Tied to the Stern Read online

  I felt a rush of emotion run through me. More than anything, I wanted to take that hurt away from his eyes. I couldn't’ though. All I could do was comfort him, comfort him with the truth.

  “She was better than happy, sir,” I said. “She was good. She was just. And, when she died, she did it to save lives. She did it to make the world a better place. You should be very proud of your daughter, sir.”

  “I am,” Rev. Shaw answered, a smile gracing his face. “I just wish I could have known her as she was.”

  “Maybe I can,” I answered, giving him a hearty pat on the back. “Do you have time for a coffee? I would love to tell you her story. I’d love for you to get to know both Becky Shaw and Natasha Rayne. I promise you, it’s worth it.

  Florida felt like heaven as I walked through the front door of my house and dropped my bags in the floor. I hadn’t been gone that long if you counted by days or hours, but when measured by what I had been through, it felt like I was gone for a thousand years.

  “Rebecca, I’m home!” I said, yelling tiredly as I moved through the living room, running a tired hand through my hair. “You’re not going to believe what happened.”

  “Something tells me neither are you,” she said from a far room.

  Walking into the kitchen, I found the woman turned away from me. When she turned back to me, I noticed tears in her eyes and something strange in her hands.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, instantly going into panic mode as I saw the look on her face. “What happened?”

  “Nothing,” she said, a strange look on her face. “I mean everything. I mean, I don’t know. They told me it couldn’t happen. They said we could try forever, and it wouldn’t make a difference.” She looked down at the thing in her hand, a white stick. “But it did. Look at it, Dillon. It really did.”

  She lifted the thing, and I looked down at it. A white stick with a screen in the middle that held two pink lines.

  “Two,” I said, the breath catching in my throat. Looking up at her with wide eyes, I said, “But two means...it means…”

  “It means we’re going to have a baby,” she said, her face exploding into the hugest, purest smile I had ever seen in my life.

  “Really?” I asked, breathing heavy. “Are you sure?”

  “Sure as I can be,” she said, showing me the stick again. “Face it, Dillon Storm. You’re going to be a father.”

  The End

  Stay tuned after the mailing list signup for a special treat!

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  You’ll be left wondering what happens in Naples to all your favorite characters, and that’s not great because- I promise- what’s coming up next is pretty awesome.

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  For more on Dillon Storm and his group of Naples neighbors, check out the sequels.

  Book 2: Far From Shore can be found here. Check it out!

  Book 3 Across the Sound can be found here.

  Book 4: Caught in the Surf can be found here

  Book 5: Buried in the Sand can be found here

  And…

  A new Spinoff Series set in the Coastal Justice world, Coastal Law, can be found here.

  Thanks, and until next time, happy sailing,

  Mark

  Now, for that treat I promised,

  Get ready for a new series from your favorite author. The Finder series will tell a darker tale of Jack Lacey, set up in his home on the dangerous coast of Savannah. Southern storms will brew and murder will be as readily available as sweet tea.

  And now, check out a taste of book one of The Finder Series available soon!

  Chapter 34

  Seven Years Ago

  Jack Lacey was somewhere he shouldn’t have been, and his wife knew it. That was why she kept calling him. It was why his phone had barely stopped ringing since the moment he stepped into this rundown, hole in the wall bar on the outskirts of town. Lord knows it wasn’t because she actually wanted to talk to him. Unless it was to scream or to tell him just how much he’d disappointed her on a certain day, Jack couldn’t think of the last time he’d really talked to his wife. Sure, there were the obligatory pleasantries, the ‘hi’s and bye’s’ that have to come when sharing a space with someone, but there seemed to be little else between them lately. Hell, if not for their son, Jack figured Sadie would have walked right out that door and never came back.

  Still, she seemed concerned enough that the man was about to throw away nine years of sobriety, and that wasn’t nothing.

  Jack looked down at his phone. He had turned the ringer off and flipped it over. He couldn’t stand to look at the calls anymore or at the picture that popped up on the screen whenever it rang. It was of the three of them at the Coastal Empire Fair off Meding Street in historic downtown Savannah five years ago. Scott was only two then, and Sadie didn’t seem to mind the fact that her husband’s arm was around her shoulder. Jack couldn’t remember the last time that was true, either. He didn’t want to see those better times. He didn’t want to drown in the good old days, not when he had no idea if they were ever coming back.

  Jack sat back in his chair as the bartender, a old man with a longish beard and a face that said he’d seen too many working Sundays sat the first of what estimated would be at least six whiskeys tonight. It had been almost a decade since he’d touched the stuff, and he never thought a bar in Pooler on some random Tuesday night would be the day he’d give up the ghost.

  It made sense though, in a poetic sort of way. He’d given it up for Sadie, because she insisted that the man who was going to be her husband straighten up and fly right. She’d pushed him to that, and to her credit, he did straighten up. The flying part wasn’t exactly accurate, given that Jack had joined the United States Coast Guard and not the Air Force, but he ‘swam right’ for her. For all the good it did.

