There was a pause, and then the voice said, “Are you someplace secure?”
“Oh yeah. I’m good.”
The guy on the other end gave efficient instructions even Karl could parse. Karl wondered who he was. He wanted to get up and have a look at the screen, but he resisted, ate his crackers, and watched the fire without comment.
“You’re not gonna like it.”
Karl looked up at that. He was suddenly sure that all the things that didn’t add up were connected—and connected to Dan.
Dan lost his smile, and his eyes clouded. “I know. I expected that. Especially after….” He glanced up at Karl and back to the screen. Karl would swear he blushed, but it was probably a trick of the screen light. “I’ll explain later. Need to explain to someone else first.”
Another long pause—it managed to sound speculative—and the guy made a low noise. “Interesting. I’m good to wait. What are you gonna do with the info?”
“I’m not sure yet.” Dan rolled his lower lip between his fingers and sighed. “Thanks, Ridge. I owe you one. Again.”
Ridge laughed. “I think I still owe you a thousand, so it’s cool. Just take care with whatever you’re doing. Got me?”
“I got you.”
“That someone you gotta explain to first. They have your back?”
Dan looked at Karl again and didn’t look away. “I think so. Yeah, they do.”
Karl batted down the warm weak sensation as Dan’s look washed over him.
“Okay. That’s something. Don’t make me have to come all the way to buttfuck Alaska after you, Dano. The files and my notes are all there, but call again if you need me.”
Dan’s mouth twisted in a pleased quirk. “Always.” He flipped the bird at the screen and laughed.
Karl’s grumpiness ratcheted right back up again.
“I’m going to read this, and then we’ll talk. Okay?”
“Do I have a choice?” Karl rolled his eyes and grabbed a paperback he’d abandoned along with the cabin. He wound up lying in the corner of the sofa watching Dan read instead.
At one point he wanted to interrupt and rip the laptop away when Dan gasped in disbelief and blinked back tears. Karl didn’t like seeing so much exposed vulnerability and hurt in Dan. It also gave him a whole different angle to consider. Karl suspected that Dan was somehow involved in whatever happened with Neal, but he hadn’t expected it to be personal.
Chapter Seven
DAN started with Ridge’s notes. He didn’t have to read a lot to know enough. Denial and bitter acceptance rose like bile, and he choked them down. The fire was suddenly too hot and Karl too close. He wrenched to his feet, set the laptop on the long plank table behind the little fireside seating area, and paced.
Ridge found what he’d asked for and a lot more than he wanted to see. His heart sank into his guts, and he turned to Karl, opened his mouth to start explaining, and snapped it closed again.
Dan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do you have any painkillers?” A headache was the least of his problems but he could do something about that.
Karl tossed his book aside and went to the kitchen. Dan accepted a glass of water and three pills and downed them all.
Telling everything to Karl, who waited calmly and patiently, was daunting. He almost preferred getting yelled at and pushed around.
“You asked, and well…. Growing up was just me and my brother, more or less. That’s who I have.”
“I have a younger brother. He’s a ranger up in Katmai.” Karl took the glass and retreated back to the couch.
“Whoa, that’s cool. Are you guys close?”
Karl shrugged. “Close enough. The little shit resented me growing up because I was bigger and faster and smarter—you know—but he’s made his own way now, and we’ve come to a better understanding of each other. Even if I’m Dad’s favorite.” He flashed a sudden grin. “But he’s Mom’s favorite, so I figure he has the edge.”
Dan grasped on to those tidbits about Karl, surprised at how much hearing them meant to him… and by how much he wanted to keep talking about stuff like that and learning more, instead of what he had to say.
“I wasn’t a favorite.” Dan smiled ruefully so Karl didn’t feel sorry for him. “My mom was out of the picture—a single mom trying to make ends meet working too much and later drinking too much. We grew up rough in a rough neighborhood.” He pulled a thread that stuck out from the waistband of his sweats. “I didn’t notice that for a long time. My brother is ten years older than me, and he made sure I didn’t. Kept me out of the house, kept us fed, taught me how to swim and about life. The beach was our home, our refuge.”
