Page 69 of Take Me Back

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I throttle back the engine as a large bright yellow vacation house on stilts with white trim and a red tile roof comes into view. Dozens of solar lights illuminate both the main house and a smaller matching caretaker house sitting about fifty feet from the dock, where a boat like the one I’m driving is tied up.

Someone is definitely here, and I’d lay money on it being the caretaker and not the owners, given that it’s low season. You can’t have an island in these parts without a caretaker if you want to make sure what you leave on the island is still there when you get back.

I rev the engine to hopefully wake whoever is in the smaller house. When I approach the dock, a set of motion lights come on at the end.

The interior of my boat is lit up, revealing splatters and smears of blood, as well as the asshole’s hat that escaped the carnage.

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I reach for the hat and pull it on before picking up the line attached to the stern and pulling closer to the moored skiff.

“Hey! Hey! You better not be fucking stealing anything out of my boat. I got a gun.” A man bursts out of the caretaker house and jogs down the dock, the gun he warned me about in his hand.

I turn the boat so the side with the name and the engine slide through the shafts of light. Not only do locals know the islands, they know the boats by sight too. It’s a gamble, but one that pays off.

“Ricardo, that you? What the fuck you doing out here in the middle of the goddamned night? Don’t tell me you’re trying to find packages in the water again. You were supposed to tell me when the runs were happening. We agreed we’d split whatever you found.” Under his breath, he mumblesfucking asshole.

His little speech tells me a hell of a lot about the man I killed and the one approaching me. Both are willing to do whatever they have to do for money. I don’t fault either man for eking out a living in a country where poverty is endemic, but I do fault them for crossing the line into human trafficking. Those fuckers can go straight to hell.

I shift into phase two of my plan by tossing him the stern line. He catches it and pulls me in. Too close, and he’ll realize I’m not Ricardo.

“If we’re gonna go chasin’ drug runners around, I need my shit. Some warning woulda been nice.”

With both hands, I yank the stern line back and the man loses his balance, falling forward off the dock and landing half in and half out of the boat. His gun clatters across the fiberglass floor.

“What the—”

Jumping over to where he landed, I grip him by the collar of his shirt, jerk him up, and deliver a right cross to his jaw. His entire body goes limp.

Good.

Chancing that no one else is coming after him, I use the stern line to tie him up, ankles and wrists together. I’m not fucking around. Shifting the boat into gear, I get far enough away from the island so that no one will hear him yell.

After I put the engine in neutral, I flip on the flashlight. He’s out cold, but not for long. I didn’t even hit him that hard. Glass-jawed, wannabe drug-runner-package-recovery expert.

I retrieve the gun, a shitty 9mm pistol that’s only a step above not having one at all, and tuck it into the back of my shorts before reaching over the side to scoop up some saltwater and splash it on his face.

He sputters back to consciousness. “What the fuck, man!”

I shine the flashlight beam at my own face for a beat and then back at his. “I’m not fucking Ricardo. Right now, I’m your best friend if you help me, or your worst fucking nightmare if you don’t.”