Not right away, of course, he thought with a smile. No, no, no. He would wait and wait and wait. All he had to do was wait now. He sighed. He had no problem with that. When he put his mind to it, he could be quite a patient man.

He smiled. What was especially delicious was the secret of the whole thing. He had nothing to do with the local area of Little Abaco. He knew no one up there. There was no way to know that he had been there.

Besides, even if they surmised that the money had been picked up by someone, there were what? Five thousand fishing and pleasure boats in the Bahamas? Ten?

It made him giddy how free and clear he was.

18

He was finishing his beer and thinking about walking on down the beach road to his local watering hole to procure an actually cold one when his phone rang.

He smiled as he looked at the caller ID. His son usually took a minimum of twenty-four hours to text him back.

But in this case apparently, he was making an exception.

“Dad? What’s going on?” Declan said, sounding stunned. “I just read your text. What are you talking about? You’re joking, right?”

Gannon smiled as he sat up under the rusty awning.

“Hi, son. It’s no joke. Pack your stuff. When opportunity knocks, you have to answer the door.”

“But, Dad, I told you Larry won’t give me the time off. He can’t. We’re already down a guy. He’ll go ballistic. I’ll lose my job.”

“Don’t worry about that, son,” Gannon said. “You’re going, and that’s final. Actually, scratch that. We’re going. I’m heading over to go with you.”

Declan had been an outstanding pitcher ever since Little League, but he’d broken his arm skateboarding in his junior year, and they thought that was that.

But about six months ago, he’d started rehabbing as a goof after work with one of his buddies who’d played a little minor-league ball, and now like some returned gift from on high, he was apparently hitting the midnineties with ease. His friend had arranged a meet with a scout and just like that Declan had actually been invited to a tryout for the Brewers.

The rub was the tryout had to be in the middle of the week, and Declan’s boss was a jerk and wouldn’t give him any time off. The kid was already living lean with three roommates in a town house in St. Pete and couldn’t risk losing his job, so he was up a creek.

When Gannon found out about all of this, he had felt bad for not having even a couple of grand for his son to pursue his dream. With the boat maintenance and his bills, he’d pretty much blown through his entire savings over the last year or so.

That was why he had gone out fishing with close to the last couple of hundred bucks to his name. He thought if he caught something big, he could sell it at the dock market and help out his son like a real father instead of a broke beach bum.