Chapter 18
The wind came straight off the water, throwing cold spray over the bow until Sarah tasted salt every time she licked her lips.
The crossing was rougher than the last time.
She kept one hand light on the wheel and let the boat rise and fall with the chop.
Fighting usually ended with the ocean winning.
Hudson stood on the forward deck, one hand resting on the rail. He barely seemed to move with the boat, his balance adjusting so naturally to the swell that he looked less like a passenger than someone the ocean had failed to throw off.
His gaze moved constantly—shoreline, water, headland, back again—as if he’d decided there wasn’t a stretch of open water worth trusting.
You two always finish each other’s interviews? Petey’s bruised face surfaced in her mind with irritating clarity. No. The two of them had answered so quickly they’d sounded rehearsed. She stared at the water ahead. What exactly had they been denying?
Another wave slapped hard against the hull, spraying them both.
“You okay?” she called.
Hudson glanced back. “Fine.”
Morrow Point emerged slowly, revealing itself piece by piece. The dark shoulder of rock, and finally the cannery itself, balanced on its forest of pilings, too stubborn to admit it should have fallen into the water years ago.
The tide had dropped since their last visit, exposing another few feet of weed-darkened timber beneath the building. Gulls picked methodically through the shallows.
Before the hull nudged against the dock, Hudson was scanning the cannery. Not just the building, but everything around it. The loading platform. The gaps beneath. The tree line beyond the shoreline. The upper windows. The roof.
By the time Sarah looped the line around the cleat, he’d looked everywhere except at her.
She finished the knot and straightened. “You’re doing the thing.”
His attention remained on the weathered buildings. “What thing?”
“The one where you stop seeing a place and start cataloging threats.”
A corner of his mouth moved. “I was hoping you hadn’t noticed.”
“Not likely.”
He looked at her then, any humor gone. “Until I tell you otherwise, assume we’re walking into someone’s plan.”
She studied him. Four days ago she’d probably have argued. Today she just nodded. Together they climbed onto the dock.
The cannery enveloped them as completely as it had the first time.
Inside the main processing hall, the wind disappeared, leaving only the slow drip of water somewhere beneath the boards and the hollow echo of their boots on decades-old timber.
Salt. Rust. Old fish. The smell lived so deep in the wood the building would remember it long after the sea reclaimed everything else.
Hudson studied the floor.
“You expecting to find something?” she asked.
“I’d be disappointed if we didn’t.”
She glanced sideways at him. “That’s an optimistic way of looking at attempted murder.”
“It means they made mistakes.”
“And if they didn’t?”
His eyes swept the maze of machinery. “Everyone makes mistakes.”
“Even professionals?”
“Especially professionals.” His mouth was a taut line.
At first glance, nothing had changed. The conveyors stood silent. The belts hung slack. Thin bands of daylight cut between the wallboards exactly as they had before.
Hudson stopped so abruptly she almost walked into him. He dropped to his knees, his hand hovering over prints pressed into the grime beside a steel support. “Boot prints.”
Sarah joined him. “I see only one.”
“Because you’re only looking at the heel.” He pointed. “There’s another over it.”
One larger, one narrower, overlapping.
“Two men.” He looked past the prints. Then behind her, then toward the loading bay. “At least.”
A clatter sounded beyond the conveyor line. Sarah spun. A man stepped out carrying a box in one gloved hand.
For one suspended second, all three of them stared at one another.
Sarah moved first. “Sheriff’s Department!” Her voice broke the silence. “Stop!”
The man’s eyes flicked from her to Hudson. Then he bolted.
She took off after him. Hudson’s boots hammered the boards just behind her, so close she didn’t have to look.
She cut left through a gap between two silent conveyor lines, ducked beneath a sagging beam and burst into the next aisle. The runner disappeared through the doorway ahead into the packing room.
Hudson peeled away to her right as if he’d read her mind. Cut him off.
She ducked through the maintenance cut she’d been sneaking through since she was a kid.
It brought her out behind the silent freezer units and into the covered loading bay.
Hudson burst through the main doorway from cold storage on the opposite side a second later.
For one stupid, glorious second, she thought they’d trapped him.
The man reached the far end of the loading bay and glanced back at her. He smiled, then vanished through the personnel door onto the exterior walkway, the door swinging shut behind him.
A sharp whistle shrieked through the cannery.
What?
To her right, every trace of ease disappeared from Hudson’s posture.
“Loading bay!” a man shouted.
Another voice answered from the mezzanine above the loading gates. “I’ve got movement.” Boots struck the narrow catwalk. Several pairs. Voices shouted from opposite directions, bouncing around the empty building until she couldn’t tell where anyone actually was.
“Sarah.” Hudson’s hand closed on her wrist. “They baited us.”
A door slammed somewhere behind them.
“Too many.” He tugged her back, retreating into cold storage. “Here.” A narrow maintenance void behind the old refrigeration units. Little more than a slit between the steel housing and the timber wall, lost in shadow.
He was guiding her toward it when his hand shot out and caught the metal waist buckle swinging from her jacket, a second from striking the steel housing beside them.
By the time she registered the danger, Hudson had trapped it in his fist. He angled his body into the gap first, checking the space and nudging a loose scrap of metal out of their path before drawing her in after him.
There wasn’t room to turn around.
Her back hit freezing metal. Hudson’s chest was against hers.
His arm braced around her, pinning both of them into the only space the cannery had left to offer.
Every breath he took moved through the solid press of his chest against her.
Every breath she released came back warm between them.
Even wedged into this impossible space, he made room for her to breathe, even if she suspected the control cost him.
She was absurdly aware of him. The solidity of his frame. The steady expansion of his chest beneath her cheek. He was the only solid thing in a building full of moving shadows and converging voices, his presence keeping the urgency in her chest from becoming something louder.
Outside, the building had dissolved into voices and footsteps. Inside the gap, there was only Hudson and his unwavering presence.
A voice, gruff and terse, passed within feet of where they stood—close enough that every cell in her body screamed to move, to do something, anything other than stand here and wait to be discovered.
Hudson’s hand gave a gentle squeeze around her wrist. I’m here.
The footsteps stopped. Sarah held her breath. Somewhere above her an old beam creaked. Dust drifted lazily through the strip of light beyond their hiding place.
Then the footsteps started again, moving on, fading toward the far end of the floor, and Sarah released the breath.
Hudson didn’t relax. His head dipped until his mouth was almost against her ear. “When I move, you stay on me.”
She didn’t argue.
Following him felt like the safest thing she’d done all day.