On the cold December morning, Nathanial stared through the scope on his C7 assault sniper rifle from his perch on the southeast corner of a warehouse overlooking the commercial shipping port of Saint John Harbour, New Brunswick. The overcast sky shadowed the world in a gray haze.
His breath condensed into a white cloud, obscuring his vision in the threatening chill of an impending snowstorm. A whiteout was the last thing his team needed. He prayed the bad weather held off for a few more hours.
“Copy that.” Through Nathanial’s earpiece came the reply from his friend and fellow Integrated Border Enforcement Taskforce team member, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Blake Fallon.
Blake motioned and two members of the team below split off to subdue the guards.
Nathanial kept an alert eye for anything that would impede or jeopardize the IBETs members on the ground as they stealthily made their way down the street to another warehouse a block away.
They were determined to bring down an arms dealer and his network of smugglers who illegally brought small and large weapons across the border between the two countries. The latest intelligence reported a shipment of handguns would be brought into Canada tonight.
The men who made up the IBETs team were from various law enforcement agencies on both sides of the international boundary line between Canada and the United States. Nathanial was proud to be a part of the team and would give his life for each and every one of the other team members regardless of their nationality.
The successful completion of this mission would be a welcome Christmas present, indeed.
He intended to head home to Saskatchewan for a much-needed respite with his family. Though he doubted the visit would be very relaxing. His mother and grandmother would be on him about fulfilling his destiny and settling down to provide grandchildren.
An old sorrow stirred, but he quickly tamped it down.
Despite his grandmother’s certainty that there was a soul mate out there for him, Nathanial was skeptical about love and marriage. He’d come close once with his high school sweetheart, but that relationship had ended in tragedy and heartbreak. He’d decided then going it alone was better than opening himself up to that kind of pain again.
Besides, he liked his bachelor life too much to tie the knot like some of his friends and coworkers. Though Nathanial never lacked for female company, the thought of hearth and home made him want to run screaming into the night.
Being domesticated wasn’t on his agenda. He was over thirty and set in his ways. He liked the freedom of taking off on an assignment at a moment’s notice. He enjoyed the variety of dating different women, always careful to make sure any woman he spent time with knew he wasn’t interested in anything serious or long-term.
Some ladies took that as a challenge to change his mind, and others walked away before they became too attached.
He tolerated the former until he couldn’t and appreciated the latter.
He’d yet to meet a woman who made him want to change his mind. And frankly, he doubted he ever would.
A chill skated over the nape of his neck, drawing his attention to the current assignment. Once the two guards were out of commission, Nathanial did another visual sweep. All appeared clear. Good. He was cold and ready to wrap this up so he could have a cup of hot coffee and warm himself by a roaring fire.
He was about to give the go-ahead to the team when his attention snagged on a gold luxury sedan turning onto the street a few blocks away.
The arms dealer? Or someone in the wrong place at the wrong time? “Hold up.”
He prayed the car kept driving, because if it didn’t, this op was going to become more complicated.
Behind him, the scuff of a shoe on the concrete roof sent his heart hammering. He rolled onto his back, bringing the rifle up, his finger hovering over the trigger. A man loomed over him. Confusion and panic vied for dominance. Then the butt of an automatic submachine gun rammed into his skull.
And the world went dark.
* * *
Deputy Sheriff Audrey Martin sang along with the Christmas carol playing on the patrol car radio. The first fingers of dawn rose over the horizon. From her spot parked on a rise overlooking the small fishing village she’d been born in, she surveyed the streets and buildings of the township of Calico Bay, Maine, dusted in white.
This early-morning patrol was her favorite time, especially in winter. Gone were the summer windjammers and tour boats from the harbor. Now only the commercial fishing vessels and tugboats remained, most of which were already out to sea, while everyone else stayed snug in their beds. The population of the town receded to those whose lives began and ended here. Fishermen who made their living off the ocean, always hunting for a good day’s catch, and those who supported the fishing industry.
