P. Alderman - A Killing Tide

After Gary had left, she'd given in and let the dog sleep on the bed. She had a sneaking suspicion that Zeke was afraid of the dark. He'd been so rattled by their late-night visitor that the only way she'd gotten him to quit pacing, his claws click-click-clicking on the hardwood floor, was to invite him into her bed.

Zeke's forepaw now lay across her stomach, holding her down, and his head lay on her shoulder, tucked into the crook of her neck. He was sound asleep, his hind legs twitching as he chased imaginary prey. She lifted his paw and tried to roll him over. He groaned, snuffling against her neck and licking her ear, then went back to sleep.

It was the same ear that Michael Chapman had licked the night before.

Muttering to herself about the male gender, she lifted the edge of the covers and eased sideways out from under Zeke, half-falling onto the floor beside the bed. She dragged herself to her feet and went into the bathroom to splash water on her face.

After brushing her teeth and throwing cold water on her face, she glanced in the mirror. Big mistake. Two nights of little sleep had left her with purple smudges under her eyes. Worry about Gary had added hollows to her cheeks.

Taking a quick shower, she turned it to a bracing icy cold toward the end, forcing herself to stand under the stream until she felt more awake. Then she tamed her wet hair into a French braid and applied light makeup. Rummaging around in her dresser, she pulled on a clean pair of jeans, a turtleneck, and a heavy cotton sweater.

As she dressed, she assessed the weather. The wind was picking up in velocity, splattering raindrops against the panes of her bedroom window. Another storm was moving in, and it looked like it might have some punch to it. She'd check the marine forecast, but she was certain there'd be gale force winds and at least fifteen feet of storm surge, even close in to shore. No one would be going out crabbing today.

Sighing, she grabbed the pair of running shoes she had drying on the heat register and headed downstairs. Rounding the corner into the kitchen, she came to a halt.

There was a cup of freshly brewed coffee sitting on the edge of the counter, doctored the way she liked it with a small amount of cream, still steaming. It held down a handwritten note. She picked up the coffee and the note, noticing that Zeke was gone. Before she could read it, the phone rang.

She reached for the handset, then hesitated, unsure if she could cope with another hang-up. The phone rang again. She couldn't ignore it—it could be anyone, even Gary. Just this once, she wished her brother was into technology and had installed Caller ID. She sighed and picked up the portable unit.

"So glad you thought to call me about the break-in." Lucy's voice had a distinctly sarcastic edge to it.

Kaz relaxed. "What could you have done? Send the lab guys over to dust for fingerprints?"

"For starters, yeah."

"He was wearing gloves."

She heard Lucy groan. "I don't want to know how you know that."

"I noticed when I swung the baseball bat at him."

"Jesus Christ." There was a pause while Lucy drank something. "Does the word caution mean anything to you? The guy could've had a gun."

"That's already been pointed out to me, more times than I wanted to hear," Kaz said mildly. "Did you call for a reason?"

"Where the hell was the surveillance team? Jackson or Brenner should've been right outside."

Kaz shrugged, then realized Lucy couldn't see it. "You tell me. When I chased the guy out the front door, there was no one out there." She didn't add that Jackson had been there later, when Gary had shown up for a visit.

Lucy sighed loudly. "All right. I'll send over a team to check for fingerprints, just in case. And I'll also find out where Jackson was—he should've been out there. Can you please stay out of trouble for the remainder of the day?"

Kaz didn't bother to answer. She could hear Lucy shutting a door and walking somewhere outside, her steps crunching on gravel. She was probably leaving for the station. A new thought occurred to Kaz. "Hey. How did you know that someone had broken in here?"

"Your jerk of a brother." Lucy disconnected, leaving Kaz standing in the middle of her kitchen holding a dead phone. She realized her mouth had fallen open, and she snapped it shut.

So she wasn't the only one Gary had visited last night. Interesting. And since Gary wasn't behind bars this morning, that meant Lucy hadn't arrested him. Even more interesting.

It appeared that the men in their lives were giving both of them trouble. Speaking of which—she stared at the note she still held in her hand, focusing on the bold, black scrawl. Michael's handwriting was as forceful as the rest of his personality.

"I assume the weather's too lousy to go out," he'd written in large, slanted letters. "And I didn't figure you'd want me to join you in the shower—at least, not yet." She smiled a little at his cockiness, feeling a trickle of heat as an image of the two of them together under all that steam snuck into her mind. As he'd intended, no doubt.

Then she frowned as she read the rest of the message. "STAY PUT. Zeke and I have work to do. We'll be back this evening. GET SOME REST."

That was it—he hadn't even bothered to sign it.

She crumpled the note in her fist and tossed it into the trash. The man had more than his share of arrogance.

Unfortunately, it didn't make him any less attractive.

#

By late morning, Kaz was pacing her living room like a caged animal. Each wind gust rattled the loose pane in the south window that they'd never gotten around to glazing. Even though she'd closed the damper on the fireplace, puffs of ash floated onto the floor. Rain now came down in drenching sheets, and she could feel the barometric pressure dropping like a stone. The coastal storms had always made her twitchy, and this one was no exception.

She'd already downloaded email and taken care of any outstanding issues from the San Francisco office. That had taken less than an hour—her partner had things well under control. It seemed to be working out fine to telecommute--at least, for now. Which had her thinking about the possibility of a more permanent, commuting-type setup. Of letting her partner handle more of the day-to-day responsibilities.

Though it would've been nice if there'd been enough work this morning to keep her from going stir-crazy.

"Stay put," she muttered, stacking a pile of books in the bookshelf, then adjusting them so that they lay on their sides, then moving them to a different shelf altogether. Like she could just sit around, doing nothing. Another hour of this and she'd need horse tranquilizers.

She couldn't see the mooring basin from this end of town, but she hoped none of the fishermen had gone out before the storm hit. Worry for them had been nagging at her since she'd awakened. Most likely, though, they were camped out in the Workman's Café on the waterfront, waiting to see if the weather let up. Or on their boats, killing the time by knocking out some of the items on their ever-present repair lists.

But her concern for the fishermen was nothing next to the hysteria that threatened to bubble up whenever she thought about Gary. He was out there, somewhere close by, trying to catch people who were capable of murder. And trying to evade the cops who, with the exception of Lucy and Ivar, wanted his head served up on a platter.

A nervous widow, fishermen who were too scared to talk, and something that people wanted. What did it all mean? Was it drug-related, as Michael seemed to think? Were some of the fishermen running drugs? Could that have been what Bjorn had been alluding to when he'd said that some of them were involved?

But if so, how had Ken gotten mixed up in it? It didn't make sense—he was a family man, not a drug runner. She couldn't imagine him taking those kinds of chances, not with his wife and kids. Then again, Bobby had been horribly sick, and Ken would do anything for him. But Kaz knew beyond a doubt that Gary wouldn't touch drugs, not for any reason.