In the Waning Light Page 6

  Blake Sutton’s eyes flash up to meet the sheriff’s. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing, son, nothing. Just trying to figure out whether we should be looking for those Brogan girls in two separate places, or one.”

  Search beams dance in the mist over the black water. Calls carry in snatches of wind. Bull Sutton marches fast down the gangplank in heavy rubber boots, a strident figure in his sou’wester. He climbs into his boat with the big engines.

  The sheriff moves fast down the gangway to join him. The engines rumble to life. A powerful spotlight flares on, turning rain into a silvery sideways sheet.

  “I’m coming!” Blake charges down the gangway and along the wobbling wooden dock after the sheriff and his dad.

  “You stay right there.” Bull Sutton tosses free the lines, and the boat churns backward, away from the dock.

  “What do you think I am?! A kid? I can handle this water, this bay, the storm better than half the men out there!”

  “Stay there,” his father calls. “Man the fort, Blake. Keep the radio on. Need you on communications.”

  Blake clenches his jaw, hands fisting at his sides. Rain drenches him. The horns moan. Wind slaps waves against the dock and he can hear the thunder of surf against rocks at the mouth. His dad’s boat is swallowed by dark and mist. Adrenaline thumps through him, as does the image of Meg, heading off in her little boat, bare legs, hair snapping in the wind. Small against the world.

  You know her well … Very well …

  CHAPTER 5

  Blake watched Noah scrambling up the sandy trail behind the house, little red backpack bobbing, his towhead tousling in the breeze. When his son reached the road up top, he hesitated, but did not look back.

  “Later, champ!” Blake called from the bottom, taking the gap before his kid vanished without a good-bye. “Don’t forget, it’s bus home today!”

  Noah turned, gave a quick wave, then disappeared between the scrub, heading down the road to join the other kids waiting for the school bus.

  Blake stuffed his hands in his pockets. He felt strange, a hollowness as he stood there in the wet grass in his gum boots. The morning was chilly, but the wind had died and the skies were clearing. In a few minutes the sun would crest above the east ridge and spool some warmth into the bay. Yet everything was dead. The tail end of winter was always the ugliest time of year, a time when it seemed that summer might never come. But he had work to do if he was to ready the marina and campsites and cabins before the annual influx of tourists. He also wanted to have Crabby Jack’s Cafe renovated in time for a grand spring opening. He sucked in a deep breath and made for the office, boots crunching over gravel.

  Who’d have thought he’d be like his dad, running this marina alone? A single father. After trying so hard to go another way, to find another route, just to circle all the way back as if destiny ordained it.

  Focus on the routine. Check off the chores. Open the marina up. Even in winter there was the odd diehard fisherman who still wanted to go crabbing. Soon it would be spring—then the summer holidays, the busy season. His kid might grow to love it yet. Blake was forming a vision of the way it could be—Noah helping him with the campsite, and the boats, and the tourists, and the more serious crabbers and clammers and fisher folk.

  While the marina life had not been for his older brother, Geoff, Blake had deep down always loved it, living by the push and pull of the tides, the seasons, the sea. If it hadn’t been for Meg, for what had happened to her and Sherry … he probably would have stayed, taken over from his dad. Married Meg if she’d have had him. Instead she’d cut them all out of her life, excised this place like a cancerous tumor in order to survive. And he’d been too close to the lesion she’d needed to separate out. Collateral damage.

  Sherry’s murder had pitched some serious curveballs.

  Blake unlocked the office, put on coffee. He glanced out the window at the camper. Still there. Last night, from his upstairs window, he’d seen the light go on inside, around 3:00 a.m. He couldn’t say what had roused him and made him look. Perhaps the sudden quiet of the storm.

  He ran through his list of chores, setting things up for the day, then checked his watch again before making his way over to the camper, Lucy in tow.

  Blake knocked lightly on the camper door. “Hello? Anyone home?”

  Peggy Millar cracked an egg and dropped it into the pan. It hit with a sizzle, the white lacing into a crisp curl along the edges.

  “You’ll never guess who came into the gas station last night,” she said, reaching for another egg. She raised her voice to be heard over the stove fan. The scent of coffee mingled with the aroma of a loaf fresh from the bread maker that had been working its magic during the night. Outside, the day was clear, heavy conifers bejeweled with droplets shimmering in the early morning sun. The sound of traffic on the coast road grew steadily as the day got started.

  Her husband, Ryan, just back from dropping Jamie and Alex at school, grunted at the breakfast table, reading his newspaper.

  “Meg Brogan.”

  He glanced up sharply. “What?”

