Jesse McDermitt 26.Weigh Anchor, page 1
part #26 of Jesse McDermitt Series
Copyright © 2023
Published by DOWN ISLAND PRESS, LLC, 2023
Beaufort, SC
Copyright © 2023 by Wayne Stinnett
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned,
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Library of Congress cataloging-in-publication Data
Stinnett, Wayne
Weigh Anchor/Wayne Stinnett
p. cm. - (A Jesse McDermitt Novel)
ISBN: 978-1-956026-67-2 (eBook)
Cover and graphics by Aurora Publicity
Edited by Marsha Zinberg, The Write Touch
Final Proofreading by Donna Rich
Interior Design by Aurora Publicity
Published by Down Island Press, LLC
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies,
events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Many real people are used
fictitiously in this work, with their permission. Most of the locations
herein are also fictional or are used fictitiously. However, the author
takes great pains to depict the location and description of the many
well-known islands, locales, beaches, reefs, bars, and restaurants
throughout the Florida Keys and the Caribbean to the best of his ability.
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Also by Wayne Stinnett
The Jerry Snyder Caribbean Mystery Series
Wayward Sons
Voudoo Child
Friends of the Devil
The Charity Styles Caribbean Thriller Series
Merciless Charity
Ruthless Charity
Reckless Charity
Enduring Charity
Vigilant Charity
Lost Charity
Elusive Charity
Liable Charity
The Jesse McDermitt Caribbean Adventure Series
Fallen Out
Fallen Palm
Fallen Hunter
Fallen Pride
Fallen Mangrove
Fallen King
Fallen Honor
Fallen Tide
Fallen Angel
Fallen Hero
Rising Storm
Rising Fury
Rising Force
Rising Charity
Rising Water
Rising Spirit
Rising Thunder
Rising Warrior
Rising Moon
Rising Tide
Steady As She Goes
All Ahead Full
Man Overboard
Cast Off
Fish On
Weigh Anchor
Swift and Silent
The Young Jesse McDermitt Tropical Adventure Series
A Seller’s Market
Non Fiction
Blue Collar to No Collar
No Collar to Tank Top
Sam Hoster
Life is full of challenges and you and your team helped me to get over a really big hurdle. I am forever grateful.
I know why you do what you do, why you push so hard every day, and why you enjoy it so much. You’re doing good work, brother.
Stay Strong!
"If you can't fly, then run. If you can't run, then walk. If you can't walk, then crawl. But whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward."
– Martin Luther King Jr.
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Title Page
Copyright
Also By Wayne Stinnett
Dedication
Maps
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Afterword
Also By Wayne Stinnett
Jesse’s island in the Content Keys
The Florida Keys
November 1,2023
Big Horn Basin, Wyoming
The old ranch had seen better days. The land itself was unchanged since it had first been settled in 1870, and for centuries before that, transformation only came about due to climate changes. The natural basin had been formed hundreds of millions of years ago, so the 153 years since it had first endured continuous habitation was merely a blink of the eyes of a very old man.
The main house was 150 years old, having replaced the original shack that was built on the land when it was first claimed three years prior. The settler who built both had taken a wife and she wanted a proper home to raise their family. And in 1874, the first child was born in the home—a son.
The sprawling old ranch house had seen six generations born within its walls, and five generations die. The first of each new generation had consistently been born in twenty-five-year intervals, always in the month of November, often very close to a father’s or grandfather’s birthday. And every single firstborn for 125 years had been a boy.
It stood to reason. Nine months prior was the dead of winter, and in the high, northern basin, those months were exceptionally brutal, with winds howling over 10,000-foot peaks, no matter from which point on the compass they came. When temperatures dropped below zero for weeks on end, there was little else to do to keep warm.
The door opened as a man came out. He slammed it so hard behind him, the glass rattled in the frames. He wore a heavy coat against the early frost and a Western hat on his head. Steam blew from his mouth and nostrils as he looked all around in the crisp morning air.
“Where’d you go this time?” he muttered to himself in a half growl before stepping down off the porch.
He was young, in his mid-twenties. Tall, rangy, and filled with the vigor of youth. Reddish-brown hair hung from under the Stetson he wore and lay loosely on the big white collar of his tan coat.
