Enemy Waters Read online

  And even if it was, was she really silly enough to feel a little thrill at the idea? Would she really turn around and stare at the man she’d already been thinking far too much about since the day he’d walked into the café and given her that lazy smile and drawled thank you for refilling his cup of coffee?

  She kept walking, her eyes determinedly on the sidewalk as she headed for the beginning of the path that ran for the last mile through the waterfront park. She weakened as the whine of the engine neared, giving a quick, almost furtive look to the side, telling herself she was just checking to make sure it wasn’t some crazy local kid who might crash or something.

  As she reached the start of the park path, the bright red motorcycle shot by her and headed up toward the main road. Indeed a local kid—although she doubted a crazy one—aboard, not even giving her a glance as he rocketed by, crouched over the handlebars as he revved the throttle, apparently content with waking the neighborhood rather than running over unwary pedestrians. He leaned into a sharp right and headed north, probably toward the high school, she thought.

  No, it was not the man she’d been thinking far too much about lately. His motorcycle was black and, she thought, a bit smaller. Couldn’t keep a huge thing like that red one on a boat, she guessed. Or rather, get it on and off, which would be the point.

  And, she thought as she got to where she could see the marina, there his bike was, parked where she’d noticed it before, at the head of the visitor’s dock. She supposed he must have tied up at the temporary side tie and offloaded the thing, then gone back to tie up at the offshore mooring.

  Her gaze shifted to the end of the dock where the port master’s office was. There were only two guest slips in the small marina, and she could see they were still occupied. The season was ending, but it wasn’t over yet. Too bad; she’d been half hoping a slip would open up for him.

  And half hoping one wouldn’t.

  You, she told herself with no small amount of chagrin, are an idiot.

  But no amount of telling herself that, and reminding herself that she’d sworn off entanglements, possibly for good, seemed to make any difference; the lean, rangy man with the crooked smile and the laid-back air had crept into her mind and refused to leave.

  He’d probably laugh if he knew, she chided herself silently. She’d successfully turned herself into a quiet, plain, virtually unnoticeable woman, hardly the type a man like that would look at twice, let alone take an interest in. No, this man with the dark hair, strong jaw and light, almost green eyes would require an attractive woman at his side, and any time he spent dabbling with her would be along the lines of a cat playing with a small, insignificant mouse because it amused him.

  More like a tiger toying with dinner, she amended grimly.

  Or, she thought, a little more charitably, he figured she could do something for him. Like find him that berth for his boat.

  On that thought she looked out at the cove. There were about a half-dozen boats tied up to the permanent moorings, cramming in those last, desperate moments of decent weather before the wet fall and winter set in. There were always boats there, Roger had told her; if you didn’t take your boat out in the rain up here, you might as well just rent one for two months in the summer and forget it the rest of the year.

  The farthest mooring out, he’d said. She looked past two small cabin cruisers, a fishing boat, two sailboats and then out to the last blue-and-white buoy. Secured to it was a boat with a dark blue hull and a white topside. It looked tidy and in good shape from here, although she wasn’t sure what she’d expected. Just because he lived aboard didn’t mean it had to look like a caricature of a houseboat.

  What did you expect, a laundry line strung from bow to stern? He actually moves the thing, so of course it’s got to be shipshape to some extent.

  She nearly stumbled over an uneven spot in the raked gravel path, realized she was staring at the boat instead of watching where she was going. She yanked her attention back to business, furious with herself. She’d gotten through nearly eight months without focusing on a man outside of the café—except for Roger, but that was completely different—and she’d done just fine. Damned if she was going to let this man shake that, no matter how much he kept snaking into her mind. She wasn’t fool enough for that.

  She knew she was vulnerable. And she knew even better—far, far too well—that responding to a man, any man, when you were vulnerable carried a very high price. The last time she’d done it, it had ended up destroying her life.

  And costing her brother his.

  Chapter 4

  Guilt, Cooper thought, does crazy things to you. Nobody knew that better than he. He’d lived it for over half his life.

  He veered away from that old, well-worn track and kept his mind on the matter at hand. On the woman at hand. The woman he was waiting for, and had been for twenty minutes. Fortunately, the bench he sat on was in a pleasant place, under a sizeable tree and angled to look out over the water to the forested hills on the opposite side of the cove.

  He knew she walked to work. He’d overheard someone asking her about it in the café.

  “I enjoy it,” she’d said, with every evidence of sincerity. “It’s only two miles, and I come up the path through the park, along the water. It’s beautiful, peaceful—”

  “Wet,” one of the diners had pointed out.

  “Well, yes,” she’d said with the most genuine smile he’d seen from her. “But I don’t mind that, either. It’s the price for all this gorgeous green, isn’t it?”

  He’d wondered about the sunny attitude at the time. Wondered if she really enjoyed it, or if it was simply that she didn’t have a car. She’d left, after all, with virtually nothing. Her brother had told him she’d taken some cash that had been in her husband’s desk that night, just under a thousand dollars. Not much, he’d said, not for Tanya. She was used to living high, he’d said, and he’d been certain she hadn’t gotten far on it. But her car had been found near a Greyhound station, and it had been the memory of a favorite family vacation that had made him call an investigator in the northwest.

