“It was just a flash and then gone. Probably nothing.” Karl frowned as though he wasn’t convinced.
The shiver that skittered across Dan’s skin left him with a similar feeling of unease.
“Radin!”
They both followed the shout to see Yaz waving from the door of the hangar.
“Go on in and get warm. I better go see what he’s making noise about.”
Dan almost went with Karl instead, but cold and hunger—and Karl not asking him along—won out. He watched until Yaz closed the door and Karl was gone from his sight, checked the trees again, and then went inside. He couldn’t shake the sensation they’d been watched.
Chapter Six
KARL got away from the station as soon as they were graced with a clear-weather morning.
“Bennett, I got my radio on me. Back in a while.” He patted the duty station counter and headed for the door.
“What’s up?”
He knew Bennett would ask—counted on it. Karl knew Dan was in the mess, but he hadn’t looked in to acknowledge anyone. He could sense Dan listening, and he walked to the door so his raised voice would carry.
“Oh, off to look at a boat.”
Bennett tilted his head. “You in the market for one?”
Karl shrugged. “Not yet.” He sketched a brief salute and started out. “I’m taking the shore trail to the wharf.”
He didn’t wait for a reply, but he did loiter around the corner of the station for a two-minute count. Then he started to jog, nicely stuck out from the water and landscape in his high-vis jacket. Karl had hours to get to Neal’s boat and back, but it wasn’t exactly nearby. He still ran easily in the hope that Dan would take the bait and follow him—and bring that key. Karl recognized it as one sold by the local marina and made for multiple fittings to secure boats and equipment.
He’d done a lot of work setting it up—detouring to talk to Yaz in front of Dan, making sure Dan overhead Yaz in the lobby the other night—but he also hoped Dan wouldn’t show.
Karl liked Dan a lot more than he should, and that was complicated enough. After getting a good look at the key Dan so often fiddled with and listening to Dan’s so-casual questions for Ratchet about the accident, he couldn’t shake his suspicions any longer. He had a lot to work out and put to rest before he started to even think about really liking Dan. But he wasn’t sure he could reconcile finding out Dan had anything to do with Neal’s disappearance and what worse that could mean.
Adding to the mystery was whatever happened to the winch during the rescue. After the shop had it all pulled apart, Yaz gave him a grand tour, and it didn’t look good. It’d looked almost like sabotage—just the right thing tweaked in just the wrong way, so it would make a mess well into a rescue but not before. Would Dan jeopardize his own safety?
Karl picked up the pace and listened to the surf to clear his mind. Dan would either follow or he wouldn’t, and he couldn’t turn around to check. He loved being outside—loved it in sun or rain—and he appreciated the mental pause that running gave him. There was nothing better than the wide-open ocean on one side and mountains looming in the distance on the other, with miles of dark, conifer-covered foothills in between.
The trail led him north, around the curve of the cove, and as the station fell away behind him, he started to see signs of the wharf jutting from the safe inner harbor. Karl wouldn’t have to search for the berth number. Yaz came through with good info, info Karl probably could have rooted out eventually. But with someone always mysteriously in the know—like Yaz—in his pocket, why waste the resource? He had the name of Neal’s boat and, unverified, that a man of indistinct description had come and gone from it a few times since the incident. Was it a friend checking on it, or somebody wise to the fact that it was abandoned? Karl didn’t want to find out the hard way, so he’d have to stay alert and proceed with caution.
Fishing sheds and cabins lined the water several feet from the trail. Erosion had moved boulders and earth over the years, nearly separating the two, and Karl kept waiting for the day the trail dropped into the ocean.
Smaller boats were tied to multiple docks that splintered hodge-podge into the water from the central wharf structure. A few larger boats bobbed at anchor. Karl slowed, read the dock numbers as he went, and trotted right up to Neal’s boat at the end of a small, listing dock. He made a quick sweep of the area. Three guys scraped paint from a boat not in his direct eyeline, and a group of bored fishermen idled in the bowl of the cove. He boarded, had a quick look around, and then made a show of rattling the locked cabin and huffing about it. Then he took advantage of the nearby set of stairs that connected the docks and the road to a huddle of sheds, and started to run back toward the station.