She’d been on the job for less than a year and already she wanted to run for sheriff when the office’s current occupant retired. There would be those who would cry nepotism, because Sheriff David Crump was her mother’s aunt’s husband. And there would be those who would oppose her for the simple fact she was female. Two strikes against her.
But she’d win them over with her capabilities. She had to. Failure wasn’t an option. Too many people expected her to fail. She wanted to disappoint them. She wanted to make her family proud. Especially her mother and father, rest his soul.
He’d been gone since she was a child, but she still wanted to honor his memory by doing well and serving her community.
Having grown up with a doctor for a mother and a fisherman for a father, she knew hard work and commitment were the keys to succeeding. Not that she needed much beyond her studio apartment and the respect of the town.
Though her mother constantly warned her if she didn’t take another chance on love, she’d end up old and alone.
Better that than having her heart trampled on all over again. Those were three years of her life she’d never get back. Three years wasted on a man who had cheated on her and then called her a fool for believing in love.
Well, she wouldn’t be making that mistake again.
She warmed her hands in front of the car’s heater vents and sang beneath her breath, not really in tune but enjoying singing anyway. Outside the confines of the patrol car, snow flurries swirled in the gray morning light and danced on the waves of the Atlantic Ocean crashing on the shores of Calico Bay, a sweeping inlet that formed a perfect half-moon with a picturesque view of their friends across the waterway in New Brunswick.
The radio attached to her uniform jacket crackled and buzzed before the sheriff’s department dispatcher, Ophelia Leighton, came on the line. “Unit one, do you copy?”
Thumbing the answer button, Audrey replied, “Yes, dispatch, I copy.”
“Uh, there’s a reported sighting of a—”
The radio crackled and popped. In the background, Audrey heard Ophelia talking, then the deep timbre of the sheriff’s voice. “Uh, sorry about that.” Ophelia came back on the line. “We’re getting mixed reports, but bottom line there’s something washed up on the shore of the Pine Street beach.”
“Something?” Audrey buckled her seat belt, shifted the car into Drive and took off toward the north side of town. “What kind of something?”
“Well, one report said a beached whale,” Ophelia came back with. “Another said dead shark. But a couple people called in to say a drowned fisherman.”
Audrey’s gut clenched. All sorts of things found their way into the inlet from the ocean’s current. None of those scenarios sounded good. Especially the last one. The town didn’t need the heartache of losing one of their own so close to Christmas. Not that any time was a good time.
Her heart cramped with sorrow for the father she’d lost so many years ago to the sea.
She prayed that whoever was on the beach wasn’t someone she knew. It would be sad enough for a stranger to die on their shore.
Pine Street ended at a public beach, which in the summer would be teeming with tourists
and locals alike. She brought her vehicle to a halt in the cul-de-sac next to an early-model pickup truck where a small group of gawkers stood on the road side of the concrete barrier. Obviously the ones who’d called the sheriff’s department.
Bracing herself for the biting cold, she climbed out and plopped her brimmed hat on her head to prevent her body heat from escaping through her scalp. With shoulders squared and head up, she approached the break in the seawall.
“Audrey.” Clem Previs rushed forward to grip her sleeve, his veined hand nearly blue from the cold. The retired fisherman ran the bait shop on the pier with his two sons. “Shouldn’t you wait for the sheriff?”
Others crowded around her. Mary Fleischer from the dime store. Pat Garvey from the hardware store and the librarian, Lucy Concord. All stared at her with expectant and skeptical gazes. These men and women had watched her grow up from a wee babe to the woman she was today. She held affection for each one, and their lack of confidence in her hurt.
Pressing her lips together, she covered Clem’s hand with hers. He felt like a Popsicle. “Clem, I can handle this,” she assured him and the others.
Her breath came out in little puffs. The ground beneath their feet crunched with a top layer of ice. “You all need to get inside somewhere warm. I can’t deal with more than one crisis at a time, and I sure don’t want to be having to give you mouth to mouth out here in the cold.”
