Chapter 5
Hudson followed Sarah up the dock. Wood creaked and gave under his feet, and underneath water sloshed, dark and oily.
He gritted his teeth and kept his eyes straight ahead.
The hush was broken by a wrench against a pipe, somewhere underneath the dock. A stream of invective from a man with a grievance against inanimate objects. Then a clang that echoed out across the water and a silence that suggested the pipe had won.
Sarah cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hello?”
Shuffling followed. A face appeared from below the dock boards—seventies, deeply weathered, a wool beanie pulled down over his ears.
“Sarah Meyer.” He peered at her badge and gave a small nod.
“Sheriff.” His grease-stained fingers touched the brim of his beanie.
“You still climb where you’re not supposed to? ”
“Hey, Petey.” Sarah’s hands hit her hips as she deadpanned. “Only professionally.”
“What’d I do wrong?” He grinned, showing irregular teeth.
“Nothing. We just need to take a look around.”
Petey’s gaze slipped past Walter onto Hudson.
Borrowed jacket noted, verdict delivered in the slight twist of Petey’s mouth before he looked back at Sarah. “Who’s this?”
“Hudson Kane. Deputy U.S. Marshal.”
“Ah.” Petey’s eyes narrowed at Hudson. “You here to look at my sump pump?”
Hudson shook his head. “No.”
“Whole place is mid-winterize,” Petey said. “Got three more lines to drain before the freeze.”
Sarah shot Hudson a glance. “We won’t be long.”
Petey wiped his hands on a rag that redistributed the grease without removing any. Then he folded it into his back pocket and pulled himself up onto the dock, muttering about his aging knees. “Right then. This way.”
The heavy steel door dragged across the warped floorboards when Petey shoved it open. Rust rasped against rust.
The scale of the place hit Hudson all at once as the processing hall opened ahead of them like the inside of some aging shipwreck hauled onto land.
Conveyor lines stretched away into shadow, as though the machinery were only sleeping between shifts.
Gutting tables in long rows. The overhead rail system for the bins, hanging empty.
Everything built to handle tonnage and volume.
Light came through gaps in the board siding in long, thin lines, striping the floor and the machinery. Hudson brushed past a steel support. Dust lifted, drifting through the light in slow spirals before settling back onto his sleeve.
The air temperature felt lower than the dock—a chill that was closed-in and had been sitting in this space since August. The smell of old fish surfaced unexpectedly in colder pockets of air, as though the cannery remembered what it had once been.
“Sump pump’s on the south wall,” Petey said, to no one in particular. “Told Seattle three years running they needed to replace the housing. You know what they did?”
Sarah cleared her throat. “Petey?—”
“Sent a man to look at it. Man looked at it. Wrote something down. Never heard another word.” He picked his way between two conveyor belts. “Flooded the whole south quarter in 2019.” He paused. “Still got the photographs.” He thumbed the suspenders holding up his baggy work pants.
Sarah pinched the bridge of her nose. “Petey.”
“What?”
“You’ve been trying to show people those photographs for years.”
His bushy eyebrows rose as one. “Because they’re excellent photographs.”
“They’re photographs of water.”
“They tell a story.”
Hudson swallowed a laugh.
Petey pointed at him. “See? Federal guy gets it.”
“I really don’t,” Hudson said, keeping his face straight.
A man performing normalcy had tells—the laugh that came a beat late, the answer that arrived too fast. Petey’s grievances were real. The drainage opinions were genuine. He wasn’t hiding anything except possibly the photographs of the 2019 flood.
Hudson pulled out his phone and confirmed the name Owen had given him. “Did a man named Jake Mercer work the summer season?”
Petey cocked his head sideways. “Yeah, Jake worked this summer. Didn’t like him much. Kept himself to himself.”
Sarah cast a glance at Hudson. “When was he last on site?”
“Left at the end of August, same as everyone else.”
“Have you?—”
“No. Not seen him since.”
Sarah nodded and tucked her hands into her pockets.
The authority in this building was hers. Her badge, her jurisdiction. Hudson stayed back and watched her work. She was good at this. Better than good. He’d missed the years that made her this woman. He didn’t examine too carefully how that felt.
“North wall flashing,” Petey announced. “See that line there? That’s where the water comes in when the wind’s off the point. Two years I’ve been saying?—”
The floor changed under Hudson’s boots as they moved toward the far end, becoming more spongy. He was over the water again. It slopped against the pilings hidden below the floorboards.
Water always sounded louder indoors. He didn’t look down.
Sarah had moved ahead with Walter, following Petey through the packing room and along a short passage into cold storage, where large refrigerator hulks sat silent in the gloom.
Beyond them, a broad doorway opened into the covered loading bay.
Loading gates lined the far wall, with an exterior walkway running above the water beyond them.
As Sarah stepped into the loading bay, her foot went through.
The board exploded downward with a crack that echoed through the cannery. Sarah vanished to her thigh, her other foot skidding on rotten timber.
The rest of the floor lurched after it.
Petey shouted something.
Hudson was already moving.
His hand closed around her forearm. Momentum carried her straight into him while his other arm caught her around the waist. She hit him full force.
Dark water flashed beneath the broken boards. His grip tightened instinctively.
Not again.
His pulse hammered against his throat as he hauled her clear of the hole. One step back. She was upright. Safe.
The danger had already passed. Even though his hands hadn’t gotten the message yet.
She was warm despite the cold, her breath ghosting against his neck. For a second, neither of them moved. Walter said something. Hudson had no idea what.
“Are you hurt?” His hand still rested on the curve of her waist.
She looked down. “I don’t think so.”
Her hat had tipped sideways. One strand of hair had escaped and caught against her mouth. Sarah looked up. For a moment she looked genuinely surprised.
Not by the fall.
By him.