Karl ran until he was naturally obscured from the docks and bellied down to keep watch. His heart sank when Dan appeared.
Dan cautiously approached the boat, checking all around as he went, and Karl lost sight of him as he climbed the stairs.
He sucked in a breath and ducked his head as though that would hide him when Dan had already chased after him this far. But he didn’t hear any approaching footsteps, and he looked up to see an empty roadway.
The dock and boat were empty too, but the boat weighted side to side in the water beyond the heave of the lapping waves.
Karl boosted to his feet and sprinted back to the stairs, down them two at a time, and loped onto the boat. The cabin door padlock was popped, and he pushed inside.
White as a sheet, Dan stood over a pried-open crate. Karl’s pulse thundered in the shocked silence, and the key dropped from Dan’s hand.
“All right. What’s going on?” he demanded before Dan’s lost look and defeated posture could get the better of him.
Dan didn’t answer so Karl huffed and maneuvered past the crate to get a look. Plastic-wrapped white bundles were tucked inside, five-by-ten and at least three deep. Even with the crossed bars of duct tape sealing each end closed, Karl could tell what they were, and the enormity of the situation almost overwhelmed him.
“What is all this to you? Why are you here?” He picked up a bundle, and the small crystals inside crunched in his hand.
He could put the pieces together, but he hated the picture they presented—Swift’s old cabin, a meth lab, Dan running in that direction the same day it slid off the mountainside, Dan’s furtive behavior and careful questions, the chart that mapped the site where Neal was lost, California, and the goddamn key. Anger filled him at the idea. He hated it, couldn’t stand it, didn’t want to believe any part of it.
“Did you come up here chasing this crap? Were you working with Neal and had to come after it yourself when he fucking died?”
The disgrace to the Guard was bad enough, but it was worse because it was Dan—Dan whom he liked too much and wanted even more.
“Well?”
Dan shook his head and tried to get past Karl.
Karl threw the bundle down in disgust and shoved Dan against the cabin wall. Anger swirled with betrayal and the loss of something he never even had. It was heavy and acrid in his gut. Dan’s head hit the low ceiling as Karl dug his fists into Dan’s damp sweatshirt. He reared forward and pinned Dan in place.
“Tell me.” He rattled Dan in a harsh push-pull and slammed him into the wall again. He was desperate to scare a denial from Dan.
Dan grunted and flattened both hands on Karl’s chest, but he didn’t fight back. Instead he shook his head, and red-rimmed gaze went from the tidy bundles of meth to somewhere past Karl’s shoulder. He looked as confused as Karl but utterly desolate, and under the desolation there was building anger.
“Tell me,” Karl repeated in a hoarse whisper and loosened his hold. Dan’s rapid heartbeat fluttered under his thumb, and Dan’s short breaths huffed across his cheek. His heart turned over in a hot flip-flop when Dan’s gaze turned pleading.
Approaching footsteps penetrated Karl’s awareness, and he lifted a finger in warning. He skirted the crate and peered outs
ide the cabin. A figure made shapeless in a poncho strode toward the boat with purpose. Karl cursed and motioned for Dan to close the crate and get moving.
He signaled that someone was coming their way. Dan flushed, and he snapped to action. They slipped from the cabin, hid behind its bulk, and waited the agonizing seconds it took for Dan to slot the padlock back into place and click it shut. Then they turned toward the bow as the man boarded the boat.
Without anywhere else to go, Karl dropped overboard. He held on to the rail, dangled, and lowered himself hand-over-hand. After a breathless count of several seconds, Dan joined him.
The padlock rattled, and the cabin door squeaked open. Karl found toeholds on rivets and took some of the weight from his arms. His radio squawked, and he flailed, let go with one hand, and fumbled the radio off.
