On Fire

by Carla Neggers

  It was that, more than anything else, that Emile had always seemed to understand—the push-pull of the coast where Labreque and Straker roots ran deep. Emile was hardheaded and driven, but he’d shown an impatient boy how he could move away without giving up who he was.

  Straker stopped, swore under his breath.

  It wasn’t his father who tied up at the rickety dock and jumped out.

  “Emile,” Straker muttered, picking up his pace as he ran out to the end of the dock.

  The old man was spry, at ease anywhere on or near salt water. “I’ll only be a second.” He made it sound like a warning, as if Straker shouldn’t even consider trying to impede him. “I saw my place. The investigators are still there.”

  “They want to talk to you.”

  He gave a curt nod. “Of course.”

  “Does that mean you’ll go in?”

  “It means I understand the position they’re in.” He glanced out at the water; he wore a windbreaker over his black Henley, against the cold wind. “I can’t stay long in case they have the island staked out. Your father’s boat will give me only so much cover.”

  “He lent it to you or you stole it?” Straker didn’t bother to wait for a straight answer; he knew he wouldn’t get one. “Emile, you need to get things squared away with the police. Right now they’re inclined to think you torched your own cottage. Then there’s Cassain’s place down in Boston. At this point you’re their best bet for killing Cassain.” Straker paused. “That’s how I’d be thinking in their place.”

  “I don’t give a good goddamn what they think.”

  “Riley’s here,” Straker said without preamble. “She’s your most tenacious defender. I wouldn’t be surprised if the police are wondering if she’s conspiring with you.”

  “She’s why I’m here.” Emile’s dark eyes gleamed with the kind of intensity that had sustained him over the years. The warm sun hit the deep lines in his face, made him look old but robust, capable of chasing demons, real or imagined, up and down the coast. “I know she and Sig were in the cottage last night. Sig’s with her mother. But Riley—she won’t stop.”

  Straker nodded. “I know.”

  “I saw her in the water. Once she’s revived, she’ll be back up and running again, trying to mind my own business for me.”

  “How is Sam Cassain’s death your business?”

  “He was my ship’s master for seven years,” Emile said simply.

  Straker noticed Emile wasn’t getting too far from the lobster boat. For the past six months, Straker had watched the old man settle into life on the peninsula. In some ways, it was as if he’d never left. In other ways, it was as if he wasn’t really there—he was still aboard the Encounter, trying to save his friend and his crew, waiting, perhaps, for the truth about what had happened to his ship to finally come out.

  “Let the police solve his death,” Straker said. “Tell them what you know.”

  The dark eyes fastened on him. “I want you to watch out for Riley. As a favor to me. I nearly got her killed last year. It was only by a stroke of luck we made it into the submersible.” His jaw was set, his natural stubbornness asserting itself. “I can’t count on that kind of luck saving her again.”

  “I’ve been watching out for Riley. She wouldn’t agree, but that’s the way it’s worked out.” Straker stepped over a missing plank, wondered if Riley was up on some rock buttoning buttons as fast as she could so she could streak out to confront her grandfather. “What about Matthew Granger? Did he fund Cassain’s bid to bring up the Encounter’s engine? Is he a danger to himself or anyone else?”

  Emile frowned thoughtfully. He had a keen intelligence, the weather-beaten look of a man who’d spent many years at sea. But Straker knew he would be wrong to think Emile Labreque was like his own father and the other lobstermen he’d seen at breakfast. Emile was a world-famous oceanographer. He’d founded a prestigious research center, and he’d spent a lifetime on the world’s oceans, not just the coast of downeast Maine. He wasn’t going after Sam’s killer for himself and his own reputation—he was going after it for the five people lost aboard the Encounter a year ago.

  Straker squinted at the old man. “Emile, I can’t let you go. You have to know that. I respect what you’re trying to do, but you’re going about it the wrong way.” He smiled. “That’s what you told me when I was eighteen, remember? I listened.”

  “You’d stop me from doing what I have to do, what only I can do?”

  More drama. “I would.”

