On Fire. Carla Neggers

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СКАЧАТЬ use swearing,” a voice said behind her. “Fog’ll do what it’ll do.”

      Riley swallowed a curse and came to an abrupt halt on her boulder. Straker. He materialized out of milky fog and white pines, exactly as she remembered him. Two bullets and his years as a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation hadn’t changed him. He was still thickly built, tawny-haired, gray-eyed and annoying.

      “You’re the oceanographer,” he said. “You should have known the fog’d get here before you could sneak off.”

      “I’m not clairvoyant.”

      “I knew.”

      Of course he’d know. He was the Maine native who knew everything. As if timing a fog bank were part of his genetic makeup. “Have you been spying on me?”

      His eyes, as gray as the fog, settled on her. He didn’t answer. His heavyweight charcoal sweater emphasized the strength and breadth of his powerful shoulders. He didn’t look as if he’d been shot twice. He didn’t, Riley thought, look as if he’d done anything with his life except fish the coast of downeast Maine. He looked strong, fit, at ease with his island environment—and not happy about having her in it. But wisely or unwisely, she’d never been afraid of John Straker.

      “Well, Straker, if possible you’re even worse than I remember.”

      “Fog could be here for hours. Days. It’s going to get cold.”

      It was already cold. “I tried not to disturb you.”

      “I spotted you through my binoculars. You’re hard to miss. You looked like you were paddling a pink detergent bottle.”

      “It’s a bright color so boats will see it. Forest green and dark blue wouldn’t stand out against the background of water and trees.”

      He narrowed his eyes, the only change in his expression. “No kidding.”

      He was making fun of her. No matter how much time she’d spent in Maine, how many degrees she had or what her experience—no matter how long he himself had stayed away—he was the local and she was the outsider. It was an old argument. He still had the scar on his right temple from one installment he’d lost.

      “I thought Emile would warn you off. I’m not much company these days.”

      “Emile did warn me, and you’ve never been much company, Straker. Where were you shot?”

      “Up near the Canadian border.”

      The man did try one’s nerves. He always had, from as far back as she could remember. When she was six and he ten, he’d enjoyed jerking her chain. He jerked everyone’s chain.

      “Obviously your smart mouth’s still intact,” she stated.

      “Everything’s intact that’s supposed to be intact.” He squinted out at the fog and mist; there was no wind now, no birds crying near or far. “You could be here until morning. Have fun.”

      Naturally, he had no intention of inviting her back to the cottage to wait out the fog—and Riley would freeze to death before she asked. “I love the fog,” she told him.

      He vanished into the trees.

      She thrust her hands onto her hips and yelled, “And don’t you dare spy on me!”

      He was gone. He wasn’t coming back. He’d let her sit out here and freeze. When she’d been eleven and gotten into trouble in high winds after taking one of Emile’s kayaks into the bay without permission, Straker had plucked her from the water in his father’s lobster boat. He’d been unmerciful in telling her what an idiot she was and had promised that next time he’d let her drown.

      And she’d cried. It had been awful. She’d been cold, wet and scared, and there was fifteen-year-old John Straker threatening to pitch her overboard if she didn’t stop crying. “You made your bed,” he’d told her. “Lie in it.”

      “Bastard,” she muttered now. She’d never intimidated John Straker. That was for sure.

      She scooted off her boulder and unstrapped her dry pack. Damn. She was supposed to be back in Boston tonight, at work in the morning. She’d come to Maine last Wednesday for a round of fund-raising dinners, meetings and informal lectures at the Granger summer home on Mount Desert Island. Caroline Granger, Bennett’s second wife and now his widow, had decided to end her year of mourning and invited the directors and staff of the Boston Center for Oceanographic Studies north, perhaps to indicate she was ready to take her husband’s place as the center’s benefactor.

      No one had mentioned Emile Labreque, living in exile a stone’s throw to the north. Riley hadn’t even told her father, Richard St. Joe, a whale biologist with the center, that she was extending her stay a few days to visit her grandfather.

      With a groan of frustration, she dug out her emergency thermal blanket. It looked and felt like pliable aluminum foil. She unfolded it section by section, telling herself it’d be worse if she’d been unprepared. There was no shame in having to use her emergency supplies.

      Still, she felt self-conscious and humiliated. She blamed Straker. He enjoyed seeing her in this predicament.

      She climbed up onto a different boulder and threw the blanket over her shoulders. It was effective, but un-romantic. A fire was a last resort. Fires on islands could be deadly, and even a small campfire could scar a rock forever. She’d have to find a sandy spot.

      She clutched her crinkly blanket around her, her windbreaker already limp and cold from the dampness, and followed a narrow path along the top of the rock ledge. It was just past high tide, and below her only the water’s edge was visible through the shroud of fog. Her path veered down among the rocks. She took it, relieved to have a safe outlet for her restless energy.

      Fog was normal, she reminded herself. It wasn’t like an engine explosion and a raging fire aboard a ship. This wasn’t the Encounter. This was a great morning on the water with an aggravating ending—but not a traumatic one, not a dangerous one.

      The path came to an end at the base of a huge, rounded boulder that Riley remembered from hikes on the island in years past. In happier days, she thought. Her parents, her sister, and later Matthew Granger would pack a couple of coolers and head out to Labreque Island for the day. Emile and Bennett had seldom joined them. There was always work, always the center. Now Bennett was dead, Emile was living in exile, his daughter wasn’t speaking to him and his granddaughter’s marriage to Matthew Granger was in turmoil.

      Her sister’s husband had made a brief appearance on Mount Desert Island, long enough to demonstrate he hadn’t put the tragedy of the Encounter and his father’s death behind him. Matt shared Sam Cassain’s belief that Emile should be in jail on charges of negligent homicide.

      Riley shoved back the unwelcome rush of images and plunged ahead, leaping from rock to rock, heedless of the fog, her flapping blanket, the memories she was trying to escape.

      She walked to the edge of a flat, barnacle-covered boulder below the tide line. At its base, water swirled in cracks and crevices with the receding tide, exposing more barnacle-covered rocks, shallow tide pools, slippery seaweed. Her Tevas provided a firm grip on the rocks, although her toes were red and cold.

      Should СКАЧАТЬ