Man Overboard: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 23) Read online

  Copyright © 2022

  Published by DOWN ISLAND PRESS, LLC, 2022

  Beaufort, SC

  Copyright © 2022 by Wayne Stinnett

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without express written permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Library of Congress cataloging-in-publication Data

  Stinnett, Wayne

  Man Overboard/Wayne Stinnett

  p. cm. - (A Jesse McDermitt novel)

  ISBN: 978-1-956026-99-3

  Cover and graphics by Aurora Publicity

  Edited by Marsha Zinberg, The Write Touch

  Final Proofreading by Donna Rich

  Interior Design by Aurora Publicity

  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.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Also by Wayne Stinnett

  Map

  Dedication

  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

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty Four

  Afterword

  Also by Wayne Stinnett

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  http://WWW.WAYNESTINNETT.COM

  Once a month, I’ll bring you insights into my private life and writing habits, with updates on what I’m working on, special deals I hear about, and new books by other authors that I’m reading.

  The Jerry Snyder Caribbean Mystery Series

  Wayward Sons

  The Charity Styles Caribbean Thriller Series

  Merciless Charity

  Ruthless Charity

  Reckless Charity

  Enduring Charity

  Vigilant Charity

  Lost Charity

  Elusive Charity

  Forced 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

  There, you can purchase all kinds of swag related to my books.

  You can find it at

  WWW.GASPARS-REVENGE.COM

  To all my friends, cohorts, and associates at Tropical Authors. We have only each other to blame. I’m looking forward to some great things coming out of our motley band of miscreants, boat bums, and bubble heads. Always remember, when life’s events conspire to toss you overboard, you’re not alone.

  “I wanna take your boat as far as it goes

  Feel Jamaican sand between my toes

  I wanna ride on the wind just as far as I can

  I won’t be any trouble at all

  I can sleep anywhere at all

  And I don’t eat very much

  For a Hollow Man”

  – The Boat Drunks

  Jesse’s island in the Content Keys

  The Florida Keys

  May 5, 2022

  Coco Plum, Marathon, Florida Keys

  From his living room window, using a pair of powerful binoculars, Robert Grant could see boats out on the water over fifteen miles away. He knew this because he’d looked it up when the Realtor who’d sold him the property had told him the building could be seen for over ten miles.

  Robert was a numbers guy—had been since he was a child. Where artists could see subtle variations in shape, color, and hue, he could visualize digits and how they related to and interacted with one another. He’d excelled in math when he was in school, so much so that he often found the lessons tedious and boring. Frequently, when his fourth-grade teacher demonstrated how to do a multiplication problem on the chalk board, Robert had spouted the answer as soon as she’d drawn the line under the pair of stacked integers.

  So, instead of taking the Realtor’s claim at face value, he’d asked what the building’s height was and how high above sea level the ground was on which it had been built. Then he’d looked up the actual geometric formula and found that the distance to the horizon in miles was equal to the square root of one-and-a-half times the viewer’s height in feet.

  Bonefish Tower Condo was 170 feet tall, the tallest building in the Florida Keys, and the land it was built on was ten feet above sea level, putting the roof a staggering 180 feet above the water. That was extremely high for the hurricane-prone stretch of islands at the southern tip of the state, but the building had already weathered a number of them.

  Grant had bought the penthouse suite, though he’d found the Realtor to be an imbecile. The floor of his new condo was about twelve feet below the roof and at six feet tall, standing in his living room, his eyes were roughly 174 feet above sea level, meaning the horizon was just over sixteen miles away.

  Artists knew color, Realtors knew curb appeal, but Robert Grant knew numbers.

  It was his fascination with mathematics that had led him to how he earned his living. Having graduated from Clemson University with a bachelor's degree in finance, he’d set his sights on retiring by age fifty. To that end, he’d worked hard, ignoring all the social norms for a young man right out of college.

  He’d graduated just before the turn of the century, about the time computer engineers were starting to realize there was a huge problem looming on the horizon—Y2K. r />
  By then, personal computers, or PCs, had been in widespread use for over ten years, and large companies and organizations like NASA had been using computers since Robert’s father was a child. But computer manufacturers had overlooked one small detail during all that time. Dates were entered with a two-digit format for the year. Society had simply dropped the nineteen from any given year. Robert had been born in ’75 and had graduated college in ’97. His final report card had been dated 4/24/97, one week before commencement.

