Troubled Waters
Rachelle McCalla
He's working for the Coast Guard, but that's not Heath Gerlach's only mission. He's also an undercover FBI agent, and his target for investigation is his new partner, Tracie Crandall.With her blond hair and pretty blue eyes, Tracie looks sweet and innocent. But was she involved in her former partner's crimes? Tracie won't talk about it. Because she's guilty? Or because she's afraid to trust another partner? Just when Heath is sure he knows, a shocking revelation changes everything. Now all he wants is to keep Tracie safe…and give her a reason to believe in the power of love.
“Down, get down!” he shouted, his voice lost amid the sound of rapid-fire gunshots and breaking glass.
Tracie could feel the impact of the bullets as they hit him, knocking the air from his body. Yet in six strides, he had her across the yard and over the old stone wall. Heath shoved her against the far side of the wall, shielding her with his body. “Stay down,” he hissed, and she could hear him struggling to inhale.
She knew he was wounded—he had to be—but she couldn’t see where, and the cold damp of the snow beneath her began to seep through her clothing while she waited.
Silence. Even Heath’s labored breathing had eased, though his body was tense above her and he had his sidearm out, covering them, waiting. Tracie listened, not daring to move, wondering if the gunman would come after them, wondering who it could be. Her former partner’s killers? Or perhaps someone who didn’t want them to know the full extent of what Trevor had been involved in.
RACHELLE MCCALLA
is a mild-mannered housewife, and the toughest she ever has to get is when she’s trying to keep her four kids quiet in church. Though she often gets in over her head, as her characters do, and has to find a way out, her adventures have more to do with sorting out the carpool and providing food for the potluck. She’s never been arrested, or in a fistfight, or shot at. And she’d like to keep it that way! For recipes, fun background notes on the places and characters in this book and more information on forthcoming titles, visit www.rachellemccalla.com.
Troubled Waters
Rachelle McCalla
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
—Romans 8:28
To my parents, Brian and Kerry Richter, with love.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
LETTER TO READER
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSSION
ONE
Something wasn’t right. Tracie Crandall eyed her new Coast Guard partner warily as they walked up the snowy path to her former partner Trevor Price’s house. She felt nervous, not just because of the flint-hard, steel-blue eyes of the man walking beside her, but because it was the first time she’d been near Trevor’s place since his death. Though she wasn’t sure how she’d react, the last thing she wanted was to show any sign of weakness with Heath Gerlach watching.
“You’ve got the warrant?” Heath asked in a low voice.
Tracie patted the breast pocket of her Coast Guard parka. “Right here.”
He nodded, his eyes flickering from her pocket to her face, and then quickly to the house and the woods surrounding it. Tracie felt as though he’d taken in every possible detail in those fleeting glances, and perhaps seen right through her tough exterior to her nervousness as well.
Heath’s features softened ever so slightly. “You’re all right coming here?”
“Of course,” Tracie swallowed back her fear. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
He tipped his head dismissively, his attention already back on the house. As he turned toward the curtained living room window, his nostrils flared, reminding Tracie of the way Gunnar, her German shepherd mix, reacted when he scented danger.
With her hand raised toward the doorbell, she paused, her eyes narrowing. “Do you think—” she started to ask, but the words were ripped from her lips as Heath grabbed her, scooping her off the stoop as he leapt toward the woods.
“Down, get down!” he shouted, his voice lost amid the sound of rapid-fire gunshots and breaking glass. She could feel the impact of the bullets as they hit him, knocking the air from his body. In six strides he had her across the yard and over the old stone wall that marked the property line between Trevor’s lot and the woods beyond it.
Heath shoved her against the far side of the wall, shielding her with his body. “Stay down,” he hissed, and she could hear him struggling to inhale. “Are you hit?”
Tracie ripped the radio from her belt. “I’m fine,” she said, before hurtling a call for backup and paramedics. After hastily relaying their location and the situation, she clicked off the radio and looked back at her partner. She knew he was wounded—he had to be—but she couldn’t see where, and the cold damp of the snow beneath her began to seep through her clothing while she waited.
Silence. Even Heath’s labored breathing had eased, though his body was tense above her and he had his sidearm out, covering them, waiting. Tracie listened, not daring to move, wondering if the gunman would come after them, wondering who it could be. Trevor’s killers? Or perhaps someone who didn’t want them to know the full extent of what Trevor had been involved in.
With over six feet of solid muscle blocking her body and blocking her view, Tracie couldn’t see much, but as she eased her head to the side, she saw the growing puddle of red in the snow.
“You’re hit,” she whispered, her voice barely louder than a breath.
“Shh,” Heath cautioned her. Even in near silence, she could hear the pain in his voice.
She pinched her eyes shut, praying. The paramedics would come from the Bayfield volunteer fire association, which meant guys with beepers ditching whatever they were doing, calling in, and driving to the fire house for equipment before driving out to them. All those things took time. The roads were more or less passable after the latest snowfall, but still, she wondered if they’d be too late. She couldn’t stand the idea that she’d lose two partners in less than six weeks.
“Do you need a tourniquet?” Her voice was barely audible.
Heath’s head twitched slightly to one side. A quarter shake. Did he mean no, or was he fading already from the loss of blood? From the pattern of gunfire she’d heard, Tracie figured the gunman had been using some sort of assault rifle. Their standard-issue Coast Guard body armor wouldn’t stop a bullet like that. It would barely even slow it down. And Heath had to have been hit several times.
An engine revved behind the house, and Heath eased up from above her. “He’s getting away,” he muttered, though his movements were still cautious, his voice quiet.
“Do you want me to try to go after him?” Tracie offered as the sound of the vehicle began to fade.
“No,” Heath shifted his body and looked down at her. His face was so close she could see the tips of dark hairs starting to sprout into a five-o’clock shadow. “Your body armor won’t stop what he’s shooting.”
About to ask how he knew, Tracie realized Heath’s arm was wrapped around her torso, his hand beneath her, cradling her from the cold of the snow. “And what are you wearing?” she asked, shifting her body away from the close contact, more aware of him than she wanted to be. “Obviously not our standard-issue bulletproof vest.”
“No, obviously not,” Heath conceded, “or I’d be dead right now, and so would you.” He turned at the distant sound of sirens.
Tracie took advantage of his distraction to assess what she could of his wounds. The red puddle seemed to be coming from his sleeve—he’d apparently been hit on his upper arm. The back of his Coast Guard parka was riddled with holes rimmed by tufts of synthetic down that was blackened by the searing force of the bullets. She swallowed hard, wondering how many had made it through. The severity of his wounds would depend on the angle and point of entry, and most importantly, what kind of vest he was wearing.
She sat up higher and reached for his arm. If he’d been hit in a major vein, he could still bleed to death before the paramedics could save him. She said a silent prayer that they’d hurry.
Heath leaned back against her, pushing her down. “Don’t move until backup arrives.”
“But the gunman already left,” she protested.
“You don’t know that.”
Heath sat in the open back bay of the ambulance and tried not to wince as a medic wrapped the wound on his arm.
“I really think you should get an X-ray. You could easily have broken a rib.” Another paramedic held up the severely dented steel plate they’d pulled from the back of his body armor. Six mushroomed bullets had been hiding inside—one for each of the blunt force trauma wounds he’d sustained on his back.
“And if I did, what are you going to do about it? Put me in a body cast?” Heath’s eyes narrowed as he watched Tracie talking to the local sheriff across the yard. She’d stayed at his side long enough for the medics to survey his injuries and determine none of them were life-threatening. Now Heath wished he could hear what she was saying. His boss at the FBI was already bugging him for answers, but in the three days he’d been undercover as a Coast Guardsman, Heath had yet to get Tracie to talk much about Trevor Price’s death. “How much longer is this going to take?”
“I’m done,” the first medic said. “But I’m not letting you go until you sign these release forms. It’s not my fault you won’t go to the hospital.”
Heath quickly scrawled his name wherever the man pointed, then slipped back into his bullet-hole-riddled parka before heading back across the crime scene.
Sheriff’s deputies and his fellow Coast Guardsmen were crawling all over the house looking for clues. If there was anything to find, they’d find it. Still, he wanted to take a look around for himself. Though Trevor’s house was several miles back in the woods and therefore not traditional Coast Guard territory, the Lake Superior officer’s death, as well as the shady practices that had led to his death, made his house part of the Coast Guard’s ongoing investigation.