  “Meg Brogan is back in town.”

  He stared at his wife. “Where? When?”

  “I just told you. She came in to fill up her truck last night. She had a camper shell on top. Washington plates. She bought some food in the store.”

  “Meg Brogan is back? What in the hell is she doing back here? Did you ask her?”

  “Just passing through, I think. Looking for a place to stay the night. I only registered it was her after she’d left the store. Her face was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Then as she got back into her truck, I suddenly remembered the poster in Rose’s bookstore. Meg Brogan’s book is right there in the front window. Her face plastered on the jackets.”

  She popped up the toast, placed a slice on each plate. Taking bacon off the paper towel on which it had been draining, she positioned two pieces neatly beside each slice of toast, then flipped the eggs before sliding them atop the toast. She brought the plates to the table, set one in front of Ryan. His attention remained fixed on her face.

  “She wouldn’t have remembered me,” Peggy said. “I was in a grade above her. Didn’t really have anything to do with either her or Sherry. Besides, I look different than I did back then.” She went back into the kitchen, fetched the coffeepot. “Did you know Rose’s book club is reading that latest novel of hers? Something about an old woman who remembered a crime from like fifty years ago.” She held up the pot. “Top up?”

  But Ryan just stared.

  “You okay?” She set the pot down, slowly seating herself in front of her plate.

  Ryan cleared his throat. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.” He lifted his knife and fork, ate distractedly.

  She sliced into her egg. Yolk spilled onto the plate. “I’ve been meaning to read that book,” she said, delivering a forkful to her mouth. “I wonder if she’d ever write about the Shelter Bay murder.”

  “You mean her own sister’s killing?” He stared, bloodless. “Why would she do that?”

  “Maybe her memory might come back if she did, like that woman in her latest book.”

  He drained his mug, plunked it hard on the table, reached for his napkin, and wiped his mouth. “Got to get to work.” He pushed himself to his feet.

  “I think I’ll join that book club.”

  “What about the gas station?”

  Irritation flushed hot through her chest. “I could get Brady to work an extra hour or two a week. I think we owe ourselves some time off now and then. Now that the business is finally taking off in this new location. You could do with some downtime, too.”

  Ryan regarded his wife a moment. “We’re only as good as the Kessinger-Sproatt contract. If we lose that, we’re back to square one. Tommy saved our asses.”

  “Book club is not going to kill us, for Pete’s sake, Ryan.” She lurched to her feet, snagged her half-eaten plate, and angrily scraped the contents into th
e trash.

  “We’ll talk later.” He exited the kitchen door.

  “Later,” she muttered to herself. “Always ‘later.’ Like I can’t do a damn thing without permission.” Peggy went to the window, dirty dish still in hand. She watched her husband lumbering over to his mechanic shop, where he spent seven days a week tinkering with vehicles. And most nights, too, a couple of beers at his side. He was getting heavy. What had once made him a handsome, square-jawed football force to be reckoned with in high school was now turning him into a shambling giant of a man. He carried his beer and her cooking in his paunch. Taking some time off, getting some exercise, maybe going fishing again, camping, was not only a dream, it was going to become a health necessity. If she could put it to him that way …

  Maybe she should make oatmeal for breakfast tomorrow, instead of dishing up the cholesterol and fat in eggs and bacon. She could lose about twenty pounds herself, the doctor had said. As she stacked the dishwasher, a memory snaked up … Meg Brogan returning to school for the first time after the murder. It had been a cold January. Over twenty years ago.

  Peggy stilled. Poor kid. She’d been a mere shadow of herself. Skin so pale and translucent her freckles had stood out like floating stars. In the following months she’d begun to cover her freckles with chalky makeup, and she’d cut her hair brutally short, dyed it punk black. As if somehow needing to wear her own aura of death. Or stamp it out, or something.

  Peggy had ached to say something to Meg in the school hallway—her locker had been just near Meg’s—but she’d never known what to say. And as the months wore on, Meg had begun to project a keep-the-shit-away-from-me hostility. So Peggy had just looked away. Like all the other kids had. Leaving Meg Brogan to walk and sit and eat in the cafeteria alongside them all like a silent specter, a shadow somehow removed from their own real, comfortable world, untouched by what had touched her.

  Blake Sutton was the only person who’d persevered long enough to ever get through to her. Just about every girl in her class had at one time or another crushed on Blake. He’d wasted it all on Meg.

  And then she’d gone and broken the boy’s heart clean in two when she left. He’d never have married Allison if he could’ve had his Meg. And now look at him, a single father with a son he never wanted.

