Hooked (A Romance on the Edge Novel)

by Tiffinie Helmer

  He looked thoughtful. “We’ll have to wait and see what the medical examiner says. You’ve made an interesting point. With the boat dry, it opens the possibility for someone to board the Albatross without anyone seeing or hearing him. He could have snuck onboard and laid in wait. Or boarded when he knew Kendrick was alone. The incoming surf would have washed away any evidence of his approach.”

  “Meaning the killer could have been a set netter and not a drifter?”

  “Exactly.”

  A gunshot split the air over their heads.

  Garrett shoved Sonya to the ground and covered her with his body, but not before she caught sight of Aidan on the opposite side of the bank where the creek sliced through the tundra.

  A sawed-off shotgun nestled against his shoulder.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “You okay?” Garrett demanded of Sonya, his weapon already palmed and pointed in the direction of the blast.

  “Y-yeah.” She was trying to catch her breath, and Garrett knew he’d probably knocked the wind out of her when he’d shoved her to the ground. He shifted to the side to give her more room to breathe. “Was that a gunshot?” she gasped out.

  “Yeah, your harmless neighbor is shooting at us.”

  “That can’t be right. There has to be another reason.” She sounded almost desperate as though she was trying to convince herself of something different than what her eyes had already seen.

  Sonya strained to rise, but Garrett threw his free arm over her and knocked her back to the tundra. “Stay down!”

  “This is crazy. Aidan can’t be shooting at us. There has to be another—”

  Another blast fractured the twilight.

  “That’s it.” Garrett clenched his teeth and tightened his finger on the trigger of his weapon. One shot and this whole mess would be over, and Aidan Harte would be out of the picture. He knew Aidan had something to do with the “accidents” that had plagued Sonya all season. “Harte! Drop the gun, and step away from it.”

  Harte lowered the shotgun from his shoulder but didn’t release it.

  “Everything’s—you’re—now.” Harte’s every other word got carried away on the wind and Garrett couldn’t make out what Harte said. All he knew was the man had yet to drop the sawed-off shotgun to the ground.

  “Drop the gun!” Garrett rose to a crouched position and held his own weapon on Harte. Harte’s face paled, and he dropped the shotgun like it had bit him.

  “What in tar nation is going on here?” Nikolai hollered, half-running around the side of the cabin, cradling his injured hand. He was followed by Margaret with her own sawed-off shotgun, at the ready.

  “Stay back, and let me handle this,” Garrett said, keeping his weapon trained on Harte.

  “This—big—understanding,” Harte hollered, though the wind continued to pick and choose which words it would allow to be carried. Then he began to point.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Sonya said from behind Garrett.

  “I told you to stay down.” Couldn’t she follow the simplest of commands? He was trying to keep her alive, damn it.

  “Garrett, put your gun down,” she said.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “I’m sure there’s a good explanation.” She touched his shoulder. “Let him explain before you go all cop on us.”

  He was a cop, damn it. Harte was lucky he wasn’t riddled full of holes right now. Garrett tightened his lips. “Fine, we’ll see what he has to say.” Then he’d take him down.

  “I tried to get your attention,” Aidan said again, having joined them from across the creek. They’d all entered the cabin and had taken seats around the table. Garrett and Sonya were on one side, Grams and Gramps sitting cozy across from them, while Aidan sat on Sonya’s left at the end of the table. “With the wind, I guess, you couldn’t hear me. That bear was within twenty feet of you—”

  “If there was a bear,” Garrett narrowed his brows. “I’d still like to take a look at the area, see if there are any signs.”

  “Be my guest,” Aidan said. “Though I doubt you’d be able to see anything in the dark.”

  “You couldn’t think of another way to get our attention, other than shooting at us?” Garrett continued to fire questions.

  “I wasn’t shooting at you. I was trying to scare off a bear before it stumbled into you.”

  “Isn’t it a bit convenient that a bear wandered close while you happened to be in the vicinity with a shotgun handy?”

  “I was out for a walk and everyone knows you don’t stroll around on the tundra at this time of night without protection.” Aidan turned to Sonya. “Which you know better, Sonya.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about bears—”

  “That was apparent,” he said sarcastically.

