Hard Tide: A Sea Adventure (Florida Coast Adventures) Read online

  “Tom?” I asked, putting my mug down and staring at her dead on. “Who is Tom?”

  She fidgeted and looked away from me. “Tom Randolph is the guy from your drawing.” She whipped one hand toward my phone, and I realized her fingernails had been chewed down to nubs. “He’s part of the Scorpions.”

  “What are the Scorpions? Some kind of club or something?” I asked, my fingers practically white-knuckled as I squeezed the life out of my coffee mug.

  “No.” She shook her head. “The Scorpions are a gang in these parts. Rumor is they run drugs and whatnot, but the local cops haven’t been able to do anything about it on account of the mayor being in their pocket.” She sighed. “Old Bob didn’t like it much. Said they weren’t being good stewards of the town.” Then, leaving her statement to hang in the air between us, she spun on her heel and headed into the back.

  Her words sent a dagger of ice straight through my heart. My dad had gotten himself mixed up with a drug gang? Did that mean he was dead? No. I pushed that thought away even though the evidence was starting to mount. My dad might be bullheaded and crazy as the day is long, but he’d never let himself get killed. The old mule was way too stubborn to die.

  I would find him, and if I had to beat my way through an entire gang to do it, I would.

  “Um… so where can I find these Scorpions?” I asked when she returned with my breakfast and set it in front of me.

  “Trust me, sugar. You don’t want to find them.” She let out a long, explosive exhalation of breath. “But I know your type. Like a dog with a bone. Won’t stop till you got what you came for, even if what you came for is trouble plain and simple.” Her fingers beat out a drum beat on the bar with one hand as she continued, “Look. The Scorpions will likely be on the east side of town. Down near Lawson’s place. It’s a bait shop, but I don’t know how anyone drives a nice new BMW selling bait, if you know what I mean.” With those words, she wiped her hands together. “And you’ll not get another word out of me. No matter how cute you are.”

  “Thank you kindly,” I said, turning toward my breakfast. I had half a mind to ignore my food and jet over to Lawson’s right now to save time, but from the way my stomach was growling, I knew it needed fuel. Who knew when I’d get the chance again?

  I grabbed my fork and started shoveling eggs into my mouth when the jukebox stopped. The sudden silence of it was so unnerving, I turned toward the music machine in time to see the cowboy backhand his girl across the face.

  6

  I was on my feet and halfway across the room before she even hit the ground. Rage swelled up inside me, and my vision flared red around the edges.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I snarled, my work boots beating a path across the stained floor of Malarkey’s.

  “Stay out of this, bud,” the cowboy replied, glancing at me with a pair of beady, flat eyes. There was nothing in them but the cool, calm of a predator. Like a great white shark whose victims were women who couldn’t protect themselves. I’d seen the type before. Dirt bags through and through.

  “You’re not supposed to hit a lady,” I snapped, nearly to them now. That’s when I realized how much makeup the brunette on the floor was wearing. It was a thick mask I’d sometimes seen on battered women. Way too much concealer for there not to be something that needed it.

  “I said, stay out of it,” the guy said, turning toward me and squaring his shoulders like he was used to being the biggest, toughest guy in the room.

  “No,” I replied, taking a step closer to him, so there were only a couple feet between us. His hands started to clench and unclench as I stood there, staring at him dead on. This time I made eye contact with him. I found myself staring into an abyss of nothingness, confirming what I already knew. This guy had no soul.

  “Do you know who I am?” the guy barked, and this time he took a step forward, so he loomed over me. He had me by half a head and a good fifty pounds, but that wasn’t enough. Not nearly.

  “Don’t know. Don’t care.” I pointed at the woman on the ground, my finger practically shaking with rage. “You don’t ever hit a lady. Didn’t your mama raise you right?”

  To her credit, the lady had pulled herself into a sitting position. As her eyes flitted over us, she scrunched backward, making an effort to look nearly invisible. Her face flashed with the knowledge that I was making things worse for her, a lot worse. Only as I stared at her face, I realized I knew her. Or rather, I had known her. It felt like forever ago, but there was no way I’d have forgotten her face. Even with a few more lines etched into it.

