Free Fallen Out: Jesse McDermitt Series, The Beginning by Wayne Stinnett

butter.”
    “Fight? Oh, the other night. I studied a little martial arts. You and your sister are as different as night and day.”
    “Thanks, I love her, but she can be a handful sometimes.” I nearly spit out my coffee. “What?” she asked.
    As I tried to control my laughter I said, “She said almost exactly the same thing about you.”
    Refilling both our cups she said, “We’ve decided to stay here a while.”
    “What brought you to the Keys, anyway?”
    “Mom and Dad went to Australia. That’s where the coffee came from, they sent it to me. Sharlee doesn’t like coffee.”
    “So, I guess Captain Wood will be leaving?”
    “Tomorrow. He was planning to take a bus, but since we took so much longer getting down here, we bought him an airline ticket. The way he talked, it sounded like you two knew each other. Do you?”
    “Not really,” I said. “We both served in Desert Storm. Just met the other night.”
    “You were a Marine, too?”
    I let the ‘were’ slide. “Yeah, I retired a few months ago.”
    “You’re way too young to retire.”
    “Which is why I’m working as a charter boat Captain.”
    We talked for another twenty minutes and finished the coffee when Jimmy showed up. We met him on the dock and Jimmy and I stood watching as she walked back to her dinghy. As he started to say something I held up a finger, watching her. At the end of the dock, she looked back over her shoulder at the two of us and waved.
    “She looked back,” I said waving.
    “Yeah, so?”
    “She didn’t yesterday.”
    “You’re losing me, dude.”
    I stepped over the transom and said, “If a woman looks back as she’s walking away, she’s interested.”
    “Ah, one of those body language things, huh?”
    We spent an hour checking on the boat. I was still learning a lot about it and he seemed to have an unlimited supply of knowledge. I told him that on days we didn’t have a charter he didn’t even need to come down to the marina and if something came up, I’d call him.
    I powered up my laptop and we checked emails from the website. I still wanted to keep my workdays to a minimum, so we often told prospective clients we were booked. Jimmy suggested we raise our rates. “We’re priced like every other dive operator and we only take six divers out,” he said. “A lot of people would be willing to pay more for that kind of service. And dude, nothing cuts out the serious divers from the amateurs like money.”
    So, we raised our prices. We also offered a slightly lower group rate. There were four emails, requesting slots for seven divers total. All of them wanted Saturday. I suggested to Jimmy that we only work weekdays and he seemed to like that. It would further cut our clientele by weeding out the weekend warriors. Just as I was about to shut the thing off, another email came in. It was from a friend of one of the photographers we took out a few days earlier. He wanted to book the boat for a whole night, any night this week, for just three dive photographers. They wanted to dive in the 20 to 40 foot range starting at dusk.
    “All night?” Jimmy said.
    “What’s the going rate around here for something like that?” I asked.
    “Got me, man. Nobody does it.”
    “Send him a reply. Tell him the rate’s 10% higher than an all-day charter, make it $1300.”
    “We don’t do all day charters, dude.”
    “He doesn’t know that.”
    Jimmy sent the reply, dressing it up to include free tank refills, photo editing, and breakfast at the Dockside . The reply came back almost immediately, asking what nights were available.
    “Damn,” I said. “He bit.”
    “We’ll need a third hand on board, man. Someone to help out refilling tanks and piloting, while I’m working with the photography.”
    “Tell him tomorrow night, I have someone in mind.”
    He sent the message and got a reply back immediately again, booking it. The guy said he’d stop by later in the afternoon and give me a deposit.
    “Wow, dude,”