  Now, if he was going to throw it away, if he was going to pull back on years of progress, it only made sense that it would be because of the woman who started it all.

  “You don’t look like you want to do that,” the bartender said, motioning down to the drink sitting, still untouched in front of Jack. “Should I get you something else, say a cab?”

  “Some privacy would be nice,” Jack barked back, though he never pulled his eyes off the drink.

  “Whatever you say, bud,” the bartender answered, walking away. “It’s your dime.”

  Jack was surprised how steady his hand moved toward the glass. He always thought that, if it came to this, he’d be shakier, he’d be hesitant. Maybe it was the fact that he figured everything was ruined anyway, or maybe he just missed the damn stuff more than he knew. Either way, when his hand wrapped the glass, it did so with strength and conviction. He’d have drunk it, too. He knew he would have, if only Eddie wouldn’t have screamed.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” his brother and colleague’s voice echoed through his ears. Turning, Jack saw Eddie. He had always been close to his younger brother. They were so close, in fact, that when Jack joined the Coast Guard, Eddie followed suit. Aside from a skirmish they had back in Alfred E. Beach High over a girl they both liked, Jack couldn’t remember a cross word he ever had with his brother. Eddie ended up married to that girl, and Jack ended up getting caught with a drink in his hand.

  “I don’t know,” Jack said almost absentmindedly. “I just needed a break, I guess.”

  Eddie knew everything t
here was to know about Jack, including the fact that he had been sober for almost a decade now. He had been there when Jack was at his worst, and he had seen how hard it was for him to become better. Jack could only imagine what his brother must have been thinking as he stared at him now.

  “Did you drink that?” Eddie asked. His voice was filled with a typhoon’s worth of tension.

  “Ed,” Jack sighed. “If you knew what-”

  “I’m not talking about that right now,” Eddie cut him off. “Haven’t you been looking at your phone? We’ve got work to do. A couple boats crashed a couple nautical miles off the coast. It’s an all hands-on deck situation. I saw your damn car in the parking lot on my way in and thought I’d grab you.” He shook his head. “That’s when I figured you were playing pool, though. If you’ve been hitting the bottle, then-”

  “I didn’t drink it,” Jack said, dropping the glass and standing up, throwing his jacket back on. “Not yet. I haven’t drunk it yet.”

  “Did you drink anything today?” Eddie asked, his jaw tight and his eyes serious.

  “Not in years,” Jack admitted.

  “Good,” Eddie said. “Let’s go. We need to be quick. Last I heard, The Oracle was still on fire.”

  “What?” Jack asked, his heart dropping clear into his ankles. “Why did you use that name?”

  “It’s the name of one of the boats involved in the crash,” Eddie said. “I don’t know what the other one is, but-”

  “Is it a white trawler?” Jack asked, his voice suddenly shaking.

  “Jack, what’s going on?” Eddie asked.

  “That’s Wilson Edmund’s boat,” the man said. “A white trawler named The Oracle. His kid is friends with Scottie.” Jack grabbed his arm, squeezing it hard. “There was a sleepover tonight, Ed. I think my son was on that boat.”

  Present Day

  Jack Lacey brought the last of the boxes in and set them behind the bar. Coming back home after so many years away had been strange for him. The years he’d spent in Florida, bumming around off the Gulf Coast and getting himself into more trouble than he cared to relieve at the moment, had done a lot to bring him out of one of the darkest periods of his life. Still, it wasn’t home. This was. Though still coastal, Savannah was a whole different world than Florida. It actually got cool in the winters up here. What was more, this place held all of the Southern charm one might expect to see from a city that still had moss trees hanging and spoke of the Civil War as though it had happened yesterday.

  “That the last of them?” Eddie asked, coming out of the back with a bagful of ice thrown across each shoulder. He was beaming like a brand-new man was he surveyed the property. This restaurant, a recently closed down bar that the man had got at a steal and renovated into a pretty decent looking spot, had always been Eddie’s dream.

  Jack’s father, like his boys after him, was a military man. Though he’d chosen the Navy instead of the Coast Guard, he’d seen a lot of places in his day. Jack could remember the stories he and his brother would listen to right after supper, curled up around their father’s feet. The best story, the one the man told the most, involved a peaceful little oceanview restaurant somewhere on the coast in Mexico. Jack’s father used to talk about the place like it was heaven itself. “A joint where you could get a tequilla, a good conversation, and the freshest yellowfin tuna a man could ask for”; that was what their father used to say. Looking around this place now, Jack figured that if you replaced yellow fin tuna with catfish and crappie, you’d probably have a pretty decent representation of the place their dad talked about so often.

  The old man would have been proud.

  “That’s the last of them,” Jack said, swallowing hard and setting the box down behind the bar. “Can’t believe you got the place together so quickly.”

