Chapter 31 Storm Warning #2
The boatyard transformed in forty minutes.
Bette turned the sign to CLOSED and locked the public entrance.
Every loose piece of equipment came inside or got chained to a fixed anchor.
Nora checked each boat cradle personally, testing the cable tension and lashing points while the wind screamed louder off the lake.
Jules and Arvid carried blankets, water jugs, and canned food from the pack house down to the shelter, then locked the house behind them.
Hank secured the perimeter gates. I locked the haul shed and the parts storage and disconnected the main dockside power so Conrad’s wolves couldn’t cut a live line and use it as a weapon.
Rafe found me by the outer bay while I was padlocking the last door. Rain drove sideways across the yard, stinging cold. His hair was plastered to his skull. His right shoulder rode stiff beneath his jacket.
“He’ll come during the worst of it,” Rafe said. “When the wind’s loudest and the visibility’s gone. He’s patient enough to wait at the tree line for the right moment.”
“You know him.”
“I was raised by him. He taught me to hunt when I was eleven. Tracked a buck through two miles of November brush. He waited four hours in a blind without moving. The deer walked right past us.”
I heard what he was telling me. Conrad wouldn’t charge the gates with seven wolves like last time. He’d come in quiet, let the gale do his advance work, and strike the moment we couldn’t hear him over the storm.
“Where would you put yourself?” I asked.
Rafe looked at the yard, the bay doors, the dark water beyond the dock. “At the tree line between the road and the lower yard. That’s where he’ll stage. The slope gives cover, and the wind comes off the lake, so our scent blows away from them.”
“Jules takes the shelter entrance. Nobody gets past him to Bette and whoever else is below.”
“And Nora?”
“Nora stays in the service bay running the systems.”
Rafe looked at me. Whatever he thought about that, whatever his fated bond was screaming at him about Nora staying in the service bay while Conrad’s wolves might be moving through the trees, he kept it behind his teeth.
“Where do you want me?” he asked.
“With me. North side of the yard, facing the tree line. You’ll know Conrad’s scent before I do.”
He nodded once. No argument. No negotiation. No reminder that I was asking him to stand beside me against his own father.
“If it gets bad,” I said, and stopped.
Rafe waited.
“If it gets bad, and I go down. You get Nora out.”
“Wade.”
“You get her out. Whatever she says, whatever she does. You carry her if you have to. You take her east along the shore and you don’t stop until the harbor is hours behind you.”
Through the ugly weather I could see him fighting with the answer, and I understood why. Nora would never forgive either of us if he dragged her away from a fight.
“She’ll hate me for it,” Rafe said.
“Better that than losing her.”
He took his time answering, wind tearing at both of us, rain slicking our shoulders. Then he said, “All right.”
I clapped him on his good shoulder. His body was thinner than mine, still carrying the weight loss from weeks of open bond, but the muscle beneath his jacket was real.
He’d earned it scraping hulls and hauling tarps and following Jules’s orders without complaint.
Whatever else Rafe Sutherland was, he was not a man who ran from hard work or hard choices.
We went inside.
Jules was coming up from the shelter after the last supply run. I stopped him at the lower door.
“When this starts, this door is yours. Nothing gets down those stairs.”
His face went still. “Understood.”
? ? ?
Near dusk the boatyard was sealed. Every light that faced outward was killed. The emergency floods stayed dark. The only illumination came from the service bay’s interior work lights and the glow leaking up from the shelter’s single bulb beneath the office floor.
I stood at the narrow window in the bay’s east wall and watched the weather close over Pine Harbor.
Snow had begun mixing with the rain, small white flecks vanishing against the wet concrete.
The tree line was still visible beyond the yard, though each new gust blurred it.
Wind struck the bay’s metal walls and shook the window in its frame.
Behind me, Nora moved between the generator panel and the lift controls, checking connections and testing switches with the focused competence that still made my chest hurt.
Jules sat on an overturned bucket near the shelter’s interior door, cleaning his boots and watching the main bay entrance.
Rafe stood near the north wall, arms crossed and head tilted as he listened for movement beneath the storm.
Hank had the south window, his hip braced against the sill. Arvid waited beside the reinforced lower door, ready to pull it shut behind him if I gave the order. Bette and the pack members I was keeping out of the fight waited below.
“Mind link’s clear,” I said. “No contact on the western road. Nothing on the hill.”
“He won’t come from the road,” Rafe said. “He’ll come through the trees.”
I looked at Nora. She was tightening a cable connection on the transfer switch, her hands steady. Through our bond, I felt her determination hold firm despite her fear. She caught me looking and held my eyes.
I wanted to tell her what she meant to me and how badly I feared this night could take her away. But Nora needed me to do my job.
I turned back to the window. The mix of snow and rain swirled as the last gray light faded over the lake. Somewhere west of us, Conrad Sutherland might be coming to kill the woman I loved, and the storm would hide him until he was already here.
I pressed my palm against the cold glass and felt the gale trying to push through it.
“Everybody hold,” I said.
Pine Harbor held and waited.