Chapter 2
TWO
DANIEL
My ass was asleep, and the numbness was creeping up my thighs.
I shifted uncomfortably in my chair in the conference room at Nag's Head Coast Guard base, my new second home.
The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead with that particular institutional hum that seemed to burrow into your skull after hours of exposure.
At some dim, distant point in the past, this chair had been padded—probably when Reagan was in office, judging by the faded fabric and metal frame showing through at the corners.
Years of briefings just like this one had broken it down to nothing but false promises of comfort.
Shipping routes and tracking data filled the massive screen mounted on the far wall, a spiderweb of coordinates and timestamps that told the cold, hard facts of drug trafficking patterns in the Outer Banks.
Red dots marked known drop points, yellow lines traced suspected routes, and blue zones indicated our patrol areas.
It was a digital map of criminal enterprises, color-coded and sanitized for official consumption.
The reason I was here, so far as the Coast Guard was concerned.
"And here's where we lost track of the vessel.
" Lieutenant Commander Hayes stepped closer to the screen, his laser pointer creating a red dot that danced across the display.
He circled a blip that disappeared off the coast of Hatteras, somewhere in the maze of shoals and channels that made these waters a smuggler's paradise.
I leaned forward, elbows finding purchase on the scarred conference table that bore the ring stains of a thousand coffee cups.
"We saw the same pattern operating in the Gulf.
They're using the barrier islands as natural cover, probably making drops at night when visibility's low and the tourist boats have cleared out. "
Across the table, a sheriff's deputy with graying temples and tired eyes scribbled notes in a composition book that looked like it had survived several hurricanes.
Working as liaison between the Coast Guard and local law enforcement wasn't too different from my old post in Louisiana—just swap cypress swamps for salt marshes and Cajun accents for Outer Banks drawls.
Drug runners were drug runners, whether they were slipping through bayous thick with Spanish moss or ducking between barrier islands dotted with wild horses.
"LaRue, what was your success rate with night interdiction operations in the Gulf?" Hayes asked, turning from the screen to fix me with the kind of stare that suggested he already knew the answer but wanted it on record.
"Thirty percent higher when we coordinated with local fishing boats and charter operations.
They knew the water patterns, the seasonal changes, the hiding spots better than the traffickers ever could.
" I pulled up the statistical analysis from my last operation on my tablet, swiping through screens of data that represented months of planning and execution.
"Small craft, crews familiar with every inch of shoreline, able to move quick and quiet through shallow water where our larger vessels couldn't follow. "
The meeting dragged on with the relentless pace of bureaucracy at work.
We'd already been grinding through this briefing for three hours, dissecting intercept strategies and resource allocation with the kind of methodical thoroughness that made my eyelids heavy.
Charts and graphs blurred together as speakers droned about funding allocations and jurisdictional boundaries.
I found my mind drifting south, past Oregon Inlet with its fishing fleet and charter boats, past the tourist spots clogged with rental houses and miniature golf courses, all the way down to Hatterwick Island where the development thinned out and the landscape turned wild again.
Gabi was down there somewhere, probably finishing up her afternoon appointments at the island clinic.
I checked my watch—4:20 PM. She might be wrapping up with her last patient, updating charts in that careful handwriting.
Or maybe she was already off work. Would she be stopping by her family's place for dinner? Out with friends at whatever passed for nightlife on an island with two thousand residents? I didn’t know what her routine looked like now, and that ignorance sat in my chest like a stone.
Because it had been three months since I’d taken that promotion to Seattle without talking to her first. Three months of gray skies and rain that never seemed to stop, of realizing what a complete and utter idiot I was.
Three months of staring at her contact information in my phone and not knowing what words could possibly make up for the way I'd handled things.
Getting this transfer to the Outer Banks hadn't been easy.
I'd called in just about every favor anyone had ever owed me, worked connections from my Gulf Coast drug task force days where I'd done the solid, reliable work that earned me that Seattle promotion in the first place.
Burned a bridge or two with supervisors who'd expected me to stay put and be grateful for the career advancement.
The work here was important—these waters were becoming a major trafficking corridor as enforcement tightened elsewhere along the coast. But if I was being honest with myself—and I was trying to be these days—breaking up drug operations wasn't the primary reason I'd fought so hard for this posting.
I glanced at my phone, the screen reflecting the harsh conference room lighting.
No messages. No missed calls. And why would there be?
She hadn't responded to any of the texts I'd sent from Seattle—carefully worded attempts at conversation that had gone unanswered until I'd finally stopped sending them.
I hadn't told her I was here, hadn't told her I was coming at all.
I'd thought this was the kind of gesture better made in person, so she could see in my face how serious I was about making things right.
But now, sitting in this sterile room with drug interdiction statistics scrolling past, I wondered if I'd just made another miscalculation.
Fixing things with Gabi would be infinitely harder than tracking down smugglers in the dark.
At least with smugglers, I understood the patterns, could predict their moves based on weather and tides and market pressures.
With Gabi... I'd already made the wrong move once.
I couldn't afford another mistake, not when there might not be a third chance.
It was so damn easy to picture her the way she'd been during those long weekends in New Orleans during her residency.
Perched cross-legged on that narrow balcony overlooking Royal Street, still in her wrinkled scrubs after a thirty-six-hour rotation at Tulane Medical Center, her dark hair escaping from the practical braid she wore for work and curling around her face in the heavy Louisiana humidity.
I'd bring her beignets from Café du Monde and coffee strong enough to wake the dead, and we'd sit there talking about everything and nothing while the city slowly came alive below us.
Medical school stories and Coast Guard adventures, family gossip and half-formed dreams about the future.
It had been such a comfortable routine, so natural and easy that I hadn't realized how much I'd come to depend on it until it was gone.
"These coordinates match the pattern from three previous incidents." Hayes's voice cut through my memories like a foghorn, yanking me back to the present with uncomfortable suddenness.
Work. Right. Focus on the job. This was what I was supposedly good at—uncovering patterns in criminal behavior, anticipating moves, coordinating assets across multiple agencies.
Give me a maritime chess game with drug runners any day of the week.
At least that was a problem I knew how to solve.
But telling the woman I loved that I'd screwed up beyond belief?
Acknowledging that I'd taken her for granted and made a major life decision without considering how it would affect her?
Well, I'd rather board a hostile vessel in twenty-foot swells during a gale.
The conference room door burst open with enough force to rattle the frame. Chief Weather Officer Lopez stepped in, tablet clutched in her hands and an expression that immediately put everyone on alert. "Sir, urgent update on Hurricane Hannah. The track's shifted significantly."
Hayes straightened in his chair. "Where's she headed now?"
"Direct hit on the Outer Banks, making landfall in forty-eight hours. Current projections show Category 3, possibly strengthening to 4 before landfall." Lopez swiped her tablet, pulling up the latest satellite imagery. "Hatterwick's right at the edge of the cone of uncertainty."
My stomach clenched like I'd taken a punch. Hatterwick. Gabi. Two thousand people on a barrier island with one main road and limited evacuation options, staring down a major hurricane.
"Well, that changes our surveillance timeline considerably," Hayes said, his voice carrying the weight of someone mentally reshuffling priorities. "LaRue, what was standard Gulf protocol for pre-storm drug trafficking activity?"
I forced myself to focus on the tactical question, though part of my mind was already calculating wind speeds and storm surge projections.
"Traffickers typically try to move product before severe weather hits.
They can't risk losing millions in cargo to storm damage or having their boats trapped by high seas.
" I pulled up historical data from Hurricane Katrina and other major storms. "We usually saw a significant spike in movement twenty-four to thirty-six hours before landfall. "