Heath caught Tracie’s eye and nodded to her, and she broke off her conversation with the sheriff and hurried over.
“They’re letting you walk around?” She pinched her mouth into a slight smile, but her eyes still looked worried.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m invincible,” he assured her, with a grin to tell her he knew he wasn’t quite.
Tracie’s smile inched a little closer to her eyes. Heath wondered what she’d look like if she really smiled. Beautiful? No, she was that already. She’d be simply stunning. For a moment, he found himself wanting to make her smile, to laugh even, but he quickly chided himself. He was here to investigate her in conjunction with her previous partner’s murder. That didn’t require making her smile.
He adopted a more serious expression. “What have they found?”
“Footprints. Size fourteen, or pretty close to it. Not too common, but not nearly rare enough. And snowmobile tracks.”
“That was the engine we heard?”
She nodded. “We followed them as far as Petersons’, but there are hundreds of tracks over there. He could have gone any direction—there’s no way to tell.”
“Right.” From what Heath understood, snowmobiles were as common as cars in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, and far easier to navigate during the long winter months when traveling by road was often risky. Their gunman could be anywhere. “No other leads?”
“No sign of forced entry to the house, which seems a little strange. John and Mack had locked it up tight after their last investigation—Jim had issued them new locks. Ben and Clint are dusting for fingerprints, but in this weather, everyone wears gloves.” She looked down at Heath’s bare hands.
He flexed his fingers against the cold. If she was trying to nag him, she’d find she wouldn’t get far. “So what’s our next move?”
“It’s a pretty dead end.” She shrugged. “I’ll see Trevor’s brother, Tim, at church tomorrow and ask him if he knows of anyone who’d be at his brother’s place.”
“What time’s the service?”
Tracie raised an eyebrow at him.
“I’ll meet you there,” Heath explained.
“You’re on medical leave. You have a hole in your arm and blunt force trauma wounds all across your back. You’re not getting out of bed tomorrow.”
“Medical leave is voluntary.”
Tracie huffed impatiently. “Fine, you do whatever you want, but I’m not going to be part of it.” She turned and crunched away across the snow.
Heath watched her go. Interesting woman. She had a chip on her shoulder bigger than the bullet hole in his arm, which made it very difficult to get any information out of her. She was tight-lipped about her work and absolutely silent about her personal life. The tip about church was the closest he’d come to a break in the three days he’d been on the case. Which was why, even though he hadn’t been to a worship service in fifteen years, he was going to go to church the next morning.
Tracie spotted Tim Price the moment she entered the small country church, and slid into the pew next to him. He smiled a greeting and then looked back down to the Bible on his lap. She felt a grateful prayer of thanks rising in her heart at the sight of Tim reading his Bible—at the sight of Tim in church at all.
The younger man had been in a rough spot when she’d first met him. Between the drugs and alcohol, it was amazing he hadn’t died of an overdose long before. But when his brother, Trevor, had been shot six weeks earlier, Tim had immediately entered a treatment program and given his life back to God. She’d accompanied him to church in the city while he was in treatment, and was thrilled that he’d insisted on meeting her at church now that he was home.
Lifting her eyes to the dark wood-beamed ceiling, Tracie took a long breath and tried to clear her mind as she prepared to worship. Life had been crazy lately, and the attempt on her life the day before, though unexpected, seemed to fit all too well with her recent experiences. But here in the house of God she could be at peace, if only for an hour.
As she began to bow her head, Tracie glanced around the sanctuary at the familiar faces who shared this sacred hour with her nearly every Sunday. She stopped short when a man’s broad-shouldered frame entered the room, blocking the bright sunlight that streamed through the antique leaded-glass windows. Heath.
He’d found her. Tracie’s heart stopped, then started thumping in an irregular, nervous beat. Sure, the worship service time was no great secret—he’d probably called the church and listened to the message on the answering machine. But most people in the coastal village of Bayfield worshipped in the larger church in town. The little countryside chapel where Tracie attended services had been founded centuries before by Swedish settlers, and remained a small, tight-knit congregation largely unaffected by the tourists and transplants who’d changed the face of the larger village church. She’d have expected him to look for her in the town church, not here.
So Heath had scented her out. She tried to tell herself it was no big deal. Anybody could come to church. She knew she should be glad her new partner was a churchgoing man. Trevor had never darkened the doors of the worship space in the time she’d known him, though it would have done him a world of good, she was sure. He might even be alive today if he hadn’t gotten himself involved with diamond smugglers. Rather than allow thoughts of either man to disturb her, Tracie closed her eyes and tried to breathe in the peace she’d felt before she’d spotted Heath.
But peace eluded her. She watched warily as Heath made his way across the back of the sanctuary toward where she and Tim sat. Her back stiffened, and she instinctively turned as though to shield Tim as much as possible from Heath.
What was it about her new partner that upset her so much? Was it because he’d transferred in from elsewhere? When Trevor had been murdered, she’d figured she’d fall in with someone from among the existing crew. But Jake Struckman, the Officer in Charge at the Bayfield station, had shocked her when he’d announced they were bringing in someone new to work with her.
While that news had come as a surprise, Tracie knew it didn’t explain all of the unease she felt around him. She could have chalked it up to the fear she’d always felt around Trevor. Her former partner had bent a lot of rules, even broken some when he knew there was nothing she could do to stop him, and she’d learned to constantly be on her guard around him. It was possible she’d transferred her unease onto Heath.
It would have been an easy explanation, but Tracie knew that wasn’t it, either. If anything, she’d been relieved to have someone new to work with. Nobody could be as awful as Trevor. And so far, in the three days she’d worked with him, Heath had been a perfect gentleman. He’d even saved her life. So it didn’t stand to reason that she feared him simply because she’d feared Trevor.
No, there was something about him that made her pulse race every time she saw him. He was too quiet about himself, and too quick to ask her personal questions. He watched her too carefully. And though he’d definitely tried to downplay the difference, he was overqualified for the job, and overdressed. Nobody else in the Coast Guard wore steel-plated body armor.
To her relief, the worship service began just as Heath sat down, and Tracie was able to push her nervous thoughts away and focus on the minister’s words. Whatever the issue was with Heath, the next fifty minutes wouldn’t change anything. But it would change her heart, and she needed God’s peace more than ever now.
Heath watched Tracie out of the corner of his eye. Though she’d obviously seen him, she’d failed to be nearly as welcoming as the parishioners who’d greeted him when he came in. In fact, her body language said she didn’t want to have anything to do with him.
Fine. Heath was a patient man. He’d been waiting for her to come around since he’d arrived for his undercover position in the Coast Guard. He wished he could tell her his true identity. Normally, he’d want those working closest to him to be aware of who he was and what he was up to. But not Tracie. She was the last person who’d be allowed to know. He was there to investigate her and her colleagues for their roles in Trevor Price’s murder, and to find out if anyone on the team had been involved with the diamond-smuggling ring.
The only person at the Coast Guard station who was aware of his status as an FBI agent was Jake Struckman, the Bayfield Officer in Charge, who’d helped establish his cover. All the Coast Guardsmen seemed to accept the explanation that he was a transfer from another station, brought in because of the recent trouble they’d been having, and his expertise gained during his previous experience as a Navy SEAL. So far, no one had caught on to his total inexperience with the Coast Guard. He’d memorized the handbook and leaned on his sharp instincts to fill in the cracks. It helped that the Bayfield team were a big-hearted bunch. They’d seemed more concerned about not disappointing him than checking for any holes in his story.
Except for Tracie. She still looked at him warily and had that chip on her shoulder he couldn’t yet account for. Did that mean Tracie was connected to Trevor’s diamond-smuggling friends, or involved in some way in Trevor’s death? If he’d read about her attitude in a report, he might have reached that conclusion. But having met her, he wasn’t so sure.
No, her eyes had gone a little too wide at the sight of blood, for one thing. She’d jumped a little too high when the bullets started flying. And she’d only been wearing a lightweight bulletproof vest when the tip of the rifle had peeked through the window curtains at Trevor’s. If she’d had inside knowledge, she’d have gone in prepared. But as it was, if he’d grabbed her a split-second later, Tracie would have been dead.
Heath replayed the scene through his mind in slow motion. He’d sensed something was wrong, but the gun had still taken him by surprise. His reaction had been pure training and instinct, no time to stop and think things through. Tracie had felt so light in his arms, and so delicate. He’d been surprised by the overwhelming need he’d felt to protect her.