“Which explains why you joined up.”
“More or less.”
Karl seemed to see Dan with new eyes. Not many people figured him for a latchkey slum kid. His California golden looks and easygoing ways did that. He didn’t tell anyone about his past for a lot of reasons, and that was a big part of it. But somehow telling Karl wasn’t hard.
“What did he think about you taking a spot in the back-of-beyond Alaska?”
Dan swallowed and turned to the view out the front window. It was going to be hard.
“I don’t know. He’s dead.”
Careful, muted silence followed his statement. Dan drummed the windowsill and turned back around.
“At least I think he is.”
Karl had come to perch on the edge of the sofa cushion, his expressive brown eyes soft with sympathy.
“He’s presumed dead. He went missing—lost at sea—but it just didn’t make any sense.” Dan’s shoulders drew up with a tension he couldn’t fight.
Karl got to his feet. “Your brother was lost at sea?”
“He was always a better, stronger swimmer than me. And you’ve seen me. The last place he’d go missing is in the water—in survivable conditions, well observed, everything done to the letter except for the part where he up and disappeared. Something more had to have happened. At least, that’s what I swore when I got the news.” Dan pulled his lips between his teeth to stop talking.
Karl’s gaze glittered with moving parts of assessment that Dan could almost track.
“Is that all you came here for—to find out what happened to him?”
“What?” Dan shot out on a harsh breath.
“Neal. Axe. Your brother.” Karl’s jaw worked. “Is that everything you got yourself up here for?”
“How do you mean?”
“Why did you have that key?”
Dan’s mind raced to answer. He shouldn’t be surprised Karl caught on so quickly and clearly already assumed half of what he said, but it still threw him.
“What key?”
Karl huffed. “To the boat we just ditched. The boat someone just so happens to be keeping a fuckton stash of meth on.”
“It’s supposed to open a cabin, like a house cabin. But it didn’t fit in the padlock, and I think my brother—” Dan briefly closed his eyes. “Yes, Axe was my brother—sent the wrong one by mistake.”
“Damn.” Karl gave Dan an up-and-down look that Dan felt drag across every pore and nerve ending. “I never would have guessed. I can kind of see the resemblance, and there’s something familiar in a few of your gestures, but I only see it now that I know.” He made an impatient sound, as though that weren’t what he intended to say. “So you did come up here following him.”
“Yes.”
Karl raised a sardonic eyebrow. “And?”
“And I didn’t know that shit on the boat existed before today. We kept in touch, okay? But after he left home, we talked less and less. And not like he’d say to me, ‘Hey bro, busy with a meth empire up here. How’s things?’” Dan scoffed. “Even then, he was my whole family, and always looked out for me. Then suddenly I’m told he’s gone, doing the thing he’s best at? I couldn’t believe he simply disappeared and had to see for myself where it happened. And who let it.”
“Are you still looking for that? For blame?” Karl’s
hands clenched into fists. “Do you blame me?”
“No.” Dan’s answer was immediate and maybe too strong. But he didn’t and couldn’t deny that. It was a mess, but it wasn’t Karl’s fault, and he couldn’t let Karl take any blame. “I did at first, before I got here. I thought, no way could he go down on his own, and there had to be more going on. You were with him on that rescue, in charge of it, and it’s on your watch that he died.”
The color leached from Karl’s eyes, and a muscle ticked in his jaw. His absolute stillness disturbed Dan.
“That’s true.”
“No it’s not, not really.” Dan reached for Karl but pulled his fingers to his palms, curled his fists under, and tucked his arms in. “I stopped thinking you were at all responsible during the first rescue we had. No way would you be so good with me on such a simple job but neglect Axe in rough seas with a terrible choice to make.”
Karl nodded but didn’t relax.
“I mean that. And I’m sorry I blamed you, even though I had no idea until I got here. You know? Anyway, I read the report, and then all doubt was gone.” At Karl’s look he lifted both hands. “What would you have done?”
