Chapter 2 #2
He hated Shade’s boat. Not because of the paint scum or rattling blocks. He hated it because it was a shrine to bad choices. A man who made them. A man who hid things in compartments, locked them down, and left the lies to rot with the rope.
Echo’s hackles rose. Rone set a boot on the springy finger of a dock line and listened. Over the slap of water and the tick-tick-tick of a cooling engine on some other rig, he caught the softest scuff. Above. Inside. Skittering away.
He could leave. Let the coming dark swallow this woman along with his better intentions. If he didn’t get involved, he couldn’t fail her. If he didn’t step forward, he wouldn’t have to see that look again, the flash of betrayal that said he should’ve been enough and wasn’t.
Echo gave that idea the contempt it deserved and put two paws on the rub rail, chest rising on a sharp breath.
There it was on the window. Another warning.
Rone hopped the gap to the stern swim platform, the boat not giving even an inch to his weight due to the sixty-five thousand pound yacht’s solid features. Echo flowed beside him like smoke. The aft deck was slick with spray and the kind of Florida grime that never quite dried.
Echo went low and quiet, nose down, breath measured. The smell inside the salon hit like a memory—diesel and damp, a hint of cedar-musk he didn’t welcome. The blanket that had been tossed across the L-shaped settee littered with parts was gone.
He crossed the salon without sound and took the narrow passage to the pilot house stairs.
Echo paused at the foot, ears triangulating.
He pointed his muzzle upward, then toward the bow, then to the starboard side where the guest cabin built-ins lined the wall.
A faint draft brushed his wrist. Not ventilation—fresh air from a door opened recently. Someone had moved.
“Clear,” he breathed, tapping two fingers up. Echo slowly climbed, each placement of paw deliberate. He followed, palm light on the rail because the second tread on these spiral steps always sang like a rat trap.
Halfway up, light bled across the landing, but when he reached the top, no one was there. Echo sat back on his haunches, confirming his assessment. Squeaks sounded behind him so he about-faced to find Isobel.
She was paler than she’d been on the dock, but her chin was up. A tremor rode the tendon in her throat when she swallowed, and that made something he didn’t like shift in his chest.
Her eyes settled on the overturned cushions and the open drawers and mess scattered across the table.
“Echo followed the smell of trouble, so I came to keep him from jumping through a window to get to it.”
She looked past him, out the window as if to see something in the distance, the stubborn line of her mouth sharpening. “I don’t run because someone tells me to.”
“And I don’t threaten people with cryptic messages. If I have something to say, I won’t be a coward and scratch it into some ornament.” He stepped closer. “But whatever Shade was into those final months before he died is obviously spilling over onto you.”
She moved to the helm and hung the ornament on it as if it belonged there, then turned back to him. “Someone was looking for something, but what?”
“I don’t have the answers.”
“And let me guess. You think I should leave.”
“Already told you that.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and scanned the boat, searching, as if digging for her own answers in this boat.
Rone took her measure—arms locked, chin set, that look that said she’d rather drown than ask for a rope. It hit a place he didn’t visit. The same hard light his old partner used to throw when she decided a door was opening, with or without him.
Stubborn enough to get herself killed, he thought, and hated the way the words tasted like prayer and warning at once.
Echo shifted, bringing the moment back to ground.
The shepherd nosed under the helm, fished out a loose wing nut from God-knew-what, and padded over to Isobel with a careful, almost courtly gait.
He set the tiny prize in her palm, then sat and tilted his head in that dramatic arc that made anyone smile, no matter how angry they thought they were.
It worked. The corners of her mouth curled up. “Thanks,” she murmured, and because Echo had impeccable timing, he lifted a paw as if to shake. She huffed—almost a laugh—took the paw automatically, and Rone felt the tension in the room ratchet down half a notch.
“Traitor,” he told the dog without heat.
“Don’t mind him, he’s jealous of the attention.”
She wasn’t wrong. The woman would be beautiful and a catch if he was looking for anything, which he wasn’t. Nothing but some peace and quiet. “Name’s Isobel, by the way.” She said in a sweet tone while scratching under Echo’s chin.
“Isobel,” Rone said, “What’s your endgame here? With this boat.”
She blinked, recalibrating. “Endgame?”
“You said you don’t run because someone tells you to.” He nodded toward the overturned cushions. “So what’s the plan after you ignore the warning? Fix it? Sleep on it? Pretend last night didn’t happen?”
Her shoulders drew back. “Fix it and sell it.” No wobble there. “I’m not afraid of hard work. I can make this boat presentable, get it listed, and be out of here before New Year’s.”
Good plan, the part of him that wanted her gone said. The other part—the one that had watched her retie a line with shaking hands and refuse to flinch—ground its teeth.
But he knew the truth; there wasn’t much of a market for a trawler like this. Not in the current economic downturn, and not one as unique as this one. And with only three weeks to New Year’s, she could forget that plan. “I’ll buy it.”
Echo’s head did another slow tilt, this one clearly for him. The dog’s ears made a question mark.
Isobel’s brows climbed. “You?”