Clem clucked. “Don’t get lippy with me, young lady.”
She smiled and patted his hand. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Now I’ve got to do my job.”
“Seems someone is already taking care of it,” Lucy said, pointing.
About ten yards down the beach, a man dressed from head to toe in black and wearing a mask that obscured his face struggled to drag something toward the water’s edge.
Audrey narrowed her gaze. Her pulse raced. Amid a tangle of seaweed and debris, she could make out the dark outline of a large body. She shivered with dread. That certainly wasn’t a fish, whale or shark. Definitely human. And from the size, she judged the body to be male.
And someone was intent on returning the man to the ocean.
Heart thrumming and adrenaline flooding her body, she took off at a fast clip, but the thirty-two pounds of gear she carried on her person, plus her bulky boots, made maneuvering in the sand difficult. Careful to keep from tripping over clumps of kelp and driftwood that had settled on the beach from the wind and ocean tide, she narrowed the gap.
“Hey!” she shouted. “Stop where you are! Sheriff’s department.”
The suspect froze, then dropped the prone man’s feet in the surf. The perpetrator whipped toward her with a large-caliber gun aimed in her direction.
Her breath caught. She faced her worst fear as an officer.
He fired. And missed.
The sound of the gun blast echoed through the morning air, scattering a flock of seagulls from the water’s edge. Fragments of sand pelted her uniform.
Stunned, Audrey dropped to her belly, knocking the wind momentarily out of her. Sand clung to her, getting in her mouth, her nose, as she drew in a breath. She fought through the panic and called on her training. She drew her sidearm. “Halt!”
He ignored her and ran across the sand, heading for the berm separating the road from the beach. She shot at him, the sound exploding in her brain and muffling the world.
He hunkered inward, protecting his head, but kept running. With her ears ringing, she jumped to her feet, torn between giving chase and checking on the man in the sand and making sure Clem and the others weren’t hit by the assault.
But the man with the gun posed a threat she needed to neutralize. Now, before he hurt anyone else.
She sprinted after him, kicking up sand with each step while radioing for help. “Shots fired! Officer needs backup.”
“Sheriff’s on his way!” came Ophelia’s barely audible reply through the fuzzy haze inside Audrey’s ears.
“Suspect heading toward Prescott Road,” Audrey relayed to the dispatcher, praying Ophelia could hear her, since she couldn’t be sure how loud or soft she was yelling because her hearing was muffled from the gunfire.
The deep drifts of sand hindered her progress but also the perpetrator’s.
Audrey gained on him while trying to aim her weapon. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”
Before she could pull the trigger, the suspect reached the berm and disappeared over the top. Tall sea grass obscured him from view. Deep grooves in the sand from his boots were the only sign he’d even been there.
Breathing heavily, Audrey reached the berm and crawled up the sandy embankment in a crouch. She crested the top in time to see a black Suburban peel away from the edge of the road and speed down the street. Before she could get off a shot, the vehicle careened around the corner and disappeared from view.
Frustrated, Audrey pounded the hard-packed sand with a fist. She thumbed her mic while sliding down the sandy berm. “I lost the suspect on Prescott. Black Suburban with missing plates and tinted windows.”
She didn’t wait to hear Ophelia’s answer as she scrambled to the sandy shore and hurried back toward the seawall. “Clem! Mary!”
The four popped up from behind the concrete barrier. “Here!”
Relief nearly made Audrey’s knees buckle. “Anyone hit?”
“No, Audrey,” Pat yelled back. “You?”
“You okay, Deputy Martin?” Lucy called out.
“I’m good.” She did an about-face and ran back to the man lying motionless on the shore. The water lapped at his feet. If she’d arrived any later, the man would be fish bait once again. How had the masked man known where he’d washed ashore?