Karl pursed his lips, but his long exhale was telling. “Found the report in the file room and read every last word.” He shook his head. “So okay. Axe is your brother, you learned he died, you came up here to find out what happened. Now what?”
“I’m not sure. I haven’t figured it all out yet.”
“That goes for both of us.” Karl massaged his neck and then jerked his head side to side so it popped. “You have different last names.”
Dan considered that a moment. “We had different dads. Neither stuck around long.” His fingers danced in a flight of discomfort.
“It happens. I’m sorry it happened to your family.”
Dan nodded and blinked back the prick of sudden tears. Most people didn’t have that reasonable or sympathetic a reaction—of the few who found out.
“When did he send it?” Karl made an unlocking gesture. “The key.”
“Years ago. Not long after he got here.” Dan tried to work through the timing. “He told me he came up here with a lot of savings so he must have bought the cabin and the boat around the same time.”
“Swift’s cabin?”
Dan nodded.
“The cabin reputed to have been a meth lab.”
Dan thought about the acrid scent and stain in the place, how barren and foreboding it felt, how years later, Axe had done nothing with it but let it rot. He looked away from Karl’s demanding gaze and nodded, embarrassed about something not his fault but inexorably tied to him.
“That day I caught up to you and drove you to Eider—you visited the cabin. And left it in worse shape than you found it.”
It wasn’t really a question, but Dan nodded again.
“Dammit.” Karl slashed a hand through the air and abruptly walked away.
Dan’s heart sank.
Karl rounded the dining table and returned to jab a finger at Dan’s chest just as quickly. “You could have been killed.”
“Uh….” Dan blew out a confused huff. He didn’t know what to make of Karl’s questions and fast-changing demeanor. The collapsed cabin seemed like a distant dream. “I’m fine. And just so you know, I didn’t find anything at the cabin. Whatever it was supposed to be or got turned into instead died long before I got there.”
Karl didn’t react. Instead he gathered their mugs and dealt with their soaked clothes. He wrung them out in the sink and tossed them into a dryer hidden in an alcove that was disguised with the same pine cabinetry. The kitchen was stained sage green to contrast with the darker natural floor and lighter walls. He washed the mugs almost as a meditation and set them in the drying rack.
“So the boat key, the meth, and Axe lost at sea are all coincidences?” Karl left the kitchen to poke at a log, and it crumbled into orange-limned embers. “Or a combination of those is why he disappeared.”
Dan had thought that for a while. He hadn’t wanted to say it, and hearing it tore at him. When he stood on the boat with the reality of all those packs of meth, it hit him square in the chest and stole his breath. He’d gone numb and couldn’t remember what Karl said to him. All he heard was a high-pitched buzz, the thump of his pulse in his throat, and his splitting head. Only Karl’s reaction to the person boarding the boat saved him from getting caught.
“Axe didn’t use when we were kids. He smacked the hell out of me when he was home visiting and he found out I’d tried pot. Once. It just doesn’t seem like him.” Dan cracked a window so he could hear the ocean. It was faint over the wind, but it was there, reassuring and grounding. “Maybe he did, and I didn’t know. Maybe I never knew him.” He closed his eyes and pushed on his eyelids to stop another rush of tears.
“You did. But maybe he changed in the years you were apart. He was an adult, and you were still growing up. It makes a difference.” Karl rubbed his forehead and shook his head. “I’ll tell you, though, we see enough of it up here that I know what a user acts like. Neal—your brother—never acted that way. Something else was going on.”
“Yeah. Could well be.”
“It doesn’t leave a lot of pleasant options, I realize, but I don’t think he’d be involved in quite that quantity for personal use.”
Dan went back to Ridge’s notes, and Karl left him to it again. He clicked through several tabs on the spreadsheet and read names he didn’t recognize. But it all spoke to the same story—Axe owed people money. A lot of it. Ridge had followed up on the names. It was mostly online gambling and some short-term loans. For a time Axe had moved big amounts of money around at odd intervals, paying back just enough to survive another while. But then those influxes stopped, and the debts and loans sat unpaid, owed to other similar businesses.
