Page 102 of Delta Force Defender

Closer to that life he might have had, had his parents lived.

He docked his boat and took a deep breath as he walked toward land. Grizzly Harbor hadn’t been his home in years, but it still felt like it was. He liked seeing the lights go on in the houses and cabins as folks prepared for the coming dark. He liked knowing that if he showed his face in the Bait & Tackle, the way he liked to do sometimes, Otis Taggert would snipe at him. If he walked into the Blue Bear Inn, he would find Madeleine Yazzie there, her red beehive trembling and her face pressed to one of those paperbacks she got from her sister in Anchorage. He liked knowing almost everybody he saw on the street, especially in winter, when there were never any tourists around.

He wished that he could go back in time and tell his father that he got it now. That he understood that a town like this wrapped itself around a person, then sunk in deep, so it wasn’t about whether it wasnormalor not. It wasn’t even about whether or not Isaac liked it here. Grizzly Harbor was part of him. He was part of it.

Whether Caradine was here or not, he was. The way Gentrys had been for generations, no matter the tragedies that had befallen them.

That was the thing about belonging. You couldn’t decide on it. It pretty much decided on you.

It was still summer, so even though it already looked like fall up on the mountain, with the clouds coming in low and that bite in the air, people were still out in what bit of daylight there was left. He nodded to Chris Tanaka, who was sitting down by the beach with a bottle of whiskey, and local fisherman Ben McCreedie, who was never sober on dry land. He smiled at the constantly shifting cluster of romantic drama that was Maria, Luz, the menthey traded back and forth, and their babies of uncertain paternity, who were gathered together outside the general store having one of their intense conversations.

Isaac assumed that Horatio had jumped in a boat with Griffin one night and headed to the house Griffin and Mariah kept here in town, so he walked in that direction. But halfway up the hill, right when he should have turned to climb up toward Griffin’s house, he stopped.

Because where he expected to see the burned-out husk of what had once been the Water’s Edge Café, he saw instead... something else. Something new.

Brand-new construction, in fact. And where the old sign had once been, painted by Alonzo and Martie Hagan all those years ago and ignored entirely by Caradine, there was a bright new one.

THE NEW WATER’S EDGE CAFÉ, it shouted, in a big and bold graphic that Isaac knew instantly had been designed by Everly.COME FOR THE FIRE, STAY FOR THE FOOD.

Isaac’s heart did something funny in his chest, but he was good at ignoring that by now. Instead of heading for Griffin’s, he walked up the street toward the café, his boots making a familiar sound as they hit the wood of the boardwalk beneath him.

And he didn’t choose to acknowledge what his pulse was doing when he drew close.

The restaurant was completely rebuilt. There had been one big room, but now there were two. There were more windows in front, letting in the view. He could see that the kitchen had been seriously upgraded. Not only upgraded. It was open and visible—so whoever cooked there wouldn’t be hidden away, banging pots and pans as a communication device instead of talking.

“Isn’t that something?”

Isaac didn’t jump, because he was too well trained, but it wasn’t lost on him that old Ernie Tatlelik had wandered up to him without his noticing.

Get it together, Gentry, he snapped at himself.

Isaac shook his head. “How did this happen?”

The old man gave him a look. “You know how it is around here. We don’t like it when outsiders mess up our stuff. And nobody wants to spend the winter living off burgers from the Fairweather.”

Ernie howled at that, as if he’d made a joke, then tottered off in that particular bowlegged walk of his.

Isaac couldn’t seem to move.

It was good for everyone, of course, that the Water’s Edge Café continued to exist. Grizzly Harbor didn’t have much in the way of restaurants, so losing this one would be a blow. He hadn’t even gotten around to thinking what winter would be like without it. Everybody in town relied on this place. On it opening early when folks had to get their boats out. On the holiday meals Caradine cooked, creating a festive atmosphere that it occurred to him now, looking back, was as much for her as it had been for the rest of them. Not that she’d ever admit it.

But he didn’t know how he was going to act like it was the same now. How he was going to walk in and see someone else back there in the kitchen, cooking food that would never be as good as Caradine’s.

The new owner might even have a menu, like a regular restaurant. Everything in him rebelled at the thought.

For someone who’d lost almost everyone he’d ever loved, Isaac thought darkly, he sure was bad at it.

Against his will, he found his gaze moving up the hill in the direction of that blue house where he’d grown up. The house that Amy had always wanted to sell, let others live in, orsomething. But Isaac had insisted they leave it as it was. A dedicated museum to loss and grief. And the life he’d thought he was going to live when he was sixteen.

The things Caradine had said to him in that hotel room seemed to hum inside him then.

Your response to your parents’ death was to turn yourself into the patron saint of lost causes,she’d said. And worse still,You don’t want to win, Isaac. You want to suffer.

It was hard to argue with the truth of that when he was staring at a house he’d made into a gravestone.

He turned and headed down the hill, but instead of going to Griffin’s, he headed for the Fairweather. Because it seemed he was going to need a little whiskey to handle being home.

The sky was turning pink when he reached the bar, reminding him unpleasantly of the tropical sunset he’d shared with Caradine in that damned waterfall. He didn’t think he was ever going to get that out of his head.

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