Chapter 4
Sarah had known every board of Aurora Cove’s harbor since she could walk. She knew which ones turned slick first after frost and which skippers would already be halfway to the fishing grounds by this time of morning.
She came down the ramp ahead of Hudson. Early winter had gotten into the wood and the metal both.
The handrail stung cold through her gloves.
The police boat rocked gently in its mooring in water the color of old iron.
Its aluminum hull was dulled by salt and years of hard use, the sheriff’s star faded on the cabin door.
Walter was already onboard, checking the fuel line, hunkered over the port side.
“Fuel’s topped off,” he said as she stepped aboard.
“Good.”
“Weather will hold another three hours. Maybe four.”
“Hmm.” She scanned the horizon.
Morrow Bay Cannery was seasonal. Freight in. Freight out. Barges. Fishing boats. Cold storage. If a man wanted to move something without attracting attention, it was perfect.
It was understandable why Hudson was interested. She just didn’t know why he wouldn’t tell her.
Boots sounded on the ramp behind her. She checked over her shoulder.
Hudson.
The borrowed jacket should have hidden the breadth of his shoulders. Somehow it didn’t. Sarah looked away. That wasn’t a useful observation.
Walter handed her the manifest clipboard to sign.
Hudson paused with one boot on the gunwale for a heartbeat too long.
“Second thoughts, Deputy Marshal?”
Hudson shot her a look, then stepped aboard.
She shrugged into a life jacket over her winter coat and handed him another. He pulled it on without comment, his gaze lingering on the water a fraction too long.
Seasick? A former SEAL? Hardly. She dismissed the thought with a roll of her shoulders.
Walter cast off without ceremony. The engine turned over on the first try, and the shelter of the harbor disappeared behind them.
The wind hit with teeth. The cold in Aurora Cove came off the mountains, sharp and still. Out here it rode the water, the damp finding every gap in a collar or cuff.
Hudson took the bow before anyone assigned positions. Clearly, he preferred to see trouble coming. Sarah took the stern. Walter didn’t comment.
She studied Hudson from under the brim of her hat. Jaw set, posture controlled, hands easy at his sides. He looked like a man on a job, exactly what he was supposed to look like.
That was the thing.
She’d seen people uncomfortable on water. They gripped things or sat too low, tried to keep their center of gravity down, or made themselves small against the movement. They laughed too loudly or went quiet and stared at the horizon because someone had told them once that it helped.
Hudson wasn’t doing any of that. He was just—holding. A stillness that had a shape to it. He was managing something. As though he felt her looking, he glanced back.
Sarah had already turned her attention to the shoreline. She wasn’t sure who she was trying to fool.
She remembered him at nineteen. A boy who had always looked like he was already halfway to wherever he planned to go next. Time had sharpened him. Broadened him. But the stillness was the thing she couldn’t reconcile.
Walter came alongside her, mug of his terrible thermos coffee in one hand, the other easy on the tiller. He eyed Hudson’s back, then sipped his coffee.
Icy spray came over the bow.
Sarah raised her voice over the throb of the engine. “You spend much time on boats these days?”
Hudson’s gaze swung to her. “No.”
The answer came too fast.
Walter looked between them.
Sarah tilted her head. “That’s a shame. Last I checked, SEALs were fairly boat-adjacent.”
“Last I checked, sheriffs asked fewer personal questions.” He turned to face forward again.
Walter choked on his coffee.
“Occupational hazard.” Sarah hid a smile.
The chop built as they cleared the shelter of the headland.
Hudson found his balance easily, his body making the adjustments without prompting.
Muscle feathered over his jaw. A tiny adjustment made by someone who hurt often enough not to mention it.
She busied herself reading some gauges, before he noticed her observation.
Forty minutes out. Low cloud hung over the water now, the light bleak and directionless. The coastline to their right was rock and pine, dark against the darker water.
The headland appeared first, a shoulder of rock rising out of the mist. For a moment it was all there was. Then the cannery climbed out of the fog piece by piece. A roofline. A rusted conveyor. The skeletal outline of a loading gantry.
Hudson’s eyes were already on it. Whatever he was searching for out here, he’d stopped looking at the water.
The rest of the cannery sprawled across the shoreline and out over the water on timber pilings blackened by decades of tide and weather. It was bigger than she remembered. Much bigger. Everything sagged where the weight had finally won.
She smelled it before they reached the dock. Salt and the iron-blood smell of rust. Beneath that, something older—the ghost of a million salmon soaked into timber, walls and water.
Walter lowered his coffee.
Sarah frowned. “What?”
Walter looked toward the upper windows. “Nothing.”
He cut the engine, and the quiet of the cannery came out to meet them. For a moment, nobody said anything. The water slapped softly against the pilings. A rope of kelp moved in the current below the dock.
No gulls. Not one. The place should have been covered in them.
Walter tied off without being told. His eyes were already moving across the structure, the same sweep she was doing, the same calculation.
She stepped onto the dock. The boards shifted beneath her boots with a long, tired groan.
Behind her, Hudson and Walter followed. Ahead, the main processing building sat over the water with its dark windows staring back at them.
The hairs at the back of her neck stirred beneath her collar.
Sarah started walking.