Lois Richer - Identity - Undercover

“It’s not too hot, Callie, nor too spicy,” he told her quietly. “It just takes a few minutes to identify the flavors hitting my tastebuds. I like it very much.”

“Which is a nice way of saying you can’t figure out what kind of sauce it’s supposed to be.” She watched his face, eyes brimming with curiosity. “Your stomach must have gotten stronger. You didn’t even comment on the paprika.”

Max let that pass, finished his meal, then pushed away the plate. “Nobody cooks like you, Callie,” he told her sincerely.

She seemed confused by his words, as if she couldn’t understand that he actually liked what she’d prepared. How humbling to realize that things he’d said and done had made her feel inadequate.

They sat in the silence as twilight fell around them. Encouraged by the fact that she didn’t make some excuse to hurry below to do the dishes, Max told her stories about the dog he’d adopted, the chocolate Lab he’d named Radar.

“Why Radar?”

“He can sense table scraps coming his way at a hundred feet,” he told her with a grin. “He’s boarding at the vet’s.”

Callie’s whole face seemed to soften as she stared out over the water. “I always wanted a dog,” she whispered. “But where I lived, dogs weren’t—”

Her cell phone rang. Max longed to beg her to ignore it, to finish what she’d been going to say. But she jumped up, hurried away from the table to dig it out of her backpack.

“Yes?” She listened for several minutes, then clicked it closed.

“Anything important?”

“An update. Finders got a report that Josiah was spotted on his way to Ketchikan. Apparently he hates staying in town so he’ll probably camp out with a couple of friends for two nights and show up in Ketchikan sometime the day after tomorrow. He usually doesn’t stay longer than a day.”

Meaning they had to get there ASAP. Max sighed. Always her work came between them. At least that’s what he was blaming it on this time.

He rose.

“I’ll get us under way if you don’t mind cleaning up this mess. Thanks for dinner, too. It was great.”

“You’re welcome. I’ll bring you up some tea when it’s ready.” She watched him ascend to the upper deck. “Isn’t it dangerous to sail at night?”

“We haven’t got time to sail, Callie. You need to get there fast so we’ll use the engines. I have radar, GPS, the whole deal installed on Hope so there’s not much danger. If I push it, we just might make it to Ketchikan in time to meet Josiah. A good thing I had the engine upgraded when I designed this baby.”

Max pulled anchor and backed them out of the cove, set his bearings and plotted his course. It was going to be tight, but there was an outside chance he could get her there by the day after tomorrow and he was taking it.

A balloon of pride lodged inside his gut as Hope skimmed over the smooth, flat surface of the water. His creation, his design. And they both worked beautifully. He made a small course correction, noticed a new blip on his radar. Someone else was going their way. Not unusual given they were traveling the Inside Passage.

Just for fun, he tracked starboard for a while. The blip followed. He pushed the throttle up a couple of knots. The distance between them expanded only for a few seconds, then the blip caught up. Someone was monitoring their course so closely they adjusted their own to follow.

Now that was odd.

Max wasn’t sure how much time passed before Callie returned with an insulated mug of steaming hot tea. He took a sip and smiled. Sugared exactly right. “Perfect. Thank you.”

“Is your headache gone?” she asked quietly.

“Yes, thanks. Whatever you gave me certainly did the trick.”

She stood beside him, protected by the cabin’s glass surround, facing forward as the bow cut through the water.

A soft, sweet rush of comfort filled him that she was there, beside him—until she spoke and the peace between them disintegrated like fog in sun.

“You’re trying, Max. And I really appreciate that.”

He noted a little tremble in her voice, saw her lick her lips, draw a deep breath.

“I didn’t file for divorce lightly, but the truth we both know is that you can’t forgive me for what I did. I can’t forgive myself. That’s why I had the papers drawn up and sent to you. Once we reach Ketchikan, I hope you’ll sign them.”

What she’d done? He frowned, fought to make sense of her words. Did Callie really think that she alone was responsible for whatever had gone wrong between them? He knew losing the baby had changed her, that he should have talked about it more, tried to understand what she was going through. But he’d been so angry when she’d immediately taken another assignment overseas—he couldn’t understand that. Why had she run away? Why then?

He’d told her from the beginning that he wanted a family. But after she’d taken off and stayed away, he’d begun to wonder if Callie had wanted a child—or if she’d just let him think she did.

“You’re in a bit of a rush to file for divorce already, aren’t you?” he asked tightly. “We haven’t even tried to talk, haven’t spent time trying to figure out if we can fix what’s gone wrong. I think we owe our marriage that.”

“There is no point in talking. You don’t know me, Max. You never did. That’s not your fault. It’s mine, it’s who I am. I’m not the kind of person you should have married. I realize that now. But I can’t take any more guilt for the past. I—” She hiccupped a sob, stifled it. “I can’t.”

As quietly as she came, she disappeared below. Except for the well-tuned purr of the motor, all was quiet on the boat. But Max knew Callie wasn’t sleeping.

The past, one tiny chunk of it, lay between them, dead, buried even, but not forgotten.

Never forgotten.

Max preferred to face life head-on, hit the hard spots and work his way through to a resolution. But to do that in this marriage he needed Callie’s cooperation and it was clear she wasn’t about to talk to him—not tonight, not ever—by the sounds of what she’d just said.

So what now?

He glanced at the console, noted the tiny red blip on the radar that continued to draw closer. He changed his course three times, watched the blip move three times.

This wasn’t just another craft traveling the Inside Passage. Someone was deliberately following them.

Why?

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