Crystal Blue (Buck Reilly Adventure Series Book 3) by John Cunningham (novels for beginners txt) 📕

Nothing like a toilet bath to start your day.

“You was sawing same major lumber, man,” he said.

I looked at my new roommate’s face and did a double take.

“Hey, aren’t you—”

“Diego sends his love.”

It was Brass Knuckles, the Rasta who’d cold-cocked me at the Beach Bar on St. John.

“I’m here to deliver some information. Diego heard you was here because Bramble be up to some tricks.”

I crossed my arms.

“We’re at war.” His voice dropped. “That big international syndicate moved in and killed some of our men….” His chest heaved once and he caught his breath. “Blew up Diego’s boat, fired shots at his house from a helicopter, stole his car.”

“When did this happen? I was just in St. Thomas—”

“Yesterday afternoon.” He slumped over. “They grabbed Spice… my friend.”

Dreadlocks?

“The guy with you at the Beach Bar when we, ah, met?” He nodded. “He okay?”

“No idea, but hope so,” he said.

“You say it’s an international syndicate?” I thought back to my conversations with Lieutenant White and then Harry. “From where?”

“We don’t know, but they big—went after everyt’ing all at once. Arms trade, bitches, gambling, drugs—”

“Boom-Boom?”

His brow furrowed. “Yeah, him too, same shit—shot up his compound, took some of his men. Pretty fucked up.”

Silence followed as his eyes grew distant.

“So why’d you come to see me?”

“Diego needs you to get him out. He’s stuck in Fish Bay. The syndicate has people at the ferry and the marinas that’ll shoot him dead. He needs you to fly into the bay by his house and pick him up.”

I stared at him. “I can’t exactly walk out of here.”

“You’ll get out.”

I bit the side of my lip.

“Have you heard anything about John Thedford?”

His expression compressed into a thoughtful scowl, then he shrugged.

“Could be, or maybe that actor. We heard someone be holed up in a private villa on Guana Island.”

“There’s a hundred-grand reward for Mahoney,” I said. “If you have news on him go get him yourself.”

“Call the cops? Nah, man, not me—and Diego ain’t calling no police neither. But we’ll take half the reward money if you collect. After you fly us outta here.”

I ran my fingers through my hair and rubbed my eyes.

“I don’t care so much about the actor, I’m looking for—”

“That red Cigarette boat, right?” he said.

I sat up straight. “How’d you know?”

“You texted Diego.”

“What about it?” I said.

“You gonna pick Diego up at Fish Bay?”

“If you get me what I need.”

What I didn’t need was to be smack in the middle of an organized-crime war.

He shrugged. “Baldwin outta Marina Cay. Keeps that sweet red boat over on Scrub Island. Too pussy to work for us, but he do this and that for others.”

Damn! I’d flown right over Marina Cay and Scrub Island on my approach to the airport.

“Baldwin, huh. You know his first name?”

“Nah, mon, but everyone call him Baldy. He run the marina there. Got that boat from a DEA auction on St. Thomas couple of years ago.” He laughed. “Won’t be long ‘fore they take it back, soon as Baldy get busted running shit around the islands. But we heard he be working for this new syndicate, so he might be dead ’fore you get to him.”

I let this sink in for a minute.

“Any chance Baldy might have taken Thedford to Guana Island?”

“Could be.” Brass Knuckles nodded vigorously, which made his dreadlocks jump. “So when you get out, Diego be waiting. So make it soon.”

My under the radar network was under attack and falling apart, but at least it had delivered some information.

“Now I got to get outta here.”

“Thanks for the visit.”

He walked straight to the door and beat on it, hard, with the palm of his hand. He yelled something unintelligible and beat on it again. The door opened a minute later, and the guard looked in and smiled. They exchanged garbled conversation, then Brass Knuckles walked out without looking back.

I jumped up and tried the same thing, beat on the door hard and yelled, but nobody came.

MY ASS GREW NUMB sitting on the cot, so I did an isometric-aerobic workout that soaked my already soggy shirt with more sweat—no climate-controlled comforts here in the jail. As the hours passed I felt myself descending into the mental numbness that comes with incarceration. Not that I had much experience with anything beyond the month I spent in this cell four years ago, maybe a few days here and there, but it was the same every time. After the initial anger and outrage fade, you become sluggish and enter a semi-hibernated state to survive the anguish of confinement.

I didn’t know how my former partner had handled nearly two years in jail, so far. I’d be a basket case. Last I heard Jack had another year to go before he’d be eligible for parole. My brother and I had helped support the Dodson family while he was locked up. Jack could have dragged me down with him—and my brother, too, since he inherited the wealth my parents gained when I warned them to sell our stock. Jack wasn’t the only one who hid assets as e-Antiquity free-fell into insolvency, but the cash he stashed was a lot more obvious than the maps and background information I had spirited away.

I heard a noise—the slide of the bolt and keys jingling in the lock. The heavy door slid open. Three men stood outside: a guard, Officer Bramble, and another man who was vaguely familiar—the court magistrate who released me last time.

“Charles Reilly, III,” the magistrate said. “Do you remember me?”

“Of course. You released me last time because you knew I was innocent—”

“Hardly innocent,” Bramble said.

“Why have I been arrested?”

“There’s a crime war going on in your islands, Reilly,” Bramble said. “I assumed you were part of it.”

“I’m here to help an Adoption AID charity concert on Jost Van Dyke. The head of the nonprofit, John Thedford, disappeared several days ago—”

“Also in the USVI,” Bramble said.

“My sources say he was taken by a man