Stopping in the middle of the front yard, where the grass was beginning to give up its battle with the elements, he turned, looking all around.
Soon, the stark grassland would be covered in several feet of snow, which hid the dangers of cracks and rocks and made travel, even by horseback, a dangerous undertaking. Down in town, there were plows and enough traffic to keep the roads clear, though wet. But in the upper basin, most residents just hunkered in for the winter and made babies.
There was only one out-building—an old barn with a hay loft—but Marshall Grey knew there were four small line shacks on the property’s borders, each a half-day’s horseback ride from the other. They were situated at the corners of the property, which was roughly square-shaped, and if caught in a blizzard while checking the fence, a rider was only a few hours from one of them.
Grey had already checked the barn and found that her car wasn’t there. And the house looked like nobody had been there all night.
He pulled a cell phone from his pocket and checked the bars. Or bar, as it was. Opening his contact list, he scrolled to an entry and tapped it, then held the device to his ear.
“It’s Grey,” he said. “She’s gone again.”
November 1, 2023
Content Keys
There was a cool dryness to the air on the first day of November. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, and there wasn’t a cloud in sight.
But I could sense a subtle shift in the weather.
It’s often said that if you don’t like the weather in South Florida, just wait an hour. But the high-pressure system that had dominated our weather for the last three days was slowly drifting northward, ushering in the typical sub-tropical pattern—hot and humid.
As I finished up the oil change on the Grady-White’s Suzuki, I glanced out through the big open doors again.
H
e was still sitting there.
I’d first noticed him at the end of the dock fifteen minutes earlier. It wasn’t like Alberto to sit still for more than the time it took him to wolf down a meal.
I wiped my hands on a shop rag and put the cowl back over the engine, locking it in place. Then I went upstairs to the main part of our stilt house.
“What’s with Alberto?” I asked Savannah, as she worked on sorting and packing all the provisions we’d returned with an hour earlier.
Generally, we liked to stock up enough canned and dry goods to last two weeks, sometimes longer. Meat wasn’t much of a concern in the Content Keys.
Our house was in the middle of a high concentration of diverse fish species, many at the top of the list for local restaurant fare, and when it came to shellfish, a lobster dinner was a mere two-hundred-foot swim off the south pier to Harbor Channel. Often, I could get one or two in the rocks right under the pier.
Savannah leaned over the sink and looked out the window to the left, where I knew she could see down to the end of the pier.
“He’s been sitting there a long time,” she said. “Do you think something’s troubling him?”
“Guess I’ll go down there and find out,” I replied, heading toward the door. “Oil’s changed in the Suzuki. I’ll get to the Yam-a-hammer this afternoon.”
“We’re going to the dinner concert at the community theater at four. Will you have time to do both?”
I paused halfway through the door and grinned back at her. “Probably not.”
“Good thing you don’t have any flats charters scheduled for tomorrow, then. The Yam-a-hammer can wait.”
I closed the door, grinning, and walked over to the steps. It’d been almost four months since Savannah had called me, crying, and asking if it was too late to come home.
It’d then taken another agonizing four days until she and Alberto had returned to our little island.
During that time, we’d talked on the satellite phone for hours every day, running up a huge bill, like a couple of love-sick teenagers, It wasn’t until the afternoon of Savannah and Alberto’s second day of the long crossing that she told me about what had happened in the Yucatan.
I remembered well the sinking feeling I’d gotten in the pit of my stomach when, in a very strained voice, she’d told me how she’d been forced to give the order to kill a man.
Charity had taken the shot, but it was Savannah’s call—a cruel twist of fate.
By then, I’d already gotten a full report from Deuce, forwarded from Paul Bender, one of his field operatives who’d helped Savannah and Charity rescue a kidnapped American girl.
When she’d told me about the shooting in Campeche, she started crying again, vowing that she would be more understanding of the things I’d had to do in the past.
I hadn’t been all that sure what she’d meant at the time, but it didn’t matter.
I walked down the steps and out onto the pier toward Alberto. He heard me coming and glanced back, quickly pulling the front of his T-shirt up and wiping his eyes.
Was he crying?
“What’s up, little man?” I asked, as I got to the end of the pier and looked out over the water.
He was holding something against his chest—a picture.
“Just thinking,” he replied.
