Troubled Waters

by Rachelle Mccalla

  “Oh. Is that all?” Tracie still looked a little uncomfortable with the idea.

  “Well, there is one other thing, but I suppose it’s a selfish reason.”

  Now her expression appeared intrigued. “What’s that?”

  “According to the reports I’ve read, Devil’s Island is the place where you saved the lives of three civilians. I don’t think I can fully appreciate all that you did until I’ve seen the place with my own eyes.” Heath’s voice went a little husky, and it occurred to him that Jonas would be impressed by the way his words had softened Tracie’s demeanor so quickly. But Heath hadn’t spoken that way to impress his boss.

  Tracie blushed and dipped her head. “Well, it sounds like you and Jake have the day all worked out. It’s a long trip. Let’s get going.”

  They loaded up a utility boat with supplies. Tracie balked when Heath got out the cold-water diving gear.

  “I thought we were going into the sea cave?”

  “We are.”

  “In kayaks,” she stated.

  Heath shook his head. “Underwater.”

  “Isn’t it a little late in the year for that?”

  “The air temperature and surface weather patterns will have little bearing on our dive once we get under water.” The way he understood it, Lake Superior had enough water mass that the surface water temperature didn’t begin to dip until later in the winter, though the depths tended to hover around a temperature of forty-six degrees year-round. But Heath focused his argument on the needs of the case. “The standing assumption is that Trevor’s body sank, or was sunk by his killers. If that’s the case, we should be able to dive and find it—along with any other clues the diamond smugglers may have left behind.” He took a step closer and softened his expression. “Your point about the season is a good one. The truth of it is, if we wait much longer, the lake will begin to ice over, and making this dive after that point would be distinctly more dangerous. I’ve read the weather reports. Today may be the last good day to do this.”

  For a moment, Tracie looked as though she might continue her protest, but then she gulped a breath and started helping him load the supplies.

  Heath wondered about her response. “Do you have experience cave diving or cavern diving?” he asked.

  “I’ve had the usual Coast Guard dive training.”

  Heath flinched internally. He didn’t know what the usual training was, but of course, she wouldn’t know that. Much as he needed to know her level of training, he didn’t want to risk giving away his true identity.

  Cave diving was significantly more dangerous than diving in the open sea. Not only were there often underwater currents and visibility issues, but in an emergency, ascending directly to the surface was often not possible because of the enclosed space. That made reaching oxygen vastly more difficult when every second counted. He couldn’t think of a way to ask her if she recognized the added risk without revealing how little he knew of standard Coast Guard training. He’d just have to keep an eye on her. Hopefully his experience as a Navy SEAL would compensate for any lack on training as Trace’s part.

  The weather was especially mild for late November, and though the temperature wouldn’t likely reach forty degrees, the lake was still free of ice. Heath offered to let Tracie steer.

  “That’s all right. I know the islands. I’d rather navigate.” She had her long hair tied back in a fat twist at the nape of her neck, and a few blond strands escaped to dance against her cheeks in the brisk wind.

  Once they had the boat headed toward the island, Heath had his best shot at getting Tracie to talk. Given her response when he’d mentioned her heroics the last time she’d been out to the island, he thought that might be a good topic to start with.

  “I’ve read the report,” he began, knowing her fondness for directing him back to the written version of the story, “but I’d like to hear you tell me about what happened last month on Devil’s Island.”

  Tracie must have finally softened to him after their encounter the evening before. Jonas had been right. Now she opened up without hesitation.

  “Trevor and I were called out for a search and rescue on a Saturday night almost six weeks ago. A woman named Marilyn Adams was missing out on Devil’s Island. At that point we didn’t know what we were dealing with. I just figured it was another case of tourists going out too late in the season, underestimating how dangerous it can be out here, and getting caught in a fast-moving storm.