  Mary Ann Quinn. The girl I’d wanted to take to prom more than anything. The girl I’d skipped out on because I was getting deployed the week after. The girl I’d left to become this. It didn’t make sense. The Mary Ann I knew was a firecracker. A spitfire ready to take on the world and make it run away screaming. If the Mary Ann I knew had gotten slapped, she’d have come up off that floor like a wild cat.

  The cowboy stepped to the side, blocking my view of her as recognition lit her face. “Don’t you mind what I do with my woman.” He shoved his finger into my chest with enough force for me to feel it. “You need to shove off and mind your own business before my business gets to minding you. Understand, partner?”

  “Oh, I understand,” I deadpanned, grabbing his hand and twisting it as I shifted my hips, driving him face first into the dirty cement floor of Malarkey’s. He crashed into it with the thwap of meat hitting a butcher’s counter as I stepped through and locked his arm up behind him. “But here’s what you don’t understand.” I applied some pressure to the hold, forcing his arm up until nearly the breaking point. “You don’t ever hit a lady. You treat ‘em with kindness and respect. You open car doors for them. But mostly? Mostly you thank the Lord above that a good woman would ever deign to look at you.” I pushed on his arm, eliciting a whimper. “Are you following me, partner?”

  “Y-yes,” he cried through clenched teeth as he lay there, unable to do anything because I could pop his arm from its socket without even trying.

  “Then apologize to the lady,” I snarled, turning to look at Mary Ann. “Go on.”

  “I’m sorry,” he wheezed through clenched teeth, but there was rage in those words. This guy wasn’t sorry. Sorry that he’d gotten beat, sure, but that was all. What’s worse, as his apology ripped out of his pig-headed throat, I knew what Mary Ann knew. This was going to get worse before it got better. Maybe a lot worse, and I wouldn’t be the one paying for it. She would.

  “Please just let him go, Billy,” she said, her words a barely audible squeak. “Please…”

  “You know him?” the guy on the ground snarled, and if he’d been mad before, he’d gone off the deep end now. He started to struggle, and this time, I let him go. He was on his feet in an instant, and before I could rightly process it, he flung a ham-sized fist at me.

  I moved, years of training kicking in as I dodged the blow and lashed out with my own arm, catching him across the chest. The thud of impact rang up my arm as I stepped through the attack, throwing him off balance and knocking him to the ground. He crashed to the dirty floor once more, his head bouncing off the cement with enough force to make his eyes go glassy.

  “See, here’s the problem, friend. I can stop beating you up, but I think that just might make things worse for Mary Ann, here. That’s not my intention.” I took a step forward and knelt down with my knee across his throat, cutting off his air supply as I looked down at him. “What I’d intended was to make things better, and I was dumb enough to think I could stop your violence with mine. So here’s what I’m going to do.” I stood up, allowing him to breathe. He sucked in a gasp of air like he’d been about to pass out. As he rolled into a fetal position, I continued, “I’m going to let you walk out of here right now. I don’t want to see you again. And if I hear about you going around Mary Ann again, I might just not be so amenable to seeing a fellow man change for the better. You understand, partner?”

  I
didn’t wait for his reply as I turned on my heel and strode toward Mary Ann, offering her my hand. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  She took my hand then, squeezing it with all the strength I remembered her having. A smile flitted across my lips, maybe all she needed was to be reminded she didn’t deserve to get slapped around by a scumbag like that. Then again, what the hell did I know? I’d been gone for more time than I’d known her by a whole hell of a lot.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out two twenties. I slapped them on the bar on my way out and nodded to the woman behind it. “Sorry for the trouble.”

  The bartender gave me a long look before nodding back and pocketing the money. Satisfied, I turned and led Mary Ann outside and toward the Tahoe.

  We were about halfway to my old beast when she dug in her heels and jerked her hand from mine like she was an oily eel.

