Hooked (A Romance on the Edge Novel)

by Tiffinie Helmer

  He laid Earl’s limp body down and curled in on himself. “Goddamn, Sonya.” Her name came out on a tortured sob, and she wrapped her arms around him.

  “Come on Aidan. L-let’s get to shore.” The sleeping bag was helping with the cold, but it wasn’t enough. She needed to get dry, and Aidan needed to remove himself from Earl’s dead body or she was afraid of what he might do.

  He angled his head so that he could see her. “How do I face them? Your grandparents? Lana? Oh God, Roland.” He shut his eyes on a moan. “He’s going to kill me.”

  “When they h-hear what h-happened, they’ll understand.”

  He shook his head. “Roland won’t.”

  She agreed, but didn’t voice it. “Then we’ll d-deal with it. But Aidan,” she captured his gaze, “I’m going to be in t-trouble if we don’t get to s-shore. I’m really c-cold.”

  He seemed to shake himself free of the horror of the evening’s events as he focused on her and what needed to be done.

  Sonya breathed a silent sigh of relief. She’d hoped putting herself in Aidan’s hands would force him to concentrate on her rather than the realities of what had gone on here tonight. At some point, she would need to deal with those realities herself.

  Earl had caused the deaths of her parents and Sasha.

  She sat in the stern, exhausted, as Aidan untied his skiff and positioned it to be towed behind as he drove his father’s boat to shore. Sonya looked over the side at the black tide steadily creeping to shore, trying not to see Earl’s dead body as it lay bleeding in the bottom of the boat. She swallowed back the bile that suddenly rose in her throat. Everything she’d believed was wrong, twisted.

  They’d lived, fished, next to a killer all these years and had never suspected.

  When they reached shore, everyone waited for them. Grams with Barbarella cradled against her chest, Gramps armed with a shovel, Lana clutching a lantern with both hands, and Roland, standing stoic next to her, his hands tucked into the pockets of his dirty cargo pants.

  Looked as though Earl’s fireworks/pipe bombs had woken up both camps.

  “What in dang blazes is going on?” Gramps waded into the surf, his face going pale as he caught sight of Earl’s body. “Do we need a medic?”

  “N-no,” Sonya said, stumbling as the skiff rubbed against the rocky beach.

  “Why you wearing a sleeping bag?”

  “I w-went for a s-swim.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll explain l-later. Right now, I need to get w-warmed up.” She looked Gramps in the eye. “Aidan’s going to n-need us. P-promise m-me you’ll keep an open mind, okay.”

  Gramps narrowed his eyes but nodded.

  “What the fuck!” Roland’s voice rang out as he saw their cargo. “Who did this?”

  Aidan’s face went white, but he squared his shoulders and stood up to his uncle. “I did. I shot him.”

  “You?” Roland advanced on Aidan, splashing into the surf. “You killed my brother? Your own father?”

  “Yes.” Aidan swallowed, rolling his lips tight between his teeth as though to hold in his emotions. “He was going to kill Sonya and Garrett.”

  Grams and Lana gasped. Gramps cursed, and not with one of his colorful adaptations either.

  The rest of the their explanations were interrupted as the Calypso finally roared up from the south, her bow slicing through the surf, every light onboard blazing like a beacon in the darkness. She cut her engines, and waves rolled like thick black thunderheads from under the hull, their force tossing the skiffs as they crashed to shore. A high powered spotlight pointed at each person on the beach, settling on Grams. Judd’s voice came over loud and clear from the Calypso’s P. A. system. “Lay down your weapons!”

  Grams grumbled but laid Barbarella in the sand at her feet. Gramps had already dropped his shovel when he’d waded into the surf.

  “Sonya, we were radioed that you and Garrett were under fire,” Judd continued, his voice booming over the group. “That better not be Garrett in the bottom of that skiff.”

  “Head up to the cabin, Sonya,” Aidan said, still standing in the stern of the skiff. “I’ll explain to them what happened.”

  “I’ll go w-with you. Otherwise they’ll arrest you and ask q-questions later.”

  “I don’t care if they arrest me.”

  “Well, I do. Don’t turn m-martyr on me, Aidan.”

  “They can’t come ashore unless one of us goes and gets ‘em,” Roland sneered.

