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

It was all I could do to not pound Stud Mahoney into a pulp.

I turned around and found Crystal crying, her face in her hands.

I wrapped my arms around her. What a miserable twenty-four hours. I held her while she shook. Once she stopped crying, she pushed my arms away and took long strides toward the door.

“Goddamn crummy stupid sons of bitches,” she said.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

BOOM-BOOM COCKED THE SHOTGUN.

“Take my ass to Christiansted, man!”

I glanced into the back of the plane. With eyes as kind as a vicious dog’s Crystal watched over Stud Mahoney and his manager, who were buckled into their seats whispering. No doubt concocting a story to explain their disappearance.

“You hear me, brudda?” Boom-Boom was back in the co-pilot’s seat, twisted toward me, a hand on his shotgun. “You need to take me to St. Croix, now.”

“As much as I want to get you and your cargo off my plane, we’re going to Jost Van Dyke first—”

“Look, motherfu—”

“You look!” I glared at him. “We have two very important situations at hand here. One, the asshole movie star who conned the world and who has every law enforcement agency in the Virgin Islands looking for his lying ass, and two, Crystal Thedford, whose husband is still missing, and the rest of Hollywood and Nashville awaiting her return to commence their charity concert.” I took a breath. “Not to mention television networks here to cover the event, who’ll go apeshit when we show up with Dud McPhoney.”

Boom-Boom stared at me.

“Why don’t you stay here on Guana Island and get one of your buddies to come pick you up?” I said.

“’Cause I don’t know who’s left or who I can trust.”

“Then hang on.”

I shoved the twin throttles forward and the Beast leapt ahead like an Olympic sprinter out of the blocks. What sounded like a shriek rang out from the cabin. Crystal rolled her eyes.

“What the hell am I supposed to do with these bales when the police show up at your plane, huh?” Boom-Boom pumped his thumb toward the back of the plane.

“Throw ‘em overboard, I don’t care.” But I did. What if Bramble was waiting on Jost Van Dyke? Or Booth? If they found those bales, I’d be toast. “Better throw them out now, we could all get arrested—”

“Ain’t happening, brudda.” He lifted the gun. “This is all I got left.”

Son-of-a-bitch!

Just as the Beast broke free from the water’s grasp, I spotted two helicopters speeding toward us out of the west.

Uh oh.

“Christiansted!” Boom-Boom pointed the gun at me.

“You shoot me, we crash,” I said.

He turned the gun back toward the others in the cabin. His stubbly bald head glistened with sweat, and his eyes were cold. Nothing about him quivered as he stared at me.

“Grumman Goose, Grumman Goose, do you read me?” a voice sounded in both my and Boom-Boom’s headsets.

His eyebrows arched. “Don’t answer.”

“Grumman Goose, this is Sikorsky N1960, flying straight at you out of Tortola, Grumman. We have a report that you rescued Stud Mahoney and have him on board your vessel, copy?”

What the—how would they know that?

I glanced into the back. Stud’s manager was whispering into her cell phone. The helicopters blew past us on both sides, each with cameramen hanging out of open doors. She smiled and pointed them out to Stud.

She’d alerted the press!

“The hell do they want?” Boom-Boom said.

The choppers spun back around and gained on us. I had the Beast flying at low speed, still unsure of our destination, so they cruised right up on our starboard side, one behind the other, cameras trained our way. I heard laughter in the cabin: freaking Stud Mahoney waving from his window like a victorious warrior returning home.

“Hey, cut that shit out!” I yelled.

The manager gave me a thin-lipped smile.

“You’ll be a hero.” She squinted, then reached backwards and patted the top burlap bale of reefer. She smiled again.

Perfect.

“What the fuck?” Boom-Boom said.

He held his hand up between the window and his face to try and hide from the camera. I wasn’t as lucky. They’d check on the Beast’s N-number and have the name of Last Resort Charter and Salvage before we landed—and if the press knew of the “rescue,” so would the police.

“We’re screwed now, brudda,” I said. “We can’t go to St. Croix, and you can’t toss those bales without it being captured on film!”

“Come in, Grumman Goose,” the voice came again.

“You going to answer them?”

I added power, pulled back on the yoke, and tried to lose them with altitude. Jost Van Dyke was already in view. If I ran for it, my radio silence and the fact that we had the missing movie star on board could lead to an aerial version of the O.J. Simpson Bronco chase. As focused as the Royal Virgin Islands Police and FBI had been on finding Stud, there had to be a mad scramble going on right now—

I felt a tap on my shoulder. Crystal handed me her phone. A text appeared on the screen: “Tell Reilly to bring Mahoney to Jost Van Dyke. I’m waiting. Booth.”

My sigh was lost to the noise of the twin Wasp engines.

“What’s that?” Boom-Boom said.

I held the phone up for him to read.

“Who’s Booth?”

“He’s the head FBI agent for all of South Florida and the Caribbean, that’s who.”

Boom-Boom’s shoulders sagged.

“The hell we gonna do now?”

Damn good question.

The once Dutch island grew in front of us as my mind sought options. Rescued movie star or not, those bales were inexplicable. And that shrew of a manager would damn sure use them against us.

They say necessity is the mother of invention, but in our case, innovation was the brudda of desperation.

I pushed the yoke forward.

“The hell you doing?”

Using Crystal’s phone, I dialed a number.

“Obeying the FBI.” I winked at Boom-Boom. “What choice do we have?”

Confusion dawned on his face for the first time since I’d known him.

AS WE CLOSED IN, we