  “I had good help,” Eddie said, smiling at his brother and tossing the ice into a long chest that sat under the bar and out of the line of sight of where customers would hopefully soon fill the seats here. “Besides, you know how I get when I want something.”

  “Like a hungry dog let loose in a butcher shop,” Jack answered, shaking his head.

  “Nothing wrong with a little initiative,” Eddie said.

  “Tell that to your wife,” Jack answered. “Given the fact that she’s about to pop out your fourth kid, I’m guessing she’d be up for a little less initiative in at least one department.”

  “You’re just mad that she picked me in high school,” Eddie answered, pulling a few beers from their boxes and sticking them into the ice. He left one out for himself.

  “No accounting for taste, I guess,” Jack muttered.

  Eddie popped the top, though before he took a drink, he blinked hard and looked over at his brother. “You sure you’re okay being here, man? I mean, I know I’m technically branding this as a restaurant, but look around. This is about as classic a bar as you’ll ever see.”

  Eddie wasn’t wrong. Taking in the sight, Jack knew that what he was standing in was every bit as much of a bar as the ones he’d frequented when he was younger, the one he almost threw his sobriety away in on that horrible night seven years ago, and the ones he sank into after he realized he was far too late to do any good.

  That was in the past, though. He had worked his way through that. He had worked his way through all of it. It wasn’t easy. Hell, it was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do in his life, but he did it. And he wasn’t going back, even if he was standing in a damn bar.

  “I’m fine,” Jack said, nodding firmly at his brother. “It’s gonna take more than the sight of my little brother downing a light beer to send me off the deep end.”

  “I’m trying to watch my weight, you asshat,” he muttered, smiling and taking a drink. “Besides, I’m bigger than you now. I’m not sure the term ‘little brother’ still applies.”

  “I don’t give a damn if you grow to the size of King Kong and climb the Empire State Building, you’ll still be my little brother, even if I don’t always want to admit it.”

  “What the hell did I do?” Eddie asked, setting the can down and wiping his mouth.

  “Other than to put the livelihood of your entire family in jeopardy for this pipedream of a place, you mean?” Jack asked, pulling up a stool. “How in debt are you because of this hole in the wall anyway.”

  “About half as in debt as I’d be if you’d have gone into it with me like I asked you to,” he said. “Besides, the Coast Guard gave me a really good pension when I left. If you’d have stayed long enough to retire, you’d know that.”

  Jack looked at the bar, remembering that night, remembering that, while his son was fighting for his life in that water, he was busy feeling sorry for himself and not answering calls that might have gotten him there in time to change things.

  “You know I couldn’t do that,” Jack said, still looking at the bar.

  “I know,” Eddie said, his voice instantly. “I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. I just-”

  “I know what you meant, Eddie. It’s okay,” Jack said. “And I only mean that I had to get away. After Scottie, after Sadie, I just had to get away.”

  “That’s understandable,” Eddie said. “Have you spoken to her lately?”

  “To Sadie?” Jack asked, looking up, his eyebrows raised. “Not since the divorce was finalized. You?”

  “Not since she left town a couple of years ago. Heard she was headed up to Tennessee. If you remember, she has family there. She looked better.”

  “Good,” Jack answered honestly.

  “You know,” Eddie said. “I was thinking that maybe we could put a bench over by the window in the far-left corner, the one where the jukebox used to be. Maybe we could put a plaque there, put Scottie’s name on it. You think that would be nice?”

  Just then, Jack’s phone buzzed. He looked down to find a text from Gwen stretched across his screen.

  He just left. I think he’s headed your way.

  Then another one followed.

&nb
sp; Ur welcome.

  “I’ve gotta go,” Jack said, standing from the stool and turning immediately toward the door.

  “Jack,” Eddie said, watching his brother leave. “Don’t go like that. It was just a suggestion.”

  “I heard you,” Jack said. “A bench. I got it.” He blinked hard, trying to push back the memories. “A bench is fine. It’s fine.”

  And, with that, Jack Lacey went to work.

  Chapter 35

  Jack sat in his car with the headlights off. He had been here for two hours, and if Gwen could be taken at her word, that meant the man he was waiting for would be pulling by any minute. He brought a spoon to his lips and tasted the delicacy that was cold, canned spaghetti. His brother was probably having a homecooked meal right about now. While his wife Fallon was almost a full none months along in creating their newest bundle of joy, that didn’t seem to slow her down much. As far as Jack could see, she was an honest to God superwoman. Still, that didn’t mean he was about to go intruding on their hospitality more than he already had.

  When he moved back into town, before he got his houseboat fixed up and ready to live in, Jack crashed in their guest room. He was welcome to stay there forever, according to his brother and his wife. And, with things like clean linen, stovetop food, and a home didn’t smell like feet (most of the things Jack had been missing since his divorce), he definitely wouldn’t have minded being there.

  Still, he was a grown man. He had a family of his own once, and he didn’t like the idea of encroaching on someone else’s, even if that someone was his own brother.