  “But there was a lot more to it, as you know. Diamond smugglers had been operating out of a hidden sea cave under Devil’s Island, probably for at least ten years, bringing in synthetic gems through Canada. It wasn’t until an expert gemologist figured it out a few months ago and reported his find in a major gemology journal that these guys decided they need to patch the leaks in their operation.”

  Heath nodded and kept his eyes on the helm. He knew there had actually been several reports filed on the gems over the years, but they’d never been able to follow up on them because the gemologists involved had mysteriously died shortly after their discoveries, and whatever notes or evidence they’d left behind had disappeared, leaving the FBI without anything to go on. But of course he couldn’t tell Tracie that without letting her know how he’d come by the information. So he simply nodded and hoped she’d keep talking.

  “Marilyn Adams had several diamonds that had originated from the smugglers, and the way I understand it, they were afraid her diamonds could be traced back to them. They cooked up a plot to bring her and her family out to Devil’s Island and make their deaths looks like a collision between the remote wilderness and poor survival skills. By doing so, they also hoped to get their hands on some valuable property she owned—they needed a new source of income since their diamond gig was up.

  “Are you confused yet?” Tracie pointed him around the next island.

  “I think I’m following.” He steered them in the direction she’d indicated. “Their plan was pretty foolproof, as I understand it. They came very close to getting away with it.”

  “Too close,” Tracie nodded. “If Scott Frasier and Abby Caldwell hadn’t managed to escape the island.” Her voice caught with emotion.

  Heath looked at her with sympathy. He knew she had been tied up with the others in the smuggler’s hideout. She’d ultimately been the one to get help while the others fended off their captors. “And if you hadn’t arrived to help them,” he added.

  “I was only doing my job,” she insisted, her features regaining their usual stoic demeanor. “And anyway, if Trevor hadn’t been involved with the smugglers, keeping the Coast Guard off their trail, I never would have become so tightly involved with the case. So you see, God can bring good things out of bad.” Her words faded, as though she felt self-conscious about the faith-filled statement even before she’d finished making it.

  But the integrity of Tracie’s faith had only impressed Heath, and he quickly moved to keep the conversation going. “Once the smugglers didn’t need Trevor to keep us out of their hair any more, they got rid of him?”

  “Pretty much. Tim thought Trevor had made some of the smugglers angry, and that may have been part of what got him killed. We suspect the head of their operation, a guy they called Captain Sal, was the one who pulled the trigger, but he won’t admit to anything yet.”

  “Captain Sal,” Heath repeated. “He’s the prisoner we’re transporting back to Canada tomorrow.”

  “Right. A lot of his crimes are under Canadian jurisdiction.” She pointed to the next island in their path. “Wide to the right around this one.”

  Heath steered as he’d been told. “So if Sal is in custody, who’s calling the shots now?”

  “That’s what we don’t know. We thought Sal and the ten guys we captured with him were the whole group. It’s hard to imagine even that many people being involved without us knowing something was going on for that long, so I can’t imagine there were too many more beyond them. And though I’ve heard stories of crimin
als running their empires from behind prison walls, I don’t know how Sal would have gotten his message out right under our noses.”

  “But if Tim was right,” Heath began, taking his eyes off the helm just long enough to look deep into Tracie’s clear, blue eyes.

  She nodded solemnly. “If this thing goes deeper than what we can see…” She bit her lower lip and looked concerned.

  “There could be other guys out there,” Heath finished for her. He launched the question he’d wanted to ask for some time. “When we were shot at Saturday, do you think we surprised somebody and they pulled a gun to keep us from stumbling on to something?”

  “I wish that was it.” Tracie’s face pinched up in a worried expression. “But how could it be? The gunman used an AK-47 assault rifle. There wasn’t a gun like that in the house. There weren’t any guns in the house. John and Mack confiscated them all as evidence. To think a man would just happen to be carrying a weapon like that on him, that he’d be out there with it at the exact time we stopped by? It’s absurd. He would have had to be watching out the window for us to even see us coming. The woods are thick between the road and the house. He wouldn’t have had two minutes’ warning even if he was watching for us.”