He glanced over at her now, sitting quietly with her head bowed as the minister prayed, her bulky fisherman-style sweater doing little to disguise her slender frame. Underneath her tough exterior, he sensed that she was fragile—frightened, even. But she’d put up a thick wall to keep him out.
In order to find out what she knew, he’d have to break through that wall somehow. In the four days he’d known her, he’d figured out it wouldn’t fall easily. But if he could get inside to the timid woman underneath, he might be able to convince her to lean on him.
And then? Well, then he’d have his answers, which was the whole point of this assignment. His mission would be accomplished. So why did the idea of getting close to Tracie Crandall frighten him so much?
Tracie followed Tim to the fellowship hall after the final song. She wasn’t sure how to tell him what had happened at his brother’s house the day before. Fortunately, she didn’t have to. Tim had already heard.
“I’m so glad you weren’t injured. The first I heard, nobody knew which Coasties had been involved in the shooting, but I had a sense you were one of them. I even called your house, but you weren’t home yet.”
“You could have left a message.” Tracie wouldn’t have minded the excuse to call and talk to him sooner.
“I didn’t want to bother you.” Tim clutched a cup of coffee without drinking from it.
“Don’t worry about bothering me,” she patted his free arm. “You’re my friend.”
“Right.” His eyes darted about the room. Though he’d been off drugs for weeks, he still had a jumpy, disjointed manner about him. He leaned a little closer and lowered the volume of his voice. “I’ve been asking some questions.”
“Questions?”
“Some of Trevor’s old buddies. Somebody has to have heard something.”
Though part of her didn’t want Tim doing any investigative work on his own, Tracie felt partly relieved he’d taken the initiative. Tim had contacts she had no other way of reaching, but she’d never feel comfortable asking him to get in touch with them for her. “And?” she prompted.
“Hello, Tracie.” Heath had snuck up on her.
Tim pinched his mouth shut.
Tracie could have kicked her new partner. “Hello, Heath.” She knew she needed to introduce Heath to Tim, but she didn’t know how to break it to Tim that Heath had replaced his older brother. “Tim, have you met—?”
“No,” Tim shifted his coffee to his other hand. “You’re Heath, right?”
“Heath Gerlach,” her new partner shook Tim’s hand. “And you’re Tim Price.”
“Yes. Trevor’s little brother.”
“I’m sorry to hear about your loss.”
“Thank you.”
The men maintained eye contact, and Tracie tried hard to read what passed between them. Animosity? No, Tim was too pure of heart since his conversion to sink to that. She didn’t even sense a competitive spirit. In fact, they almost seemed to share understanding. Sympathy. Tracie felt herself softening ever so slightly toward Heath. She didn’t nearly trust him, but he’d demonstrated a rare sensitivity toward her grieving friend. It was far more than she’d expected.
Now she just had to figure out how to get rid of Heath so Tim would finish telling her what he’d learned.
“You’re filling my brother’s slot on the force, hmm?” Tim raised his cup to his lips, his face curious, his tone without guile.
“He’s left me some pretty big shoes to fill,” Heath offered.
“Size fourteen, to be exact,” Tim offered.
Tracie chuckled along with them, her mind immediately latching on to Trevor’s shoe size. The same as the footprints they’d found at his house. But he’d been dead for over a month. Could the footprints have been that old? Impossible—far too much snow had fallen since then. Could their gunman have slipped on a pair of Trevor’s boots to throw them off his trail? It was certainly a possibility.
She was so intrigued by the idea, she didn’t pay attention to what the men were discussing until she heard Tim saying, “As I was just telling Tracie, I’ve been in contact with some of Trevor’s friends.”
“But I thought everyone involved in the diamond smuggling had been caught,” Heath said, his words taking Tracie back to the final showdown on Devil’s Island six weeks before—right after Trevor’s death.
“Everyone involved,” Tim repeated, his eyes darting around the room. He lowered his voice and leaned in closer to the two of them. “You must not realize how deep this thing goes.”
“Why don’t you enlighten me?” Heath’s quiet voice remained casual.
Tim shrugged. “I’m meeting with some guys tonight. I don’t know if I’ll learn anything, but if you guys to stop by my place tomorrow, say around noon, I’ll tell you everything I know.”
“Tomorrow at noon then.” Heath graciously raised his coffee cup to Tim, then took a sip and walked away.
Tracie watched him go, her insides roiling with a mixture of frustration and distrust.
Tim’s words pulled her from her thoughts. “He seems nice.”
“Yes.” Tracie admitted. “He does.” Almost too nice.
Heath called Jonas Goodman as soon as he got back to his apartment.
“Tim Price is talking.”
“Really?” his FBI supervisor actually sounded impressed for once. “And what’s he saying?”
“I don’t know yet. We’re meeting him tomorrow at noon. I’ll call you afterward.”
“Are you sure you’re up to this? I received your medical report last night. Those bruises on your back look ugly.”
“They’re even uglier today, but that’s not going to stop me. This case is cracking, and that gunman yesterday has me convinced whatever’s going down here is big. You don’t pull out an assault rifle unless you’re pretty desperate.”
“Or pretty stupid.” Jonas noted. “Remember, we are working with crooks here.”
“Crooks who successfully imported synthetic diamonds and passed them off as the real thing for over a decade,” Heath reminded his boss. “Hardly the work of a jumpy amateur.”
Jonas let the remark slide. “What about the girl? Got any dirt on her?”
“Tracie?” Heath bristled at his boss’s choice of words. “She’s clean so far.”
“Then dig deeper. She was way too tight with Trevor not to be involved with his business. We need to catch the remaining smugglers who are still out there. She has to know something.”
Heath’s hand tightened on his phone. “How do you know that? Do you have information you haven’t passed on to me?”
“Of course not. But everything points to her.”
Heath wanted to defend Tracie, but he checked his emotions. Why did he feel so strongly about her? He couldn’t give a solid reason. “Okay,” he relented. “I’m on it.”
“Good. If you’re going to crack this case, you’ll need to crack her first. But I don’t think that will be too difficult for you.”
Heath hesitated. “Could you clarify that statement?”
The insinuation in Jonas’s voice carried clearly over the phone. “She’s a young woman working a lonely job. You’re an attractive man.” He cleared his throat. “Don’t worry about fallout. You do what you have to do. We’ll clean up afterward.”
Heath’s throat tightened as he realized what his boss was openly hinting at. He’d always enjoyed working under Jonas Goodman, who had a reputation as a maverick, and whose unorthodox tactics never failed to make his job more interesting. But a sick pit churned in his stomach as he realized how much more complicated his job description now was. He’d killed before. In his line of work, it was a given. But he’d never broken a woman’s heart.
“Heath?” Jonas spoke into the silence. “Do we have an understanding?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. I expect a full report tomorrow. And I don’t like disappointment.”
“Yes, sir.” Heath’s throat felt dry. He ended the call and pinched his eyes shut, one single image filling his mind.
Tracie. He’d saved her life the day before, and still felt a lingering need to protect her from harm, to find out what had caused fear to haunt her eyes and to save her from whatever troubled her. And now Jonas wanted him to intentionally hurt her.
Clenching his jaw, Heath stood and paced the room. Tracie was his target. He had to break through her defenses, find out what she knew, and report back to Jonas in less than twenty-four hours. He’d never had an assignment like this one, and he already knew Tracie wouldn’t open up to him easily. Still, he had a sense that getting close to her wouldn’t be the most difficult part of his new mission.
No, the hardest part would be forgiving himself afterward.
TWO
Tracie had her head in the cupboard and was evaluating her dinner choices when the phone rang. She held a box of cereal in one hand and a can of ravioli in the other, and set down the pasta to answer. “Hello?”
Heath’s voice caught her off guard. “Have you had dinner yet?”
She looked at the box of cereal. “Not quite.”
“Care to join me? I’m sorry for the late notice, I just…” he paused. She waited.
“I’ve eaten every meal by myself since I’ve been here, and I thought it might be nice not to have to do that, for a change.”
His words struck a chord, and Tracie felt an emptiness inside that was more than just her stomach growling. She couldn’t remember when she’d last shared a meal with another person. But she didn’t know Heath very well, and memories of her previous partner’s unprofessional behavior toward her set off warning bells. “I make it a personal policy not to fraternize with my coworkers when I’m off duty.” She was glad she’d established that before Trevor had gotten out of hand.
“Oh.” Disappointment resonated over the phone. “You wouldn’t make an exception for my sake?”
