Going Down With the Ship: A Withrow Key thriller story
For the last 50+ days, my day job as a public media journalist has taken most of my energy. We’ve been covering the legislative session, very short handed — there’s about a week left.
So, I’m jumping back into the archives to share with you a short story I originally wrote 20 years ago. It’s been tuned up a bit since then, but I think it still holds up.
It’s the first story in the Withrow Key thriller series, a series of short stories set on a fictional Florida Key. I always thought these stories would be a great basis for a television show.
I’ll share the complete story here over the next several weeks. Below is Chapter 1, Part 1.
© Third Edition 2026, Second Edition 2013, First Edition 2005. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of Visibility Press, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2026 Eric Douglas
All rights reserved.
Chapter 1, Part 1
The conch made its way slowly across the sand – journeying from one reef outcropping to the next. The separation was no more than 40 feet, but it had probably taken the creature hours to make it the 25 feet it had traveled so far. Tiny marks – footprints, really – in the white sand showed his progress.
The reef itself was spectacular and the warm water was perfectly clear. The divers could see more than 80 feet in any direction as they hovered weightless five feet above the sand and reef bottom and 40 feet from the surface. The reef was alive with fish life and color. The coral itself looked healthy on this particular spot, something Jackson Pauley was glad to see. Not all of the dive sites on the United States’ only living coral reef were in as good of shape – storm water runoff with pollutants and fertilizer drainage from farms had seen to that.
The conch still had 15 feet to go. It would no doubt take it another several hours to make it to the relative safety of the reef structure. What had caused it to decide to move from one to the other was anybody’s guess. A predator itself, the conch was probably looking for fresh prey, but it was taking a risk crossing the open sand. Fortunately, for the conch, its large and ornately-decorated shell provided some degree of protection against larger predators, but not from the most dangerous creature in the ocean. It had nothing to protect it from that.
Jackson was leading a group of divers from the Midwest along the reef. Some of them were pretty good in the water. He could tell they took their diving seriously and were conscious of their motion and breathing. A couple of the divers in the group weren’t really paying attention, however. Jackson saw them brush against the reef and one had actually sat down on a brain coral as he adjusted his fin. Sometimes there was no getting through to people.
A diver spotted the slow moving conch and descended to the sand to get a closer look. At first, she kept a respectful distance. Then she moved closer. The little mollusk didn’t stand a chance. It attempted to retreat inside its shell, but the diver picked it up to look. Jackson guessed she wanted to see where it had gone. Not seeing anything, the diver simply dropped the shell back on the sand. It landed upside down. She swam away.
Nature and natural selection would probably have allowed the critter to survive, although it would have taken a while for the animal to work its way out of the shell and turn everything right side up again. In that time, it could have fallen prey to just about anything with teeth under the water.
As soon as the divers moved on, Jackson righted the animal. He also moved it a couple feet closer to its original objective. For your trouble, he thought as he followed along with the divers.
Back on the boat, Jackson checked everyone in to make sure the entire group was back onboard. This was the second dive of the day on a two-tank trip so that was it. Once all the divers were accounted for, the crew would head the boat back to the dock – just in time to turn it around and do it again. On good days, they could offer two trips a day and a third trip for a night dive, a couple times a week.
Such was the life of a dive instructor in the Florida Keys. It wasn’t all that bad, he reasoned, very few people he knew had an office with this nice of a view.
Jackson signaled the boat captain that everyone was on board and a deckhand raised the anchor. The captain turned the boat toward the beach and began bringing the engines up to cruising speed. The divers were busy packing away their gear and gathering up their belongings. They were all excitedly talking about the things they had seen on the dive, including several large barracuda that hovered calmly above the reef waiting for lunch to swim by. None of them even remembered the conch, Jackson thought. He was a bit of a sucker for underdogs. The big guys could take care of themselves.
Jackson moved forward in the boat, just behind the captain, to talk for a minute. As the captain turned the boat slightly to port, he crossed a wave awkwardly. It caused the boat to lurch down and then up sharply. One of the passengers, the woman who had picked up the conch earlier, lost her balance.
While there were rails around the boat, and the ropes were in place, she was just in the one, unlucky spot that would allow her to slip, bounce and then fall overboard. She was in the water before anyone knew what had happened. Jackson saw the entire scene in slow motion. He saw her crumple as she hit the water. The boat was going better than 20 knots. There was no way she was conscious.
Without hesitation, Jackson took three long strides, moving toward the stern. His next step was onto the bench the divers used. From there he launched himself into the air. The boat kept moving forward and by the time he hit the water, it was 10 feet away. He dove directly through the wake kicked up by the boat’s twin propellers.
*****
“Hello. I’m looking for some information about a company doing business in town,” Andrea Perez said as she walked up to the counter in the city hall building. “It’s the company doing the work on the ship they’re going to sink off shore – Seashore Engineering.”
“What are you looking for, dear?” the middle-aged clerk asked of the petite, dark-skinned Latina.
“Well, whatever you’ve got, I guess. I can’t seem to find any information about them online. I’m looking for names of parent companies or officers. I’d like to know who put up the bond for the work they’re doing. Can I just see their corporate papers? I’ll know what I’m looking for when I find it.”
“So, why are you looking for all this information, sweetheart?” the woman asked as she opened a file drawer and began looking.
“I’m with an environmental group out of Ft. Lauderdale, Protect the Reefs, and there are some rumors this company is actually a different organization that’s under investigation for environmental violations in several different states and a couple countries.”
“Now, just hold on a minute here,” Glenn Downing said as he interrupted the conversation. Downing was the local organizer of the artificial reef project. Considering the money and attention he was bringing to the local community, and the amount of money the locals made off scuba diving, the city government gave him office space in city hall to work on the project. “Hold on a minute. I don’t think this young lady has the right to see what’s in those documents, Mrs. Charles.”
“I’m sorry. Just who are you?” Andrea stammered, momentarily taken aback.
“I’m Glenn Downing. I’m putting this whole project together. I’ve raised all the money from private donors and the state, and I’m the one who is going to provide this enormous attraction for the local diving community. It’ll bring millions into the local economy,” Downing said, as he slipped into his standard speech about the benefits of the project.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Downing. I believe those are public documents, just like every other contract with the city and the local citizenry has the right to look them over,” Andrea responded. She had been through similar situations before and now that she knew who she was talking to, she could handle the situation.
“You might be right, of course, but since you aren’t a citizen of this town, or county for that matter, I don’t think that applies to you. I think you’ll have to ask the city council to see that information. Mrs. Charles here just can’t give it to anyone,” Downing stonewalled. “Besides, this is an extremely reputable company. They provided us with the best references. There is nothing to suspect from them.”
“Are you kidding me?” Andrea retorted, her temper quickly getting the better of her. “What are you trying to hide, Mr. Downing?”
“I think that’s enough,” Downing said imperiously. “As I said, you’ll have to ask the city council for permission to see those records. They meet once a month, on the first Tuesday. They met last night so you’ll have to come back next month.”
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