Wrecker by Carl Hiaasen

Author:Carl Hiaasen [Hiaasen, Carl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2023-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

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Wrecker’s skiff is only a sixteen-footer. The smuggler’s new go-fast is almost three times longer, ten times heavier, and thirty times more powerful. Driving it will be like switching from a golf cart to a Ferrari.

This nerve-racking turn of events weighs on Wrecker as he pedals away from the cemetery. Why would a sane person put a teenager at the helm of a half-million-dollar speedboat?

One thing is clear—he’s in even deeper trouble than before.

He could go to the police, except that he’s the one holding five thousand counterfeit vaccination cards. Since the salvaged pizza boxes are the only evidence of a crime, the case would boil down to Wrecker’s word against Silver Mustache’s. The grape-purple smuggling boat, sunken and stripped, would be useless to the prosecutors.

And once Silver Mustache learned he was talking to the authorities, nobody in Wrecker’s family would be safe….

Leaving Key West is another option—Wrecker could go camp out on one of a dozen little mangrove islands on the Gulf side. But as soon as he disappeared, Silver Mustache and his gorillas would show up at Suzanne’s door.

By the time he gets home, Wrecker feels hopelessly trapped. The feeling gets worse when he goes to the shed.

The padlock lies unlatched on the ground, the dials turned to 2-0-0-3. Somebody either guessed the combination—almost impossible—or used a professional tool to line up the tumblers. Wrecker knees the door open and turns on the light.

The pizza boxes are gone, of course. Silver Mustache sent someone to snatch the fake vax cards.

Which means he must have figured out that Wrecker’s been lying to him all along.

Yet earlier, at the graveyard, the smuggler acted so friendly and chill. In a way, that’s even scarier. Suddenly his proposal for Wrecker to drive the hot new speedboat makes sense—it’s meant to be a one-time, one-way trip.

Wrecker sits down heavily on a sack of garden mulch.

I’m a moron, he thinks, and I’m going to die for it.

He wouldn’t be surprised if the gray coupe was parked down the street right now, Silver Mustache having a good laugh.

Wrecker knows he’s down to one move: go to the cops and hope they believe his story. Maybe they’ll assign a patrol officer to watch Suzanne’s house, so at least she’ll be safe.

The police station is only minutes away. It’s his best—and maybe only—chance to shake free of this mess. He stands up and reaches to switch off the light in the shed, and that’s when he sees it.

A crisp white envelope propped on a shelf next to a carton of snail bait.

The envelope is addressed to “The Honorable Valdez Jones VIII.” Inside is a one-sentence note, written by hand.

Revealing that, once again, Wrecker was dead wrong about what’s happening.

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