Carla Neggers - On Fire

Riley struggled to get to her feet. The crewman held her by the elbow, keeping her from going after Sam—or from passing out. “Don’t,” he said softly. “There’ll be an investigation. This will all sort itself out in due time.”

“But Emile—my grandfather—”

“He’s in the infirmary. He’ll be okay.”

Every part of her, mind and body, was spent. She couldn’t even lick her parched lips. “The fire was an accident. It wasn’t Emile’s fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault.”

The crewman made no response, but his eyes told her everything. He agreed with Sam Cassain. He believed Emile Labreque was responsible for the explosion and the fire that sank the Encounter and killed five people.

Riley clutched the folds of her blanket. Bennett. Oh, God. She wished she could start the day over and save the Encounter, save Bennett, save the crew. But the old ship was gone, and five people were dead, and Emile…her grandfather, she thought, was doomed.

R iley ignored the slight tremble in her hands and jammed the two ends of her high-performance paddle together. She zipped up her life vest. There was no reason to be nervous. She’d kayaked the coves and inlets of Schoodic Peninsula since she was six years old. Today’s conditions were near perfect: a bright, clear, still September morning, halfway between low tide and high tide.

She squinted at her grandfather, who’d come down from his cottage to the short stretch of gravelly beach to see her off. “Come with me,” she said.

He shook his head. “You go on. You need to get back out on the water.”

“I’ve been out on the water. Caroline Granger had us onto her yacht for a cocktail party Friday night.”

“Cocktails.” Emile snorted. “That’s not getting out on the water.”

She knew what he meant. She hadn’t been on a boat, a ship, even a kayak, since the Encounter disaster a year ago. On the Granger yacht off Mount Desert Island Friday night, she couldn’t make herself go below. She’d never been claustrophobic, not until the watertight doors had shut her and Emile into the diving compartment, not until the two of them had endured the hot, cramped, terrifying hours in the experimental submersible.

This had to end, she told herself. She was a scientist, director of marine and aquatic animal recovery and rehabilitation at the Boston Center for Oceanographic Research. She couldn’t get spooked about the water.

“I shouldn’t kayak without a partner.”

Emile shrugged. “You’ll stay close to shore. Just watch out for fog rolling in later.”

“You’re sure you won’t come with me?” she asked him.

“I can kayak anytime I want.”

One of the perks of his exile, he seemed to be saying. After the disaster of the Encounter, Emile Labreque had shocked the world by retiring to the Maine fishing village where his family had settled generations earlier. It had been his home base for years; he owned a small cottage, where Riley and her sister had spent summers growing up. He looked after a small, private nature preserve on a part-time basis. The last hurrah of a legend.

He eyed Riley as she dragged her shocking pink, siton-top ocean kayak to the water’s edge. He wore his trademark black Henley and khakis, and at seventy-six, he was as alert and intense as ever. She’d inherited his lean, wiry physique, his dark hair and eyes, his sharp features—and, some said, his single-mindedness.

“You’re planning to stop on the island?”

She nodded. “I packed a lunch. If the fog doesn’t roll in, I’d like to have a little picnic on the rocks, like the old days.”

He gazed out at the water. The bay sparkled in the morning sun. Labreque Island was farther up the point, almost at the mouth of the bay—a tiny, windswept landscape of rock, evergreens and sand that had been in Emile’s family since the turn of the century.

“I should warn you. John Straker’s staying at the cottage.”

“Straker? Why? What’s he doing back here?”

“He took a couple of bullets a while back. He came home to recuperate. I let him use the cottage on the island.”

Riley digested this news as if it were a hair ball. John Straker wasn’t one of her favorite people. He’d left the peninsula years ago to join the FBI. A lot of people in his home village couldn’t believe the FBI had accepted him. She’d only seen him a few times since. “Who shot him, criminals or his friends?”

“A fugitive who took a couple of teenagers hostage. It had something to do with domestic terrorism.”

“Right up Straker’s alley. Anyone else hurt?”

Emile shook his head. “You know, John’s not much company on a good day.”

“This is true. I’ll just have to keep to the other side of the island. He won’t even know I’m there. I didn’t realize the cottage on the island was still inhabitable.”

“He’s fixed it up a bit. Not much.”

“How long’s he been out there?”

“Since April.”

She shuddered, then grinned at her grandfather. “Well, tough. I’m not afraid of John Straker. Will you be here when I get back?”

“I doubt it.”

She hesitated, debating. “I’m stopping in Camden on my way back to Boston. Is there anything you want me to tell Mom and Sig?”

“No.”

Riley nodded without comment. Perhaps, she thought, too much had been said already. Her mother and sister—Emile’s only daughter and older granddaughter—blamed him for the Encounter, for Bennett Granger’s death, for the deaths of four crew members and friends, for Riley’s near death. For Emile’s near death and the shattering of a lifetime’s reputation.

Of course, everyone blamed Emile for the Encounter. Except Riley. Sam Cassain’s assessment of what had happened—his conviction that Emile had cut too many safety corners—wasn’t enough for her. She needed hard evidence before she could damn her grandfather to the pits of hell. But she was in a distinct minority.

Emile wished her well and started back along the path up to his rustic cottage. Corea, Prospect Harbor, Winter Harbor, Schoodic Point. These were the places of her childhood, tucked onto a jagged, granite-bound peninsula, one of dozens that shaped and extended Maine’s scenic coastline. Riley knew all its inlets, bays and coves. It was here she’d discovered her own love for the ocean, one that had nothing to do with being a Labreque or a St. Joe but only with being herself.

It was here, too, that she’d drawn blood in her one and only act of out-and-out violence, when she’d hurled a rock at John Straker. He was sixteen, she was twelve, and he’d deserved it. His own mother had said so as she’d handed him a dish towel for the blood and hauled him down to the doctor’s office. He’d required six stitches to sew up the slit Riley had left above his right eye. She wondered if he’d had to explain the scar to the FBI. Amazing they’d let him in. Bonked on the head by a twelve-year-old. It couldn’t bode well.

Now he’d been shot. Domestic terrorism. She grimaced. Well, she had no intention of letting a cranky, shot-up FBI agent ruin her picnic on her favorite island.

She slid her kayak into the incoming tide. Given the warm weather, she’d opted against a wet suit and wore her Tevas without socks. Maine water was never warm, but she’d be fine. Her shirt and drawstring pants were of a quick-drying fabric, and she’d filled two dry packs with all the essentials. One held her picnic lunch. The other held everything she might need if she got stranded for any reason: waterproof matches, rope, emergency thermal blanket that folded up into a tiny square, rations she’d eat only in an emergency, aluminum foil, portable first-aid kit, flashlight, compass, charts, whistle, marine band radio, extra water and her jackknife. And duct tape. She’d zipped an extra compass, matches and a water bottle into her life vest, in case she got separated from her kayak.