  “Then I have no choice.” Without hesitation, Emile reached into his jacket and withdrew a Smith & Wesson .38 that looked suspiciously like the one Straker’s father kept in his toolbox. “Don’t make me shoot you.”

  “If you shoot me, it’s your choice. Not mine.”

  The dark, intense eyes stayed on him. Straker swore. The bastard would shoot him. Wing him in the leg or arm—enough to make good his exit.

  “Hands up,” the old man said.

  “For chrissake—”

  “Do it.”

  Straker put his hands up. “This feels like an episode of Bonanza.”

  “Emile!”

  Riley. She was thrashing her way up from the rocks, barefoot, shirttails flapping, moving fast.

  “Go on,” Straker told him. “Get out of here before you end up shooting her, too.”

  “You’ll watch out for her?”

  “She won’t like it.”

  “Emile, wait!” Riley was jumping from one rock to another, getting closer. “I need to talk to you!”

  “But you’ll do it,” Emile said.

  Straker nodded, and the old man lowered his gun. It would be a simple enough matter for Straker to overtake him and his damned gun, but not, he thought, the wisest course of action. Then he’d have two irate Labreques on his hands.

  Emile hopped back into his borrowed lobster boat with the agility of a man a third his age.

  Riley burst onto the dock, pushed past Straker and probably would have tried making the leap into the boat if he hadn’t scooped an arm around her middle and stopped her.

  “You’re nice and dry,” he said, “and I don’t have that many shirts.”

  Emile gunned the engine and sped out into the bay.

  Riley strained against Straker’s arm. “Emile—damn it, talk to me!”

  “Keep yelling. If any investigators are around, they’ll hear you and snatch him. It might be the best thing. Maybe I’ll start yelling—”

  She angled her chin up at him. “You’re obnoxious.”

  “I just had a seventy-six-year-old man pull a gun on me. I’m entitled.”

  “He wouldn’t have shot you.”

  The shirt he’d given her was flannel. A blue plaid. It reached to the middle of her thighs. Her hair was wet, her lips blue. She was shivering again, this time from the cold.

  “You’d have made better time if you’d put your shoes on,” he said.

  “You could have disarmed him. I mean, you know how to do that sort of thing.”

  “Yeah, and last time I ended up with two bullets in me.”

  “Is that why you didn’t stop him? Maybe you need to spend a few more months out here—”

  Straker shrugged. “I hate arguing with old men with guns.”

  “That’s twice now you’ve let him go. I thought he was the reason you left the island.”

  “Would that my life were so simple. No, Emile was the trigger. I consider him a friend, and I didn’t like the idea of his dead captain washing up on my shore. But you’re the reason.” He noticed she’d buttoned up his shirt crooked, and it almost did him in. “It took having Emile point a gun at my head for me to figure that one out.”

  Her teeth were chattering. Too much time in the damned sixty-degree bay. “He wasn’t pointing at your head.”

  “Close enough.”

  “I can’t…” She pushed a hand through her wet hair. “I can’t think.”

  He settled his arm on the small o
f her back and said, “Maybe I should at least get you to room temperature before I ask if I can make love to you. I wouldn’t want you to suggest I took advantage of you.”

  She shook her head. “No. Skip room temperature. And don’t ask.”

  “What?”

  “Just do it, because if you ask—” she smiled in spite of her shivering “—I’ll have to examine the pros and cons, the risks and rewards, and pretty much give you a dissertation—”

  “I don’t want a dissertation.”

  “If you can carry Sig,” she said, leaning against his arm, letting him take her weight, “you can carry me.”

  Straker scooped her up. She was cold, wore nothing under his flannel shirt. He took long strides up to the cottage, then pounded up the porch steps. This time there was no emergency, no collapsing pregnant woman in his arms. This time it was Riley.

  “I’m so cold,” she whispered.

  “How long were you in the water?”

  “Too long. After a few minutes I couldn’t even feel the cold. I sat on a rock in the water and let the waves wash over me. It felt so good.” She smiled. “I don’t smell like a chimney anymore.”

  He laid her on his bed, kissed her throat, her mouth. “No, you don’t.”

