wondered why she wondered. Who cared?

  The ubiquitous Key West Anthem, Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville,” drifted up from the street. The smell of fried seafood floated along with the music. Jackie’s stomach growled and she realized she’d forgotten to eat again. Her last meal had been a breakfast energy bar.

  She was about to pad into the kitchen to see what she could find to eat when her computer made a soft pinging noise. It was the alert system she set up to notify her of problems with the equipment.

  Quickly, she hurdled the coffee table, dropped down on the sofa and snatched up the laptop just in time to see the electronic data disappear from the screen.

  A curse word escaped her lips. Either something had gone haywire with the satellite feed or someone was messing around with her equipment.

  SCOTT SPENT THE REMAINDER of the day with Carl in his old stomping grounds, getting educated about what Juan DeCristo had been up to. He didn’t tell Carl about Jackie. Scott knew enough about the law to make damn sure of his accusations before he threw them out there. But even so, he couldn’t help wondering if there was another reason he did not mention his encounter with the woman in the red bikini.

  He didn’t want to admit, not even to himself, that he had been sexually attracted to her. Shame burned his gut. How could he be attracted to a woman involved in the drug trade?

  Easy there. Remember, innocent until proven guilty. Trust your instincts. Your gut didn’t get bad vibes from her. Don’t jump to conclusions.

  Still, he had to know what she’d been doing out there alone at the break of dawn.

  By the end of the day, Scott knew he had to investigate and either put his mind at ease or push Jackie Birch to the top of the suspect list.

  When Carl and Marcy invited him over for dinner, he begged off, asking for a rain check. He was staying in the guesthouse in his mother’s backyard, but he did not even stop in to say hello to his family when he got home. He didn’t bother changing out of the Coast Guard clothes he’d worn to visit Sector Key West. Instead, he walked straight to the motorboat docked at the pier and took off through the mangrove channel, headed for the estuary where he’d found Jackie that morning.

  The sun hunkered low on the horizon. He’d be returning in the dark, but he had floodlights and the power of the Coast Guard behind him. The more he thought about what DeCristo was doing, the madder he got.

  If Jackie Birch was involved in this, he’d take her down so fast it would make her gorgeous little head swim, sexual attraction be damned.

  Fury flamed hot inside him, burning up his collar to his neck, and on upward to flush his cheeks. He was so fired up that it too
k him a while to find the spot where she’d been that morning. In fact, if the dying sunlight hadn’t glinted off the silver fish bobber, he might not have been able to find it in the thickening twilight.

  “Gotcha,” he growled and motored over.

  He killed the engine and tossed the anchor overboard. Anger trembled his hand as he leaned over the side of the boat to search for what was hidden in the water. His fingers brushed a small metal platform. He grabbed hold, shook it hard.

  It did not give. His fear was confirmed. Jackie Birch was up to no good.

  “Son of a bitch,” he swore as his gut dipped to his shoes. His stupid gut had led him astray. He’d liked her. Shame pushed away the anger. Six months without sex could ruin a man.

  His furious fingers snatched at the buttons of his shirt. In five seconds flat he stripped off everything except his skivvies. He turned to lift up the passenger seat. He then dug in the compartment where he kept boating supplies, found a snorkel mask and underwater lamp. Too bad he didn’t have a diving tank with him.

  Mosquitoes buzzed around his bare skin as he strapped on the mask and leashed the lamp around his wrist. A second later, he was in the water.

  Silence engulfed him. It wasn’t until he was underneath the surface that he realized just how noisy it was topside—birds calling, insects singing, trees whispering in the breeze. Down here, quiet reigned.

  Mangrove roots stuck out every which way, snatching at his hair, scraping against his skin. Scott flicked on the light. Fish darted past him. He examined the metal platform. It was mounted on a pole securely buried in the floor of the estuary and attached to the platform was a long black cord that stretched down as far as he could see.

  He wrapped his fingers around the cord. Kevlar. He yanked. The cord did not give, but a heavy object moved, banged against the pole, vibrated the cord against his palm. Something was attached to it.

  Fueled by the rumors Carl had told him about Juan DeCristo’s stealth submarine drone, Scott’s imagination ran wild. It could be a transmitting beacon. To elude detection, Birch could have hidden the beacon here and stopped back to attach it to her boat before each of her drug missions.