Page 38 of Christmas Harbor Secrets
“Are we?”
The question caught him off guard. He glanced at her. She stood with her chin high, eyes defiant even in the half-light.
“Not yet. But if we hide, we will be.” He made sure the AIS was switched off so they couldn’t be seen. Not a smart move in the dark, but it was the lesser of the evils that faced them.
She nodded once. No argument this time. Just trust—or something that looked close to it.
The shoreline slipped past, mangroves and cypress forming dark walls. The channel narrowed, twisted. Twice, he cut the throttle and let the current pull them silent past shallow markers.
By the time they reached the inlet to the hidden cove, the horizon had started to gray. The tide had turned, ebbing out toward the gulf.
Rone eased the boat through a slit of water barely wide enough for her hull. The mangroves swallowed them whole. Branches brushed the rails, leaves whispering against fiberglass like warnings.
When the channel widened again, it opened into stillness—a pool of glassy water reflecting the first silver streaks of dawn.
“This’ll do,” he murmured. “Only accessible during high tide, and not even the locals know a trawler like this can slip through near the shore. All charts show its depth at two feet, but the last hurricane ripped out more mangroves, and Shade found this place. Showed me.”
He dropped anchor near the far bank, cut the engine, and listened as the silence folded back around them.
The sudden absence of sound made his pulse thunder in his ears. The air smelled of brine and wet wood and something faintly metallic—gun oil, maybe. His own.
He double-checked deck lights were off, confirmed the anchor line was tight, scanned the perimeter with a small tactical flashlight, keeping the beam low.
Nothing but frogs and the slap of small fish breaking the surface.
For now, they were nothing but another secret hidden in the harbor.
Inside, Isobel was pacing the narrow galley. Her movements sharp, restless, contained only by will.
She twirled and faced him. “You said you would find Echo and my father.”
“Not yet.” He pulled the oilcloth bundle from under the bench seat, his field bag which he’d snuck on board that first night that he had an inkling they’d have to run. Inside, he pulled out his compact satellite unit, old burner phone, short-range scanner. “Since they removed Echo’s collar, there’s no way to track his GPS tag.”
“Then let’s go back, find another way to track him. Isn’t that what you do? You’re a detective, right?”
“Former.” He gave her a look that shut that down cold. “They’ll be waiting. We go back, we’re dead. Echo, too.”
Her eyes flashed, angry and wet. “So what,we hide here forever?”
“No,” he said, voice low. “We get the upper hand. Then we hunt.”
The wordhuntlanded between them, hard as stone.
Isobel’s shoulders sagged. She sank onto the bench, gripping the collar. The metal tag caught the weak light and gleamed like a tear.
“My father. He brought me here for a reason,” she whispered.
“If I had a daughter, there is no reason I’d ever bring her into this mess.” Rone’s stomach tightened. “Especially when he was the reason for all this.”
Her gaze snapped up, fierce. “You don’t believe that.”
He met her eyes. “I didn’t. Until now.”
The silence stretched, taut as a wire.
She looked away first, voice unsteady. “I know what you think, but he chose to protect us—that’s why he left. He went back to a life he didn’t want, but something happened that got him killed or kidnapped. That drive was his insurance policy, but instead of cashing it in, he left it for me.”
Rone leaned back against the bulkhead, closing his eyes, not willing or able to argue her point. The truth didn’t change anything anyway.