  “We aren’t hiding out from the t-troopers,” Sonya said. Besides, they had a dinghy. They could get to shore without any problems. “We didn’t do anything w-wrong.” Maybe Roland had. Earl didn’t do anything without Roland. Was Crafty as much to blame for this whole mess as Cranky?

  Roland must have read something in her expression. “I’m not waiting around to entertain a bunch of fucking fish cops.” He took off toward the Hartes’ camp.

  “Halt!” Judd’s voice rang out.

  Roland gave them the bird and kept right on moving. If anything, his gait increased.

  “Sonya, it’s in your best interest to get one of those skiffs out here and pick us up,” Judd hollered. “Now.”

  “Aidan, take your other skiff,” Gramps said. “Leave this one here. Lana, help me beach her on shore. Sonya, you’re staying here.” Lana handed Grams the lantern and waded into the water, while Aidan did as Gramps instructed.

  Sonya was rapidly getting tired, her limbs not wanting to respond, fingers numb. It had been a while since she’d felt her feet.

  “Come on, Sonya.” Gramps reached his arms up for her. “Let’s get you out of this skiff and up to the cabin. Maggie May, run up and heat some water. Lana, you go with her, we’ll meet you there.”

  “Your h-hand. I don’t want to h-hurt you, Gramps.” Sonya wanted to sink down into the bottom of the skiff, her muscles seeming to atrophy.

  “Fiddlesticks,” Gramps said, making her smile like the word always did. “The day I can’t help my favorite granddaughter out of a boat, they might as well put me in my grave.”

  Not a good day for analogies like that one. Sonya put her hands on his shoulders so that most of her weight centered there instead of on his injured hand. Her frozen booted feet landed on the rocky sand and felt as though she’d stood on a bed of sea urchins.

  Gramps put a hand around her waist to help her stand. “You’re in bad shape, Sonya.”

  She was afraid he was right. She indicated Earl left in the skiff. “W-what about him?”

  “He’s not going anywhere.”

  It was slow going up the beach to the trail with Gramps’s help, but once facing the trek to the cabin, Sonya knew she wouldn’t make it the rest of the way. Then Aidan was there, accompanied by Judd and Skip. He swooped her up into his arms, and she gratefully rested her head on his shoulder as he carried her up the bluff to the cabin.

  Heat blasted her when they entered. Grams had turned up the little propane heater and it was eating up the BTUs.

  “Aidan, lay her over there.” Grams indicated the curtained-off area where the bed sat. She bustled Aidan out of the room after he’d laid Sonya down. She didn’t bother with the questions Sonya knew she was dying to ask, just went to work with Lana’s help, getting Sonya out of her wet clothes and into dry ones. Then she piled Sonya high with blankets, stuffing hot water bottles around her. It was heavenly, and Sonya soaked it all up: the undemanding attention, the exquisite heat warming her bones, and the gracious postponement of the troopers’ interrogation.

  She crashed.

  Aidan’s interrogation started the moment he’d retreated from laying Sonya on her grandparents’ bed. She’d seemed so removed from what was happening. As though she’d somehow…left. He couldn’t lose her too. She’d been in that water too long, had felt like ice when he’d lifted her in his arms. He prayed they weren’t too late getting her care.

  They’d returned to the beach, along with Nikolai, after the fish cops had realized Sonya wou
ld be no good to them until she was warmed up. The cops had searched his camp for Roland, but there was no sign of him.

  Roland wouldn’t be found either, not unless he wanted to be.

  Now they sat around the fire pit on stumps. The remains of the last fire was nothing but black, cold ashes, much the way Aidan felt inside. More fish cops had shown up to take care of his father’s body. Aidan tried to put what they were doing to his father out of his mind. The sound of the zipper, as they sealed Earl into a plastic body bag, caused his stomach to churn.

  He’d killed his father. He was a killer.

  “Harte.” Judd snapped his fingers in front of Aidan’s face, breaking into the horrific replaying of what he’d done. “From the top. Again.”

  Aidan swallowed the bile he’d been fighting since realizing that his own father had been the one causing Sonya all the trouble this summer. “I woke around 1:00 a.m. when I heard what sounded like a gunshot or a firecracker. At first, I thought my da—” he stopped himself and had to swallow. If he kept referring to Earl by Dad, he wouldn’t be able to hold it together. “I thought Earl and Roland had decided to light their fireworks early—”

  “Homemade fireworks, you said?” Judd clarified, looking at his notes. The sun had started to rise, a faint blush in the east, giving enough light for everyone to see too much. “How did your father and uncle know how to make fireworks?”