Everything went still. Karl held his breath and glanced at Dan, who was ashen and wide-eyed, listening with the same intensity. Boots scraped the deck in approach. Karl changed his handholds to under the gunwale, lifted his hips, and pressed them to the hull. A shadow fell over the water and Karl sucked in harder and tucked his face down. He sensed the man’s searching gaze, listened to the shift of the man’s weight as he inched along, leaned over the railing, and inched along again. Karl’s arms began to shake, and his foot cramped. Grit cascaded over the edge and landed with soft whispers in the water. The stillness stretched, too thin and nearly screaming.
Karl was on the brink of losing his grip when the guy made a short, impatient noise and stalked back to the cabin. He shifted and let out a long breath and considered his options. Then the engine sputtered to life, and he grimaced at Dan. They had to hold on a while longer.
The boat steered wide toward the ocean. Karl searched for outs, and then they caught a break as it skirted the opposite shore. He moved to grab the rail and flatten his feet on the hull. Then he straightened to an angled stand and checked their bearings. Another several yards and he dropped back down, motioned for Dan to follow, filled his lungs, and pushed away from the boat to land in the water.
The water was so cold that it ached to his bones and wanted to steal his breath, but he stayed down, listening to the screws and feeling for the boat’s wake. When he was well clear, he kicked, up and up, careful to surface without much splash or rise above the waterline. He tread water and searched for Dan. Panic started to fold his belly under, when a warm hand grasped his arm and tugged him along.
“You’re doing good. Keep swimming. Let’s just get to the shore, and we’ll go from there.”
Dan wasn’t out of breath and seemed impervious to the cold. He coaxed Karl along as though Karl were green to the water and in need of rescue. That’s when Karl realized his teeth were chattering, and his hands and arms had gone sallow and bluish.
They clambered ashore not too far from where Karl wanted. Despite the cold, steady wind, he stripped to his pants and shoes. Better to wear dry skin than sopping clothes. He made himself move and led Dan up the rocks to a thin trail and then up a set of stone steps that blended into the landscape. He climbed as fast as he could manage and ignored the beestings of blood as it pumped back to his extremities.
At the top of the rocky hill, the stairs plateaued into several cleared terraces, and swaddled in the trees stood a small cabin. Karl hurried for it, gained the short porch, and went inside. It wasn’t locked. He crossed the room—across creaking floorboards, past comfortable but spare furniture, through the overall sense of sunlight and pine—spilled matches everywhere, and lit the ready fire.
A healthy blaze immediately overtook the crumpled paper as dry wood snapped and splintered ends burned in blue hearts of flame. He breathed on it to get it hotter faster and poked at the center to dislodge the ash. Karl blew on it again and then stacked several more logs on top. He stood, toed off his sneakers and left them, and turned to find Dan one step inside the door.
“Here, gimme those.” He took Dan’s clothes and dropped them all in the kitchen sink to be dealt with later—same as everything that led to him finding that boat. It seemed best to get warm and gather his wits before he confronted Dan. He didn’t even want a confrontation anymore, or even an interrogation. He just wanted to understand. He was also weary, all his anger doused in the cold ocean.
He shivered as he made coffee. Grounds pinged onto the counter, and water sloshed onto the floor as aftershocks of the cold wracked him. He changed into sweats and thick socks and tossed the same at Dan. Then he filled two mugs and made both creamed and sweet. They would need the sugar and calories.
Dan remained by the door. He was cautious but didn’t seem afraid. His mood seemed to match Karl’s, both wanting to settle down from the intensity on the boat and frigid swim.
Karl sank onto the floor in front of the fireplace. The fire burned hot and steady, and he sat wonderfully too close so the heat pulled the moisture from his skin and the chill from his body. He sipped his coffee and held up the other mug.
“Don’t die of hypothermia just standing there.”
Dan hesitated. He wiped his palms on the too-small sweats, made up his mind, nodded, and joined Karl. He sat with his back to the fire, accepted the coffee, and closed his eyes as the heat soaked into him.
The sweats were short in the legs and tight everywhere. They should look ridiculous, but paired with Dan’s unfurling, blissful sigh, Karl found the effect gorgeous. Distracting and dangerous in his weakened state.
