Chapter 17 Inga #2
Luke continued to glance at the sky now and then, but Inga, fully relaxed and comfortable in the safety of her hometown, thought he was being unreasonably paranoid until the sudden thumping of helicopter rotors made her heart accelerate.
It had to just be a coincidence, tourists or whale-spotters—but when she looked up, she saw a familiar black helicopter fly over, low.
Luke had already stepped back under Ms. Sanderson’s awning, his whole body tense.
“Joyriders!” Ms. Sanderson declared, shaking her fist at the sky. “Someone oughta do something.”
“Have you seen them around before?” Inga asked. She recalled what Nita had said about a low-flying helicopter annoying people in Westerly Cove.
Rogue pressed his head against her leg, as if sensing the tense mood of the humans. Or maybe he, too, recognized the helicopter. Inga felt his body vibrate with a growl.
Ms. Sanderson was happy to complain at great length about the helicopter flying around, blowing the covers off boats, and scaring the seals. Meanwhile, Luke was looking out into the bay, squinting against the bright sun. He touched Inga’s arm.
“Does it look to you like it’s landing on something?”
Inga shaded her eyes against the sun. “Mimsy, do you have a pair of binoculars?”
The old woman brought an incredibly old-fashioned monocular telescope, looking like something that belonged on the deck of a pirate ship.
Inga and Luke passed it back and forth. The helicopter was definitely lowering itself to land on the deck of a ship, but the ship was so far out to sea that they could barely make out more than a large shape.
“It actually looks a lot like a marine research ship,” Inga said.
For a moment she felt the old wistfulness and regret for that particular road not taken.
“We get a few of them in the summer, although this is early in the year for it. Maybe that was a different helicopter?” She said it thoughtlessly, forgetting about Ms. Sanderson, and quickly glanced at Luke.
“Than ... the one that’s been flying around, I mean. ”
“It wasn’t,” Luke said quietly.
It seemed that nothing more was happening for the moment. Inga returned the old lady’s monocular to her, and they continued their climb up the hill in a much more subdued mood. Inga kept glancing out across the water, where she could still see the distant ship, a speck on the horizon.
“I figured they have some base of operations,” Luke said. “That ship must be it.”
“You know, I bet either of my brothers would be happy to sail out and take a look,” Inga suggested.
“My brother Eren and his wife Lucy spend most of their time on the family fishing boat when the weather’s nice enough to take it out, and I’m not sure precisely where they are right now.
But if they’re not close enough, I bet Tor can borrow something from one of his friends. ”
“I don’t want to get your family involved.”
“They don’t have to be involved. They can just take a look around. I don’t expect anyone will bother them if they don’t get too close.”
“Inga, I absolutely would not gamble your family’s safety on these people not bothering them.”
Inga gripped his arm. “I get it, okay? I don’t want my family in danger either.
But if these people keep coming here, then they are going to be our problem sooner or later, all right?
I told you my brother has tangled with them in the past. We definitely don’t want them coming around.
” She gave his arm a little shake. “It’s our problem too, Luke. Not just yours.”
Before he could answer, they ran out of road.
The incredibly steep road they had been climbing—almost impossible to drive in the winter, as Inga knew firsthand—ended at a large turnaround area, with a few parked vehicles belonging to residents who parked up top and walked down.
They were now above the town. The hilltop road ran off to their left and eventually connected to the highway, with a few turnoffs to the town and the lighthouse along the way.
But, while they had gone as far as the road went, they were not yet out of hill. Above them, the hillside rolled upward, and the pitched roof and upper walls of Mace’s rambling, gabled house were just visible above the rocks.
“Is that the stone house you told me about?” Luke asked, shading his eyes and frowning up the hill.
“Yeah. Mace and his family live there.”
Talk to Mace, her dad had said. Inga frowned up at the house, and then her gaze drifted nearer, to a gargoyle statue on the edge of the parking lot.
It was life-size, and unique as all of them were, once you got to looking closely at the details.
This one had the aspect of a hunched troll-like figure, slightly taller than Inga, with its hands resting on top of the handle of a massive battleaxe. It was gazing out to sea.
“Man, those things really are everywhere,” Luke said, having followed her gaze.
“They sure are. Do you want to go meet the sculptor?”
“Right now?”
“Why not now? We can at least see if they’re home.
It’s not a bad time of day.” It was midmorning, the sun growing high overhead and starting to pick up some warmth.
“We don’t have to stay for lunch, but we can stop in for a cup of coffee and a chat, and maybe see if Mace knows anything about that ship. ”
A winding path led up the hillside from the parking lot. Here and there it was marked by cairns of stone. Inga, who was all too familiar with the winter weather here, guessed they were to identify the path when the snow was deep. Rogue trotted along behind them, tail waving like a flag.
As they started climbing, Luke said, “Do you know him well?”
“Who? Mace? No, I’ve never talked to him.”
Luke looked puzzled. “But you’re on a first-name basis?”
She had never really thought about it. “Well, I guess he’s just ... Mace. Everyone in town calls him that. He’s a fixture.”
Like the gargoyles. And this made her wonder how old Mace really was. She remembered him from when she was a child—or had that been his father?
And what did her dad, who she had never realized even knew Mace, think he might be able to help with?