I smiled and strode toward them.
Maybe throw a towfish of our own into the water and see what we can find.
TWENTY-EIGHT
With “Margaritaville” playing from a nearby corner restaurant, we made our way down the dock and sat around the cushioned seats up in the flybridge of Jack’s Sea Ray 45. Jack popped open a cooler and divvied out drinks. I’d told them what Jane had said while we’d navigated our way through the nighttime streets of one of the world’s wildest and most unique towns.
“This guy Lynch seems to give new meaning to the phrase ‘bottom of the barrel,’” Pete said, cracking open a beer. “But it’s a shame he got away again.”
“It’s only a matter of time with people like him,” Ange said. “It’s like playing the odds at Vegas. You can win a few hands—hell, you can make out like a bandit for an entire night. But in the end, the house always wins.”
“And right now, this guy’s chips are way down,” Jack said. “To continue on with the analogy.”
We fell silent for a moment, and their eyes gradually gravitated toward me. I hadn’t said a word since we’d arrived at Jack’s boat. I was too stuck in my own thoughts.
“What are you thinking, Logan?” Ange said, placing a hand on my leg.
I took a swig, let out a satisfied breath of air, and leaned back into the cushion.
“I was just thinking about how it’s been a little while since we went on a treasure hunt.”
They all smiled, but Pete’s was the biggest.
“Ah, not since the Florentine Diamond back on Fort Jeff,” Pete said. “That sure was a pretty stone.”
Jack pointed the neck of his beer at me. “Scar and her research got to you, didn’t they?” he said. “You’re a believer now, then? In the story of the original Avengers?”
“With all respect for the dead, I’m not sure they really fit the title,” Ange said. “After all, they never really avenged anything.”
Pete shrugged. “True, but they still managed to sneak away from the city and enlist. That alone was a blow to the northern supporters who’d taken control of Key West. And they may have lost their grip on the gold after they stole it, but they still stole it nonetheless. To them, and I’m sure to Mallory, that mission was more a success than a failure. After all, the Union never got to spend an ounce of that gold either.”
Ange snuggled in close, lifted my left arm, and draped it over her. “You think the gold’s there?” she asked.
I peered out over the dark harbor. “I think it’s worth taking a look. We owe that much to John Ridley, and to ourselves after dealing with Lynch’s boys.”
That was all the encouragement Jack needed to bound down to the main deck, grab his laptop and a cardboard tube with a chart inside from the saloon, and skip back up to the flybridge. Within seconds he had the computer cracked open on the table in front of us. Pete removed the chart, unrolled it, and pinned the corners with beer bottles and his Taurus Raging Bull revolver.
The fact of the matter was, if I was going to attempt to find a treasure, Jack and Pete were the two men I’d want by my side. Few men alive knew the history and geography of the Keys better than Pete. And Jack spent most of his waking hours on the ocean and knew boat engines, nautical navigation, and scuba diving as well as anyone I’d ever met. Plus, this wasn’t our first rodeo together.
Within no time, they had a search grid set up. Unlike a number of our searches in the past, the issue wasn’t sheer size but the landscape. If Professor Ashwood’s prediction was correct, we were looking at a search area of just five acres, or roughly five football fields not including the end zones. The problem was the terrain itself. The shallow water, the tangles of mangroves, and the thick seagrass would make the going slow. But we were all up for the challenge.
Though I didn’t have Scarlett’s research on hand, I’d taken snapshots of the pages with my phone. We used the charts, internet searches, and the info from Scarlett to piece together a plan of action.
At one point, Pete took a break, standing, stretching, and gazing out over the downtown waterfront area.
“Hard to imagine this whole thing was originally thrown into motion by Stephen Mallory himself,” Pete said. “And I’ve got a gut feeling that this tall tale isn’t over yet.” He clinked his beer against Jack’s, then killed the rest of it. “As my old treasure hunter friend Walt Grissom used to say, ‘Once you catch the treasure bug, you never lose it.’”
After an hour, we decided to call it a night. With the weather report in our favor for the next few days, we’d agreed to head north the following morning.
When Lauren showed up and saw what we were up to, Jack greeted her with a kiss and asked if she needed anything.
“Uh-oh,” the pretty auburn-haired woman said. “You look like you want something.”
Jack grinned. “Sweetie, you mind if I go and—”
She waved him off. “Course not, Jack. You guys go and play Treasure Island. With all your talk about it this past week, you got me excited, so you four have fun and come back with some good stories to tell.”
Rising to our feet, Ange and I told them that we’d meet them there at the marina bright and early the following morning. We cruised home and met with Scarlett just as she was about to go to bed. We told her about our upcoming trip and that Harper was more than happy to look after her and Isaac while
