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Excerpt: The Last Resort
Prologue
The cloaking fog appeared strangely protective. There were areas along Anastasia Island’s coastline where no one could hear you scream. And it was in such an area that the bottle was launched, spinning through the air and landing with a splash. It bobbed and weaved quietly eight feet above the sandy bottom before deciding on a direction. Seemingly, it appeared to be floating a quarter mile off the northerly point of St. Augustine Harbor.
As the day progressed, feeling the pull of the tide, the bottle moved imperceptibly westward before making a gradual circuit around the jetty outward along Salt Run inlet. Starting its journey into the path of the sunlight. Glinting through the sparkling Atlantic, the bottle reflected blue, gold and pink.
Three days later it had cleared the inlet area and was moving north by northwest, about two hundred feet offshore, in fifteen feet of water along the Ancient Sand Dunes.
The rolling waves of the Atlantic and gentle westerly breeze blew across the tropics. Despite the westerly wind, the bottle continued to float west. St. Augustine, Florida has over four and a half miles of beach that stretch along the northeastern tip of Anastasia Island. It is situated right in the middle of modern Florida -- a mere 40 miles from the glassy skyscrapers of downtown Jacksonville, 100 miles from the rocket ships of Kennedy Space Center and 100 miles from the fantasy theme parks of Orlando -- but its nearly four and a half centuries of history make it seem worlds away. The bottle had floated aimlessly for over 200 miles and seven days before drifting into an offshore basin where the water circulated in a counterclockwise motion. The bottle was in the extreme south of this basin. The circulation moved the bottle westward, back toward home.
For two days, the bottle washed back and forth against the rock and wooden structure of the south end of the jetty; as if it were uncertain whether to go inside, toward St. Augustine, or outside, back into the Atlantic.
The romantic symbolism of bottles containing proclamations of love and being tossed out to sea have intrigued people for as long as there have been bottles. Oceanographers have charted these romantic journeys; Hollywood has made blockbuster movies out of the tenderness from the notion.
The bottle that had been hurled out in the Atlantic on a balmy spring day from St. Augustine Harbor contained no messages of undying love and passion. Nor did it contain charts or maps of shipwrecks. What it did contain was secrets, lies, betrayals and the most unspeakable of crimes—murder. And just as the journey of the bottle itself, it would alter the course and direction of many lives beginning with the life of whoever discovered this message in a bottle.
THE DOLPHIN TRIANGLE
Meet Detective Krista Becker. She’s bold, strong, courageous, daring, intelligent, sexy and tough. And this is her story...titled The Dolphin Triangle.
Determined to prove the chilling similarities between the gruesome murders of a ten-year-old boy and a young wife and mother, Krista’s quest for justice leads her through a maze of perilous detours and into the path of a psychotic murderer.
The Dolphin Triangle is a complex murder mystery with a punch.
Detective Krista Becker is haunted by an unsolved murder that she cannot forget. When she investigates the grisly murder of a child with details eerily reminiscent of an unforgettable case, her intuition kicks in. So starts the chain of events that will lead her to uncover a plot that could end her career, and possibly her life.
Don Austin is trying unsuccessfully to put his life back together after the murder of his wife, Hope. The only light in his life is his daughter Julie. When Detective Becker appears after a year she stirs up memories best left alone. Irritated, frustrated, and pushed beyond human limits he lashes out at the curvaceous detective who refuses to back down. Will he crack under the pressure?
The Dolphin Triangle crackles with more secrets than a middle-school slumber party. Trying to solve a murder is never easy and for Krista Becker solving the death of a young boy will take her back in time to another unsolved case of hers', one that brings her into contact with the victims' husband, Don Austin. Krista knows within herself that these two murders are connected but first, she needs to find the relevant evidence and two, find the murderer and bring them to justice. If only things were that easy because now she has to fight the attraction she feels towards Don and also, why are her father and brother trying to hinder her case?
The gripping climax unfolds deep in the mangroves, while a game of cat and mouse prevails between Krista and Randy as he holds Don and his daughter hostage.