She hesitated. The man had saved her life. But her policy had saved her skin before, too. “No exceptions.”
“Right. Sorry to bother you. Goodbye then.”
“’Bye.” Tracie hung up the phone and leaned back against the cupboard. Gunnar, her German shepherd mix, whimpered in concern at her feet, and she realized she was clutching the cereal box so tightly to her chest that she’d crumpled it.
She looked at the box, then down at her dog. “It’s okay. I’m fine.” She forced a smile for Gunnar’s benefit, but he didn’t look any more convinced than she felt. Shaking off her doubts, she nodded resolutely and proceeded to pour herself a bowl of cereal. “That was the right answer. I’m pretty sure it was.”
Tracie pulled up at the Coast Guard station the next morning just as Heath was getting out of his truck. Her insides knotted at the sight of him.
“Medical leave,” she said with a pointed look at the bandage on his arm.
He grinned at her, and she felt her heart give a dip. “Not for me, thanks. How was your dinner?”
It had been horribly dissatisfying, and she’d ended up feeling so bad about turning him away that she hadn’t even been able to finish her cereal, which had seemed to stick halfway down her throat every time she tried to swallow. But she wasn’t about to tell him that. “It’s really none of your business,” she reminded him as she stepped through the door he held open for her.
“Mine too,” he agreed.
“What?” She spun and looked at him, meeting his eyes, where flickering sadness didn’t match the smile he’d pasted on his lips.
“Dinner,” he explained, letting the fake smile drop. “Lonely and disappointing.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Tracie’s heart thumped hard against her rib cage and she hurried to the office that housed her cubicle, hoping he’d disappear into his own. Instead, he followed her.
“Look, I don’t mean to be rude,” she stared him down, “but I have work to do.”
“We have work to do.”
“I don’t need your help completing my paperwork.”
“The paperwork can wait, Princess. Somebody tried to kill us on Saturday, and I intend to catch whoever it was before they get a chance to finish the job.”
Tracie bristled. She was no princess. Princesses didn’t work for the Coast Guard. “Look, Heath, I’d love to catch our gunman, but we have no idea who it is, and no leads right now to go on.” She sat at her desk and picked up a sheaf of papers.
“And we’re not going to find any leads sitting around doing paperwork.” Heath plucked the papers from her hands and set them out of her reach on top of her file cabinets.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Then what do you propose?”
“Have you had breakfast?”
“No,” Tracie stood. “Not that it’s any of your business.” She gestured for him to leave. “I have work to do.”
Heath smiled as he stepped out of the office. “I’ll be back.”
Twenty minutes later, Heath stepped, uninvited, into Tracie’s cubicle and plunked a fresh apple fritter on her desk, then slid a steaming cup of coffee next to it. “Half cream, no sugar,” he smiled triumphantly. “Jake ratted you out.”
“I had no idea Jake cared so much,” Tracie slid the coffee toward her, lifted the lid, and inhaled a deep breath of steam.
“From the Egg Toss Café,” Heath explained, hoping he’d earn points for fetching her favorite brew.
“I can see that.” She speared an icy eyebrow his way, but took a small swallow and reached for the fritter. “Have a seat,” she said, nodding toward the spare chair as she took a big bite of the pastry. “Tell me what I have to do to make you go away.”
Inwardly congratulating himself on his small victory, Heath took the chair and opened a white sack, pulling out another fritter for himself. “I want to know everything you know about Trevor.”
She shrugged and washed down a bite with coffee. “It’s in the report. Read it.”
“I’ve read it. I can quote long sections from memory, if you’d like. But nothing in the report tells me who else Trevor was involved with, or why they’d rather risk a murder charge than let me look at a house your men had already searched.” The vivid details of the report stood out fresh in his mind, from the moment Tracie and two civilians discovered Trevor’s body floating facedown in Lake Superior, to their discovery of a hidden cave under Devil’s Island. But the body had disappeared before they could recover it.
Tracie leveled her gaze at him across the desk. “Don’t you think I’d tell you if I had any idea? It’s not in my best interest to withhold information, you know.”
“But you were closer to Trevor than anyone else on this team.”
“We really weren’t that close.” She plucked a large blob of apple from the fritter, and dropped the gooey mess into her mouth.
As Heath watched her lips close over the morsel, he was struck again by how attractive the woman sitting across from him really was. What was she doing living in this tiny dot on the map, working for the Coast Guard of all things? It took him several seconds to pull his thoughts back to their conversation. “How long had you known Trevor before his death?”
Tracie sighed over her fritter. “I’m from Bayfield. Trevor’s from Bayfield, too, but he’s a few years older than I am. Growing up, I’d heard his name, but never paid too much attention to him. When I started working for the Coast Guard, he was stationed elsewhere, near Canada, I guess. He transferred here, we started working together. What else do you want to know? He took his coffee with cream and way too much sugar. He’d eat pretty much anything, including other people’s food if they didn’t eat it first. I think he felt entitled to things, but I never understood why.” She shrugged and took another bite of apple fritter.
Heath felt like he was beginning to make progress. “And you had no idea he was involved with a diamond-smuggling ring?”
“None,” Tracie looked at him blankly and swallowed. “As far as I know, nobody had any idea anyone was smuggling anything through the Apostle Islands. Nobody even knew there was a sea cave hideout in Devil’s Island—not unless you believed the old fishermen’s tales about pirates, anyway. Six weeks ago, the case got blown wide open. Before that, I admit I was completely oblivious.”
“So you never suspected Trevor was involved in anything covert?”
“No.” Tracie looked annoyed. “Why would I?”
“You spent ten hours a day together, four days a week. He never did anything suspicious in all that time?”
“Look, Trevor and I had an arrangement. He stayed at his desk, I stayed at mine. When we drove around in the truck together or rode around in the boat, he drove and I navigated. He did the grunt work and I did the thinking, and we never talked about our personal lives. Ever. It’s an arrangement I’m hoping you and I can duplicate.”
“But you’re friends with his little brother.” Heath persisted.
“I met Tim after Trevor was already dead, when Tim came forward with information that helped us crack the case. We’ve barely known each other a month. And yes, I’m already better friends with Tim than I ever was with Trevor, but that only reinforces how very little I cared for Trevor.”
“So you didn’t like him?”
Tracie threw back her head and looked at the ceiling. Heath watched the muscles in her slender neck shift as she tightened her jaw in frustration. “Trevor and I had an arrangement,” she repeated.
“What kind of arrangement?”
Heath watched carefully as Tracie’s eyes darted to the door, as though seeking escape. Her face paled slightly and a vessel in her neck began to pulse visibly. She stood. “I think it’s time for you to leave.”
Though Heath rose from his chair, he didn’t take his eyes off Tracie’s face. He was learning more by watching her reaction to his question than he’d gathered from anything she’d told him in the last five days. She was scared. Of Trevor? He had to know.
“What was your arrangement with Trevor?” he asked quietly.
“I just told you.” The fire had gone out of her voice. Her chin quivered ever so slightly.
“So you never saw him outside of work?”
“Leave,” she pointed to the door. She wasn’t ordering him anymore. Her eyes were pleading.
Heath felt an unfamiliar urge to soothe her. “Tracie.” He spoke her name softly.
She flinched as he drew closer.
And suddenly, Heath realized he had to back off. “I’m sorry. I’m out of here.” He glanced back as he slipped through the door. Tracie’s face was still turned away, and her slight shoulders heaved as she gulped a breath.
For a fleeting instant, he wanted to grab her up into his arms, to protect her from harm as he had on Saturday. But something told him he was already too late.
Trevor had gotten to her first.
It took Tracie most of the rest of the morning to compose herself. Heath showed up at her desk shortly before noon. He handed her the keys. “Why don’t you drive? You know the way.”
She accepted them with quiet thanks and tried not to shiver when his hand touched hers. His comment on the phone the night before had reminded her of how rarely she experienced human contact. But she didn’t need to get it from him. She had friends. Tim was one of them.
Tim’s place was on the edge of town, rimmed by woods like so much of northern Wisconsin. Tracie spotted his bike leaning against the side of the porch. She knew he hadn’t driven since his license had been revoked following a drunk-driving charge the year before. She smiled. Tim was a good guy. A lot of drunks just kept on driving without a license.
Heath followed her up the peeling porch steps, and Tracie felt a sense of déjà vu as she recalled what had happened two days before when she and Heath had stood on a Price doorstep. She shook off her nervousness, rang the bell, and waited. No answer. She met Heath’s eyes, he shrugged, and she pressed the buzzer again. Still nothing.