  Cooper was a little surprised that Tristan Jones wasn’t canceling everything and hopping on the first available flight, such had been his urgency to find his sister.

  But you found her, he told himself, so no more urgency.

  He felt another jolt of satisfaction, like a warning bell going off in his head. Was he actually starting to enjoy this work? Or was it simply that this time he’d been paid a large chunk up front, that there’d be no chasing down a client reluctant to pay up after he’d gotten what he wanted?

  Jones was just a busy guy, Cooper thought. Only busy guys made the kind of money Jones was paying him. In the end, he was going to be buying Cooper all he needed to get The Peacemaker shipshape again, and some free time to do it in to boot. He had no complaints. The job had been routine, if a bit tedious, and, more important, lacked the unsavory tinge of so many of the jobs he took simply out of the need to eat.

  Just think about how much more you’d have to work if you had the standard issues: rent, car payments, cable TV…wife, kids.

  He jumped up and walked down the neatly maintained path—this water’s-edge haven was nicely taken care of by the locals—to where he could see a long stretch of it heading down toward the residential neighborhood. Since the other end of the path terminated near the head of the cove and the small commercial district, within a block of the café, he knew she had to come up from there.

  He’d ridden it on the bike in reverse, the day after he’d overheard that conversation. At the two miles she’d mentioned, there were three possibilities, three directions she could go after she hit the end of the park path. Down toward the water, and the older houses that had been part of the original town, straight ahead into the houses that went along the main road, or up the hill where the newer neighborhoods were. Problem was, he didn’t know exactly what “by the water” had meant, and the café owner hadn’t been in the mo
od to expand on the vague answer.

  Hell, around here, everything could be seen as “by the water.”

  He supposed it didn’t matter if he didn’t know exactly where she lived, as long as he knew where she worked. But he’d feel better if he did. And better yet if he was also in the neighborhood; he hoped whoever it was she’d been thinking of about the dock was close by.

  He stood for a moment, looking toward the far end of the path. There was an older couple walking along hand in hand, a kid with a big, shaggy dog and a guy loaded down with fishing gear, all moving at different paces. But no single woman, at least not yet. But it was still early, if she was a fast walker. He returned to his bench. The kid with the dog had paused, texting a message on his cell phone.

  Just then a solitary figure came into sight, around the bend in the path about thirty yards away. She was walking steadily but not hastily, slow enough to soak in the ambiance of the water, the trees, the serenity of the setting.

  He shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and waited, his head turned toward the natural view of the water, but he kept her solidly in his peripheral vision. He worked on making it seem coincidental; to some women it might be flattering that a man would wait here for the chance to run into them, but this woman was so edgy he wasn’t sure what she’d do. It was a good thing he’d been warned, or he’d be wondering what the heck was with her, anyway.

  “Right now she’s not thinking too clearly,” Jones had told him. “She really blames herself, because she called me over to the house that night. To talk about plans for Jeremy’s surprise birthday party.”

  A perfectly normal action that had ended in disaster. In tragedy. Maybe that was why he’d taken this case in the first place, Cooper thought. Because he knew so damned well how that felt. Go to work one day like any other. And never come home.

  He shook off the memory. He’d read the news story Jones had sent. A case of mistaken identity gone mad, resulting in her older brother being shot as a burglar, kidnapper, rapist or whatever her husband had feared. The man had, the article said, taken a lie detector test and passed with flying colors, and the police had closed the case as an accidental shooting.

  He had deduced two more things from the article: one, at the time the wounds Jones suffered had been described as fatal. It had been an alert paramedic, Jones told him, who did his job thoroughly and discovered the faint pulse of life still in him. But by then Tanya had vanished.

  Jeremy Brown was blameless, Jones had said, he’d thought Tanya in danger and acted accordingly, just as the article said. He’d been devastated, both by what had happened and by Tanya’s disappearance. He’d spent months looking for her in Southern California while Jones, as soon as he was able, led the search farther afield. At first that had sounded like an odd division, until he thought about it a little and realized searching the massively populated area would be much tougher, and likely hugely expensive. Jeremy was a well-known fundraiser in a town full of them, James had said, the best of the best. And Tanya had been an asset in that, with her beauty and charm.

  Which was the second thing he’d learned from that article: Tanya Jones had been incredibly hot then. Normally it would have been odd that the photo included with the article was not of the shooter or the victim, but the sister of the victim, but one look at it told him why. Any newspaper would jump at the chance to run the glamorous shot of a leggy, beautiful woman with a thick, blond mane of hair, in a floor-length gown that was classy and sexy at the same time.

  The woman in the photo was a far cry from the waitress with the short, dark hair and thick-rimmed glasses, dressed in jeans and a baggy shirt that hid any hint of the figure that gown had displayed so well.

  The one who was barely fifteen feet away now. Walking slowly, not meandering like someone with all the time in the world to walk in this beautiful place, but like someone lost, aching, looking for a solace even nature’s bounty couldn’t provide.