  During his final year of college, Robert’s roommate had been a computer engineering major. During their last semester as seniors, Robert was inputting data on his computer, creating a thirty-year amortization table, when he looked up and asked Bill how a computer could tell the difference between the years 1927 and 2027.

  His roommate looked up with a knowing grin, ready to school the finance whiz on the world of computers. Then his mouth had slowly fallen open.

  Now, at forty-seven, Robert Grant had amassed a large fortune, mostly through stock trading and investments. He drove a German-engineered car and lived and worked higher than anyone for almost a hundred miles. He also owned an estate in the U.S. Virgin Islands, a mountain retreat in North Carolina, and several office buildings in California, where property values rose higher than the buildings. Many of his properties were leveraged to the hilt, waiting on financing from a South American company which at first had seemed keen to invest. So, he’d made the investment for them, certain the deal was golden.

  Robert looked up from his desk in his home office. He stared out the window for a moment, marveling at the varying shades of blue stretched out before him. The sea was calm and changed from a turquoise color close to shore to dark indigo farther out. The sky likewise moved from pale blue near the horizon to brilliant cerulean high above.

  The investors would come through. The prospectus he’d sent them was simply too compelling not to. Once it was over, he’d have no further dealings with them. But today wasn’t about business. Several months ago, Grant had decided he needed a change in his personal life.

  He had everything he’d ever wanted. Or he would have. Once the South American businessmen he’d brokered—and actually financed—the deal for, came through with the promised investment, his assets would be free and clear again, and his coffers replenished.

  He could easily retire then and live an extremely comfortable life on the interest from his investments.

  But Robert had nobody to share it with. He’d never married and had no children. He’d considered such things a distraction from his ultimate goal. He’d overshot his mark, forsaking all else to become wealthy, without considering what would come after.

  So, he’d done the logical thing. He’d turned to his computer to find someone to share his lifestyle with—or what he considered his new lifestyle would be once he stopped working from dawn to dusk, seven days a week. And once the South American investors wired him the money, he needed to keep from losing a huge chunk of his holdings. He knew the investment was good—beyond good, in fact. He couldn’t understand why they were dragging their collective heels. So, he’d gone ahead and made the investment for them, leveraging his own assets and severely over-extending his ability to pay.

  It was a leap of faith.

  The prospect of not working had frightened him at first. He’d worked all his life. The hope of finding someone to show him how to live the rest of it seemed daunting. He’d approached it in the same way he did everything—analytically. He’d joined a few dating sites on the Internet and interviewed potential mates as he would a new secretary, by inviting them to his office first, just to see if there was any common ground. His latest guest was due any minute.

  The phone on his desk buzzed and he picked it up. “Grant Holdings.”

  “Um, hello,” a woman’s voice said, in slightly accented English. “I am Katya Popova. I am to meet Robert Grant.”

  “Go to the last elevator,” Robert directed. “I’ll open the door for you.”

  He hung up the phone and pushed a button on a small box next to it. A yellow light came on, indicating the elevator door was opening. A moment later, the light turned red, letting him know the private elevator car was in motion. On the ground floor, a key was needed to open the door and there were no buttons for individual floors. His elevator stopped only on the ground floor and his living room.

  Closing a ledger book and his laptop, Robert rose from his desk and walked around it into his living room. The young woman he was about to meet for the first time would be the seventh such candidate.

  He’d dismissed the first six within a few appointments, each having some flaw or another—too tall, too short, too heavy, too skinny, but mostly they’d been after money. Robert could have a $1000-a-visit call girl every night if that was all he wanted. Nearly half were like the woman coming up in the elevator, foreign women looking for a husband so they could remain in the country. Robert couldn’t find fault with that, but they had to bring a lot more to the table than just a desire for citizenship.

  When the elevator door whisked open, Robert found himself looking at an exceptionally attractive blonde almost as tall as he was. She wore an expensive-looking blue silk blouse, open at the neck, but not too revealing, and navy slacks with a razor-sharp crease. Her height was mostly natural, but the two-inch heels on her feet helped. Her hair framed an exquisite face, with full lips, an aquiline nose, and eyes the color of Arctic ice.