“The bell might be out. Let me try knocking.” Heath reached past her and rapped on the doorframe.
“Here, try the inside door,” Tracie suggested, alert to the possibility of danger, and eager to get inside instead of standing out in the open on the porch. She held the storm door open.
Hardly had Heath’s knuckles touched the inner door than it swung inward. Heath quickly reacted and raised his arm. “Don’t look—” he started.
But Tracie had already seen inside. Tim lay in a pool of blood on the floor.
“Tim!” Tracie gasped as she shouldered past Heath to her fallen friend. Her hand flew to his neck and found a weak pulse. Hope rose within her. “He’s alive!” She could hear Heath behind her, giving instructions over his radio. “We need a medical team, quickly!”
“Tracie?” Tim’s eyelids fluttered.
“Yes, Tim, I’m right here.” She found the wound in his gut and tried to stem the flow of blood. “Help is on the way. Hang in there.”
“Can you hear them?”
Tracie listened for the sound of approaching sirens, though it was far too soon to expect them to arrive. The only sounds she could hear were Heath’s soft footfalls as he scoured the perimeter behind her. “Not yet, Tim, but they’re on their way.”
“They’re singing,” Tim gasped. “So beautiful.” His eyes bore a faraway look.
And suddenly Tracie realized Tim was no longer really with her. “Tim,” she choked on his name. “Tim, stay with me. Look at me!” she demanded.
Tim shifted his gaze to her face, and his pupils dilated as he focused on her.
“Who did this to you?” Tracie could feel the tears running down her cheeks. She realized Tim didn’t have much time. Likely the only way they’d ever bring his killer to justice was if he could name him before he died.
Tracie watched the light fade from his eyes.
“No, Tim. Look at me! Who did this?”
Tim blinked. “T—” he choked. “T-Tre—”
Tracie focused, pleading with her eyes.
“—verrrr.” The last syllable escaped his mouth in a sigh.
And he was gone.
Tracie picked up his hand and held it to her lips. “No.” She tried to squeeze back the tears. “No, please, no.”
She didn’t realize Heath stood behind her until she felt his hand on her back.
“Perimeter’s clear,” he said softly.
Tracie nodded. She didn’t look up at Heath, but neither did she push his hand away. It wasn’t until the paramedics came rushing in that she stood and turned to face him.
“We shouldn’t have left him alone. We should have put him in protective custody.”
“He didn’t want to go,” Heath reminded her. “Besides, we thought we had everybody.”
“It doesn’t matter!” Tracie hugged herself tightly. “We should have insisted. He could have gotten mad at us, but at least he’d still be alive.” She looked back over her shoulder in time to see the medics draping a sheet over Tim’s body. She pinched her eyes shut.
Heath’s hand fell gently on her arm. “We can’t go back in time. Don’t blame yourself.”
Much as Tracie would have liked to push him away, she found she couldn’t bring herself to shrug off the light touch of his hand. She took a moment to steady her breathing, then looked Heath directly in the eye. “We have to catch whoever did this.”
The corner of Heath’s strong jaw shifted in a determined expression. “I think it was the same person who shot at us on Saturday.”
“That makes sense,” Tracie acknowledged, “but we don’t have any evidence to link anyone to either crime.”
“Don’t we?” Heath moved closer to Tracie as investigators scurried around behind them, and his hand slid higher on her arm. “You asked Tim who did this. I heard his answer.”
“You did?” A shudder rippled through her. “But all he said was—” She stopped and pinched her eyes shut, too afraid to speak the word out loud.
Heath’s mouth moved close to her ear. “Trevor,” he whispered.
She pulled back and looked at him, her eyes wide. “But what does that mean? Trevor’s friends? Trevor’s associates, his rivals, his enemies? We don’t know what Tim was going to say.”
“He said Trevor.” Heath looked at her with an intensity that made her want to shrink away.
“Trevor’s dead,” she insisted in a whisper. Didn’t Heath understand? She’d seen Trevor’s dead body floating in Lake Superior. There was no way a dead man could commit murder.
“His body was never recovered,” Heath challenged her.
Tracie shook her head, still feeling shell shocked. “Trevor’s dead,” she repeated.
Heath nodded, took a step back, and bowed his head. When he looked back up at her, his eyes wore an unreadable look. “Right.” He said simply. “Right.”
Jonas sounded frustrated when Heath finally reached him by phone later that afternoon to report on what had happened.
“He was still alive when you reached the house?” his supervisor clarified.
“Barely,” Heath conceded. “If we’d have gotten there a moment later, we wouldn’t know anything. As it was, I think it’s pretty clear he was blaming his brother for his death, but Tracie doesn’t necessarily see things that way.”
“Ah,” Jonas’s tone brightened. “The two of you are close now, hmm?”
Heath cringed. “She’s not the most open and trusting person, but I think she’s starting to let me in.” He thought about the brief time she’d allowed him to rest his hand on her arm. It wasn’t much—for most people, he wouldn’t think of it as anything. But with Tracie, it was progress.
“Starting to?” Frustration edged back into Jonas’s tone. “Look, we’ve got a gunman on the loose and we’ve just lost a witness. We don’t have time for you to ease your way into this. Tracie Crandall knows way more than she’s telling, and until we learn what she knows, we run the risk of losing more lives on this, maybe yours.” Jonas paused, and his voice dropped an octave to take on bone-chilling seriousness. “If you can’t handle this, Heath, tell me now, and I’ll put in someone who can.”
“I’m on it.”
Tracie took a long soak in the tub, but she couldn’t seem to wash away the chill she felt after watching Tim pass away in her arms. She dressed in her comfiest yoga pants and an oversized sweatshirt, and joined Gunnar in the kitchen, where her bare cupboards offered little to console her. Even Gunnar whined when she poured him the same old dry dog food.
“Sorry, buddy,” she whispered when he looked up at her with pleading eyes.
She jumped at the sound of the doorbell. “You expecting anyone?” she asked the dog.
Gunnar cocked his head to the side and barked once before trotting off toward the front door. Tracie followed him and flipped the switch for the porch light. The broad-shouldered silhouette at the door appeared to be holding a pizza box. Tracie let go of the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
She looked down at her dog. “I didn’t order pizza. You?”
Gunnar ignored her and poked his head through the doggie door.
Taking her cue from her dog, Tracie drew closer and peeked tentatively through the sheer curtains.
“It’s me. Heath,” her partner mouthed as he peered back at her through the gap in the shades.
Tracie jumped back and opened the door. “What are you doing here?” She grabbed Gunnar by the collar before he could attack.
Heath stepped into the house holding the pizza above his head. “Since you turned me down last night, I decided tonight I wouldn’t bother to ask.” He looked at her with challenge in his eyes.
Tracie hardly noticed his look. Instead she stared at her dog, who was nuzzling Heath’s free hand playfully while the Coast Guardsman attempted to pet him.
“Beautiful,” Heath nodded to Gunnar. “Part Great Dane?”
“Mostly German shepherd, I think.”
“But bigger,” Heath noted.
“Uh-huh.” Tracie looked quizzically at Gunnar. “He likes you,” she said softly.
“You sound surprised. Should I be insulted?”
“Oh. No.” Tracie shook her head and tried to focus her thoughts. “It’s just that—” She stopped. She needed to convince Heath to leave, but at the same time, the pizza smelled so delicious. Her stomach growled. “What?”
“Gunnar hated Trevor,” she admitted in a small voice.
“Gunnar—” Heath looked down at the dog with a bright smile “—you’re a smart dog.” He crouched a little lower, still holding the box high above his head.
Instead of leaping up and snatching away the pizza as she’d have expected, Gunnar planted his front paws on Heath’s knees and licked his chin.
Swallowing her surprise, Tracie took a deep breath and prepared to tell Heath to leave. But the savory aroma of the pizza tickled her nostrils, and her stomach gave another grumble. She looked at her dog. Gunnar thought Heath was okay. And the day had certainly been an exceptionally trying one. Perhaps she could relax her rule just a little, under the circumstances. But what good was a personal policy if she didn’t always stick to it?
Heath reached back through the open front door and grabbed a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew.
Tracie realized she’d been outmaneuvered. She tried one last protest. “Neither of us will get any sleep tonight if we drink that.”
