Page 12 of Christmas Harbor Secrets
He dipped his chin. “We’ll keep it running.”
Echo’s ears tipped, body going still a second later, gazecutting toward the front windows. Rone’s head turned too—automatic, like they shared a neck.
“I’ll get her running and sold,” he said quietly, voice gone serious again.
Isobel’s fingers tightened around the rabbit in her pocket.
And for the first time since the attorney had slid her the keys and the lie of a will,herefelt less like a punishment and more like an opportunity to discover what really happened to the man that once cuddled, fished, and kissed her wounds away.
Rone hosedthe salt off the top deck, steady arcs, the water turning silver in the last of the light before it sheeted down the swim platform. The boat drank and bled at the same time—scuppers spitting, last of the soap suds swirling then disappearing. Inside, the A/C hummed like a contented machine.
Through the pilothouse glass, he studied Isobel. Not frantic. Methodical. She leaned over the helm with a coil of painter’s tape sliding down her arm and a Sharpie in her fist, labeling buttons and switches where the names had been worn off. For the past two days, she’d asked smart questions, wanting to know how everything worked. Inquisitive and capable, but despite not admitting it, nerves kept drawing her attention out the window or behind her. It had been quiet, though. He knew he was kidding himself, hoping they had found what they were looking for the other day when they’d tossed the pilot house.
Echo flopped on the deck by his side with his head hanging over the edge, watching the water like it might tell him a secret. After a beat, the dog tipped his gaze up at Rone—one of those expressive, human looks that said more than a bark ever could.
“Don’t start,” Rone said, palming the spray pattern down to a rinse. “I’m not her savior. I’m not here for her. We’re justgetting the boat to tolerable. Then she sells. Then we’re done. I’m not going to let any more drama happen on my dock. It’s been quiet since Shade…”
Rone didn’t finish the statement because the idea that he didn’t push to see Shade’s body still haunted him. They said he’d been identified through dental records, and he’d told himself that was it. But the way the Sheriff ushered him out warned of a cover-up.
Echo blinked, unimpressed. The ear closest to Rone cocked out like a challenge.
“I mean it.” He set the hose down and reached for the long-handled brush. “We keep the water where it belongs, the power where it’s supposed to be, and we don’t catch feelings for stubborn women who think a cot in a motel is a battle lost. I know this is a lonely life, but it’s what we chose. It’s what we want.”
The dog’s gaze didn’t waver. Rone looked away first. Coward.
He scrubbed at a smear of tar and let the muscle memory run while the mind wandered where it never did unless forced. Shade interrupting Rone on a rainy night while he sat alone with a bottle and a gun..Shade asking him, “That what you think she’d want? Rone didn’t want to listen to the man. Torres had bled out in his arms on a cold, wet dock. Now he sent envelopes every month and drove his truck farther when he needed parts just to fix another man’s boat so he could send more.
Shade and his lies, Shade and his saves. He’d told Rone once about a niece who’d died, and something in his face had cracked open for half a second—father-love, not uncle-grief. Rone understood then that “niece” was the safer word for a man who didn’t want to invite questions. Looking at Isobel now—the jaw, the refusal, the way the engine-room tin had put sunlight in her eyes for a heartbeat—he didn’t have to guess hard. He wondered howmany nights Shade had sat in some quiet place and talked about a girl he would never admit was his. He could only guess the shady dealings on the docks were the reason.
Echo huffed like he’d heard the thought.
“We don’t know the tin Shade gave me was meant for Isobel.”
Echo rolled to his feet and stared at the outer door ladder leading down to the cockpit, body going from lazy to a wire strung tight.
“What?” Rone asked, even though he was already seeing it—the tiniest glint where the ladder met the platform, a thread catching light for a blink and then vanishing. Fishing line. Wrong place. Wrong height.
He set the brush down without a sound and cut the hose at the valve. The marina noise shrank to gulls and the slap of water. He moved careful, silent to the pilot house door and opened it. “Isobel? You got a second?”
She appeared outside the pilothouse with tape stuck to her wrist and a smudge of dust on her cheek, hair pulled up in a knot that hadn’t beaten the humidity but refused to surrender. “What’s up?”
“Stay where you are.” In one breath, he didn’t want to frighten her; in the next, he reminded himself she needed to be scared into leaving. “Please.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t test him. Good. He stepped to the platform’s edge and crouched. There it was: monofilament stretched from the top rung, around the outside of the boat through the hole to the inner cleat on the far side, set just above ankle. Not enough to break skin. Enough to take a person down the steps with a good injury if they weren’t paying attention and came down the ladder cocky. On the line, three inches off the step, someone had crimped a lure with the barbs flattened. Not meant to injure. Meant tosend a message.
His jaw locked. He followed the line with his eyes. The tag end disappeared under the dock finger, tied off where a foot wouldn’t find it by accident. Fresh, too—the clear plastic still glossy, no salt fuzz.
Echo’s lip lifted over just a hint of tooth.
Rone pinched the line between thumb and forefinger, easing it slack with the kind of patience he only used for bad ideas other people built. He didn’t hand her a lecture on what it was. He didn’t name the knot. He didn’t give whoever was listening a how-to. He just gathered it until he had the lure in his hand and snapped it off with a quick twist.
He stood and showed Isobel his palm. The lure dangled, a nasty little Christmas ornament of its own.
Her mouth thinned. “That was for me.”
“For anyone coming down fast and not looking.” He met her eyes. “But yeah.”
“Who?”
