We’d taken out their little waterfront home base. It was time to deal with Jake and his pontoon pirates, then track down Lynch and finish the job. It was clear that these white supremacists hadn’t expected much of a challenge when it came to their search for the treasure.
Ange and I were more than happy to be the proverbial wrenches in their plans.
It was ironic. They were trying to finish the job of their idols, the old-school Avengers who’d risked everything to fight for a cause that had defended the enslavement of over four million African Americans. Now it was our turn to do the avenging. To avenge John Ridley, and the lives of however many other people the Aryan Order had undoubtedly murdered over the years. The group had a bad reputation, and its members impressive rap sheets. They’d been stirring up trouble in Florida for long enough.
As I brought us up to speed at the mouth of the channel, Ange came in close beside me.
“It just seems too straightforward,” she said. “Too easy.”
“That’s because we’re used to dealing with some of the best criminals in the world. Think about who we’ve been pitted up against the past few years. Big-time gang leaders, Mexican cartels, and the billionaire Richard Wake and his posse? These boy scout wannabe Nazis are minor league compared to them.”
SEVENTEEN
Casper Nix woke up to the sound of police sirens. He felt intense, searing pain radiating from all over his body. As he blinked his glazed eyes open, he saw blood oozing from his left thigh, adding to an impressive puddle of deep red soaking the carpet. He’d already lost half a liter of the precious liquid. It made him lightheaded as he groaned himself up, propping his back against the edge of the couch.
His damaged hand protested as he searched, then grabbed a rag from the table. Wrapping it around the knife wound, he pulled it tight, then secured the fabric with a double knot. The pressure kept the bleeding at bay. It was far from perfect, but the rag would keep him alive long enough to try and make an escape.
Escape.
The word jumped into his mind and rattled with a vengeance. The police sirens were getting louder.
I need to escape. I need to get the hell out of here, now!
The young man sucked in air through his teeth as he pushed himself to his feet, keeping his weight on his good leg and using the other for balance. He cradled his broken hand and limped across the room toward the stairs. Step after painful step, he willed himself to the bottom, knowing that if the cops caught him, he’d be tossed into jail and charged with Teddy’s murder.
If they somehow manage to find the body, that is.
Even if they didn’t, Casper had no doubt that he’d be put behind bars for one reason or another. He’d been involved in the marina’s shady illegal dealings for years. The jig was clearly up.
Anger fueled him as he shoved open the door. The decrepit room was filled with activity. Some people were frozen, confused and unsure of what to do, others shuffled like mad out the doors. None of them were working with Lynch like Casper was, but many had their own small-time petty crime side gigs that they wanted to keep in the dark.
Casper struggled out the back door, then slipped down the old sidewalk to the boathouse at the end of the marina. Shouldering his way inside, he cranked his aluminum skiff down into the water. He grabbed a first aid kit from a gear locker and tossed it into the boat. He also grabbed an extra tank of fuel, a jug of water, and a tattered bag of fishing gear.
He pulled on a nylon rope that caused the small garage door to rattle open. Wincing as he flopped into the boat, he started up the 50-Hp engine and hit the gas. Casper looked over his shoulder as the small boat grumbled out into the channel. The sirens were ear-rattling. Through breaks between the marina’s main building and the nearby outbuildings, he could see flashes of red and blue.
He peered right toward the opening out into Biscayne Bay. Knowing that a straight shot attempt at an escape would be riskiest, he held tight to the tiller with his only good hand and motored in the opposite direction.
Weaving into a narrow cut in the mangroves, he managed to force the narrow aluminum-hulled boat through the tangles and into a canal on the opposite side. Gunning the throttle, he flew half a mile north before cutting back to the east and sneaking into the bay.
He kept the engine at full speed, skipping across the water at thirty-five knots. He relaxed a little as the sirens quieted at his back, but as the adrenaline from the narrow escape wore off, the intense pain returned.
It took just fifteen minutes for him to reach the islands on the other side of the bay. Wanting to keep his distance from the ranger station, he decided to take refuge at Sands Key, a one-and-a-half-mile-long uninhabited island just north of Elliot Key.
Having spent his entire life in Biscayne Bay, Casper knew the geography as well as anyone alive. He brought the skiff into a cove on the northwestern side of the island, then motored into a twenty-foot-wide channel. The waterway dead-ended at a round body of water barely larger than a football field near the center of the island. With no other boats in sight, and with sufficient cover in all directions, Casper shut off the engine and tossed the anchor.
With his body shaking and his mind hazy, he fumbled open the first aid kit. It was old and covered in
