Wood's Wreck Read Online Free Page A

single window in his room; no sunlight yet. 
    He thought about waking her, but didn’t want her around Mac when he picked up the boat, so he left her where she was. Mac had been fine when he had called last night about taking the boat for service this morning. He hadn’t planned on checking his traps for a couple of days, he said. With the season this slow, it was better to save the time and gas money and let the traps soak longer. When things were hot, the commercial limit of 250 lobster per boat per day was easy. You could go out and check half your traps each day and pull those kinds of numbers, but the way this year was going, it took almost three full days of soak and pulling all the pots to limit out. 
    He left a note on the bathroom vanity with directions to the boat ramp on the Gulf side, where he would pick her up in an hour. Ready to leave, he went back to the bed and patted her butt. 
    “Wake up, sunshine. I left directions in the bathroom. Meet me in an hour.” He made sure she acknowledged him before she closed her eyes again.
    Downstairs, he went out to his motorcycle and started the engine, allowing it to warm up for a minute before he climbed on. It was just getting light out when he started down the street. Several turns later he stopped at US1 and waited for the traffic, found a hole, and accelerated into the middle turn lane. He followed the highway for a few miles and turned left onto Mac’s street. 
    “Why don’t you stop being an idiot and wear a helmet?” Mac asked as he pulled up.
    “Shoot, injures the reputation,” he responded.
    “Injures your brain is more like it, and I know you don’t have insurance.” Mac turned away and walked into the house.
    “Breakfast.” Trufante smelled the bacon as he followed him through the door. 
    “Mel’s upstairs. Go ahead. There’s a few things I want to get off the boat before you take it.” Mac started to walk through the downstairs workshop. The house, originally built on stilts, as were most houses in the Keys, had the bottom enclosed after the final building inspection, and now housed a small office and large workshop. 
    Trufante turned and headed up the stairs into the living area. He found Mel deep into her laptop, muttered a quick hello, and went for the stove. After downing several pieces of bacon, he murmured something again and left, thankful that she had been engrossed in whatever her lawyer brain did. Theirs was a mutual-respect relationship, and that was mainly respect by distance. She was critical of Mac for still working with him after all the trouble he found himself in, and which usually involved her and Mac getting him out of. 
    Back downstairs, he wandered through the workshop looking at the equipment scattered everywhere and walked out the door that led to the water. Mac was taking some fishing rods off the boat and placing them on the dock. 
    “They said they could fix it while you wait?” Mac asked.
    “Sure enough. I told them the windlass has been nothing but trouble since we installed it. I’ll hang out—got nothing better to do. You going fishing?”
    Mac picked up the rods and walked toward the door, leaning them next to a small cooler. “Yeah, gonna take the paddleboard out and see if I can get into something.”
    “Well, later then.” Trufante turned and walked toward the boat, climbed aboard, and started the engines. Mac came over and slipped the dock lines for him and watched as he pulled forward into the small turning basin at the end of the canal. He slowed, pushed one throttle forward and the other back, and waited while the boat pivoted on its center. Once it was turned, he pushed both throttles to their first stop and idled out of the canal. 
    The narrow canal opened into a large harbor where he passed several moored sailboats and one wreck from a storm last year. Ten minutes later, he pushed the throttles forward and left the channel, staying parallel to the Seven Mile Bridge. At the fourth