Caribbean Rescue (Coastal Fury Book 16) - Matt Lincoln (reading tree .TXT) 📗

when we reached the point where sand gave way to grass and rock. By this point, there were basically no tourists around. There weren’t even that many buildings around since the only thing out this way was a steep, rocky cliff. It was a popular spot for young couples to sneak away to, though it seemed to be unoccupied right now.

“Maybe we walked the wrong way,” Holm huffed as he wiped the sweat off his forehead. A walk along the beach wasn’t exactly tiring for us, but the intense heat made even a light stroll feel strenuous. “I mean, I didn’t see any sign of a boat on the way here. And this far out, any boat that tried to come close would be completely wrecked on the rocks.”

“Maybe that’s why we didn’t see anything on the way here,” I muttered as I glanced down over the side of the cliff. “If the boat was destroyed, then there wouldn’t be one to find.”

“You don’t think…?” Holm turned to look at me.

“One way to find out,” I sighed as I began to step carefully down over the side of the cliff. The rocks there were loose and uneven, so it was a slow and risky process.

“I really hope we don’t die here,” Holm scoffed as we made our way slowly down the side of the cliff. “Can you imagine that? After everything we’ve survived, dead from tripping over a rock.”

“Don’t trip then,” I retorted just as my foot slipped against a piece of loose rock. I hissed as my ankle jerked in an unnatural direction as I attempted to keep my balance.

I heard Holm snicker behind me, and I had to resist the temptation to turn around. I might have actually fallen if I tried.

“Seriously,” Holm huffed tensely as we got closer to the base of the cliff. “I don’t think that— Dammit.”

I looked up to see what he was reacting to and noticed it immediately. Just a few yards away from the base of the cliff, half-hidden behind a large chunk of jagged rock, was a piece of something smooth and white. Even broken and in pieces, I instantly recognized the hull of what was once a boat.

My heart sank. Even from this distance, I could tell that the thing was wrecked, which wasn’t a good sign.

It took an agonizingly long time for us to finally make it back onto level ground at the base of the cliff. The moment I’d made it down, I raced over to where the boat was stuck. The water was up to about my ankles here, but I ignored it as I hurried to inspect the damage.

It looked like a small bowrider, though it was difficult to tell from this angle. The boat had crashed onto the rocks in such a way that its bow was facing straight up, making it impossible to see the deck or cockpit from where I was standing. A large portion of the side was also caved in, as though it had struck first on that side before finally getting stuck like this.

I wasn’t sure how stable the thing was, but I needed to have a closer look, so I circled around to the other side of the boat and began to climb up. As I hauled myself up, I nearly gasped at the sight I came face to face with.

Lying on the floor of the boat was the body of a woman, badly sunburned and unnaturally still. I cursed as I clambered beside her to check for a heartbeat, but I could tell by the stench even before I’d checked for a pulse that she was already gone, probably for some time now.

“She’s dead,” I informed Holm as he climbed up into the boat beside me.

“Damn…” he muttered as he stared down at the body.

Though it was matted and covered in dirt, I could tell that the woman’s hair was the same shade of bright blond as Eddy’s.

“Wait, so the kid climbed up the cliff and walked all the way down to the crowded part of the beach?!” he exclaimed as he looked up at the cliff we’d just cautiously scaled down. “That was like a mile of beach!”

“Kids are tougher than you think,” I replied. “Resilient, too. Little guy kept walking until he found someone to help him.”

“She did right by him,” he murmured as he looked back down at the woman’s body. “After everything she went through, she sailed from Turks and Caicos to Miami in this little rickety thing?”

“She saved her child,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’m going to make sure she gets justice.”

9

Ethan

I grimaced as I watched Agent Olivia deliver the bad news to Mrs. Newark from Mrs. Abernathy’s kitchen. She was speaking quietly enough that I couldn’t quite make out what she was saying, but there was no way I could miss the intense grief that flashed across her expression as she let out an agonized wail and fell to the ground.

“This sucks,” Holm muttered beside me.

“Yeah.” I frowned. I couldn’t imagine how awful it must feel to finally get a glimmer of hope that your kid might be alive, only to have it crushed almost immediately.

After we’d discovered the body, we’d called to report what we’d found. Forensics had been dispatched to deal with the body and the scene, and Diane was currently attempting to trace where the boat had come from. We already suspected, based on Barbara Newark’s story, that they might have come from Turks and Caicos, but there was no telling what Allison Newark had gone through in the past two decades. Until we knew exactly where the boat had come from, we couldn’t proceed with the case.

Agent Hastings sighed as she walked into the kitchen a moment later, likely to give the woman a little space to process the news.

“Sorry you had to do that,” I said as she leaned against one of the countertops.

“Don’t be,” she replied, all the earlier venom in her voice now