Turning the bottle so she could clearly see the label, Heath corrected her. “It’s caffeine-free.” He gave her another one of his bothersome grins that told her he knew he’d won. “Where can I put this?”
With a sigh, Tracie led the way to her kitchen.
THREE
Heath wished he knew how to set Tracie at ease. She ushered him through the house like a museum tour guide who hadn’t learned her lines yet.
“This is my living room. Sorry about the mess.”
“You weren’t expecting me,” Heath assured her, taking in a room that wasn’t so much messy as cluttered, with built-in oak cabinetry halfway installed along the outside wall, piles of books awaiting the finished shelves and a solid-looking window bench stained but not varnished between the ceiling-high bookshelves. “Besides, it looks like the mess belongs to your handyman, not to you.”
Tracie looked up at him and blushed. “I’m the handyman.”
Glancing back over the cabinetry, Heath took in the solid craftsmanship. “I’m impressed. It looks like you know what you’re doing.”
“I don’t, really.” Tracie tucked a few tools discretely on a shelf.
Heath noticed the brand name of the drill just before she set it aside. Gerlach Tools—his family’s business. Fighting back the urge to look closer and see what line the drill came from, he continued on as Tracie led him through the room to her kitchen. No, it wouldn’t do at all to give away that much of his identity. If she knew who he really was, she might ask how he got into the military, and he didn’t feel at all confident that he could maintain his cover story if she began to ask him personal questions. Too much of his real-life history didn’t match up with his cover story. The last thing he needed was to blow his cover.
Heath learned all manner of interesting tidbits from Tracie about life in the Coast Guard. He found out what to do when the copier jammed up, whom to call when a toilet backed up and how best to lie low when Jake got fired up. But he couldn’t seem to steer their conversation toward anything personal, not without Tracie heading him off, going silent or even leaving the room to check the porch light or investigate imaginary noises in the basement.
He ran into a little more success when he brought the conversation around to the topic of the diamond smugglers. It seemed she was as intrigued as anyone about how they’d run their operation under everyone’s noses for so long.
“None of the men we’ve captured will tell us anything—where the diamonds are coming from, or how they’ve been transporting them. The boats we captured contained a small number of stones—a few handfuls. Nothing like the reports we’ve heard from gemologists. They claim these fake rocks have taken over a major niche in the market. People have been paying top dollar for them for years, thinking they were getting real diamonds of superior color and clarity.” She tossed a pizza crust to Gunnar before helping herself to another piece.
Heath smiled, glad to see her enjoying the food he’d brought. Tracie looked like she’d skipped too many meals. He tried to keep his tone casual, to keep her talking about the smugglers without getting suspicious of his curiosity and clamming up. But as he’d suspected, the woman who’d worked so hard to keep him at a distance had a flood of thoughts and theories pent up inside her. As she began to trust him, her dam began to crack.
“What I don’t understand,” she continued after she’d washed down a bite of pizza with a swig of soda, “is why no one figured out something was wrong a long time ago. I mean, we no sooner discover these smugglers than multiple gemologists come forward and announce these fakes have been out there for over a decade. Granted, the diamonds were excellent imitations—chemically and optically identical to real diamonds. But how could synthetics sneak by so long on the national market? And why can’t the Feds figure out where they got them from? You don’t just buy diamonds out of thin air. Somebody had to sell them. Can’t they follow the trail?”
“I believe the FBI is on the case now,” Heath said, trying to distance himself from the very organization he worked for. “I should hope we’d have answers soon.”
Tracie let out a snort. “Not soon enough for Tim,” she said, winging a pizza crust through the air and watching Gunnar leap artfully to catch it. Her scowl faded and she grinned at the dog, but when she glanced over at Heath, she immediately blushed. “I probably shouldn’t give him people food, but when he gives me his sad-eyed begging look, I can’t very well turn him away. He’s my very best friend in the world. I don’t know what I’d do without him.” She clamped her mouth shut after that profession, which was the closest thing to personal information he’d learned all evening. She sat silently fiddling with her napkin while Heath finished the last piece of pizza.
When the two-liter was empty, the pizza box contained only crumbs and Tracie had carried their glasses to the sink, Heath realized he was going to have to pull out all the stops in order to keep from being evicted.
“Could you do me a favor?”
“What?” Tracie looked back at him from the sink, her tone unabashedly suspicious, and he could almost see the wheels turning in her head as she tried to invent a reason to make him leave.
Heath looked pointedly at his injured arm. “Could you take a look at my arm? The wound is on the back, on the underside, and I can’t see it very well myself.”
Concern crossed her features, but she chased the look away with one of distrust. “Why?”
“To see if it’s getting infected.”
“Can’t you go to the doctor for that?”
“I could, if I wanted to waste half a day driving to Ashland and sitting in a waiting room.” He approached her slowly until he stood beside her at the sink.
“You’re supposed to be on medical leave anyway.”
Heath could have reminded her that medical leave was voluntary, but instead checked their catty back-and-forth. “Tell you what—you take a look at it for me, and if it’s getting infected, I’ll call the doctor tomorrow.”
“I guess I can’t turn down an offer like that.”
The way she smiled at his suggestion, Heath wondered if she’d stoop to lying to him to get him to call the doctor the next day. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that. If his ruse worked, he’d distract her from wanting to get rid of him and convince her to get close to him, instead. Jonas seemed to think it was the only way for him to learn her secrets. And Jonas was the boss.
Heath hurried to peel off the long-sleeved shirt he wore before Tracie could change her mind.
Tracie nearly gasped at the sight of Heath in a snug black T-shirt, but swallowed her exclamation while struggling to keep her expression unaffected. She’d already guessed the man worked out, but his well-developed muscles still took her by surprise, especially at close range. He was a powerfully built, handsome man. She focused her attention on the injury on his arm.
White tape secured a thick gauze bandage to his right triceps muscle on the underside of his arm toward the back, a place where it would have been nearly impossible for him to examine it himself. She tentatively reached for the dressing. “Do you want me to peel this back?”
“Yeah, go ahead and take a peek.”
Stepping closer, she tugged gently on one corner of the tape. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“That tape’s nothing compared to what’s under it.”
“I suppose not,” Tracie peeled back the tape and winced at the sight of the wound underneath. “Oh.” She couldn’t suppress her reaction.
“That bad?”
“It’s like something took a bite out of your arm.”
“It did. Does it look infected?”
“Not really. It looks like it’s healing.” She peered a little closer, close enough to smell the scent of the antibiotic that covered the injury. Another smell teased at her nose—something masculine and slightly spicy. She breathed a little deeper, then realized she was probably sniffing Heath’s aftershave. Self-conscious, she took a half step back.
“I guess you don’t need a doctor after all,” she noted, smoothing her hand over the tape, barely daring to press down lest she hurt him. “There.” She slid one fingertip around the edge of the bandage to be sure it was secure. “You’re all set.”
“Thanks.” He turned slowly to face her. He stood too close, and his expression was intense, his eyes smoldering.
Tracie felt overwhelmed. It had been such a long day. Her nerves had been shot long before he’d shown up on her porch with pizza, and her mind was still muddled from dinner. Talking to him had eased a weight off her shoulders. It had made her feel closer to him, too. Now he stood mere inches from her with a look on his face she’d never seen before, yet somehow she knew exactly what it meant.
She took a deep breath and tried to clear her thoughts, but instead found herself breathing in more of the faded scent he wore. “You smell good.” The words escaped from her mouth before she even realized she’d been consciously thinking them.
“So do you.” His fingers touched her hair where it hung past her chin.
About to deny it, she realized what he was referring to. “Oh, my shampoo.”
“It smells fruity. Strawberries?” He leaned closer to her, his nose nearly brushing her temple as he inhaled her scent.
“No, passion fruit,” she blurted, and immediately blushed. There was no way she could let whatever was happening between them continue. He was getting too close. She took a step back. “Sorry. You just smell so much better than Trevor.”
“How did Trevor smell?” Heath must have sensed her discomfort, because he grabbed his other shirt and pulled it back on.
“Awful,” she said emphatically, hoping to bury whatever had just happened under a mountain of words. “He wore this ridiculous, expensive cologne. I asked him about it once because it was so strong, and he told me how much he paid for it. I don’t remember what he said it cost, but it was a lot, and he always used way too much so that it followed him in a cloud. I’ve never smelled anything like it before or since. Except—” She caught herself a moment too late and stopped.
