BooksBarbecue
Back Deception Cove
Chapters (78)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. Prologue
  7. One
  8. Two
  9. Three
  10. Four
  11. Five
  12. Six
  13. Seven
  14. Eight
  15. Nine
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Twelve
  19. Thirteen
  20. Fourteen
  21. Fifteen
  22. Sixteen
  23. Seventeen
  24. Eighteen
  25. Nineteen
  26. Twenty
  27. Twenty-One
  28. Twenty-Two
  29. Twenty-Three
  30. Twenty-Four
  31. Twenty-Five
  32. Twenty-Six
  33. Twenty-Seven
  34. Twenty-Eight
  35. Twenty-Nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-One
  38. Thirty-Two
  39. Thirty-Three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. Thirty-Eight
  45. Thirty-Nine
  46. Forty
  47. Forty-One
  48. Forty-Two
  49. Forty-Three
  50. Forty-Four
  51. Forty-Five
  52. Forty-Six
  53. Forty-Seven
  54. Forty-Eight
  55. Forty-Nine
  56. Fifty
  57. Fifty-One
  58. Fifty-Two
  59. Fifty-Three
  60. Fifty-Four
  61. Fifty-Five
  62. Fifty-Six
  63. Fifty-Seven
  64. Fifty-Eight
  65. Fifty-Nine
  66. Sixty
  67. Sixty-One
  68. Sixty-Two
  69. Sixty-Three
  70. Sixty-Four
  71. Sixty-Five
  72. Sixty-Six
  73. Sixty-Seven
  74. Sixty-Eight
  75. Acknowledgments
  76. Discover More
  77. About the Author
  78. Also by Owen Laukkanen

Jess shrugged. “A hundred years, maybe more. Ty said this was a secret wreck and not many people knew about it. I figure if he hid the package anywhere, it’d be here.”

“Makes sense to me,” Burke replied, setting down the shotgun and walking to the closest rib. Jess watched him peer underneath, and she shivered a little bit. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be right, wasn’t sure she wanted to find this package after all. But she knew she couldn’t bail out, not now. There was no good path forward but the one they were walking.

She set down the rifle. Followed Burke to the wreck.

Forty-Eight

Forty-Eight

Mason and Jess found the package easily. It didn’t take more than four or five minutes.

The shipwreck was nothing but keel and sun-bleached wood at the beach end, but farther inland it grew more substantial, mossy and rotten, as the forest gradually reclaimed what had once been trees. Mason watched Jess push through the ferns and deadfall, lean into the loamy dark between the ribs and the trees surrounding. He waited, poking around in the tall grass on the other side of the wreck, and then Jess came back out into the sunlight and looked across at him and shrugged.

“Guess I was right,” she said.

The package was stashed underneath what had once been the bow of the ship, wedged into place such that Jess had to crawl into the underbrush to retrieve it. She dragged it out, and Mason leaned down and helped her, and together they carried it out to the grass.

It was the size of a carry-on suitcase. Didn’t weigh a great deal—twenty, twenty-five pounds—and it was wrapped in plastic so thick it was impossible to see what was inside. Mason figured you didn’t need to be a genius to get that it was drugs, and a fair decent haul of them.

They set the package down on the rough shingle at the edge of the high tide line. Jess produced a knife and cut into the plastic wrapping, a long slice down the top of it, and then they peeled back the plastic like they were doing an autopsy, peered in and studied what they found.

Ten individual bricks, more plastic wrap, light tan substance underneath. From the color Mason surmised it was heroin, Southeast Asian or South American white, quality product compared with the Mexican black tar or brown powder. Ten bricks, each one probably a kilogram, each package stamped with a Playboy Bunny logo inside a black poppy. Nothing else.

Jess stared at the logos. “That son of a bitch,” she said slowly. “That no-good, piece-of-shit son of a bitch.”

Mason looked at her, waited until she met his eyes.