Page 18 of Christmas Harbor Secrets
They moved together, scanning the black seams—the gap between boat and finger pier, the darkholes where a smart animal might drop to trail a problem underwater along the pilings. Rone’s hand burned brighter with every heartbeat, a metronome for the worry he refused to let start conducting.
“He knows to circle back,” Isobel said, and there was faith in it like water finding a low place.
“He does,” Rone answered, because if he didn’t say it out loud, the room where he’d locked fear would kick the door and demand attention.
They swept the dock end to end. Neighbors peered out and asked questions he didn’t answer. Powder dust stuck to his tongue. A smear of melted plastic tracked down his wrist where the ember had branded him and was now letting itself be noticed.
Isobel saw it before he could tuck it behind his back. “Rone.” She didn’t scold, she spoke more like concern with soft edges. “You’re burned.”
“I’ve had worse.” Truth, but not helpful.
“Worse doesn’t mean this one doesn’t need tending.” She took his wrist—careful, firm—and turned his hand into the only dock light left in the form of a city lamp post. Angry, red crescent, beginning to puff. “Come,” she said, and the word didn’t give him a choice, only shelter. “Inside.”
He wanted to keep moving until Echo appeared out of the dark like he always did. He wanted to kick every shadow until it admitted what it was hiding. He wanted to shake the dockmaster awake and saylock this place down until I say, and he couldn’t have any of those. What he could have was her steady hand and the small mercy of water and salve.
He let her lead.
Inside, the boat held the smell of night—metal, salt, the faint mineral oil from whatever cleaner she’d found that didn’t make old varnish protest. She sat him at the settee like she’d been born giving orders kindly. She disappeared to the back, returned inshorts and a t-shirt, then took out a bowl and the kit she already had placed where a seasoned sailor would put it. He turned his hand palm-down on his knee because stubborn dies hard, and she didn’t call him on it. She just dipped a cloth and set cool against fire.
The first touch took a tight inch out of his spine. He didn’t mean to make the sound. She didn’t pretend not to hear it.
“Better,” he said after a long breath.
She nodded, eyes on his skin, not his face, because dignity matters. “He said my father’s alive.”
He shifted when she moved the cloth, heat talking louder now that it had an audience. “Can’t trust him.”
She wrung the cloth, her fingers sure. “He said my father would die if I didn’t turn something over to them.” Her gaze flicked up, quick and searching. “I don’t know who ‘they’ are. He didn’t say.”
The Altoids tin rose in Rone’s mind as if it had been sitting at the center of his thought the whole time, waiting its turn. Red paint rubbed smooth by a man who carried it everywhere. A rabbit charm carved for small hands. A washer etched in small, careful letters meant for one person only. FOR FIRST MATE—ALWAYS HOME. —DAD.
And its twin, tucked inside the panel in a wall of his boat.
Not yet, he told himself, and shoved the thought back where he kept the parts of truth that could get a person killed if said at the wrong time. The sting in his hand helped. Pain could be useful when you needed a reason to be cautious.
“Thanks for keeping me from doing something dumb.” She swallowed as if to control her anger or tears. “I wanted to get him to talk. But he wasn’t here for answers. Just threats.” She folded the cloth and laid it cool again, and when she spoke next, she sounded like the version of herself that had tossed water at flame without flinching. “I wantanswers, but even if he was telling the truth, I can’t take him—or what he stands for—down alone. That’s a fast way to die.”
Rone’s throat did that hard swallow it hadn’t done since the night a bullet took Torres and taught him what alone looked like with sirens. He had been watching Isobel for the ways she was like his partner—jaw set, eyes bright, the refusal to step back when stepping back would be smart. This wasn’t that. This was a woman who could measure her fight and pick ground that didn’t end in a body bag.
Maybe she wasn’t like Torres, which allowed relief to slip through a crack before he could shut it.
It didn’t mean he should care. Caring was how men like him made stupid promises and got people hurt.
She lifted the cloth. The worst of the red had calmed. He could move his fingers without wanting to put his teeth through a stick. She squeezed burn gel into her palm, warmed it with a breath, and smoothed a thin shine over the crescent. Her touch was careful and impersonal and somehow not impersonal at all.
“Thank you,” he said, and meant for more than the salve.
She taped gauze to his skin. “You’re welcome.” She hesitated, then asked, “Who do you think ‘they’ are?”
He stared at the white bandage edge against his skin and saw an Altoids tin tucked where only a daughter would think to look. “I think they’re patient until they’re not,” he said. “And I think they just told us they’re done waiting.”
A sound cut across the night—sharp, distant, wrong enough to snap both their heads to the dark rectangle of the window. Not a gull. Not an engine cough. A single bark, clipped short, swallowed fast.
Echo.
Rone stood too fast. Pain lit his hand like a match, but it wasn’t the brightest thing in him anymore.
“Stay here,” he said.