  “What do you think you’re doing, Billy?” she cried, whirling on me like a sun devil. Tears filled the corners of her eyes before slipping out to run down her cheeks and ruin her makeup. “You can’t just come back here after all these years and mess everything up.” She turned back toward the bar, pointing at it with one shaking finger. “Chuck is a good man. He takes care of me—”

  “He hits you, Mary Ann. He can’t be a good man by any definition after something like that.” I shook my head, wondering how I could possibly make her see that. It obvious to me, but somehow she was blind to that truth. “Come on, let me get you out of here, take you home.”

  “Arg! You don’t understand,” she cried in a rush of rage as she whirled on me, hands balled into fists. “You jackass…” She stopped then and buried her head in her hands. “I don’t have anything…”

  Then because I didn’t know what else to do, I took a step closer and wrapped my arms around her, pulling her body against my own. She shuddered, crying into my chest, and as she did, I couldn’t help feeling like I was somehow responsible. Sure, I knew that was ridiculous, that she’d made her own choices and whatnot, but I was also the one who had stepped into her business without being asked. That made me responsible. Didn’t it?

  7

  “So what’s your big plan, Billy?” Mary Ann asked as she sat next to me in the Tahoe while I drove toward my dad’s house. We were still pretty far from there, but I had nowhere else to go really. I couldn’t just leave Mary Ann out on the street, nor did I want to risk going back to her place since it was likely Chuck would show up there. With that in mind, taking her to my dad’s seemed like the best plan. Then I could go hunt down Tom and get my dad’s spare key. Two birds, one stone.

  “I’m taking you to Dad’s. You can stay there for a bit while I take care of some things. Then I’ll—”

  “Are you being serious right now?” she snapped, interrupting me mid-thought. Instinctively, I turned toward her even though I knew I should have kept my eyes on the damned road. That momentary glance was enough for me to see how angry she was. The old spitfire I’d remembered had returned… but where had it been all these years?

  “Um… yes?” I replied, gripping the wheel tighter and focusing on the drive. There wasn’t a lot of traffic, but that didn’t mean there was no traffic. I could still rear-end someone if they came to a sudden stop, or worse, I could sideswipe a moving car. “I don’t have a hotel or anything, and you said you couldn’t go home…”

  “So you think you can just walk back into town and play the hero? I haven’t seen you since the night before prom.” She harrumphed, turning away to stare out the window. “You know I waited for you, right? I sat there all night waiting. Thinking you’d show up, and then you never did…”

  “I’m sorry, it’s just—”

  “No, you get to hear this. Then you can apologize afterward.” She sighed and turned to look at me. I could feel her gaze hot on my face, begging me to look at her, but I couldn’t do that and keep driving. “My friends told me I was crazy, that you’d shipped out already, but my Billy wouldn’t have done that. He’d have said goodbye.” Her voice cracked then. “He wouldn’t make me go to his house all dressed up and alone on prom night to find out from his father he’d shipped out early. A real man wouldn’t do that.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said as the memory of the night flashed across my eyes despite my best efforts to stop it. I hadn’t been a good man that night. “That’s one of my biggest regrets. Everything happened so quickly… I tried to call, but the line was busy, and the next thing I knew I was on my way to boot camp. I got off and wanted to call, but then it was too late, and I thought maybe it was better. I wrote you a letter, a dozen letters, but I could never bring myself to send them…”

  “Well, that and a few bucks will get you a bag of chips,” she replied, glaring at me so hard, I actually pulled the Tahoe over so I could look at her. The car behind honked at me, but I ignored him as I slid to a stop in the parking lot of a convenience store advertising all manner of junk food in glowing neon script.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, turning toward her, and before I could stop myself, I’d grabbed both her hands. They were warm, soft, and comforting in a way I couldn’t quite explain. “I really am…” I swallowed, shutting my eyes for a second as I collected my thoughts. “If you really wanna know, that was the reason I never came back. I knew I’d have to face you, and I was too much of a coward to do it.”

