Whiplash River by Lou Berney

Love when Baby Jesus found out what happened. On the other hand, he supposed, One Love probably wouldn’t want to trade places with Shake either.
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    PIJUA DROVE UP PAST THE high school and over the bridge that spanned the Cut. That part of the ride wasn’t too hard on Shake’s ribs. The next part, ten miles north on a rutted sand track, was.
    For the first time it really hit Shake that the restaurant was gone. His restaurant. Shake remembered how for the first few weeks the local fishermen had tested him. Steering him toward the snapper with the milky eyes. Shake would toss the bad snapper back and say, “Would you feed this to your family?” He gradually earned their respect. Or else the fishermen just got tired of him making a scene every time, pain-in-the-ass cabrón.
    And not just his restaurant gone, Shake realized. His life in Belize too. A life, for better or worse, that he’d expected to live for a long time. It felt like he’d lost his balance. Like he’d reached for the rung of a ladder, and the rung wasn’t there. The ladder wasn’t there. Maybe there’d never been a ladder at all.
    Shit. Pijua hit a bump and Shake couldn’t breathe for the next thirty seconds. Finally, though, the truck slowed and stopped. Pijua gave him an all-clear rap on the back window of the cab. Shake climbed out from beneath the tarp and out of the truck bed. Pijua came around to shake his hand.
    â€œThanks,” Shake said. “I mean it.”
    Pijua looked around, dubious. They were in the middle of nowhere. “For what?”
    â€œI know,” Shake said.
    â€œSeem like you gotta have a better option, amigo.”
    â€œSeems that way to me too. I agree.”
    â€œMight be tricky, you know, but we can get you over to the mainland.” That had been Shake’s original plan, when he thought he still had his Wahoo. Now, though, he realized he had bigger problems.
    â€œThat doesn’t help me any,” Shake said. “And it sure doesn’t help you any.”
    Pijua slapped at a mosquito. “You thinking Baby Jesus got reach over there too. Somebody high up.”
    â€œYeah.” As much dope as Baby Jesus ran up into the Yucatán, the odds were good that he had a cabinet minister or two in his pocket. Maybe he didn’t, but Shake would rather not test the theory by walking up cold to airport security at Goldson International in Belize City. Shake’s passport was fake paper that he’d picked up a few years ago in Vegas. But it was in the name he’d been using while he was in Belize, so that didn’t help him any.
    â€œI need to find a way out of the country that Baby Jesus won’t know about,” Shake said.
    â€œHow much he want?”
    â€œTwo and a half.”
    â€œAmerican?” Pijua slapped at another mosquito. “Shit.”
    â€œAnd then we’d have to start talking about the other people want to kill me. The girl with the freckles.”
    â€œIdaba said she didn’t see no girl with the freckles.”
    â€œIdaba wasn’t there about to get shot.”
    â€œHow about,” Pijua said, but then didn’t finish the thought.
    â€œThis is my only option,” Shake said. “I wish it wasn’t.”
    Pijua sighed. “You in a pickle, amigo.”
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    PIJUA GAVE SHAKE A MACHETE, promised he’d have his daughter say a rosary for Shake, and then drove back toward town. Shake began to hike north, hacking his way through the brush. There was a better path on the beach, just a hundred yards or so to his right, but it was too exposed. Shake couldn’t afford to be spotted.
    About an hour later, around three, Shake turned seaward. The resort was on the other side of some low dunes. There were a dozen or so small bungalows, white stucco and red clay tile roofs, grouped around the pool with the leaping dolphins. Farther on was the main, two-story building, with a long balcony