by S A Monk
Nick got up from the table, pulled her chair out, and took her by her elbow into the living room. He gave his mother a glance over his shoulder. “Do you think Colleen has some brandy you could put in Hanna’s coffee?”
“I believe so.” Jessie got up to get the brandy and more coffee. “I think we could all use some,” she said quietly on the way into the kitchen.
In the living room, Nick sat next to Hanna on the sofa and slid an arm around her, then pulled her completely into his arms when she began to cry harder. Several moments passed before she could compose herself enough to accept the tissue he handed her.
“It’s going to hurt for a long time. It’s so damned unfair!”
“You don’t need to tell me anything else right now, Hanna.”
Nick had her head tucked under his chin and was gently stroking her back when Jessie returned with a tray of brandy-laced coffees. He took two from her and gave Hanna one. He didn’t see his mother closely watching him.
Hanna took a couple of sips of her drink, then straightened. “You need to know this stuff if you’re going to help me investigate Dylan’s death.” Another long drink helped. “The medical examiner from Seattle told me that he’d seen a similar case two years ago. It turned out to be a homicide made to look like an accidental drowning. Lord, Nick, who would have done that to Dylan?!”
He shook his head. “Did you tell Lance all this?”
“He read both the coroner’s report and the Dr. Newell’s report. He was with me when the sheriff and police chief told us they didn’t have any evidence of homicide. As far as they were concerned, Dylan died the way the local coroner said he did. Lance and I were furious with them both, especially with the sheriff. He was Dylan’s boss. Dylan had been with the department for years. He had an exemplary record. And why didn’t the coroner let Dr. Newell do another full autopsy?”
“Probably because he had something to hide.” Nick shook his head, as disgusted as Hanna. “I don’t know the sheriff. He was just elected last year, according to Mom, but we went to high school with Phillip Douglas, the police chief. I played football with him. Do you remember him? He was one of the guys who liked to tease you all the time.”
“I never liked him.”
“He was an obnoxious jerk most of the time.”
“Well, he still is. He’s just a more diplomatic, obnoxious jerk now.” Hanna drank more of her brandy-laced coffee. “He doesn’t tease me anymore, though. Guess he’s afraid I might have to patch him up someday in ER.”
Jessie was seated in a chair, across from Nick and Hanna. “Lance was helping Hanna investigate Dylan’s death,” she told Nick. “He was getting frustrated with the lack of cooperation from the sheriff and the police chief. He was thinking about hiring a private investigator. But first, he wanted to dive around Discovery Junction to see if the sheriff’s divers had overlooked anything. He may have dived farther out to see if he could find anything. The sheriff didn’t drag the whole bay.”
“Lance was interested in checking out those crab pots.” Hanna sighed in frustration. “I don’t know, Nick. We really need more information, more clues. I’ve gone over and over all the things we know so far, and I just have no idea who might have killed Dylan. All I know is that he did not fall off his patrol boat in a drunken stupor and drown. No one will ever make me believe that of my brother.”
Nick still had one arm wrapped around her shoulders. His hand curled over her upper arm and squeezed gently. “Rest assured I won’t ever believe that of Dylan either. I may not have been home a lot in the last twenty years, but Dylan and I wrote to each other regularly. There was never anything to indicate he had a drinking problem.”
She turned to him, her face full of anxiety. “I feel so guilty because I asked Lance to help me find out what happened to my brother.”
“He would have investigated Dylan’s death, regardless, Hanna,” Nick reassured her. “He was Dylan’s best friend.”
Hanna knew that, but it didn’t ease the guilt she felt. “I still shouldn’t have let him dive alone that day. But he couldn’t have drowned. His body would have been found by now. And what happened to his dinghy? It disappeared as mysteriously as he did. None of it makes any sense! What can we do? Where do we start?”
Nick caught her hand and stroked it, trying to ease her distress. He gave his mother an assessing look. She looked as distraught as Hanna. Both women definitely needed his help. He could see they felt they had hit a dead end, with nowhere to go next.