  Sonya dragged in a deep breath. Aidan must’ve seen Garrett kissing her. There could be no other reason for the poison in his brown eyes. They’d already gone over this. They were just friends now. He needed to stop playing the jealous boyfriend.

  “Okay, kids,” Gramps began. “No one was hurt, and the bear was scared off. Aidan, you want a piece of cake? Maggie May baked up a tasty German Chocolate cake today.”

  “Yeah.” He sighed, though he didn’t take his eyes off Sonya sitting next to Garrett. “That’d be great, thanks. By the way, I saw that old outboard of yours on the tarp. Did you get it running?”

  “Sure as heck, did.” Gramps grinned from ear to ear, and Sonya wished that she’d been the one to bring up the outboard instead of Aidan. She knew Gramps wasn’t happy to be no longer fishing, due to his injury. He wanted to be part of the operation, to feel needed, wanted, useful. She should have recognized this and made more of an effort herself. “Want to give me hand tomorrow mounting it on the skiff?” Gramps asked, sounding like a kid who was dying to play with a new toy.

  “You can count on me.” Aidan took a big bite of cake and groaned with pleasure. “Margaret, if you weren’t already married, I’d make a play for you myself.”

  Grams actually blushed. Sonya didn’t like where this was going. Granted, Aidan had always been part of the family, but there needed to be limits, especially since there was no way she was getting back together with Aidan. Her family needed to stop encouraging him too.

  “Gramps, I can give you a hand with that engine in the morning,” Sonya said.

  “Great, Aidan and I can sure use your help. As heavy as that engine is, it’ll take all of us with my bum hand.”

  Well, that went and backfired. If she made a big deal out of Aidan not helping now that she volunteered, she’d come off bitchy. Breaking up was hard to do, she thought. Her family was comfortable with Aidan. She’d have to find a way to be comfortable too. It would be easier if Aidan didn’t look at her like a pound puppy in need of a loving home.

  “If you’d like help with the engine tonight, I’d be happy to lend a hand,” Garrett added.

  “Much appreciated, but I’d rather do it when it’s a bit lighter outside,” Gramps said. “My eyes don’t see so well in the dark anymore, and it’s a bugger bolting that engine to the skiff.”

  A silence settled over the group that had tension testing the waters. It was blatantly obvious how comfortable Aidan was with her family and vice versa, while Garrett, though welcomed, didn’t have that natural rhythm which had developed with Aidan over the years.

  “Well, I’d better be headed back,” Garrett said. “The tide will be getting high soon.” Garrett rose to his feet, while Aidan extended his, easing back in his seat, like he had all the time in the world and was welcome to stay as long as he wanted.

  Sonya wanted to kick his feet from under the table.

  “Walk me out, Sonya?” Garrett asked, holding out his hand in what really wasn’t an invitation, more of a “this is my woman” message directed toward Aidan.

  With both men’s eyes on her, Sonya choose to go with Garrett, almost stumbling when Aidan’s stare narrowed with temper.

  “I need to know what�
��s still ‘personal’ between you and Harte,” Garrett said, as they walked in step across the beach toward his Jeep. A burnished moon glistened over the dark surface of the ocean, painting a coppery trail to the horizon.

  “I don’t want to get into it.” Sonya wished now that she’d decided to stay in the cabin. The day had already been way too long to venture into the past with Garrett.

  He grabbed her arm, and swiveled her around to face him. “Too damn bad. Every instinct I have is pointing me in Harte’s direction. Now, tell me.”

  “I can’t.” She looked past him, down the beach. The area was deserted except for an eagle feasting on a fish that had washed up on shore after falling out of someone’s net.

  “Can’t? Or won’t, Sonya?” Garrett pressed.

  “What difference does it make?”

  “Can’t, tells me you don’t trust me. Won’t, that you are protecting Harte. Do you still care about him?”

  She bit her lip. How did she answer that in a way that satisfied them both?

  “Sonya.” Garrett placed his hands on her shoulders and forced her to look at him, his eyes drilling into hers. “Why are you protecting him?”

