Troubled Waters. Rachelle McCalla
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then down at her dog. “It’s okay. I’m fine.” She forced a smile for Gunnar’s benefit, but he didn’t look any more convinced than she felt. Shaking off her doubts, she nodded resolutely and proceeded to pour herself a bowl of cereal. “That was the right answer. I’m pretty sure it was.”
Tracie pulled up at the Coast Guard station the next morning just as Heath was getting out of his truck. Her insides knotted at the sight of him.
“Medical leave,” she said with a pointed look at the bandage on his arm.
He grinned at her, and she felt her heart give a dip. “Not for me, thanks. How was your dinner?”
It had been horribly dissatisfying, and she’d ended up feeling so bad about turning him away that she hadn’t even been able to finish her cereal, which had seemed to stick halfway down her throat every time she tried to swallow. But she wasn’t about to tell him that. “It’s really none of your business,” she reminded him as she stepped through the door he held open for her.
“Mine too,” he agreed.
“What?” She spun and looked at him, meeting his eyes, where flickering sadness didn’t match the smile he’d pasted on his lips.
“Dinner,” he explained, letting the fake smile drop. “Lonely and disappointing.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Tracie’s heart thumped hard against her rib cage and she hurried to the office that housed her cubicle, hoping he’d disappear into his own. Instead, he followed her.
“Look, I don’t mean to be rude,” she stared him down, “but I have work to do.”
“We have work to do.”
“I don’t need your help completing my paperwork.”
“The paperwork can wait, Princess. Somebody tried to kill us on Saturday, and I intend to catch whoever it was before they get a chance to finish the job.”
Tracie bristled. She was no princess. Princesses didn’t work for the Coast Guard. “Look, Heath, I’d love to catch our gunman, but we have no idea who it is, and no leads right now to go on.” She sat at her desk and picked up a sheaf of papers.
“And we’re not going to find any leads sitting around doing paperwork.” Heath plucked the papers from her hands and set them out of her reach on top of her file cabinets.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Then what do you propose?”
“Have you had breakfast?”
“No,” Tracie stood. “Not that it’s any of your business.” She gestured for him to leave. “I have work to do.”
Heath smiled as he stepped out of the office. “I’ll be back.”
Twenty minutes later, Heath stepped, uninvited, into Tracie’s cubicle and plunked a fresh apple fritter on her desk, then slid a steaming cup of coffee next to it. “Half cream, no sugar,” he smiled triumphantly. “Jake ratted you out.”
“I had no idea Jake cared so much,” Tracie slid the coffee toward her, lifted the lid, and inhaled a deep breath of steam.
“From the Egg Toss Café,” Heath explained, hoping he’d earn points for fetching her favorite brew.
“I can see that.” She speared an icy eyebrow his way, but took a small swallow and reached for the fritter. “Have a seat,” she said, nodding toward the spare chair as she took a big bite of the pastry. “Tell me what I have to do to make you go away.”
Inwardly congratulating himself on his small victory, Heath took the chair and opened a white sack, pulling out another fritter for himself. “I want to know everything you know about Trevor.”
She shrugged and washed down a bite with coffee. “It’s in the report. Read it.”
“I’ve read it. I can quote long sections from memory, if you’d like. But nothing in the report tells me who else Trevor was involved with, or why they’d rather risk a murder charge than let me look at a house your men had already searched.” The vivid details of the report stood out fresh in his mind, from the moment Tracie and two civilians discovered Trevor’s body floating facedown in Lake Superior, to their discovery of a hidden cave under Devil’s Island. But the body had disappeared before they could recover it.
Tracie leveled her gaze at him across the desk. “Don’t you think I’d tell you if I had any idea? It’s not in my best interest to withhold information, you know.”
“But you were closer to Trevor than anyone else on this team.”
“We really weren’t that close.” She plucked a large blob of apple from the fritter, and dropped the gooey mess into her mouth.
As Heath watched her lips close over the morsel, he was struck again by how attractive the woman sitting across from him really was. What was she doing living in this tiny dot on the map, working for the Coast Guard of all things? It took him several seconds to pull his thoughts back to their conversation. “How long had you known Trevor before his death?”
Tracie sighed over her fritter. “I’m from Bayfield. Trevor’s from Bayfield, too, but he’s a few years older than I am. Growing up, I’d heard his name, but never paid too much attention to him. When I started working for the Coast Guard, he was stationed elsewhere, near Canada, I guess. He transferred here, we started working together. What else do you want to know? He took his coffee with cream and way too much sugar. He’d eat pretty much anything, including other people’s food if they didn’t eat it first. I think he felt entitled to things, but I never understood why.” She shrugged and took another bite of apple fritter.
Heath felt like he was beginning to make progress. “And you had no idea he was involved with a diamond-smuggling ring?”
“None,” Tracie looked at him blankly and swallowed. “As far as I know, nobody had any idea anyone was smuggling anything through the Apostle Islands. Nobody even knew there was a sea cave hideout in Devil’s Island—not unless you believed the old fishermen’s tales about pirates, anyway. Six weeks ago, the case got blown wide open. Before that, I admit I was completely oblivious.”
“So you never suspected Trevor was involved in anything covert?”
“No.” Tracie looked annoyed. “Why would I?”
“You spent ten hours a day together, four days a week. He never did anything suspicious in all that time?”
“Look, Trevor and I had an arrangement. He stayed at his desk, I stayed at mine. When we drove around in the truck together or rode around in the boat, he drove and I navigated. He did the grunt work and I did the thinking, and we never talked about our personal lives. Ever. It’s an arrangement I’m hoping you and I can duplicate.”
“But you’re friends with his little brother.” Heath persisted.
“I met Tim after Trevor was already dead, when Tim came forward with information that helped us crack the case. We’ve barely known each other a month. And yes, I’m already better friends with Tim than I ever was with Trevor, but that only reinforces how very little I cared for Trevor.”
“So you didn’t like him?”
Tracie threw back her head and looked at the ceiling. Heath watched the muscles in her slender neck shift as she tightened her jaw in frustration. “Trevor and I had an arrangement,” she repeated.
“What kind of arrangement?”
Heath watched carefully as Tracie’s eyes darted to the door, as though seeking escape. Her face paled slightly and a vessel in her neck began to pulse visibly. She stood. “I think it’s time for you to leave.”
Though Heath rose from his chair, he didn’t take his eyes off Tracie’s face. He was learning more by watching her reaction