“That’s where Deacon Lynch is?” Scarlett asked enthusiastically.
I gasped. “It sure looks that way.”
Our daughter beamed and lifted her chin toward the sky. “You’re right, Dad. I am a genius.”
Ange and I sat in shock at the newfound intel and huddled over the screen. We couldn’t believe that Lynch’s position had been in my pocket the entire time without us knowing about it. The tracking device, and the boat I’d attached it to, hadn’t crossed my mind since we’d beaten up the guys back at the marina.
Could one of the guys I’d fought have escaped before the police arrived?
It was a question that I didn’t have time to ponder, but the answer was clear. Someone had escaped with the very boat I’d compromised, and they’d managed to stay under the radar and pounce on us from behind in perfect synchronization with Lynch and his jet ski crew.
Then, it all made sense. One of Lynch’s men had been watching us in Jones Lagoon. That’s how they’d known we’d found the gold in the first place, and how they’d known when to strike. My mind flashed back to the light that had caught Ange’s eye in the northern part of Old Rhodes Key when we’d brought up the gold, and I wondered just how long we’d been watched while searching for the treasure.
I threw those questions out of my mind for the time being. We had pressing matters to attend to. There was a good chance that we had Lynch’s position, that the white supremacist leader was right in our crosshairs, and we needed to capitalize on it.
We zoomed out, trying to get an idea of where the tracker was coming from. It was in the middle of nowhere, beside a long dirt road ten miles outside of downtown Homestead. Focusing around the tracker, we saw a cluster of buildings and strange-looking structures surrounded by thick forest and swampland.
Ange and I rushed upstairs and flipped open the laptop in the living room, punching the coordinates from the tracking program into Google Maps. After a brief flash, the digital map indicated the position.
“It’s an old alligator farm,” Ange said. She did a quick search of the farm’s name, then spewed out info. “It was closed down in ’07 due to the bank foreclosing on the owners, and the place was subsequently abandoned.”
An abandoned alligator farm in a middle of nowhere swamp? Of course that’s where Lynch and his buddies are hiding out.
I clenched my fist instinctively, then reached for my phone.
“We need to pounce on this,” I said. “If Lynch’s still there, he could slither away at any moment.”
I called Jane and gave her the info, telling her that we knew where Lynch went and sending her the address.
“Are you sure about this, Logan?” she said.
“Positive. If Lynch isn’t there, then he was recently.”
She told me that she’d inform the Homestead Police Department and thanked me again, and we hung up. Sliding across my applications, I clicked on the tracking program once more and looked at the beacon on the map.
Ange smiled when I looked away and locked eyes with her.
“I think it’s time to start giving Scarlett an allowance,” she said. “With all she’s done to help us over the past week, she’s sure earned it.”
FORTY
Deacon Lynch sat at an old wooden table in the run-down, dimly lit center of the alligator farm’s former main building. The windows of the abandoned structure were boarded up, the has-been attraction left to its own devices years earlier. It smelled of mildew, and bugs and various critters scurried in the corners. But Lynch didn’t notice, or care to.
By the light of his lamp, he admired the Civil War–era gold bar in his hands. His eyes lit up as he gazed and ran his fingers over it. He’d never seen anything so beautiful.
Scattered across the room, and the rest of the compound, were the remaining members of the Aryan Order. A small handful had recently arrived from upstate, and the rest were part of the crew that had hightailed it into Jones Lagoon, taken the gold, and vanished seemingly into thin air. The plan had worked to a T.
He looked over at Casper, who was counting the stack of gold bars for the fifth time. He was like a kid on Christmas morning. Lynch had nine men in all. Most were in their twenties, and only a third of them had graduated high school. They were a group of misfits, outcasts from society looking for a place to belong. They’d found it with Deacon Lynch and the Aryan Order.
For the past four years, Lynch had been peddling drugs all across Florida, using the men at various scattered locations to transport, drop off, and sell their product. It was an ever-shifting complex network, and it had funded Lynch’s growth and ammunition stockpiling.
But admiring the gold bar in his hands and glancing at the stack behind it, Lynch knew that their operation was on the brink of exponential growth. Instead of traveling across the state with drugs and returning with wads of cash, his loyal followers were gearing up to deliver much more valuable commodities in exchange for bags of cash. They’d finally begin to realize Lynch’s ambition. They’d finally make a more powerful dent in the liberal status quo of the twisted modern American nation. And it was all thanks to an old group of ragtag Floridians who’d risked everything to fight against Lincoln and the Union oppressors of the North.
~ ~ ~
Outside the decrepit structure with a faded sign above it that read “Wild Glades Alligator Farm,” Titus Fleming was making his rounds down the driveway. Trees lined both sides of the long, pothole-riddled dirt road, blocking out the sun’s light and drowning him in shadows.
He