  “I’m not really. It’s just that…I can’t even contemplate that Aidan would be behind what happened to Kendrick or the attacks on me and my family.” She shook her head and wished she hadn’t as a headache had begun to develop. “Aidan has been a part of our family forever. I even thought that someday we would…”

  “That you would what? Marry?”

  Her eyes shifted to the encroaching tide and then back to his. “To be honest, yes.”

  “Why didn’t you marry?” Garrett swallowed as though the words had been difficult to vocalize. “What happened, Sonya?”

  “What always happens when couples aren’t meant to be, we had a fight that couldn’t be resolved.”

  “What did you fight about?”

  “We’ve already been over this.”

  “And we’ll go over it again until I get the full picture.”

  “Fine.” She sighed in resignation. “Fishing, remember? We fought over me wanting to drift.”

  “Why did that break you up? Why weren’t you able to work through it? What else happened?”

  Here was where it got tricky. If she told him that Aidan had hit her, she knew where Garrett would go with that information. “You need to understand something about Aidan. First, his father, Cranky—I mean Earl—is a real bastard. Aidan grew up in a house where his parents fought. A lot. Earl beat his mother, and even though Aidan hasn’t said as much, I think he even beat Aidan.”

  Garrett’s mouth thinned. “Go on.”

  “That night we fought it got…physical.”

  “He beat you?” His eyes turned to steel.

  She took a long time answering but then couldn’t find a way around it. “Yes.”

  “He hit you, and you don’t think he could be a part of this?” Garrett threw his hands out to the sides. “A man who would raise his hand to a woman has no limits.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t understand.” She folded her arms. The night air suddenly turned chilly.

  “Understand what? Don’t tell me you think it was your fault? You are not one of those women who feel that they are to blame. Come on, Sonya. Tell me you hit the son of a bitch back?”

  This man did know a thing or two about her. “That’s beside the point. What I’m trying to get across was that when Aidan hit me, it scared him as much or more than it did me. He hasn’t touched me that way since, and I called an end to the relationship. According to Aidan, he’s been getting help. He hates what his dad did to his mother and is determined not to turn out like him.”

  “That’s all a nice fish tale, but who’s to say part of Aidan isn’t just like his father? A part he can’t control. I’ve seen it happen before. Dual personalities: one tows the line, the other is psychotic and believes that if I can’t have her, no one else can.” He ran a hand through his short hair. “Sonya, Aidan doesn’t have an alibi for the night of Kendrick’s death. Nor can he verify his whereabouts for when your window was shot out. Not to mention, he had the perfect set up to mess with your skiffs.” Garrett indicated the Harte’s camp up the beach.

  “Yeah, but you’re forgetting, I’m his alibi for when Wes was hurt and for the damage that was done to the reel.”

  “Maybe he had an accomplice. His dad? His uncle? Possibly both of them?”

  Sonya vehemently shook her head. “I don’t buy it. Aidan wouldn’t do that to me. He loves me.” He’d told her that very afternoon how much he still loved her, and she believed him.

  “Psychotic, remember?” Garrett tapped his temple.

  “He might be troubled, but he isn’t psychotic.”

  “Sonya, right now, you can’t trust anyone. You can’t let whatever you feel for Harte cloud your judgment. You need to be on your guard.”

  “What about you? Should I be on my guard against you?”

  He paused. “Yes.” Then his next words threw her into the deep end of the pool minus a lifejacket. “For starters, there’s part of me who hopes you’re pregnant, because it’ll insure that I’m part of your life, regardless if you want me to be or not.”

  “Whoa.” She held her hands in front of her as panic and pleasure warred inside her. “Back up the boat.”

  “Babe, the boat’s sailed.” Garrett took a threatening step, scowling down at her. “Do you have any idea what I want to do with you? How hard it’s been to concentrate on my job today having you within reaching distance and not being able to touch you?” He hauled her against him now, his body making an impression on hers that caused her knees to weaken. He lowered his face, the breath of his words caressed her lips, prompting them to part with wanting. “If Harte feels about you half the way I do, I feel sorry for the bastard.” Then he crushed her lips under the plundering pressure of his.