“Not that this isn’t amazing, but should we be here?” Dan glanced all around the cabin. With his eyes he traced the open-concept main room and up the slat stairs to the sleeping loft. “I get we needed to get warm and everything, but going this far feels like we’re taking advantage.” He jabbed his thumb at the fire that roared behind him and tapped the coffee mug.
“We absolutely should. It’s mine.”
Dan’s eyes went wide, and he did the once-over of the cabin again, slower and more thoroughly. Then he gazed openmouthed at Karl. “Wow. Really?” He boosted up to peer out the front windows. “It’s in the perfect spot.”
“I thought so.”
“Do you mind?” Dan circled a finger in the air.
“Have at.”
Dan smiled and continued around the room. He looked at the trees on both sides and the clearing behind the cabin. He rapped the solid log walls, peeked into the small bathroom, and climbed halfway up the loft steps.
“This place is great.” Dan motioned to the Ansel Adams prints and smaller framed photos and drawings that hung salon-style on the opposite wall. “I should have known.” He came back over, grabbed his mug, and sat a bit farther from the fire. “Whoever designed it did a good job.”
Karl inclined his head. “Thank you.”
Dan huffed. “Like I said, shoulda known.” He drained his coffee cup, put it on the hearth, and spun it a few times. “Guess that explains why your station room is so impersonal. But then don’t you live here?”
Karl didn’t know what to make of the fact that Dan had noticed his utilitarian, minimal room and that he hadn’t really settled into either place. He shrugged. Karl didn’t want to say that living in the cabin was a paradox of loving the solitude and unimpeded views of the ocean and being really fucking lonely.
“It’s close to the station as the crow flies but not exactly an easy commute. Living in at the station was easier, and it’s become routine.” Karl inched back to lean against the low sofa. He would add that he got to the cabin whenever he could, but that would be a lie.
Designing and building it had been an enjoyable challenge. He saved up to buy the land, cleared as little of it as possible to nestle the cabin in the trees and standing on the prominence in front to look over the rim of the world. They were all amazing accomplishments that he was proud of. But once he built it and moved in, he’d pretty much run scared from it. He intended the cabin to be a haven, but it seemed hollow and unfinished no matter what he added. Pictures didn’t keep him company, old quilts and down blankets didn’t make warmth,
and a refinished set of cast iron pans didn’t provide nourishment. No, they just made him feel more alone.
Living at the remote station didn’t much change that. He was often alone among his peers, and the middle of nowhere Alaska at a tiny military post did little to help that, but at least it was noise and distraction.
Karl didn’t know if he’d ever live in the cabin. He tossed another log on the fire and watched the sparks spray and get sucked up the flue. There’d probably never be any reason to.
Dan toed his leg. “Well, I like it. A lot.”
“I do too.” Karl swallowed the hot rush of longing that welled up inside.
“So do you have parents?” Dan made a face. “I mean around here.”
“They retired—to Florida.” Karl smiled fondly, and Dan laughed. “How about you?”
Dan’s laughter died, and his smile cracked.
“Ah.” Karl gathered their mugs and got refills. He didn’t want to break the comfortable mood, but getting away from his thoughts would be good—and getting to what was happening with Dan a necessity. “I think we need to talk.”
“Do you have a computer? Laptop? Internet connection?”
“Yes, laptop. Yes, internet—satellite.” Karl loaded both coffees with cream and sugar again because it felt good going down. He rummaged in the cabinets and found crackers.
Dan took the coffee and the sleeve of crackers he offered. “Can I use them?”
“Right now?” Karl sat on the sofa.
“It’ll help in talking about… everything.”
Karl dug out his laptop, fired it up, and handed it over.
Dan sipped coffee and munched crackers with the laptop perched on his crossed legs. His adorableness was distracting and made Karl grumpy.
“Dano, hey,” someone said from the computer.
Dan’s wide grin and dancing eyes made Karl grumpier.
“Talk me through getting the files downloaded. I’m not at the station.”
Staggered Cove Station Page 9