  “So you think he was expecting us?”

  “How could I pretend to think otherwise?”

  Heath met Tracie’s eyes again and held her gaze for as long as he dared before looking back at the lake. She looked worried. No, more than that, she looked sickened by fear. “Do you have any idea who it might have been?”

  “Somebody who knew when we were coming? Who knew how to get inside Trevor’s house, who had a reason to take a shot at us in the first place? I wouldn’t have thought such a person existed.”

  Her analysis made Heath’s skin crawl. He wished he could drop the subject and talk about something innocent like the weather, but as Jonas had said, this was a matter of life and death. Heath had to know how close Tracie was to the inside.

  “There was one guy who could have done it,” he began slowly.

  Tracie’s eyes widened, but she didn’t speak.

  Heath continued. “You thought you smelled Trevor’s cologne on the stoop when we arrived. Had you ever smelled it there before?”

  “You mean outside?”

  “Yes.”

  Tracie looked frightened and confused. “No, but what do you think that means? Trevor’s dead.”

  Heath took one hand from the helm and reached for Tracie’s hand. In spite of the warmth of the boat’s cabin, her fingers felt cold. “Do you think there’s someone else out there, wearing Trevor’s cologne and Trevor’s size-fourteen boots, knowing things only Trevor could have known, trying to kill us?”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “Which is more likely? That somebody else is doing what only Trevor could do, or that Trevor himself took a shot at us?”

  “No!” Tracie shouted, dropping his hand and backing away before he’d even finished his sentence. “Trevor is dead. I saw his body myself. I’m telling you, he’s dead!”

  Heath stared patiently at Tracie while he slowed the boat in preparation for reaching Devil’s Island. “I know. I read the report. I know what you think you saw. But what if you’re wrong? You weren’t able to recover his body. It disappeared. What’s more likely: that someone disposed of it that quickly, or that Trevor simply walked away?”

  “Dead men don’t walk away, Heath.”

  “True. But what if Trevor is still alive?”

  Tracie stared at her new partner for a moment in fear. Was he crazy? There was no way Trevor could be alive. She had to make him understand that. They’d come around the northwest side of Devil’s Island to the area of the sea caves, and she pointed up the steep brownstone cliffs to where the tops of a few wind-whipped hemlocks were just visible from below.

  “Look,” she pointed. “I was in the woods up there when I heard shots fired. Abby Caldwell and Scott Frasier were the first people on the scene. They saw Trevor’s body in the water. I arrived seconds later, stood on that spot and looked right into this area of the lake. I saw Trevor’s body floating in the water facedown.”

  “How can you be sure it was Trevor if he was floating facedown?”

  “It was Trevor,” Tracie insisted. “He’s an unusually built guy. He was six-foot-five, really big with a distinctive body shape. Trust me, it was Trevor’s body I saw. Besides that, I took blood samples from the cliff side and inside the cave. The DNA evidence came back two weeks ago. The blood belonged to Trevor. The body looked like Trevor’s. You can’t tell me that wasn’t him.”

  “I believe you,” Heath looked down into her eyes, and for the first time Tracie realized he had his arm around her again. Now she was glad for the support of his strong arm on her shoulder. “I believe that was Trevor who was shot, and whose body you saw. But his body was never recovered.”

  A chill ran down her spine. Tracie fought back the fear she felt at Heath’s suggestion. “He had multiple bullet wounds. I saw them.” She had to make him understand. Trevor had to be dead. The man was evil. He’d tormented her. He’d killed one of his cohorts in cold blood. If he was alive…no, he had to be dead.

  “I have a bullet wound,” Heath noted. “I’m not dead.”

  At that reminder, Tracie pinched her eyes shut. To think that Heath could have died, just like Trevor.

  “What was the nature of his wounds? Where were they located?”