  He slipped the shirt over her head. Her slim body was cold under his hands. He tried to hold back and go slow, ran his palms up her legs and over her stomach and breasts, lingering there, feeling her temperature rise.

  “Body heat is a quick cure for hypothermia,” she said.

  He smiled. “Ever the scientist.”

  But he was past holding back. He’d been holding back for days, from the moment he’d confronted her on the rocks in the fog. He’d dismissed his jolts of desire as being driven purely by his self-imposed isolation and celibacy. Wanting Riley St. Joe for her own sake was mad. Yet here he was, consumed by the taste of her, the feel of her, the unending longing for her.

  She tore at his shirt. She was breathing hard, her eyes dusky, her body warm. “You don’t have the excuse of six months on a deserted island,” he said.

  “No, I have the excuse of seventy-hour work weeks. Don’t make me wait.” She slipped her hands under his shirt, spread her palms on his bare skin. “I can’t wait.”

  “For once we’re in complete agreement.”

  He had his clothes off, with her eager help, in an instant, and he fell onto her with a ferocity that took him aback. He couldn’t get enough of her. He couldn’t make himself slow down, go easy, not that she showed any sign of wanting him to do anything but what he was doing.

  And what she was doing to him, the feel of her mouth and hands, the thrust of her hips, the eager movement of her legs, urged him on. The old bed creaked and moaned as they came together, her body hot now, with no sign of blue lips and chattering teeth. They rolled onto the floor in a tangle of sheets, the mattress half off the bed.

  Straker didn’t stop. Couldn’t. He peaked once, then again as her body quaked under him, her arms clasped around him as she pulled him even more deeply into her. It was as if the last six months of isolation, meditation, running, working had prepared him for this moment. He wasn’t sure he’d have survived otherwise. She filled up his mind and body, his soul, in the way no other woman ever had.

  He kissed the damp ends of her hair, breathed in the smell of ocean and lovemaking. Outside the wind had picked up. The tide was coming in. A few boats were out.

  “We could stay here,” he said, “and make love for the next six months.”

  She smiled. “Tempting, isn’t it?”

  “Place isn’t winterized. Pipes’d freeze.”

  “Oh, who cares,” she whispered, snuggling against him; she was warm and almost liquid, nothing shivering or trembling or tensed.

  She slept. They were still on the floor, arms and legs intertwined. He pulled an old blanket up over her shoulders. Her clothes were probably still out on the rocks. He’d fetch them later. Right now, he’d let her sleep against him and imagine the rest of the world falling away until it was just the two of them on their tiny windswept island.

  Sig staggered into her studio. She was shaky and queasy and burning with fatigue. She couldn’t imagine painting. The urge was gone. She tried to remember what it felt like to want to paint. Dipping her mop brush into water, squirting out dots of vibrant colors, pastels, earth tones. Spattering, washing, blending, playing. Being absorbed in what she was doing. Loving it.

  She dropped onto her high work stool and stared at her large, empty board. For a second she pretended she was signing her name in the corner of one of her paintings. Sig St. Joe. Who was that? Wife of Matthew Granger. Expectant mother. Riley’s sister. Mara’s daughter. Richard’s daughter. She wasn’t sure she knew anymore.

  Her mother was making her tea and toast. Her cure-alls. Whether it was the body, mind or spirit in pain, Mara would make tea and toast. Sig smiled, glad for her mother’s company, her constancy.

  “Matt,” she whispered, choking back tears. “You asshole.”

  But she’d felt his agony when he’d come to her in the hospital, heard it in his voice, sensed it in his touch as he’d placed his palm on her swollen abdomen. He was consumed by demons. In that moment in the hospital, with her pit fighter of a sister protecting her, Sig had known he was convinced they were his demons alone to confront. Not hers. This wasn’t something they could do together.

  Perhaps that was what he’d tried to explain to her months ago, however inadequately and superficially. She didn’t want to understand. Couldn’t. He was her husband, her soul mate, her partner in life, her lover. She wanted to be at his side no matter the dragons that needed slaying.

