Chapter 6
Sarah stepped back, professionalism kicking in.
Everything else—especially the memory of Hudson’s hands around her—could wait. She’d expected a comment. A joke. Or a lecture. But Hudson said nothing. She concentrated on pulling her hat straight because, for reasons she couldn’t explain, looking at him right now felt dangerous.
“Are you all right there, Sheriff?” Petey ambled back toward them, boots loud. He peered down into the gap with the mild interest of a man assessing a crack in his own driveway. “Well. That’ll need fixing. I told Seattle that floor wanted replacing.”
Walter sighed. “You mention this now?”
Petey looked affronted. “Seems like a good time to mention it.”
Hudson crouched at the edge of the hole.
There it was, his economy of movement—weight dropping straight down through his heels instead of folding forward. Time had changed almost everything else about him. Somehow, not that.
She’d seen it before. Years ago. A boy coming down off the loft ladder in a barn at two in the morning so the boards wouldn’t creak and wake his parents, ending the whole enterprise of two teenagers being somewhere they shouldn’t be.
He’d always landed like that. Like the ground owed him quiet.
Sarah sucked air through her teeth and studied the hole. Far safer.
“Rot’s deeper than the surface.” Hudson’s fingers traced the broken edge of the board. “Goes back a few feet. This whole section’s been compromised a while.” He glanced up.
Sarah’s stomach performed an uncomfortable loop. “Meaning?”
“Meaning everyone who knows this building stays away from this section.” He stood, dusting his palm against his thigh. “It leaves this waterside access out of sight and mostly unobserved. If someone wanted to bring something in without using the main dock, the rot gives them cover.”
“Huh.” Petey scratched at his chin, leaving a faint grease smear behind. “That’s a hell of a thing to notice about my drainage hazard.”
“He’s federal,” Sarah said, by way of explanation that explained nothing but satisfied Petey completely. He nodded like that accounted for several mysteries at once and wandered off toward Walter, already narrating something about belt tension.
Which left her alone with Hudson and several feet of cold air between them that did absolutely nothing to dilute the problem.
“You think someone’s been using this section.” Questions gave people room to manage their answers, and she didn’t especially want his answer managed right now.
“I think it’s worth finding out.” He looked past her towards the loading gates.
Beyond them lay the exterior loading platform and, farther along, the oldest section of walkway extending over open water.
“If you wanted to bring something in without putting it through the main dock where your caretaker would notice, this is exactly the access you’d want.
Remote. Falling apart already. Nobody questions the falling-apart part. ”
“And nobody questions a few extra footprints on rotten boards that already look unstable.”
“Right.”
She crossed her arms against the draft whistling up from beneath the broken boards.
“So. Are you going to tell me what this is all about?”
His gaze stayed on the shattered section of flooring before lifting to hers. There was calculation there. Not whether to lie—that wasn’t the man he was—but how much he was prepared to say.
He scrubbed a hand over the stubble on his chin. “The man I’ve been looking for isn’t Jake Mercer.”
She waited.
“His real name’s Cord Blake.”
The name meant nothing to her.
“He’s living under an alias.” Hudson’s eyes drifted briefly toward the gate. “I’ve got an active federal warrant for him.”
“For what?”
Tendons stood out briefly in his neck. “He’s wanted in connection with an ongoing federal investigation.”
She held his gaze. “That’s not an answer.”
For the first time since she’d known him again, the corner of his mouth twitched into a smile. It was lopsided, an acknowledgment that she’d caught him trying to answer without answering.
“We have reason to believe he’s involved in moving illegal firearms.”
This whole place was freight, boats, seasonal workers. A place where people and cargo came and went without attracting much attention. “You think the cannery’s being used as a transit point.”
“I think it could have been.”
“And Jake Mercer—Cord Blake—worked here.”
“Hmm.”
She looked back at him. “Why Aurora Cove?”
“Because this is where the trail stopped.”
Matter-of-fact. It answered the question. It also somehow didn’t.
There was something about how he’d said Cord’s real name. Barely anything. Just the faintest tightening around his eyes.
“Why not tell me yesterday?”
“I didn’t know he’d been here.” His eyes drifted briefly toward the broken floor. “Now I’ve got something I can stand on.”
She couldn’t help it. She smiled and shook her head. “Poor choice of words.”
“Yeah.” His mouth twitched. “Walked into that one.”
A laugh escaped her.