“Except what?” Heath’s steel-blue eyes watched her as several seconds ticked by. “Don’t tell me it was nothing. You were going to say something. You’ve never smelled anything like Trevor’s cologne except what?”
“It really was nothing,” Tracie sighed.
“Then it shouldn’t be any big deal for you to tell me.”
“It’s not even worth telling.”
“Prove it. Tell me and I’ll tell you if it was worth telling or not.”
Tracie’s tired mind spun as she tried to follow Heath’s logic. She felt completely exhausted: mentally, physically, and especially emotionally. “Fine. I smelled Trevor’s cologne at his house on Saturday, just before we were shot at. But how can that mean anything? It was his house. He wore so much of that stuff it was bound to linger even though he’s been dead for over a month. The smell will probably never come out of his carpets.” She planted her hands on her hips and looked up at him. “So see? It really was nothing.”
“And that’s all?”
Tracie wanted to nod, to claim there had never been anything more to what she was thinking, but she couldn’t lie to him. “And I smelled it at Tim’s house this morning. Very faintly. I was so distracted by everything else I didn’t even think about it until just now, but I guess it makes sense. Tim was Trevor’s brother. Why wouldn’t his place carry a little bit of his smell?”
“Had you smelled it before when you’d gone over there?”
“I’d only been twice before.”
“And you smelled it there then?” Tracie hesitated.
Heath took a step closer to her, and his hand fell on her arm.
She felt the warmth of his touch run straight to her heart.
“No,” she admitted reluctantly. “Today was the first time.”
“Thank you for telling me.” Heath leaned toward her and whispered the words, his eyes meeting hers, his hand still on her arm.
Tracie nearly looked away, but there was something in his expression that told her he wasn’t out to hurt her like Trevor always had been. For a moment, she allowed herself to bask in the reassuring feeling that she wasn’t alone on this case—that Heath was working on her side. Was Heath really someone she could trust? She wanted so much to believe it was true.
Gunnar’s sharp barking brought her back to reality, and she looked down to see her dog nosing Heath in the leg, obviously trying to push him away.
“Looks like we’ve got a chaperone,” Heath said softly, stepping back and pulling his hand away.
Tracie didn’t know how to respond. She knew she ought to be glad her dog had the good sense to break them apart before they got any closer, but as reality returned with its crushing weight, she almost considered offering to put the dog out in the yard. But now that they were no longer standing so close, Gunnar didn’t seem nearly as concerned. He hunkered down and put his head on her left foot, as though staking his claim.
Her silence must have concerned Heath, because he quickly apologized. “I’m sorry. I know you said you don’t fraternize with coworkers. I should respect your personal space.”
“It’s okay,” she said softly.
A relieved grin spread across Heath’s lips. “I’m glad. I think I’d like to spend more time with you.”
Though she hadn’t intended to encourage him, Tracie couldn’t help smiling back at him. She shook her head and whispered, mostly to herself, “I should know better.”
“Why? There’s no rule in the Coast Guard against the two of us spending time together outside of work.”
“Not in the Coast Guard,” she shook her head. “It’s my rule.”
“Why?”
Tracie sighed. She’d been tired before Heath had arrived. She was exhausted now. Still, it had been so long since she’d had anyone to talk to, since she’d stood so close to anyone. She didn’t want Heath to leave, so she kept talking.
“I didn’t always have this rule. Before Trevor came, I wouldn’t think twice about meeting a few guys from the team at the rec center for racquetball, or joining my coworkers and their families for a barbecue.” She paused.
“Before Trevor came?”
“He wanted more of my attention than I wanted to give him.” It took several long seconds for her to gather the courage to look Heath in the eye.
The concern on his face strengthened her, and she went on. “He thought we should hang out together. He—” she struggled to form the words she hadn’t ever admitted to anyone “—he wanted to be involved with me. He thought we should get together after hours. Not that I ever would.” She made a disgusted face. “I tried to turn him down politely. I tried to give him hints. When hints weren’t enough I had to make myself very, very clear.”
Her voice rose as the confession came spilling out, and Gunnar lifted his head from her foot and whined his concern.
Tracie lowered her voice slightly. “I told him I didn’t fraternize with coworkers. Ever. And I stuck to it. Once I thought I could get away with going to play sand volleyball with a bunch of guys from work, but he showed up. It was bad.” She pinched her eyes shut against the memories. Trevor’s anger. Trevor’s accusations.
Heath extended his good arm, gently enfolding her shoulders. She smelled the scent of his fabric softener mixed with his aftershave, and his soft cotton shirt pulsed ever so slightly with his strong heartbeat.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Heath apologized. “And I’m sorry I pushed you. I didn’t know.”
Tracie shook her head against him, startled to find herself so close to him, but immeasurably glad for his closeness anyway. “No. Don’t be sorry.” She looked up into his face. “You are nothing like him. I don’t regret letting you in tonight. I really appreciate the pizza, and the opportunity to talk.”
The grin that instantly appeared on Heath’s face told Tracie he didn’t regret it either.
A surprised laugh burst from her lips. “If Trevor was alive right now, he would be so furious to see you here when I was so insistent on not getting involved with him.”
Heath lifted her chin. “Let’s just be glad he’s dead, then.” He looked into her eyes, his expression warm.
Returning a giddy smile, Tracie let her eyes rove over his handsome face, to his lips less than a foot from hers. What would it be like to kiss him? She was chiding herself for thinking such a thing about a man she’d only just met when Gunnar’s barking protest distracted her. “Okay, Mr. Chaperone,” she relented, backing away.
“I should go,” Heath said, taking a step toward his coat.
The twinge of disappointment she felt took Tracie by surprise. She hadn’t ever intended to have Heath over in the first place; she should have felt relieved that he was leaving. “Thanks for the pizza.” She headed for the door, self-conscious about where her thoughts had roamed.
When Tracie opened the front door for Heath, Gunnar’s nostrils flared and he bounded outside, barking.
“Want me to go after him?” Heath offered.
“It’s okay, he usually goes out before bedtime.” She bit her lower lip thoughtfully. Gunnar wasn’t usually so excited about his evening ritual, but she figured Heath’s visit had thrown him off his routine. Still, he barked angrily at the thorny stand of blackberry canes that rimmed the one side of her property. Strange.
“Sounds like he’s pretty interested in those bushes,” Heath observed. “Is that normal?”
Tracie felt her pulse tick up a notch. “Not really,” she acknowledged, sliding on her oversize snow boots and tromping out at Heath’s side.
“Hey, buddy.” Heath went nose-to-nose with the canine. “What’s up? You got a rabbit pinned in there?”
Gunnar whined at Heath, then shook his head and made a sound that may have been a sneeze, though it sounded more like the dog was disgusted about something.
“Oh!” Tracie’s eyes opened wide, and she almost laughed at her dog, who could seem so human at times.
The dog turned his back on the bush and kicked snow behind him with his hind legs before trotting back to the house.
Heath escorted Tracie to the door. “You sure you’re going to be okay?”
“Of course.” She smiled up at him, feeling better after his visit than she had in some time.
“Call me if anything bothers you,” Heath insisted. “Or if you have anything on your mind and just want to talk.”
“Sure.” Tracie waved as Heath trotted off to his truck.
She closed the door and locked the deadbolt after him, wondering what his final words had been about. Too tired to make any sense of it, she wandered back to the kitchen with Gunnar huffing indignantly at her feet.
Heath breathed deeply of the cold night air and tried to clear his thoughts, but his evening with Tracie had blown his mind. Sure, he’d felt attracted to her from the start, but getting to know her and taking a peek inside her world only made him want to spend more time with her and get to know her even better. Who would have guessed he’d find such an intriguing woman in this little corner of Wisconsin—and she used Gerlach Tools! It had taken all his resilience to leave her, in spite of Gunnar’s insistence and his own certainty that if he went too far with Tracie too quickly, he’d push her away. She was a woman of strong convictions. He’d figured that much out already.
Nor did he think Gunnar had simply been after a rabbit in the bushes. He didn’t want to scare Tracie, but he was fairly certain the ground had been recently trampled by something a lot bigger than a bunny, though whatever—or whoever—it had been was long gone. Still, Heath would be keeping a close watch on her place tonight.
And he knew one other thing for certain. Tracie had been right about Trevor. If her old partner had seen them spending time together tonight, he would be furious. From what he knew of the man, that rage would play out violently. If he was dead, of course, there was no way the issue could be a problem. But Heath was far from certain that Trevor was really dead.