  I opened my eyes to find her staring at me with a look I couldn’t discern across her face.

  “You know,” she said, taking a breath as she watched me carefully. “Chuck didn’t start off so bad. He started off nice. Made me think of you, all stalwart and tough. No one could tell him what to do, and I thought he liked me. Hell, he didn’t even hit me until we’d been together a couple years. He apologized so much, and I believed him. I know it sounds crazy, but after you, I thought maybe I deserved it. Because, you know, you just left me like that.” She shook her head as her eyes began to fill with unspent tears. “Then before I knew it, I had no more friends, no one to talk to. It was just Chuck and me against the world, and if sometimes I messed up, well…” She touched her cheek then, and I could see the darkness barely concealed by the makeup. It damned near broke something inside me.

  “You were the best thing that ever happened to me,” I said before I could stop myself, and the next thing I knew, I’d wrapped my arms around her, pulling her into me. I buried my head in her neck, inhaling the scent of her, like fresh apple pie and springtime flowers. “And I was just a scared kid. Scared ‘cause you made me want to be better, and then when I left I had this hole, and I guess, I just learned to live with it.” I pulled away then, putting my hands on her shoulders as I stared into her eyes. “And now, I just feel so responsible.”

  “Now you feel responsible?” She laughed, shaking her head at me. “I’m a grown ass woman, Billy. Not some stupid kid. Sure, I might have gotten so mixed up I couldn’t see up from down, but I spent the last twenty minutes trying to think of a way to explain to you why Chuck wasn’t so bad, and you know what I realized? I couldn’t think of one I’d believe if someone else was telling me. And that got me thinking that maybe you were right… so no, Billy. You’re not responsible for me. I’m responsible for me.”

  “But if I’d come back sooner…” I mumbled, and as I spoke, she shook her head at me.

  “But you didn’t, and you can beat yourself over it, and baby, if you want to go ahead and do it, I’ll let you because I’m still right pissed at you over prom, which is crazy because it was over twenty damned years ago, but no more than that. Everything else is my fault and Chuck’s fault, and no one else’s. His for being a horrible person, and mine for not seeing it.” She inhaled sharply. “I can own that, so you man up and own what you did and stop making excuses.”

  “Okay,” I said, watching her shed who she had been an hour before and rising above it like a newly reborn phoenix. In that moment, she was everything I remembered, and my heart ached because of it. “Let’s leave the past in the past.”

  �
��Good,” she said, pushing me away and crossing her arms over her chest. “So why are you back, Billy, ‘cause Lord knows it isn’t for me.”

  Her words snapped me back to the moment, back to what I’d come here for. To save my dad. As that realization hit me, quickly followed by the fact I had no time nor idea where to find my dad, and that the seconds on his life could be counting down as I sat here, I did the only thing I could. I pulled out my phone, went to my voicemail, and handed it to her.

  “Listen to the message,” I said as I keyed it up to start before turning my eyes back on the road. I waited for the big green Subaru Forester to lumber by before I jetted back into traffic, heading for my dad’s place with renewed vigor.

  Mary Ann put the phone to her ear, and as I heard my dad’s muffled voice on the other end, a quick glance at her revealed her face paling. When it ended, she turned to look at me, and again I could feel her gaze on me.

  “You need to call the police,” she deadpanned. “I know you think you can take care of this,” she waved the phone at me, “but you can’t. Billy, this isn’t a guy in a bar. This is the Scorpions. You couldn’t fix everything then, and you can’t now. Not by yourself.” She shook her head at me, sending her raven locks fluttering around her face. “Are you listening to me?”

  “He’s my dad. I have to help him!” I said, determination steeling my voice. “If I don’t, who will?”

  “You don’t know these people.” She swallowed audibly. “They’re killers… your dad is probably…”

  “Don’t even finish that statement,” I replied, glancing at her as I took a hard left onto my dad’s street. “I’m going to find him, and that’s all there is to it.”