  “Upper torso.” She closed her eyes and pictured the image that she’d never been able to exorcise from her memory. “Two wounds, maybe three. There was a lot of blood in the water.”

  “How high on the torso?”

  “Pretty high.”

  “And Trevor was a big guy, right. Lots of extra bulk?”

  Tracie understood what he was suggesting and pulled away from him, as though she could hide from the possibility of what his words implied. He held on to her fingertips and met her eyes.

  “Is it possible the wounds could have missed major organs—that they could have been superficial muscle-tissue shots through the shoulder?”

  “Yes.” Tracie admitted with a shaky breath. “But he was floating facedown. Facedown, do you get that? You don’t float facedown in Lake Superior for more than about two minutes and still live, bullet wounds or not.”

  “Was he in the water that long?” Heath pressed. “Do you know for a fact he was floating facedown for more than two minutes?”

  And then Tracie felt it. A cold terror like she’d never felt before. Her grandmother would have said someone had walked over her grave. And maybe there was something to that. She felt as though the lid had been closed on her casket, as though her fate had been sealed. If Trevor was alive, if he was out to kill her, she didn’t know how she could ever evade him. She wanted to vomit, but she slowly forced herself to look Heath in the eye. “No. I only had one look at him before we went back around the other end of the island to get the boat to retrieve his body. When we got back around to this side, he was gone.”

  Heath rested a tentative hand on her back, his touch so welcome after all the time she’d spent feeling isolated by Trevor. She sniffled a few times, then gave in to the tears that poured down her cheeks. Trevor. Alive. Suddenly it all made sense. He’d been the one shooting at them, he’d killed his own brother. He was after them, and Tracie knew Trevor well enough to know he wouldn’t stop until he’d killed her, too.

  The job she’d started to dislike when Trevor had arrived now terrified her. What had begun as a challenging occupation now seemed impossible. How could she continue to do her job with Trevor on the loose? Her only hope was to somehow bring him to justice—but that task seemed insurmountable since they knew nothing of his whereabouts, their every lead had dried up and, if they got too close to him, he’d kill them.

  They needed another lead to go on, and the sea caves were their most promising option. She tipped her head up and looked into Heath’s face. At his tender expression, she near
ly started sobbing again out of gratitude that he was with her. But instead she blinked back her tears.

  Heath cradled her face in one large hand and brushed away her tears with his thumb. “Ready to go on?”

  “Yes.”

  She followed him dumbly as he pulled close to the island and anchored the boat. But when he pulled out the diving wetsuits, she took a deep breath and fought to stifle the fear of diving she’d worked so hard to overcome during her Coast Guard training. She thought she’d put it behind her, but now with everything else, she felt its lingering effects all the more acutely. It occurred to her that she could tell Heath about her fears, but after all the time she’d already wasted by crying on his shoulder, she knew she oughtn’t bother him. It wasn’t his fault her father had died making a dive in Lake Superior.

  FIVE

  Heath pulled on his gear inside the cramped dressing closet of the utility boat, then stepped out and waited for Tracie to finish suiting up. The same question kept circling in his mind: Was Tracie involved with the diamond smugglers? And the same answer rose like a shout in his throat: No!

  But did he truly believe that, or did he keep returning to that answer because it was what he wanted to believe? Getting close to Tracie hadn’t been difficult, once he’d broken through the barricade she’d put up to keep her fellow Coast Guardsmen out. But it had also proven not to be without risks. He liked Tracie, and already felt himself losing his ability to objectively evaluate her as a suspect. But he knew better than to let his feelings get in the way of the investigation.

  He stepped out of the closet and saw her, suited up and ready to go, and he grinned, unable to fight back the smile that rose to his lips. Tracie Crandall was a beautiful woman. No wonder he had trouble keeping his heart from getting involved. He had already begun to hope sincerely that she hadn’t been involved with the diamond smugglers. Either way, he needed to find out who was.