Page 19 of Christmas Harbor Secrets
Isobel was already moving. “Not a chance.”
They hit the cockpit together, breath fogging in cooling air, eyes searching the lanes of black water and the ribs of dock shadows where a dog could be and a man could hide. The marina held its breath, listening with them.
Another sound, closer now. Not a bark. A splash.
Rone didn’t think. He vaulted onto the dock, burn on his hand a brand that said keep moving.
Behind him, Isobel’s voice carried—a prayer, or his name, or both.
And from beneath the dock, something knocked once, like a warning coming up through wood.
CHAPTER FIVE
Isobel joggeddown the dock with Rone at her side, the planks still gritty with extinguisher powder that puffed ghost-white under their shoes. Smoke hung low in places, stitched together with curls of cooler bay air. Lanterns from a few cabin windows threw thin slices of yellow across the water. Beneath them, the black sheen of Estero Bay slid between hull and piling like something thinking.
“Echo,” Rone called again, his voice rough at the edges. The night took his word and dimmed it. He didn’t slow. He moved like a man who’d counted too many seconds in his life between calling a name and getting no answer.
“Echo knows where home is,” she said, for him and for herself. “He’ll come back.”
“He does.” Rone’s jaw flexed. “He’s smart.” He said it like a fact on a report, not comfort. His burned hand sat tight at his side. The bandage she’d wrapped glowed pale against the night. He hadn’t flinched when she taped it. He wasn’t flinching now. It made her want to both shake him and shield him, which she knew was its own kind of trouble.
They reached the end of the finger pier wherethe main dock opened wider, and the sounds of the marina spread out: a splash, a gull’s late complaint, the small clanks and sighs boats make when they’re settling after excitement. People were out—robe-clad neighbors with mugs, bare-chested fishermen who slept on decks because air-conditioning had given up long before they did. The dockmaster hustled past with a clipboard he pretended was a shield and a whistle no one would obey.
They jogged. The marina changed as they moved—voices thinning, the cheerful clutter of dock boxes giving way to the quieter stretch where liveaboards kept to themselves and winter transients tried to pretend they belonged. Somewhere, a radio murmured a Christmas song about snow no one here had ever seen. The irony made her teeth ache.
As they ran, she felt Rone’s presence like a guardrail—close enough to brace against, not so near it took her attention. He ran without wasting motion, breath measured. He’d been in emergencies before, she thought, and then chastised herself because of course he had. Men like him wore history in the set of their shoulders and the things they didn’t say when the world went loud.
“Echo!” Rone’s voice went out again. “Here!”
They reached C-row. The channel cut black along its far side, mangroves crouching like a fringe of old men holding their breath. Isobel swung her light low and saw the glimmer of two small circles in the water—then realized they were only reflected stars.
“Echo!” she tried, and hated the way worry thinned her voice.
Isobel turned her flashlight under the walkway where barnacles clung like old secrets. A jellyfish drifted by—slow, serene, utterly unbothered by the chaos above. The beam caught on a tangle of rope, a glint of metal, nothing alive. Her throat tightened.
Behind her, Rone shifted—measured, not anxious. Always in control, or pretending to be. “Check C-row,” he said. “He’s jumped over there before to cut off a runner.”
“You think he’s trailing that man?” she asked, breath coming shallow. The messenger’s words came back:If you ever want to see your father again.The weight of them pressed into her ribs like a sucker punch to her side.
“Perhaps.” Rone’s chin tipped toward the dark stretch ahead.
“Then we go,” she said, moving forward. Anything to keep from drowning in stillness.
But a beam of light cut through the haze, slicing across the dock and freezing them both. The crunch of heavy boots followed—the kind of stride that carried ownership, not authority.
A man in a tan uniform stepped out of the smoke, Echo’s leash clenched in his fist.
For a heartbeat, Isobel couldn’t move. The sight slammed into her—raw and dizzying. Echo.
He’s alive.The thought came sharp and bright, so fierce it hurt.
The shepherd’s coat gleamed wet under the dock lamps, tail low but steady. “Echo,” she whispered, before realizing the dog wasn’t looking at her—his eyes locked on Rone, waiting for a command that hadn’t come.
“Evening,” the man in uniform said, voice low and unimpressed. His hat shadowed his eyes from the lamp post, but his smirk wasn’t hidden. “Got a call about trouble down here. Imagine my surprise when I find you at the heart of it Rone, again.”
Isobel frowned.Again?The word the sheriff said landed heavy. Rone didn’t rise to it. He stepped forward, calm and solid, one hand hanging loose at his side.
“Evening, Sheriff,” Rone said in an unfriendly tone, but it wasn’t defiant either. It was the kind that refused to bend. “There was a fire on the dock. Several pedestals. I shut it down before it spread and put out the fires.”