  Her bio on the dating site had said that Katya Popova was born in the Czech Republic in 1990, making her thirty-two years old—fifteen years younger than himself. She’d immigrated to the United States with her parents at the age of fourteen and moved from Connecticut to South Florida just three years ago.

  “Good afternoon,” he said, stepping forward and extending his hand. “I’m Robert Grant.”

  The fingers that took his were long and slender, her grip firm and sure. The nails were long, but not excessively so, and well-manicured with a neutral-colored polish.

  “I am pleased to meet you,” she said, stepping out of the elevator. “I am Katya.”

  They’d exchanged a few messages through the website, which soon became private emails, and then a couple of lengthy phone calls. She’d cleared the last bar during the most recent call, when she’d told him that she had been an American citizen since the age of twenty-one, seven years after arriving in the country. He didn’t have to worry about her being someone just looking for an easy ticket to citizenship.

  “Please come in,” Robert said, waving a hand toward the seating area in his expansive living room.

  “Thank you,” she said, moving toward the floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors, which opened onto a well-appointed terrace. “Your view is magnificent. I do not see how you can do any work here.”

  Robert stared at her from behind. She moved with the grace of a gazelle, a slower version of a runway model’s catwalk. She was obviously comfortable in heels. She was slim but curvy in all the right places.

  She turned and faced him, clasping her hands together. “May I speak openly, Robert?”

  He smiled. “I hope that you will.”

  “I have my own money,” she said bluntly. “I am not looking for dates or a sugar daddy. Nor am I interested in sex with just anyone.”

  “I’ll be equally frank,” he responded, smiling. He liked her open, straight-forward attitude. “I am only interested in finding someone who is looking for a lifetime commitment and children. If either of those is off the table, we can say goodbye here and not waste each other’s time.”

  A slow smile spread across her face, revealing perfect teeth. “I like a man who knows what he wants. These are things I too want, and I have met a string of men before you, Robert Grant.”

  July 5, 2022

  Yucatan Strait

  It was a dark and stormy night. Sure, that sounded clichéd and corny as all hell, but it was the only way to describe this one. It was alwa
ys dark at night, so yeah, I guess maybe that part was redundant, but in the middle of a tropical depression, with low-scudding clouds blotting out sky and driving rain hiding everything behind a silvery veil, it was especially dark; the kind of night when a person could marvel at the awesome power of nature.

  The wind howled at thirty knots, with gusts up to fifty, seas were running upward of fifteen feet, and lightning was flashing all across the sky. The storm raged, trying to get its act together enough to warrant getting a name.

  It wasn’t a good night to be out in a boat but that’s just where I was.

  Not just any boat, mind you, but a 199-foot custom-built yacht converted for oceanographic research. And Ambrosia was far from an ordinary yacht; she was way faster than most any yacht her size. With her work platform at the stern lowered to water level and locked, she was 215 feet, overall. But no amount of speed could’ve helped us avoid the storm.

  The night bridge crew consisted of Axel Troutman at the helm, straining his eyes to see ahead, Ross Mosely at navigation, who mostly watched the instruments and electronics, and Giselle Lopez, assistant yeoman, who watched us and tried to anticipate our needs.

  Being barely five feet tall, Giselle couldn’t quite reach the overhead grab rails, one of which I kept a firm grip on. Instead, she held onto the back of the helm and nav seats, which were locked into position.

  The deck wasn’t pitching wildly, but there was no rhythm to the waves as the storm intensified, sending towering walls of water in all directions like a washing machine.

  We’d been heading north at twenty knots in the Yucatan Channel, having transited the Panama Canal two days earlier, when the storm blew up out of nowhere, the low forming right on top of us. We had to slow to ten knots as the storm moved slowly eastward, and we pressed on to the north.

  I knew eventually we’d escape the wind and the waves it was kicking up. But first we had to ride it out.

  There were many ways to ride out a storm. The best would be in a protected harbor, the boat tied securely to a dock, while you watched the reports on a hotel TV. Caught at sea, a powerboat could turn into the wind to take the brunt of the waves on the bow. A sailboat would have to reduce sails or dowse them altogether and switch to engine power to turn into the wind and waves. A sea anchor could be deployed, which was like a small, heavy-duty parachute that is dragged in the water from the bow. It could keep a boat heading into the wind without any power.