“I’ll start by going over all the same ground you’ve already gone over, with all the same people,” he informed them. “I have a friend in the FBI office in Seattle who might be of some assistance. I’ll also see how much pressure I can put on Phillip Douglas and the sheriff to reopen this investigation. I’m anxious to hear, first-hand, what they have to say about Lance’s disappearance and Dylan’s death.”
Jessie rolled her eyes. “It will be the same old baloney they’ve been giving us.”
“I’m sure it will be, but they’re not going to get away with standing on that. They aren’t going to ignore me the way they’ve been ignoring all of you.”
“They’re probably blowing us off because we’re women.”
Nick nodded in obvious disgust, then gave both his mother and Hanna a reassuring smile. “I will find out what happened to Lance and to Dylan. I’ve got lots of training in this kind of thing, lots of tools at my disposal, and some good contacts that can help me get the information we need.”
Nick’s confident assurances relieved some of the frustration and guilt Hanna had been carrying around for too long. “Well, please don’t go diving without me. I don’t want to lose you, too.”
Nick smiled indulgently at her. “I’ll take you with me.” Again, he missed the interest in his mother’s eyes as she watched his tender exchange with Hanna. “Now tell me what happened to you on the way home from work last week.”
“I was driving home about midnight. We’d had an entailed emergency that night, so I had to work late. I was on McHenry Point Road when a car came up fast behind me. He didn’t have his headlights on, or I would have seen him sooner. As he came up alongside me, he swerved toward me and forced me onto the shoulder of the road. My car hit the guard rail. He sped off. I didn’t get a license number, although it looked like a Washington plate.”
Nick pictured the scene, and it scared the hell out of him. She could have easily ended up in the bay below the cliff road.
“You keep saying he. Was it a man driving?”
“I think so. He had short hair. But it was so dark….”
“What did the car look like?”
“It was a sedan, an older model. I don’t know the make. It was a dark color, maybe blue or black.” Hanna shook her head. “I wish I could tell you more, but it happened so fast.”
“You weren’t hurt, were you?” Again Jessie saw the unmistakable concern on her son’s face.
Hanna shook her head no. “It just shook me up a bit.”
“Was that the only incident?”
Colleen came back into the room and sat down in a rocking chair near Jessie. Hanna asked her if Christine was okay, and she told them that she was lying down. “The next night I was near the same spot on the same road, and I had a flat tire. I’d just had the tires replaced, so I was a little surprised. A man on a big bike like yours, a Harley, stopped to offer me help. He looked like he belonged to a biker gang. He was scruffy… scary. He had long hair and was dressed in a black leather jacket and chains. He might have been in his thirties. His face was rough, pock-mocked. He didn’t threaten me. But he made me uneasy. He came up really quietly behind me while I was getting my tire iron and tools out of my trunk. He startled me, but I was ready to clobber him with the tire iron if I needed to.”
Nick frowned, clearly troubled.
“Luckily, a male nurse from the hospital happened along at that point and stopped, recognizing my car. The biker left then.”
“And the
latest incident?” he prompted her.
Hanna shot Jessie and Colleen a censuring glance. They obviously had told Nick about her latest fears. Since they were just that, she hadn’t intended to tell Nick about them. He had enough to worry about. “It wasn’t really an incident.”
“You thought someone was following you,” he reminded her. “Under the circumstances, that’s important. And I understand your car isn’t running too well.”
“Grandma! Jessie!” Hanna sent both women a look of rebuke.
“We’re just worried about you, honey,” Jessie told her.
“I think we’ve lost enough of the family the last few weeks,” her grandmother gently scolded. “We certainly don’t want anything to happen to you, too.”
Hanna felt immediately contrite. “I know. I’m sorry. Yes,” she said, looking at Nick. “I’ve had the feeling that someone has been watching me, following me. But I’m not sure. Only suspicious.”
“Nick’s home now. He’ll take care of this,” Colleen inserted, giving him a brief smile.