FOUR
Heath met Tracie in the parking lot of the Coast Guard station when she arrived for work the next morning. He’d gone in early to talk to Jake about his plans for the day. After everything that had happened in the previous three days, Jake had been eager to agree to Heath’s idea. Devil’s Island was as likely a place as any for them to turn up new leads in the case. It was where Trevor’s body had been discovered, then lost. If they were ever going to recover any trace of it, they’d need to do it soon—before time and wild animals took any more of a toll. And, perhaps most importantly, with a gunman loose on the mainland, Devil’s Island was arguably the safest place for them to spend the day, as it was located twenty miles out on Lake Superior.
The smile Tracie flashed him as she hopped out of her car caused Heath’s heart to leap and a matching expression to appear on his face. “You don’t regret having me over for dinner last night?” he asked as she drew close.
“Not yet.” She smirked at him, then sobered her expression. “Although our relationship remains strictly a professional one, regardless of how much time we spend with one another.”
“I agree.” He fell into step beside her as she headed for the building. “I talked to Jake about our plans for today.”
“Plans? I’ve got all that paperwork—” she said, starting to protest.
He stopped walking and turned to face her. “There’s a gunman on the loose and he’s already taken a shot at us. I think we need to get out of Dodge, so to speak, and Jake agrees.”
Tracie shook her head. “We’ve got a case to solve.”
“And we’re not going to solve it filling out paperwork like sitting ducks where anyone with evil intentions could expect to find us.”
She made a squinty-eyed, thoughtful face, and Heath sensed his argument was winning her over.
“Now, the last couple leads we’ve tried to follow have gone cold. We need to backtrack and follow our last lead.”
“Which is?” She looked at him expectantly.
“Devil’s Island.”
Tracie started visibly as he named the place. “Why?”
“Well, for one thing, most of the diamond smugglers’ operation was centered out of the secret cave under the island. I haven’t had the chance to visit it. So it’s pretty high on my list of things to do. This thirty-degree weather we’ve been enjoying isn’t going to last, either. It’s supposed to snap off cold tomorrow. Even though the Bayfield crew has already searched the island, there’s always the chance a new set of eyes could pick up on something they’ve missed. And I, for one, think it’s high time we recover Trevor’s body.” If it’s really out there to recover, Heath thought to himself, though he didn’t say the words out loud.
“Oh. Is that all?” Tracie still looked a little uncomfortable with the idea.
“Well, there is one other thing, but I suppose it’s a selfish reason.”
Now her expression appeared intrigued. “What’s that?”
“According to the reports I’ve read, Devil’s Island is the place where you saved the lives of three civilians. I don’t think I can fully appreciate all that you did until I’ve seen the place with my own eyes.” Heath’s voice went a little husky, and it occurred to him that Jonas would be impressed by the way his words had softened Tracie’s demeanor so quickly. But Heath hadn’t spoken that way to impress his boss.
Tracie blushed and dipped her head. “Well, it sounds like you and Jake have the day all worked out. It’s a long trip. Let’s get going.”
They loaded up a utility boat with supplies. Tracie balked when Heath got out the cold-water diving gear.
“I thought we were going into the sea cave?”
“We are.”
“In kayaks,” she stated.
Heath shook his head. “Underwater.”
“Isn’t it a little late in the year for that?”
“The air temperature and surface weather patterns will have little bearing on our dive once we get under water.” The way he understood it, Lake Superior had enough water mass that the surface water temperature didn’t begin to dip until later in the winter, though the depths tended to hover around a temperature of forty-six degrees year-round. But Heath focused his argument on the needs of the case. “The standing assumption is that Trevor’s body sank, or was sunk by his killers. If that’s the case, we should be able to dive and find it—along with any other clues the diamond smugglers may have left behind.” He took a step closer and softened his expression. “Your point about the season is a good one. The truth of it is, if we wait much longer, the lake will begin to ice over, and making this dive after that point would be distinctly more dangerous. I’ve read the weather reports. Today may be the last good day to do this.”
For a moment, Tracie looked as though she might continue her protest, but then she gulped a breath and started helping him load the supplies.
Heath wondered about her response. “Do you have experience cave diving or cavern diving?” he asked.
“I’ve had the usual Coast Guard dive training.”
Heath flinched internally. He didn’t know what the usual training was, but of course, she wouldn’t know that. Much as he needed to know her level of training, he didn’t want to risk giving away his true identity.
Cave diving was significantly more dangerous than diving in the open sea. Not only were there often underwater currents and visibility issues, but in an emergency, ascending directly to the surface was often not possible because of the enclosed space. That made reaching oxygen vastly more difficult when every second counted. He couldn’t think of a way to ask her if she recognized the added risk without revealing how little he knew of standard Coast Guard training. He’d just have to keep an eye on her. Hopefully his experience as a Navy SEAL would compensate for any lack on training as Trace’s part.
The weather was especially mild for late November, and though the temperature wouldn’t likely reach forty degrees, the lake was still free of ice. Heath offered to let Tracie steer.
“That’s all right. I know the islands. I’d rather navigate.” She had her long hair tied back in a fat twist at the nape of her neck, and a few blond strands escaped to dance against her cheeks in the brisk wind.
Once they had the boat headed toward the island, Heath had his best shot at getting Tracie to talk. Given her response when he’d mentioned her heroics the last time she’d been out to the island, he thought that might be a good topic to start with.
“I’ve read the report,” he began, knowing her fondness for directing him back to the written version of the story, “but I’d like to hear you tell me about what happened last month on Devil’s Island.”
Tracie must have finally softened to him after their encounter the evening before. Jonas had been right. Now she opened up without hesitation.
“Trevor and I were called out for a search and rescue on a Saturday night almost six weeks ago. A woman named Marilyn Adams was missing out on Devil’s Island. At that point we didn’t know what we were dealing with. I just figured it was another case of tourists going out too late in the season, underestimating how dangerous it can be out here, and getting caught in a fast-moving storm.
“But there was a lot more to it, as you know. Diamond smugglers had been operating out of a hidden sea cave under Devil’s Island, probably for at least ten years, bringing in synthetic gems through Canada. It wasn’t until an expert gemologist figured it out a few months ago and reported his find in a major gemology journal that these guys decided they need to patch the leaks in their operation.”
Heath nodded and kept his eyes on the helm. He knew there had actually been several reports filed on the gems over the years, but they’d never been able to follow up on them because the gemologists involved had mysteriously died shortly after their discoveries, and whatever notes or evidence they’d left behind had disappeared, leaving the FBI without anything to go on. But of course he couldn’t tell Tracie that without letting her know how he’d come by the information. So he simply nodded and hoped she’d keep talking.
“Marilyn Adams had several diamonds that had originated from the smugglers, and the way I understand it, they were afraid her diamonds could be traced back to them. They cooked up a plot to bring her and her family out to Devil’s Island and make their deaths looks like a collision between the remote wilderness and poor survival skills. By doing so, they also hoped to get their hands on some valuable property she owned—they needed a new source of income since their diamond gig was up.
“Are you confused yet?” Tracie pointed him around the next island.
“I think I’m following.” He steered them in the direction she’d indicated. “Their plan was pretty foolproof, as I understand it. They came very close to getting away with it.”
“Too close,” Tracie nodded. “If Scott Frasier and Abby Caldwell hadn’t managed to escape the island.” Her voice caught with emotion.
Heath looked at her with sympathy. He knew she had been tied up with the others in the smuggler’s hideout. She’d ultimately been the one to get help while the others fended off their captors. “And if you hadn’t arrived to help them,” he added.
“I was only doing my job,” she insisted, her features regaining their usual stoic demeanor. “And anyway, if Trevor hadn’t been involved with the smugglers, keeping the Coast Guard off their trail, I never would have become so tightly involved with the case. So you see, God can bring good things out of bad.” Her words faded, as though she felt self-conscious about the faith-filled statement even before she’d finished making it.
But the integrity of Tracie’s faith had only impressed Heath, and he quickly moved to keep the conversation going. “Once the smugglers didn’t need Trevor to keep us out of their hair any more, they got rid of him?”
“Pretty much. Tim thought Trevor had made some of the smugglers angry, and that may have been part of what got him killed. We suspect the head of their operation, a guy they called Captain Sal, was the one who pulled the trigger, but he won’t admit to anything yet.”
“Captain Sal,” Heath repeated. “He’s the prisoner we’re transporting back to Canada tomorrow.”
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