The drugs, the gambling, the bad loans. It all added up to a good reason for someone to go after Axe. Or a good reason to disappear.
His swim to the Guard’s boat was about the same distance the Fairweather had gotten to the wreckage. It was possible. Disappear—yeah, it was possible.
“So?” Karl said from directly behind him.
Dan pulled his hands from the keyboard and mouse as though they shocked him. He twisted on the bench, got between Karl and the screen, and closed out of the documents in quick succession. They were safe on a neutral server Ridge had set up. He shut the laptop off and moved back to the fire, despite the look Karl followed him with.
He struggled over sharing that part of his theory with Karl. It was farfetched and too painfully possible. The greater consequences were more than he could fully comprehend, much less drag to light for Karl to examine and prod at.
“Axe was in pretty deep debt.” That Dan could share, and Karl would likely learn it on his own if push came to shove. “Major debt. Gambling. More than in over his head.”
Karl rapped the laptop with a knuckle and seemed to consider that. He checked on the dryer, gave it more time, and then joined Dan by the fire.
“Axe started out good. We never got to be friends, but I respected him to do his job. He never botched a rescue. Okay?” Karl’s tone was low and gentling like he might spook Dan. He reached out and brushed a tickle from Dan’s cheek, and the wetness spread under his thumb.
Dan realized he’d started crying. Slow, heavy and silent tears, as a gnawing ache grew in his heart. Karl gathered Dan to him, and Dan held on as Karl rocked them.
“Remember what I said about how this place can get to some people?”
Dan searched his fogged brain, and the words penetrated—how some people got lost, eaten alive, tried all sorts of vice in desperation to fill the void that such a demanding existence in Alaska exacted.
As though sensing his thoughts, Karl nodded. “Right. Some people thrive, and some go under. I think Axe went under. We just didn’t know it until too late.” He sighed and held Dan to him tighter. “I’m sorry. Maybe I should have done more, but Axe did his duty, kept to himself,
and didn’t cause trouble. Past that, we don’t think to pry around here.”
Karl patted Dan’s back and started to pull away. Dan made an embarrassing noise, almost a whimper, and Karl shushed him. He hadn’t been comforted or held in a long time. Or had someone who cared and looked out for him, like it or not, as Karl already did. It was good, and he needed it, craved it, as he did Karl, despite fighting every last breath not to acknowledge it. His hands convulsed, and he buried his face in the join of Karl’s neck and shoulder.
Dan was aware of too many things—their bare chests pressed together, the heat, strength, and reassuring safety of Karl’s embrace, those documents and Ridge’s notes outlining Axe’s decline into debt and ruin. Axe had grown away and lost to him years before he went missing. Some people weren’t up to keeping ruin at bay, no matter where they were.
Karl shifted to look at him, gaze darting to his mouth, and Dan struggled to calm the fever that raged in mind and body.
“Sorry, sorry.” Karl let out a breath and pulled a fraction away.
Dan lifted his face to follow.
Karl kissed him, a soft nothing, and rubbed his nose along Dan’s cheek. Dan sighed and chased Karl’s lips with a kiss of his own, spread his fingers to mold to Karl’s ribs and hold Karl’s deep breath in his palms, and the tension left him like strings being cut.
His body buzzed, and his brain swam in a fog. He couldn’t do more than hold on. His nerves were shot, and spent adrenaline burned in his muscles.
Karl moved back to look at him, and Dan blinked heavily and tugged at Karl to come back in. His lips parted with instinctive wanting and invitation, and Karl stared at them as though unsure of what to do next. Then an alarm split their fragile state, and Karl ripped free to stalk across the room.
Karl went rigid and cursed in guttural frustration. Dan staggered as the incoming rush of duty and action roared through him, fatigue, upset, and arousal a dangerous riptide rushing away underneath.
“My weather radio.” Karl smashed a button and silenced the grating alert noises and static-laced warnings of a coming storm. “We should get back.”
Staggered Cove Station Page 10