  Her eyes burned with exhaustion. She could still taste the smoke. The doctors had urged her to rest and drink lots and lots of water. She needed to rebuild her strength and slowly ease the shock of the fire out of her system. The doctors had assured her that if she took care of herself, her pregnancy should proceed without incident. She was healthy. Her babies were healthy.

  Mara came out onto the porch with a tray. “I made green tea, and I found a lovely oatmeal muffin in the freezer. I heated it up and put a little pumpkin butter on your plate.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Oh, this was easy. Seeing you and Riley last night—that was hard.” She set the tray on the gateleg table; she looked tired herself, and guilty, as if she’d done something wrong. She manufactured a cheerful smile. “I can feel fall in the air, can’t you?”

  Sig smiled back. “I love fall.”

  “I’ll leave the tray—”

  “No, Mom. Sit down with me. You’ve had a hell of a scare, too. It’s not—you know it’s not your fault Riley and I were up at Emile’s. You couldn’t have predicted…”

  “Yes. I could have predicted. Riley went to sea with Emile and was almost killed. On Tuesday, she goes kayaking at Emile’s and finds a dead body.” Mara gave Sig a hard look. “I should have stopped you both.”

  “We’re adults—”

  “You’d have listened if I’d told you to stay put.”

  “I might have,” Sig said with a small smile. “I’m not so sure about Riley.”

  Her mother inhaled, said nothing.

  “Do you want to fetch a cup? We can share the tea and muffin.”

  Mara shook her head. “I’m fine, thanks.”

  But she sat on Sig’s studio bed, staying on the edge, too tight and nervous to lean back and relax. “It’s been a rough week for all of us. I didn’t want to acknowledge how it’s affected me. Seeing Sam again, then having Riley of all people find him dead—” She broke off quickly, gave herself a shake. “The last thing you need is to have me whining and moaning to you. We’ll all be fine. You, Riley, me. We’re strong women.”

  “That’s one positive result of Emile’s hardheadedness. It must be a dominant gene.”

  Mara nodded, biting back tears. “God, it would be so much easier if I could hate him.”

  “I know what you mean,” Sig s
aid quietly, thinking not of Emile but her husband.

  She poured the tea. She wasn’t that fond of green tea. The muffin looked and smelled wonderful, but she had no appetite. She sipped the tea, aware of Mara’s eyes on her.

  Her mother sighed. Her dark eyes shone with unshed tears. “You’re going back to Boston, aren’t you?”

  “I have to.” Now that her mother had articulated it, the thought was taking concrete shape. “How did you know?”

  “Because I know you, Sig, just as I know your sister. She won’t stop until she finds her grandfather and proves his innocence.” Mara made a visible effort to control her feelings about her two daughters, her lack of control over their decisions. “You’ll need tonight to rest up. If you’re not feeling up to the drive in the morning—”

  “I won’t leave unless I feel strong enough. Mom—”

  “I know,” her mother said, smiling bravely. “You need to go home.”

  Thirteen

  Riley slipped out of the cottage at dawn to watch the sunrise from a rock ledge. Cormorants dove for fish, gulls called in the distance, lobster buoys in a variety of bright colors bobbed in the outgoing tide. The horizon had turned lavender and purple, the sun a glowing sliver of gold where water met sky.

  She had to go back to Boston. She needed clothes. Her one outfit, even after it had been washed in Straker’s sink and hung to dry on his porch, still stank of smoke. Her other clothes were totaled in the fire.

  But more than that, she needed space. She needed time alone to think, to process the past few days and figure out where she went from here.

  “Yep.” She wrapped his chamois shirt more tightly around her. “A few hours alone in your car will fix you right up.”

  At least, she thought, it would be a start.

  She heard the cottage door creak open. A few minutes later, Straker climbed up onto her huge granite boulder and stood beside her. He wore his charcoal sweater, which fit snugly across his big shoulders. His gray eyes blended into the environment, made him seem almost a part of the island.

  She quickly explained her rationale about going back to Boston. He nodded without hesitation. “Good idea. I’ll drop you off at Emile’s as soon as you’re ready to roll.”