“Suspicious is good,” Nick encouraged them. “It will be a lot easier to take care of all of you, if you don’t keep anything from me, no matter how trivial it seems,” he added just as Christine came back into the room and sat down. “Until we know what’s going on and who’s targeting our families, you need to be extremely alert. Look around you all the time. Be suspicious, even of people you know. Paranoia doesn’t hurt under circumstances like these. It might save your lives. I carry a regular cell phone on me all the time, plus my SAT phone. I have an extra one that I’ll leave with Mom. You can reach me anywhere with it, no matter where you are. I’ll send all of you my numbers. Call me if you need me, no matter how silly you think it might be. No one is going to chastise you for it, especially not me. Christine, don’t go to your house alone. Always wait for me to go with you. And Hanna, no more using your car. It’s not reliable enough. If you break down on the way home after work, on a dark stretch of the highway, you could be in big trouble. You’ve been lucky so far. In fact, I’ll take you to work and bring you home this week.”
“Can’t you just fix my car?”
“I’ll take a look at it, but it’s not a priority right now.”
“If I go to work on the back of your bike, I’ll be a mess by the time I get there.”
Nick smiled. “I won’t take you to work on the Harley. I’ll use Mom’s car.”
“Lance’s new Jeep is at the house,” Jessie suggested. “And his truck is at the boat yard. We probably need to do something about the business, too. Paul is keeping things operational, but you might want to see if he needs anything.”
Nick nodded. “I’d planned to check in with him this week. But the business is not as important as finding Lance and keeping you safe.” He meant everyone, but he was looking at Hanna. “You’re not going to give me any trouble about taking you to and from work, are you?”
“No,” she answered him, then made a face at him. “You know you sound like you did when we were kids, always in charge. No wonder they made you a Colonel.”
CHAPTER 5
IT WAS A TRADITION ON SUNDAY, after church, to take Christopher to the park to play football or baseball, sometimes basketball, actually any game that entailed using a ball. Whoever didn’t have to work went. Lance had always taken his son. Hanna went most Sundays. Dylan and Christine often joined them. Afterward, they usually had a picnic.
This Sunday, after everyone had gone home and changed out of their dress clothes, they decided to go Fort Worden State Park. The fort itself was a nineteenth century military installation with a parade ground, officers’ quarters, plantation style barracks, and 434 acres of beautiful green manicured grounds and huge leafy trees. The big guns that had once guarded Admiralty Strait had been quiet since World War II. The meticulously preserved site now housed campgrounds, a picnic area, museums, conference facilities, and a non-profit center for arts and education. There was even a hostel on the grounds, and an underwater park off-shore.
Since Lance’s disappearance, Hanna and Christine had taken Christopher out as much as possible. With his Uncle Nick home, there was no doubt who the boy would rather play football with. Sometimes Jessie and Colleen went, but this Sunday they opted to skip the outing and stay home. Christine brought the baby, and since there were four of them, one needing an infant car seat, Nick took his mother’s four door sedan, rather than Lance’s Jeep.
At the park, they chose a big grassy clearing, laid down a blanket, and anchored it against the light ocean breeze with an ice chest and a picnic basket. They were all wearing shorts, and Christine had her baby girl strapped to her chest in a sling type harness. She wasn’t about to leave her precious cargo in her baby carrier on the blanket, while she played touch football. Leaving a baby unattended, even a few feet away these days, was way too risky.
Nick produced the football, and to warm up, they threw it to one another for a while. Then the game was on; Nick and Christopher against Hanna and Christine. The baby went along for the bouncy ride.
A coin was tossed and Christine got the ball first.
“Aw, no fair!” ten-year old Christopher complained.
“The ladies won the toss,” his uncle reminded him. “Be a good sport.”
Hanna ran down field for a pass, and Christine threw the football to her. She caught it and laughingly dodged the tackle Nick tried to make on her. Christopher chased her, caught up to her, and tagged her a quarter of the way to their imaginary goal line.
When they all lined up in position again, facing one another, Hanna pushed her sunglasses up and shook her finger at Nick. “This is touch football, Colonel. No tackling. Your nephew knows the rules, and so should you.”
He threw up his hands. “What fun is it, playing football with girls, if you can’t tackle?”