  “Earl was an explosives expert in Vietnam. What he knew he taught Roland and vice versa.”

  “How did he acquire the necessary ingredients to make fireworks?”

  Aidan shrugged. “You can make a bomb using ordinary household materials.”

  “A bomb?” Judd jumped on the word. “What was it, fireworks or a bomb that your father made?”

  “I didn’t see him make the pipe bombs, but that’s what he was throwing at the Double Dippin’. I only saw him make the fireworks.” Aidan sighed. Why hadn’t he paid more attention to what was happening in his own camp, rather than being so concerned with what was happening with Sonya? Maybe he would have figured this out sooner, before someone had to die.

  Nikolai raised his hand. “I can verify the fireworks. I witnessed Roland and Earl both working on them last night. I’ve seen them do it year after year. They were planning a late Fourth of July celebration for tonight as the weather was supposed to be nice.” He paused and then his voice got quiet. “We were going to have a bonfire and roast hotdogs.”

  “Okay,” Judd addressed Aidan again, his pencil scratching on his notepad. “Let’s get back to when you realized your father was missing.”

  “When I woke up, Earl was gone, but Roland was still sleeping. I knew that Earl wouldn’t light off the fireworks without Roland. They were a pair when it came to explosives. Turned them into kids.” True juvenile delinquents. “Anyway, I got dressed and went to investigate. One of the skiffs was gone and then a bomb went off near where the Double Dippin’ was anchored.”

  “It was then that you realized your father was after Sonya?”

  Aidan nodded. “I had some suspicions when her window had been knocked out by a rock and it was assumed someone with a slingshot had done it. Earl is—was—real handy with a slingshot.”

  “Why didn’t you come forward then?” Judd asked, his shrewd gaze narrowed.

  “I couldn’t believe it, or see why Earl would do something like that. It didn’t add up.” Now he knew different. Acid burped in his stomach again as he replayed the scene in his head of his father confusing Sonya for Kyra.

  “So you grabbed the other skiff and made your way to the Double Dippin’.” Judd pulled him back from the nightmare. “Then what?”

  “When I got there Sonya and Garrett were already in the water. I don’t know how, but I assumed they jumped overboard to avoid the pipe bomb. Except Sonya would never jump willingly, so Garrett would have had to push her into the ocean.”

  “She must have been terrified.” Nikolai shook his head. “My poor girl.”

  “What was Earl doing?” Judd steered the subject back to where he wanted it.

  “Ranting.” Aidan swallowed hard.

  “What about?”

  Aidan turned to Nikolai. This next part was going to be hard for the man to hear. Hard enough for him to say. “I’m sorry, Nikolai. I didn’t know any of this, I swear.” He turned back to Judd and Skip. “When my dad drank, he’d sometimes confuse Sonya for Kyra. He was calling her Kyra, telling her that he wasn’t going to allow her to make a fool of him again.”

  “Again?” Nikolai asked, his busy brows furrowing.

  “I think the situation between me and Sonya mirrored what happened between him and Kyra years ago, and he refused to let history repeat itself.”

  “You mean Sonya leaving you for Garrett?” Judd clarified.

  It shouldn’t have surprised him that these cops knew his and Sonya’s history. Whatever Sonya told Garrett about them, he would have shared with his buddies. “Technically Sonya and I have been over for a while. Her decision, not mine. Earl saw it differently.”

  “Why didn’t I see it?” Nikolai said to no one in particular. “Earl had always been jealous of Mikhail. Then when Mikhail decided to get into drifting, with Kyra behind him, Earl went ballistic. He caused all sorts of problems, got the set netters up in arms, the drifters worked up. A Fish and Game meeting was held to see if a set netter drifting was even permissible.” He paused as though to gather his emotions. “Chuck Kendrick actually came to Mikhail’s defense. We thought later it was because he wanted to unload the Mystic. When she sank, it had the effect of sending a clear message to the other set netters of what could happen if any of them followed Mikhail’s example.”

  “So when Sonya announced she was going to do the same thing as her father, it might have snapped something in Earl?” Judd speculated.

