When I arrived home, I found that there was a car parked in front of my house. I instantly recognized the car; it belonged to my ex-girlfriend, Cat. She and I had broken up a few years prior to all of this, so I was curious as to the nature of her unexpected visit.

“What are you doing here?” I asked as I exited my Mazda.

“I needed to go somewhere on the coast. Something big has started to happen in the ecosystem. I was coming by to see if you wouldn’t mind. I’m more than happy to rent it out if you’d like me to, but you have some good beach front property,” Cat explained.

Cat and I had dated about two years before this, and we split on somewhat decent terms about a year after that. I’d only seen her twice since the breakup; this would be time number three. But I didn’t really have any reason to object to the offer I knew she was about to make. “You want to stay here?” I asked.

“If you don’t mind. I’m willing to chip in some cash and groceries and stuff, it’s just that nowhere else I’ll be able to go would be so ocean accessible, not even Tiff’s,” she explained.

“I mean, if you really need somewhere to stay, I guess you can crash here. I’ll help you clear out the guest bedroom,” I said.

“Thank you so much David, it means a lot. I promise this shouldn’t take anymore than two weeks, then I’ll be out of your hair,” she explained as she grabbed some of her luggage, “If it is, I’ll see if I can crash with Tiffany and just take samples at the public beach.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I began, “I will understand if you need to complete something. If it’s only gonna be a couple more days than you originally said, that’s fine.” I paused and looked over the situation again. “You’re not trying to get us back together . . . are you?”

“Of course not! We both determined we weren’t compatible as a couple,” Cat said as she slung a duffle bag over her shoulders.

“Alright, just checking,” I confirmed as I unlocked the front door to my house.

As I walked inside, I noticed something I knew hadn’t been there before. On my kitchen table was a manila folder that I know for a fact had not been there when I’d left my house to go check out James’s weird, paranormal murder den. I didn’t bother thinking too much about it in front of Cat so I could get her settled in and make sure she was ready to start experimenting with the sea creatures. I had only seen a small tuna wash up on shore, so I wasn’t aware of any mass die off, but considering the fact that she taught marine biology at Eckerd College up in St. Petersburg, maybe she knew something was happening down this way before we could tell.

After I helped her set up the guest bedroom, I took the manila folder upstairs and opened it to find a picture of the USS Malibu and all the men who were aboard the ship before it sunk. All of the men had red “X” marks across their faces, except for one at the very end. His face was circled.

Of course, I had no contact information for James, and Danny said James had changed numbers again since he’d last had contact with him. I was left with no other option than to make the two and a half hour drive to West Palm Beach at some point within the next twenty four hours to try and make sense of this new mess.

I assumed that it was him that had dropped off the folder in the first place. It hadn’t occurred to me how odd it was that James knew where I lived, or how my back door had been left wide open when I got back from the sketchy house James had written on his front door.

Next Chapter: Shoreline: Section 4