Hanna rolled her eyes. He sounded just like he had as a teenager. “Play by the rules, Kelly. Be a good sport,” she echoed, making Christopher giggle.
And he did, for most of the game. Hanna and Christine made the first touchdown, then Christopher and Nick made the second. Hanna was fast. Neither of the boys had an easy time trying to tag her, while she caught them and tagged them frequently. Nick and Christopher thought they were going to beat the girls easily, but an hour later, they were down by one touchdown. Everyone was getting tired and hungry, so they agreed to play only another fifteen minutes. Christine and Hanna were on defense. Nick threw the ball to Christopher, who caught it and started to run down the field. Christine couldn’t catch him with the baby. Hanna was close behind her sister-in-law, and charged after her nephew.
Angling in from her blind side, Nick dove for her just as she was about to tag Christopher. He caught her around the waist and tackled her to the ground. He broke her fall, but she landed with a whoof beneath him. Momentarily winded, she stared up into his laughing gray eyes.
“No fair!” she protested. “There’s no tackling!”
“I had to— just once,” he argued, his eyes twinkling with mischief.
Before Hanna could scramble out from under him, he lifted his hand to caress her cheek. Her eyes widened as his mouth began a slow descent to hers. “You look so cute with that new haircut, I couldn’t resist doing this.”
This was a kiss— a totally unexpected, breathtakingly wonderful kiss. At first, it was just the gentle sampling pressure of his lips against hers, tasting and savoring. But as her lips softened and warmed beneath his, the pressure increased.
As the kiss deepened, his mouth slanted more vigorously across hers. Pleasure sliced through her, swift and hot. His tongue probed the seam of her now wet lips. They parted, opened to let him in. He plunged inside, his tongue tangling fiercely with hers― demanding, hungry, wanting more. The heat between them ignited into a blaze. Nick plowed his fingers through her sweat-dampened hair and groaned.
His body was so big and hard in all the places it pressed against hers. Hanna lost all sense of time and place. His masculine arous
al was clearly evident where his hips pushed against hers. The pleasure became so acute, a breathy little moan escaped her throat. Then Christopher jumped on Nick’s back, and broke the magical spell.
“Uncle Nick, I made it! A touchdown! 100 points. Stop kissing Antie Hanna, Uncle Nick.”
Nick did a push-up off of her, and then offered her a hand up with a rueful smile. “Great job, champ!” he congratulated his nephew as he ruffled his hair. “I think you’re just about ready for the NFL.”
Hanna pretended to dust some grass off her bottom, unable to look up at Nick or over at Christine, who she just knew was watching very intently and very curiously.
“Antie Hanna, why kissing Uncle Nick?” Christopher’s curiosity was bluntly honest, and Hanna was too flustered to answer.
Nick’s response flustered her even more. “I think your Antie Hanna likes the way I taste, sport.” He laughed, then winked at her.
“Yuck! No kissing!” Christopher expressed his opinion of that clearly, producing a deep rich laugh from Nick.
He clapped his nephew once on the shoulder. “You’ll like it when you get older, champ. Now let’s go eat. Who’s hungry?”
“Me, me!” cried the ten-year old as his uncle hoisted him onto his broad shoulders and carried him over to the picnic blanket.
“Wow, Hanna! What was that all about?” Christine whispered to her sister-in-law, hanging back so she wouldn’t be heard by Nick.
“I’m not sure.”
“We need a little conversation later, lady. That was one smokin’ hot kiss!”
Hanna blushed so hotly she felt like she was on fire. It had been one smokin’ hot kiss, and she didn’t know what exactly to make of it. She was still just trying to catch her breath.
After lunch, they all rested and played with Christopher and the baby on the blanket. Hanna watched Nick tickle and coo at the baby after he wrestled with his nephew. It amazed her that he was so fascinated by the tiny girl. He fit the description of a tough, battle-hardened Marine. Yet he clearly enjoyed holding and cuddling the baby. The two of them were such a contrast— one so weathered, tanned, and large. Once so soft, pink, and tiny.
