The Harbor. Carla Neggers
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territory, letting him know they didn’t care if he was on edge or why. He was bad company. They weren’t going to give him an inch.
“Nobody believes you’re here on vacation,” Bruce said.
“Why not?”
“You don’t look like you take vacations.”
J.B. didn’t disagree. He looked as if he’d spent the past year working on an undercover operation that had ended badly, leaving him with his throat half slit and the searing memory of killing a man in front of his own children. Not what J.B. had envisioned when he’d infiltrated a group of violent criminals who used their virulent antigovernment beliefs to justify robbery, murder and the possession and distribution of illegal assault weapons and explosive devices.
“I’m doing genealogical research on my Maine roots,” J.B. said.
“Uh-huh. You a Mainer. I like that. You ever been to Maine?”
“This week.”
“There you go.”
“My ancestors helped settle Goose Harbor in the seventeenth century.”
“So did mine.”
“You see? We could be cousins.”
Bruce wasn’t amused. “Yeah, right. Listen, Mc-Grath—” Bruce sighed, staring at his nearly untouched beer. “Christina West’s house was broken into today. The police think it was some idiot looking for cash, but I’m wondering—you didn’t have anything to do with it, did you?”
J.B. shook his head. He hadn’t heard about the break-in. “No.”
“Because, you know, some people think you’re here because of her father’s murder last year—”
“Bruce, I’m on vacation. I know about the murder, but that’s it.”
Bruce rubbed a big hand across his face. “I know. It was stupid. I just—Chris is so damn young, and she’s here on her own.”
“What about her sister?”
But J.B. knew about the sister. Zoe West was a screwup. The rising star, the local hotshot pushed hard and fast because she made everyone else look good, too. She should have gotten her ass kicked along the way, but instead she got accepted into the FBI Academy for new-agent training. It was only natural she’d think she could solve her father’s murder—only natural she’d come unglued and fallen apart when she’d had to face his death, her aunt’s death, her own limitations, the kind of real-world experience she must have known was out there but hadn’t had to confront herself.
Zoe West had bowed out of the academy, moved to Connecticut and got herself fired from what was likely her last job in law enforcement.
A screwup.
J.B. thought of the man he’d killed. The looks on the faces of his three children. Nine, eleven and fourteen. They were horrified, furious, filled with hate. J.B. didn’t know what would become of them. Their father, a murderer and a rapist, a man who’d taught other people how to build bombs and convert legal weapons into illegal weapons, had attacked J.B. from behind, without warning, and stuck a knife in his throat, and J.B. fought back. It was self-defense. But nothing, he thought, was ever that simple.
He’d been forced on vacation by his superiors. “Take a break, McGrath. As long as you need.”
Bruce drank more of his beer. J.B. could tell Zoe West wasn’t Bruce’s favorite subject. “Christina’s just twenty-four. Zoe shouldn’t have left her here on her own. I don’t know what the hell she’s still doing in Connecticut—she doesn’t have a job. I think everyone in town’s told her about you by now.”
And everyone in town knew because Bruce had told them. “You talk to her?”
“Yeah. Made no difference. She went on about goat’s milk when I talked to her.”
“Did you tell her about the break-in at her sister’s house?”
“No. I expect Chris did, though.”
J.B. smiled. “You have a soft spot for Christina West, don’t you?”
“Up yours, McGrath.”
“She’s okay?”
Bruce’s expression softened. “Yeah. I’m supposed to bring her a new door. Want to go with me?”
J.B.’s instincts told him not to get in any deeper with the West sisters. He was in deep enough. He’d been interested in Goose Harbor because of his ancestors, but he’d actually come here because of Patrick West’s murder. His own father had died over the winter, an old man who’d loved western Montana—and yet he never would have been born there without his tragic connection to the Wests and Goose Harbor, Maine.
J.B. knew he should cut the night short and go back to his inn, but he got to his feet and followed Bruce Young out to buy a new door for Christina West.
* * *
Bruce did most of the work. Installing a solid wood door was nothing to him. J.B. finally quit pretending to help and joined Christina and her boyfriend, Kyle Castellane, in the kitchen. The West house was built in 1827—a plaque above the door said so—on a corner lot on a side street behind the town library. Yellow clapboards, black shutters, roses. Their mother had died of lupus when the girls were two and nine. It was one of the many tidbits J.B. had learned about the West sisters since he’d decided to vacation in Goose Harbor.
Christina looked agitated. She was tall, slender and usually quick with a smile, but not tonight. Wisps of long blond hair had worked their way out of her braid and into her face, which was lightly freckled and pretty, making J.B. wonder about her older sister, the ex-detective. Christina wore the white ruffled blouse and slim black pants that were her basic uniform at her café. Kyle, the boyfriend, was sandy-haired and good-looking, dressed in his habitual gray sweatshirt and khakis. He also had on a five-thousand-dollar watch. They both stood with their backs against the kitchen counter.
J.B. had on jeans, a black chamois shirt and boat shoes he’d managed to scuff up properly during his four days on the Maine coast. His sports watch cost about a hundred bucks. He’d had to buy a new band for it after he’d bled on the old one when he got his throat slit. The scar wasn’t all that visible when he wore collared shirts.
He had a feeling Christina West already knew about him, but he went ahead and introduced himself. “I’m J. B. McGrath. I’m on vacation here in Goose Harbor.”
“I heard,” Christina said. “I’ve seen you at the café a few times.”
He smiled, aware of her tension. “Hard to resist wild blueberry muffins and warm apple pie. Chowder’s good, too.”
She couldn’t muster much of a smile back at him. “Thanks.”
“You’re FBI, aren’t you?” Kyle asked.
“I’m just a guy with some time off.”
The kid didn’t like his answer. “Some people are saying you’re a phony.”
J.B. shrugged. “It’s a crime to impersonate a law enforcement officer.”
Kyle Castellane liked that answer even less than the first one. “I’d like to see some I.D.”
“Would you?”
“Yeah. Why the name McGrath? Don’t you think that’s a hell of a coincidence?”
“McGrath’s not an uncommon name.” It was a fact, but it left out the rest of the facts—that he knew why Olivia West had picked the name Mr. Lester McGrath for Jen Periwinkle’s evil nemesis. She hadn’t plucked it out of thin air. “I can’t blame people for wondering.”
Kyle wasn’t pacified. “Why did you pick Goose Harbor for your vacation?”
“Cute name.”
“I