AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He had the best view because he was out on the rock jetty that curved slightly on the right side of the beach, facing the rest of the team. Owens’s team was in front of him, off to his right. Dane held his breath.
Jace’s voice vibrated in his ear. “Shit. Got one at my two o’clock. Another on my four.”
Fuck.They were stuck until those guys moved. The pickup drove up the beach and over the bluff. He went back through the parking lot and made a left back onto the road. A few seconds later, his taillights disappeared. Nobody moved.
Damn. He hated that the guy got away with the drugs. Tension vibrated along his body like tight guitar strings. Pins and needles stung his back, but he didn’t move. He brought the binoculars up slowly. Owens stayed just off the beach in the speedboat. He hadn’t left yet.Why?
“Two, got any insight into why he’s hanging around?” Cain asked.
“None.” What the fuck was Owens waiting for? A sound reached his ears. A buzzing. “Shit. Drone.” Dane froze. Moving even slightly now would give them away.
The drone swooped in over the boat and hovered. It was carrying something, some sort of basket.What the fuck?It wasn’t looking for them. It seemed to be looking for Owens. Maybe confirming he was there? The drone did a swooping circle and then came to a stop chest-height, hovering above the beach.
Owens brought the boat in and dropped the anchor on the sand. He hopped out and then reached over the side of the basket. He pulled out a small, black square box, the size of carry-on luggage, only square.
“Five, are you getting this?” Dane whispered through his comms.
“Yes. Lots of shots.”
Owens put the square bag back into the basket and stepped back. The drone dipped, almost like a bow, and then took off, first over the water, and then back over the trees. It was gone from view in seconds.
“Some sort of handoff,” Tac mused.
Owens got back in his boat and turned out to sea.
Dane stayed still. The churn in his gut matched the burn in his back. This was not how this night was supposed to turn out. They were supposed to follow the pickup and arrest the guy for drug smuggling, but he was long gone. Jace probably had pictures of the truck’s license plate, but the likelihood of it being legit was small.
Jace’s voice broke into his thoughts. “Watchers are bugging out.”
Dane heard the distant sound of a motor. Thirty seconds later, an SUV went down the road to the left. They all stayed where they were for another couple of minutes. Satisfied they were alone, Cain called it.
Dane got up and swore. His back had stiffened up so much that he moved like a one-hundred-year-old man. He was also crunching sand in his teeth. Jace hadn’t been wrong about the nooks and crannies part.
They rallied in a parking lot three-quarters of a mile away. Dane was the last to arrive. His back was too stiff to move quickly if it wasn’t necessary. He walked up to Cain’s vehicle, a black pickup ironically enough, where the rest of the team was waiting.
“So, what the fuck?” Jace asked. “Your old boss?”
Dane blew a breath through his clenched teeth. “Senior Chief Craig Owens. I knew that guy was up to no good. I even spoke to base command about it, but I was told to talk to CGIS. I did, but they screwed me. Owens found out, and then I…had my…incident.” He couldn’t bring himself to call it an accident because he was sure it wasn’t. He knew in the pit of his stomach that Owens had been behind the shit that happened the night Dane suffered his back injury…the reason for his persistent pain, but there was no proof.
“Cass, you’re Tactical Law Enforcement. What do we do?” Cain asked.
Cass leaned her slender frame against the truck. “We don’t have enough to charge him with anything at this moment. We have to see what the pictures captured. For all we know, he could have had rocks in that box and the duffel bag could’ve been full of laundry.” She held up her hands to stave off any kind of argument. “I’m not saying it’s likely. I’m saying what we know and what we can prove are worlds apart. We need more.”
“What do we know?” Koa asked. “Cass is right. We were told there would be a drug deal. That’s what we saw, but we don’t know for sure that drugs changed hands. Zero proof on that. We know Owens is involved, but in what? And we know he gave three backpacks in exchange for a duffel bag and then he put a black case in a basket of a drone. We can fill in the blanks, but it’s supposition, not fact.”
Tac leaned on the side of the truck. “So, again, what do we do?”
Cass sighed. “Realistically, we’re supposed to hand something like this off to the Coast Guard Investigative Services unit.”
“No fucking way,” Dane said bluntly. “I tried them last time. I just told you what happened. I put Owens on their radar, and they shut me down and then offered me up on a platter.” He clamped his jaw shut. It was a long story, and he didn’t want to get into it, but he could tell by the looks he was getting he was going to have to at some point. It just wasn’t going to be on this beach in the middle of the night.
Cain unstrapped his body armor. “We start poking around.”
“You mean we’re going to stay on this?” Dane asked. He didn’t want to get his hopes up. Nailing Owens was something he’d been dreaming about.
“We’re the Coast Guard. Our job is drug interdiction. We just watched a man presumably bring drugs onshore. That falls under our purview. I will confirm with Admiral Bertrand since he’s our direct boss, but I think he’ll go along with it. One of our own is the man in question. I don’t know about you all, but I hate the thought that someone, who took an oath to protect and defend, is bringing drugs onto our shores. It pisses me off.”
That was probably one of the longer speeches Cain had ever given, and Dane found himself agreeing. However, his doubts rose when they started to talk about the next steps.