  Walking wounded, he thought. That was what she looked like. The sight of her churned him up inside, in a way he’d never quite felt before. It kind of echoed the way he’d felt looking at his mother after his father had died, the way he himself had felt. But yet it was different, spiked with instincts he’d never known he had before, to stand between her and anything that might try to hurt her even more.

  And it was that confused set of feelings that had put him where he was now.

  Just imagine how she feels, he told himself.

  Slowly, he began walking toward her.

  She spotted him the moment he started to move. She told herself the leap her heart gave was a normal reaction, even here, a thousand safe miles away. Yet that image of a tiger toying with what would eventually become dinner had stuck with her, uncomfortably.

  “Hey, Nell!”

  His voice was bright, welcoming, the perfect greeting to an acquaintance stumbled upon accidentally. So why didn’t she believe it?

  “Beautiful morning, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, unable to summon up anything more than that.

  “On your way to work? Will coffee be available?”

  “Of course,” she answered, aware of the stiffness of her voice.

  He dropped the cheer, and she didn’t know if that proved it had been false, or if he was just a nice guy reacting to her own shortness.

  “Are you all right? You look like you expect an orca to come charging up out of the cove and attack.”

  “I was thinking more of tigers,” she muttered, not looking at him.

  “Tigers?”

  He sounded confused, and she risked a glance at him. No, he hadn’t changed: same dark, tousled hair, same laid-back, casual manner. Nothing tigerlike about him at all, except the way he moved.

  And those eyes, more green than hazel, and with a slightly predatory look. Tiger, indeed.

  “You’re safe…Nell,” he said, with an odd hesitation that made her wonder if he’d forgotten her name in the space of thirty seconds.

  Or as if he’d almost called her something else. Fear spiked through her.

  “Safety,” she said, “is an illusion.”

  An illusion she doubted she’d ever have again.

  Chapter 5

  “Cooper Grant, Roger Donlan,” she said, pouring them each a cup of coffee. “Have at it, gentlemen.”

  Introductions made, Nell walked away and went about her business. It was a busy morning at the Waterfront, a gorgeously sunny fall weekend morning had brought people out in droves.

  They were at a table for two in one corner, the quietest corner, behind a little stub wall that seemed to separate it from the rest of the dining room. Interesting that she’d seated them here, Cooper thought. Good place for a business meeting like this.

  Or a private, cozy meal with a lover.

  Jeez, where’s your head at? Cooper snapped inwardly.

  He turned his attention to the man across the table, who was studying him so intently he had the unsettling feeling he should have been paying much more attention to the guy.

  “She’s a special lady,” Roger said.

  “Yes,” Cooper said automatically. And had the feeling the man knew it was a reflexive answer.

  “She’s had some tough times. I’d hate to see her go through any more.”

  Cooper had to make a quick decision. The chance of finding out why she was so jumpy, versus possibly ticking this guy off and blowing his chance to get off that damned offshore mooring.

  Live with it, he told himself. This was more important. Besides, what she’d said earlier this morning still haunted him. Safety is an illusion. He wanted this over, he wanted her to know and oddly, he wanted to be the one to tell her.

  Not your job, he reminded himself.

  “Tough times?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  The man simply stared at him, and Cooper suddenly realized his words had been a warning. The man was protecting her. Cooper wasn’t sure what Roger thought his motives were, bu
t just the fact that he cared enough to warn off a stranger told him a lot about the man himself. And while Roger was a generation, maybe two, older than himself, he looked tough enough and fit enough to make it more than an idle threat. And there was an air about him that said ex-military, or maybe even retired cop, the same sort of air his father’s old buddies had. He’d seen enough of it; they’d been part of his life ever since his father had died.

  “I don’t know her that well,” Cooper said, not sure what else to say. “Just from coming in here since I got here last week. So it was really nice of her to ask you to talk to me about the berth.”

  “You some kind of boat bum?”

  “I work for a living.” Sporadically, he added silently. “I just live aboard.”

  “Why?”

  Odd question, he thought, but this was the man with the dock. And it was at his home, so Cooper supposed he had every right to be picky.

  “It’s important to me. The boat was my dad’s.”

  “Was?”

  “He’s dead.”

  He said it bluntly, harshly, determinedly. He did that whenever it came up, which after all these years wasn’t, thankfully, often. But even after more than fifteen years, he let the claws dig deep; getting over the pain would be like forgetting, and he didn’t want to ever forget.

  Roger just looked at him for a long, silent moment, and Cooper had the feeling the older man was seeing much more than just the insouciant, careless demeanor he projected. He would do well, he thought, not to underestimate this man.

  Or the woman who chose him as a friend.

  He wondered if she’d been looking for someone to take care of her high-maintenance self. If so, perhaps she’d found him. He thought of the leggy blonde in the photograph. That woman, maybe. The one across the room right now, doing what the blonde would likely think of as the most menial of work, and doing it with efficiency and flair and no sign of resentment, not so much. She didn’t seem the type to look for anyone to take care of her.