I sat down next to him, letting my feet dangle in the water, and reached over, gently tugging the picture away.
“I remember this day,” I said softly, looking down at a picture of Alberto and Finn on the beach. It was taken in Roatan, Honduras.
There was a pile of empty clam shells in front of them and Finn was looking up at the camera, with his head cocked to one side. “You both got sick from eating too many.”
“Yeah…”
“You miss him, don’t ya?”
He looked up at me, his dark, expressive eyes beginning to well up again. “I only got to know him for a few years, and we only got back a month before he died.”
I pulled him against my side. “I know, son. It’s never long enough.”
“How come dogs can’t live as long as people?”
I remembered reading something once—some story I’d seen online, supposedly from a kid, but it made the greatest sense to me.
“You understand what true loyalty and unconditional love is, right?” He nodded, so I asked him, “How old do you think you were when you first understood that?”
“That’s easy,” he replied. “The summer you and mom found me in that old boat.”
That kinda kicked me in the side a bit. Alberto had been eight years old when Savannah and I had found him drifting in an old wooden dinghy.
“People are born,” I said, staring down at Finn’s quizzical expression, “and then it takes us years to learn how to live a good life. You know, like loving unconditionally and being loyal to friends and family.” I paused and looked down at my young son. “Well, dogs already know all that stuff from the time they first open their eyes. So they don't have to stay as long.”
“But I was supposed to take care of him,” he said, his voice cracking. “I owed him my life and we went away.”
Another unforeseen consequence. Though not directly related, the pain Alberto was feeling about not being there for Finn was the result of my actions.
I pulled him close and held him tight. Savannah had left in early spring, and they’d returned shortly after Independence Day. Finn had recovered completely from his shark-bite wound while they were gone, but he just wasn’t the same until they’d returned. By then, I’d learned from the vet who’d treated him that he was dying of cancer and at his age, there was nothing to be done.
“Don’t you worry about that,” I told him. “I took over and did a good job for you, while you couldn’t. You did the hard part, taking care of him after the shark bite, and again during his last few weeks. When he needed you most, you were there for him.”
He sniffed and wiped his nose. “He changed a lot while me and Mom were gone.”
“It was the cancer,” I said, remembering how quickly Finn had gone downhill after the diagnosis. “He got weak really fast after you guys came home.”
“And there wasn’t anything—”
“No, son,” I replied. “If there was, you know I would have done it. But as strong as he was, he was very old and weakened by the shark bite. Another surgery might have killed him, and even if it was successful, we’d probably be facing it again in just a few months. The cancer had spread too much.”
“Yeah, but…” His voice trailed off.
“Look at it from his point of view, son. Being wheeled away by strangers in an unknown place, scared and alone, then never waking up from the surgery, or having the doctor come here and help him fall asleep on his favorite bed, surrounded by everyone he loved. Which would you choose?”
Alberto stared at the framed snapshot in my hands for a moment. “He was sure a good dog.”
“Yeah, he sure was,” I agreed. “He was my third good dog.”
“You told me about Pescador,” he said. “When did you have another one?”
“When I was about your age,” I said. “Molly was a black Lab that Pap brought home when I was ten. She died not long after I was transferred to Parris Island for Drill Instructor School.” I remember the pain I’d felt then. “I was a drill instructor and couldn’t be there for her.”
“How old was she?”
“A little over thirteen.”
“How long did Pescador live?”
“After I returned him to the woman he belonged to, he lived to be fourteen.”
“Three good dogs…” he said, his voice trailing off.
“Supposed to be four,” I said, grinning at him. “At least, according to Scott Kirby.”
He laughed and we both started singing Scott’s song, Four Good Dogs.
“Mom said I have to wait until tomorrow to change the oil in the Maverick,” I said. “We’re going to the dinner concert at four.”
“That’s still five hours.”
“Minus an hour to get ready,” I said, kicking my feet slowly in the water. “And another hour to get there. By myself, it’d probably take… oh, maybe three hours. Not a lot of wiggle room.”
“How about if I helped?”
I nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, I think with your help, we can probably get it done in just two hours.”
“Let’s do it,” he said, scrambling to his feet.
I got up and trotted after him as he sprinted up the steps. Savannah was just coming out the door.