  Nikolai solemnly regarded Aidan. “Kendrick didn’t sell my boy a compromised boat, did he?”

  Aidan swallowed once again. Keeping the contents of his stomach down was getting harder and harder as the questions escalated. “No. It was Earl. He admitted to booby-trapping the electrical harness aboard the Mystic. I’m so sorry, Nikolai.”

  “You mean Earl sank the Mystic?” Skip asked, bending forward. He’d been silent the whole time while he watched, studied, and judged. “He killed Mik, Kyra, and Sasha?”

  “Yes, and he was just as determined to kill Sonya and Garrett too.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Garrett sat on an over-turned bucket and leaned against the side of Wes and Peter’s skiff as they made their way to the Savonski’s camp. His head ached like a son of a bitch, and he was real unsteady. Wanda had sewn him up and complained like the good doctor she was when he insisted on leaving. He knew he had a concussion, but he wasn’t seeing double and he was aware of who he was, unlike the time in Iraq when he’d been blown a hundred yards by a bomb planted in the body of a twelve-year-old boy. It had taken him a month to figure out who the hell he was that time. This concussion produced a hell of a headache, and an upset stomach, but it didn’t hurt nearly as much as his heart did.

  Sonya had actually chosen Harte over him.

  He’d promised her he’d keep her safe, and then he’d thrown her overboard into her own version of hell. In his defense, he’d had every intention of helping her in the water, knowing she’d be panicked, but then something had hit him, a piece of shrapnel from the pipe bomb most likely. The last thing he remembered was Sonya saving his sorry ass.

  He’d bullied his way onto her boat and his own actions had set off a psycho. He’d known this whole mess had been tied to a Harte. He’d just been looking at the wrong Harte.

  Why was that?

  The answer was a bitter pill. Because he’d wanted Aidan Harte to be guilty, then he wouldn’t be competition. He’d be imprisoned. Garrett had done exactly what Skip had feared he would do. Let his feelings for Sonya interfere with his ability to do his job and she’d almost died because of it. Hell, he’d be dead, too, if
it wasn’t for Aidan.

  Wasn’t that hard to swallow.

  “How you doing, Garrett?” Peter asked from the bow where he stood, holding onto the painter’s rope, balancing on the balls of his feet, while Wes drove the skiff full out, flying over the waves.

  Other than his breaking heart, pounding head, and nauseous stomach, he was dandy. “Fine,” he answered, just as the skiff hit the trough of a wave and banged him hard enough to see stars. Probably the ones laughing at him earlier.

  “Sorry about that,” Wes said. “Hold on, we’re almost there.”

  Garrett didn’t care how many bangs he had to take as long as Wes got them to the camp fast. He’d taken too long at Wanda’s. The woman had demanded he be checked over for hypothermia, since he’d shown up in her Infirmary wet, naked, and shivering. She’d rustled up some baby blue scrubs, with little black bears on them for him to wear, and he’d promised to get them back to her. He still held the sleeping bag around him and was forever grateful that the rain had ceased to fall. For once in his life, he had no wish to be wet again any time soon.

  “Wow,” Peter commented, standing straighter in the bow as they came into shore. “Looks like we’re having a party.”

  Sure enough the place was lit up like a carnival. Troopers canvassed the area, flood lights becoming less effective with the weak sunrise coming up over the bluff. Garrett gingerly stood, holding onto the rail, and took in the scene, fighting the wave of dizziness that threatened to swamp him.

  The RHIB was beached next to Aidan’s skiff, and Corte and Foster where bagging the body. Farther up the beach, Garrett made out Aidan, Nikolai, Judd, and Skip.

  No sign of Sonya.

  Bet Sonya was cursing him loud and angry about now, with troopers invading her camp. The alternative didn’t bear thinking about. Luckily it was still considered middle of the night and there wasn’t a fishing period until later that day, leaving the beach empty of spectators. At least Cranky’s dead body didn’t have the audience that Kendrick’s had.

  Wes brought the skiff to shore, and Garrett climbed out into the surf, leaving Peter to help Wes tie up to the running line. He trudged toward the group sitting around the fire pit. He had a job to do. Something he should have been concentrating on instead of letting his emotions for Sonya cloud the reason he’d come to Bristol Bay.