Page 32 of Rogue Wave

Dockyards were great places for people to smuggle in drugs.

Looked like I had my work cut out for me looking into yet another person.

10

“Are you a rogue wave? Because you just swept me off my feet.”

—It’s Sea-duction

Hank

The last few days had been busy. I’d looked into both Hazel’s ex and her father, both of whom had lengthy rap sheets that made them ideal candidates for the attempted break-in. But something wasn’t sitting well with me.

Like I was missing something.

They had also been very busy days because the various deputies I’d had taking turns blocking the front of our street had been up to their eyeballs with tourists and locals alike wanting to come check out “drug beach.”

We’d even had a crime podcaster and two social media influencers try to take a stab at getting access all because they felt they could be the key to finding something new—something worthy of the reward money.

It only got worse when word spread that another brick of drugs had washed ashore about twenty miles down the coast yesterday, sparking new interest in the case.

It appeared to have been from the same load that we had originally found but just got lost at sea or took a little longer to be noticed.

The reward money was making people crazy, and it was overloading my staff every time a tip came in that sounded even remotely real and we had to investigate.

I knew the stress was getting to me.

I was already losing sleep over it, but I needed to find some relief.

One way I often sought relief was finding a willing woman to spend some time with a few towns over, but every time I thought about doing it, Hazel’s face would pop into my mind, effectively ending that option.

The other option was manual labor. Good old house repairs and landscaping work were the keys to getting my mind off work and off Hazel.

I had some vines that had become overgrown on the side of my house, so I decided to tackle those.

I was halfway through them when Shadow barked and took off.

I turned around to find that Hazel was standing on her front porch, leaning down and petting my dog, who had abandoned me embarrassingly fast.

“Whatcha doin?” she hollered over at me.

“Pruning vines so my house doesn’t look like an ideal setting for a horror movie,” I yelled back, climbing down the ladder in order to shift it two feet over to get the next section.

I blamed Hazel for what happened next.

She began asking about whether she could take Shadow for a quick drive over to the pet store, and I got distracted. Which was how I completely missed the wasp nest buried in the vines I’d just disturbed.

Pain struck my arms, hands, and neck like I had never felt before. Like a hundred tiny knives stabbing me over and over across my body.

I jumped off the ladder and ran away in the direction of the street, swatting away whatever was attacking me. It took about thirty seconds of flailing, but I finally broke free from them.

I bent over, my hands going to my knees as I tried to take some even breaths and ignore the shooting pain striking my body.

“Hank!” Hazel’s concerned voice called out as she rushed to my side. “Oh my God, are you okay?”

“No, I just got stung by, like, a thousand bees,” I told her curtly.

“I actually think it was wasps, but I could be wrong,” she said. “Here, come inside my house. I have stuff to take the sting away.”