He kept his face blank. He could see it, sure—get her off the target, keep Family First close enough to control what spilled out of it, lock down whatever Shade had left bleeding.
Except there was a stack of realities between want and can.
Every extra dollar he made went where it needed to: a mortgage that wasn’t his, a kid’s private school tuition with the wrong last name on it, monthly envelopes to a man who wore grief like a uniform because a bullet had taken his wife. Rone’s partner.
He could still feel Torres’s blood on his shirt if he let himself. He didn’t let himself.
“Or,” he amended, voice flat, “I’ll find a buyer who won’t spook at dock gossip. Someone who can close fast.”
Her eyes narrowed a fraction. “Someone who’ll make me disappear fast, you mean.”
“I mean someone who doesn’t want you on a boat that’s already been turned over by a stranger.” He jerked his chin at the ransacked drawers. “Whoever left that ornament came back. Whoever wrote on your window had hands on your line. That’s not superstition, Isobel. That’s a sequence.”
“And you think buying it makes the sequence stop?”
“I think getting you out of it makes it stop.” The words came out harder than he meant. He softened nothing. “Shade drew heat in his last months.”
She flinched at the name, then covered it with anger. “You keep calling him that. Shade. Like it’s normal.”
“It was his name.” Rone’s mouth set. “And I never believed he capsized his dinghy and drowned in the mangroves. Men like him don’t vanish clean. They leave complications.”
“I’m aware,” she said, the words sharp enough to cut. “I’m one.”
Echo, who had been listening like he understood every syllable, leaned into her leg until her balance shifted. She looked down, then let a hand slide along his neck. The dog sighed—a soft, ridiculous sound. Cute was a tool, too.
Rone used it. “He picked you,” he said. “Echo doesn’t choose wrong.”
Her throat moved. “Maybe he just likes being petted.”
“Maybe,” Rone said. “Or maybe he recognizes someone who won’t quit when she should.” He thought to tell her Echo was Shade’s, which meant he was hers now, but he decided to let Echo choose where he wanted to live. Maybe selfish of him, but if the animal chose Rone, he didn’t do anything wrong.
Her gaze snapped back. There it was again—that spark of fight that had first made him furious and then made him tired. And underneath it, a sliver of fear she was doing an excellent job pretending didn’t exist.
“Offer stands,” he said. “Sell it to me. Or let me line up someone who might not garner carved warnings instead of knocking.”
She studied him like she wanted to peel him open and look for strings. “You don’t strike me as a man with a lot of… discretionary cash.”
He almost smiled. Smart. “I’m resourceful.”
Echo snorted. Rone shot him a look. The dog’s head tilt became a full-body lean that said don’t lie to the nice lady, which landed harder than it should.
Isobel watched the exchange, something like curiosity cooling her temper. “What’s his story?”
“He thinks he’s my conscience.”
“I meant before you.”
Rone didn’t answer. Not here. Not with someone watching them, untying lines, and rummaging through the boat. He lifted a hand, palm down at Echo’s chest. The dog’s ears eased forward again—alert, not alarm.
Maybe he should leave Echo here to keep her safe.
“Look,” Rone said, keeping his voice level.
“You want answers, I get it. But you need to decide if you want them more than you want to keep breathing. People who leave last warnings tend to mean them. And if I’m right about Shade’s last months, there are folks who will treat you like an open tab they have to close. ”
She held his stare. “I’m not leaving because a man with a dog tells me to.”
Torres again, in the flash of her jaw. You can wait if you want, she’d said. And he had. A moment that left his partner vulnerable. A moment when the world exploded sideways with a spray of bullets and disbelief. He blinked the memory away until the edges dulled.
“Fine, but the second I find a buyer, you’re gone,” he said. “In the meantime, you don’t open anything you didn’t close. We double up on lines.”
“We?”
Darn if he hadn’t said that aloud. Inserting himself into the hero role before he knew what he was doing. Torres had been right; he couldn’t help himself. But he needed to because his hero complex only got people killed. “Shade’s people don’t have patience.”
“His people,” she repeated, voice hollowing just a little like the words were stepping on her throat. “You talk like you knew him.”
“I knew the wake he left.” Rone angled his head toward the starboard cabinet with files spilling out. “And I know how to read a boat that’s been staged for a message.”
Isobel looked at Echo, then back at the ornament dangling from the wheel. Its red glass swung in a lazy arc, tapping the helm with a patient tick. The sound felt louder now that they were quiet.
“Fine,” she said at last. “In exchange, no more condescending sell it to me tricks.”
He would’ve told her he wasn’t trying to con her. He would’ve told her he was trying to keep her alive. He didn’t bother. Men who said that sounded like liars, even when they weren’t.
“Deal,” he said. “Long enough for me to find a buyer. Then you’re gone.”
“Like the wind.” She laughed.
He wanted to tell her this wasn’t a laughing matter, but if he was honest, he liked the way she smiled like the world wasn’t falling apart around them.
And the one thing he’d never do is tell her he suspected her father wasn’t dead but captive.
Captive by people who would make him wish he were dead.