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cabin and opened the chart table with one eye on the deck. 
    “Here.” He grabbed a stack of papers and handed them to the officer. “Permits, registration, it’s all there and current.” Telling the truth, or at least what he knew of it, was probably the easiest way out of this. He knew he was in trouble, and probably big trouble. The least he could face was a fine, that he would of course have to front that for Trufante who was always broke, The worst was the loss of his commercial license and maybe his boat, which would put him out of work. Add that to the loss of the cache on the reef and things were looking bad. How he handled this could be the difference. “I’ll tell you right now that my mate there—” He pointed to Trufante. “—Took that woman out, and they’re over the limit. Lobsters are in there.” He motioned to the fish box just before the deputy lifted the lid. 
    They left the cabin and joined the gathering of people staring into the fish box filled with lobster. “Go ahead and start with these. You know the drill; check the size and get a count,” the officer said. He looked up at another deputy. “And keep looking.” Then he turned to Mac. “What’re you doing aboard if you weren’t with them?”
    Mac pointed to the paddleboard. “I was out fishing when they cruised past. Just got a ride back, is all.”
    “Hate to break it to you, but it’s your license and your vessel. Doesn’t matter who’s on board and who’s not,” the officer said.
    Mac looked at Trufante and shook his head, wondering how bad this was going to get. He sat down on the gunwale and watched as the lobsters were pulled one at a time from the fish box. They were stacked in two piles; one of legal size, the other with shorts. He was starting to calculate the fine in his head when the head man came over to him. 
    “Mr. Travis, my boss is coming over here with some papers and some bad news for you. I’m going to do you a favor and tell you what we know and let you call a lawyer, if you want.”
    Mac nodded.
    “We had a boat out by the Sawyer Keys pulling casitas. It’s pretty high on our priorities to eradicate all those illegal habitats out there.”
    Casitas , Mac thought. That’s what this is about. He had seen a chart in the Deptartment of Fish and Game newsletter showing how thethe illegal traps were heavily concentrated in that area. That had to be how Trufante had gotten this many lobster.
    The man continued, “This boat was working an area we were about to hit, so we sent an inflatable out to see what was going on. Your man here pulled out before we could get there and hightailed it through the backcountry. We have orders not to pursue out of sight of the base boat, so the inflatable didn’t follow.”
    Mac looked over at Trufante again. He didn’t look worried at all, sitting there playing grab ass with the redhead. “You hear what he’s saying, Tru?”
    Trufante looked up. “Yeah. That’s about it. Sorry, Mac.”
    “In a marine sanctuary on top of it. Now the feds are involved.”
    “Sorry,” Trufante muttered again.
    “Sorry.” He was at a loss for words. This could cost him his boat. NOAA was becoming increasingly involved in both the removal of the casitas and the prosecution of those involved. The federal agency started using the laws of civil forfeiture to confiscate property in these cases. As the chart in the newsletter had shown, the largest concentration of casitas were in and around marine sanctuaries. He and the other commercial fishermen steered clear of the protected areas and he knew there was a good probability that a NOAA boat had been working the Sawyers Keys area when Trufante was there. He turned to the officer. “I don’t have my phone on me. Can I go in the house and make a call?”
    “You’re good until my boss gets here,” the man said, and turned his attention to the lobster crawling around the deck.
    Mac jumped onto the dock and strode to the house. He went up