Keeping her gaze alert, in case the assailant returned, she knelt down next to the supine body, noting with a frown that he was dressed in what could only be categorized as tactical attire, minus the hardware.
Definitely not a fisherman.
And definitely not from around here.
She pressed her fingers against the side of the man’s neck, fully expecting to find no pulse, as no one could survive for long in the frigid Atlantic Ocean, not to mention being exposed to the elements onshore. The skin on his neck was like ice, but beneath her cold fingers a pulse beat. Slow, but there!
With a renewed spike of adrenaline, she grabbed the mic on her shoulder. “Send the ambulance to the beach. We have a live one here. Hurry, though!”
“Copy that.” Ophelia’s surprise matched Audrey’s.
Audrey slipped her arms under the man’s torso and dragged him to the dry sand. Then she unzipped her jacket, thankful she’d worn her thick, cable-knit sweater over her thermals today, and shrugged out of the outerwear. She laid it over the man on the beach.
Turning to the group of town elders still gawking like she were the main act at the circus, she called out, “Clem, is that your truck parked out there?”
“Sure is,” he yelled back.
“Do you have any blankets or jackets? I need them!”
Clem and Pat hustled away, leaving the two older ladies huddled together, staring in her direction. Audrey turned her attention back to the man lying on the sand. Dark hair hung in chunks covering his face. Dried blood matted some of the hair near his temple. He had on black jackboots, similar to the ones she wore, black cargo pants, a black turtleneck and gloves.
She made a quick check for identification. None. She placed a hand on his shoulder. “Lord, I don’t know why this man has washed ashore here or what purpose You have, but I pray that he lives. Have mercy and grace on this man. And let us find the masked man without any lives lost. Amen.”
The man stirred and moaned as he thrashed on the sand, giving Audrey her first real glimpse of his face as his hair dropped away. Dark lashes splayed over high cheekbones. A well-formed mouth with lips nearly blue from the cold. He had handsome features. Curiosity bubbled inside her. Who was he and what was his story? Why was someone trying to kill him?
“Sir.” Audrey gave his shoul
der a gentle shake.
A word slipped out of his mouth.
“What?” Audrey bent closer, turning her ear toward his mouth.
“Betrayed...” He stilled and slipped back into unconsciousness.
A sense of urgency trembled through her. What did he mean? Had he betrayed someone? Or had someone betrayed him?
She still didn’t hear the siren. Where was the ambulance? It wasn’t like the medical center where Sean James kept the bus parked was that far away. Calico Bay was barely the length of a football field. Keeping her gun ready, she stayed alert for any signs of the masked man returning.
Clem and Pat picked their way to her side, their arms loaded with a plethora of blankets and jackets. She quickly packed them around her charge. Whatever this man’s story, whether good or bad, she had a sworn duty to serve and protect the community of Calico Bay, and for now that included this man.
The shrill siren filled the air. Good. About time. Within minutes Sean, his intern and the sheriff were hustling across the beach with a stretcher. Sean ambled toward her on an unsteady gait. He carried his medical bag in one gloved hand. A yellow beanie was pulled low over his auburn hair and covered his ears.
His intense brown gaze swept the area as if looking for insurgents. He’d been a medic in the military before losing a leg at the knee when an IUD exploded. The town had been heartbroken at his loss but thankful their star high school quarterback had returned to Calico Bay alive.
Though Sean had slipped into a depression when he’d first come home, the town’s people wouldn’t let that continue and had pooled their resources to buy the ambulance and make him the town’s official EMT.
Audrey moved out of the way to allow Sean and his intern, a kid named Wes, to work on the unconscious man.
“I’ve got all deputies out looking for the SUV. What do we have here?” Sheriff David Crump asked. He was a big, brawny man with a shock of white hair that had once been as dark as night and a ready grin that had captured her great-aunt’s heart back when they were in high school. Now if only Audrey could capture his respect as easily.
She related what she knew.
Deadly Setup Page 20