  Her world tipped, or was it Garrett pulling her off her feet? Either way, she knew the ground she walked on was shaky at best.

  Rather than do what she should and put an end to this, Sonya scaled his body, wrapping her legs tight around his waist. He groaned and swiveled. Crushing her in his arms, he pressed her against the cold metal side of the Jeep.

  “I’ve wanted to take you into my arms all day.” His teeth nipped down her neck. “Kiss you like this.” His lips conquered as they persuaded. She felt his frustration, his confusion, his need. “I felt impotent standing by while Judd questioned you like a criminal.”

  She giggled like a teenager and it felt fabulous, liberating. “You sure don’t feel impotent now.”

  “Far from it.” He gave her a devilish grin that promised dark and wondrous things.

  They fumbled to free clothing, Garrett cursing the stubborn zipper on her jeans. Salt air had a way of corroding all metals. She didn’t care about the cold air hitting her backside as he freed the zipper and tugged off her pants, not when Garrett made her feel like she was in the middle of a raging bonfire.

  “You’d better damn well have a condom with you this time, cop.”

  “I bought a pack at the cannery this morning,” he panted. “We’re good to go for twelve.”

  She choked out a laugh. It was heady to not think of consequences, responsibility, or restrictions and, for once in her life, just live in the moment.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Sonya straightened her clothes, and watched until she could no longer see Garrett’s taillights on the Jeep they’d just made desperate love against. A tickled smile seemed to be permanently fixed on her mouth. She’d never done anything so reckless. It felt exhilarating, and naughty, and she didn’t even question her reasons for having her way with him. Or did he have his way with her? It didn’t really matter, for they’d both had their way and then some. She turned and found herself humming as she sauntered down the beach, taking pleasure in the magical moonlight, the rhythmic waves, and the stirring breeze heavy with the promise of rain.

  “Enjoy yourself
,” Aidan bit out from the dark shadows of the alder bushes that marked the trail leading up the bluff to the cabin.

  Sonya squeaked back the scream trapped in her throat. “Aidan? What are you doing?”

  “Waiting for you.” The tone of his voice caused the hairs on the back of her neck to rise.

  Could Garrett be right about Aidan? Was there another side to him? Because she sure as hell didn’t recognize the man in front of her right now.

  “Why were you waiting for me?” Had he seen her and Garrett together?

  Had he watched?

  Maybe Garrett’s suspicions were correct and Aidan hadn’t been scaring off a bear earlier. She scanned him for weapons but didn’t see anything except the fisted hands at his sides.

  She shivered.

  “I wanted to talk to you.” He stepped from the shadows and the light from the moon shone over the sharp angles of his face, making him look like one of the dark characters in his graphic novels.

  “What about?” She swallowed and yearned to take a step back, but held her ground on shaky legs.

  He motioned to the empty beach behind her. “Doesn’t matter now.”

  “Listen, Aidan, I don’t need to explain my actions to you. I’m free to do what I want.”

  “Right.” He glanced away from her, his nostrils flaring, his jaw flexing, then he turned back to her. “Damn you, Sonya.” He grabbed and yanked her into his arms, his mouth crushing hers.

  Fear surged inside her like a gale storm. Her arms were pressed to her sides with the force of his hold, his body urgent against hers, bowing it until she felt he’d snap her in two. Aidan was stronger, and desperate. They were utterly alone. Breathing became difficult, and she whimpered as she realized how precarious her situation was.

  Suddenly his mouth released hers, and she gulped in air. His bruising hold gentled. His breathing was labored, and his eyes wild. Those eyes searched hers, and she knew he saw the fear and panic swirling in hers.

  “I’m sorry, Sonya. Please—” he closed his eyes as though in pain “—don’t fear me again.” He dropped his forehead to hers and just held her. Gone was the monster and back was the man she’d cared for. “Damn it,” Aidan said without any heat and Sonya thought she heard tears in his voice. “He’s a stinking fish cop, Sonya. How is he preferable to me?”