Walter’s voice echoed from inside the cannery, arguing with Petey about drainage gradients.
The moment passed. Her attention returned to Hudson. “If this man’s moving illegal weapons through my town?—”
“He won’t be for much longer.”
There wasn’t an ounce of bravado in the sentence. Only calm certainty.
“Then let’s find some answers instead of standing here speculating.” She moved past him.
Hudson fell into step behind her. He’d been doing that all morning. Staying just off her shoulder. Close enough to reach her. Far enough away not to crowd her. On anyone else, it would’ve annoyed her.
On Hudson, it was?—
Stop it. Focus.
Sarah led him through the personnel door beside the nearest loading gate and onto the exterior walkway.
The loading platform extended from the building on heavy pilings.
Most were slick with old creosote and green with something that had been growing undisturbed since before either of them was born.
Sarah crouched at the edge where the boards met the open water, running her palm along a support post that had clearly taken a recent impact. Scuff marks. A clean gouge through the grime at the base. Something had been dragged against it. “Here.”
Hudson took a knee beside her. He ran a thumb along the same scuff mark, head tilted, reading methodically.
“Recent,” he said. “Within the last month, maybe less. The creosote’s worn through clean here, not weathered.”
“Crates could fit through that gap in the wall.” She pointed toward a section of corrugated siding that had buckled outward, wide enough for a good-sized crate if it was maneuvered carefully.
“Bring it in by water, up onto this platform, through the gap, and you’re inside the building without ever crossing the main dock where Petey could see you from his office. ”
“And out the other side to what?”
“There’s a track, eventually.” She’d driven it herself, years ago, checking on a poacher complaint that had turned out to be nothing. “Rough as hell and overgrown. But a truck might make it if you didn’t mind the scratches.”
“That’s a viable route. Quiet. Remote. Deniable. If people were moving anything through Aurora Cove, this is exactly the kind of place they’d use.” His expression was deliberately neutral, and she guessed it cost him something to keep it that way. “Good spot.”
“That’s my job.”
“I know.”
She eyed him. “You sound surprised.”
The ghost of a smile crossed his mouth. “I’m not.” He looked away first this time, back toward the cannery. His eyes narrowed.
Sarah followed the direction of his gaze. Something shifted inside the loading bay, between the storage racks where the daylight didn’t reach.
Hudson’s hand drifted towards his hip.
But whatever it was had gone, leaving discarded cardboard boxes disappearing into shadow and dust hanging motionless in the thin strips of light.
Still.
She flicked the catch on her holster. “Sheriff’s Department,” she called, adjusting her stance. Hudson shifted with her. The sound carried the length of the building and died there.
No answer.
Beside her, Hudson was motionless. A long second passed.
Nothing moved.
Sarah let her hand fall away from her weapon. “Probably a bird.”
Hudson didn’t look convinced. Neither was she.
“Anyway, the ventilation stacks are original to the building too.” Petey approached from behind them, entirely unaware she’d run a full threat assessment in under ten seconds.
“Which is its own headache come spring thaw. Condensation buildup, you know. I’ve got photographs of that too if you’re interested?—”
“Petey.” Sarah secured the catch on her holster. “We’re heading out.”
His head bobbed. “Ma’am.”
“We’ll be back out this way. Might want a second look another day.”
“Suits me. Less I have to think about my own drainage hazard, the better.”
Walter went ahead and had the boat’s engine idling low by the time she got there, his breath fogging white above the collar of his jacket.
Sarah climbed down first.
The boat shifted beneath her weight, a familiar roll she’d negotiated a hundred times before. But her legs were still sore from the fall, and the deck met her a second sooner than she expected.
She wobbled.
A hand closed lightly around her elbow, gone again the instant her balance returned. By the time she’d found her footing, Hudson was already looking past her toward the water, his own hand back at his side as though it’d never left it.
Twice in one day.
She gave herself a mental shake. Keep it together, Meyer.
The cannery slid away behind them as Walter eased the throttle forward, the building shrinking until it was just a shape on the point again, indistinguishable from any other piece of derelict coastline. The water widened, the sky pressing down flat and colorless over all of it.
The wind picked up and Hudson stood where he’d stood on the trip out, hands loose at his sides, eyes on the coastline. He hadn’t looked at the water once.
“We weren’t alone in there,” he said finally.
Sarah didn’t answer. She’d already known.
What she hadn’t expected was how quickly she’d looked for him when she’d felt it.