  Peggy inhaled, glanced at the kitchen clock. This stuff was drawing her back. She needed to get ready, go help in the store.

  With the base of his fist, Blake banged louder on the camper door. “Hello? Anyone home?”

  No answer. He noted the Washington plates. Either the occupant was dead asleep, or out on a morning walk or … fishing? He frowned, turned slowly around, taking in the bay, and then he caught sight of a lone figure in the distance, on the Crabby Jack deck.

  A woman.

  She stood at the railing cradling a travel mug, looking out over the bay. Hair long and wild in the breeze. Chestnut-red, the color catching the gold in the dawn sun. Something snared like a bramble in his chest. With it came a hot rush of adrenaline. He shook it off. Disarmed by the coincidence, he crossed the vacant camper sites and made his way through the covered area in front of his office, and around the building to the front deck of the cafe. As he turned the corner, Lucy bounded ahead and nudged the woman’s jeans in search of a greeting. The woman stiffened in surprise at the dog’s touch, then she laughed when she saw it was a black Lab. She set her mug on the railing and crouched down to pet Lucy, revealing her profile. Blake’s heart stilled. His breath, his whole body stopped dead in his tracks.

  “Oh, hello, girl, who are you?” she said to his wiggly Lab as she examined the tag on her collar. “Lucy? Aren’t you a pretty thing.” She glanced up and froze. Paled. Her mouth opened, but words seemed to elude her. Slowly, she rose to her feet, reached for the railing, as if to steady herself.

  Blake felt as though he was seeing a ghost. His world spun and tilted in a dizzying distortion of time. She’d matured—the lines of her features had refined. She was slender under that bulky brown coat. Almost a little too thin. Wan complexion. Same soft brush of freckles. Wide mouth. Light honey-brown eyes, almost amber in this light. Big eyes, dark lashes. Those eyes that had always sucked him in with their mystery, into the depths where Meggie’s imagination lurked, the place he knew she hid the real girl, the vulnerable teen, the maturing woman. The place he knew hurt. And how he’d tried to help her out, but never could fully lure her into his light. Yes, for selfish reasons of his own, he’d tried. Meg had been his first love. Real love. The kind of feeling that went beyond sexual lust and attempts at gratification. The kind of feeling that delved deep into the realm of friendship, kinship. Soul mate, as trite as that might seem to some.

  The woman who’d left this town, and him, because he reminded her of bad shit.

  He knew what she’d become. He’d read her books. In tabloid rags at supermarket checkouts he’d glimpsed photos of her with that filthy-rich, celebrity-shrink fiancé of hers, him with his James Bond looks. He’d known every moment what Meg Brogan was making of her life.

  And not for one of those moments had he ever expected to see her back here. Home. Standing on the deck of his marina. Petting his dog. And in the distance behind her, across the water, the spit where he’d found her lying unconscious and close to dead.

  “Meg?” His voice came out hoarse.

  Her gaze shot up to the sign on top of the building. BULL’S MARINA.

  “I know.” He came forward. “I should get around to changing that one day, huh. Only been mine for two-plus years now. Still, it’s been a lot of work to fix up. Damned Pacific Northwest, you know—everything tends toward entropy. Even the buildings are biodegradable. Salt wind doesn’t help. Just feeds it. And then there was that super tide that flooded Crabby Jack’s. I’d like to get it shined up before spring …”

  Shut the fuck up, Blake, you asshole.

  She stared, confusion chasing across her features. Her thinness, paleness, made her eyes seem even bigger than he remembered, and they swallowed him whole. She held her thick hair back off her face as wind gusted. The sun crested the top of the building and caught her features. She blinked. An ethereal thing of beauty—like some shining piece of a dream plucked out of his past and plunked down into this soggy, decaying, paint-peeling reality that was his present. He swallowed. Unsure. Feeling somehow less. As if in approaching any further, speaking another stupid word, he might spook her off. Shatter the illusion.

  Jesus Christ, he was still totally messed up over this woman …

  “Is … your dad?”

  “Bull passed away. Two and a half years ago now. The old ticker”—he tapped his chest lightly with the front of his fist—“finally packed it in.”

  The news seemed to physically punch her in the gut. She lowered herself slowly onto a wet log bench. He hesitated, then moved closer to her. Close enough to touch. Her eyes dipped over him, taking in what had become of him over the past sixteen years. His pulse raced. He shoved his hands into his pockets. “That your rig back there?” he said with a jerk of his head.

  She nodded.

  He bent down, gave her a quick kiss on her cheek, stealing her scent. “God, it’s good to see you again, Meg.”

  She swallowed.

  He turned on the gas that fed into the concrete fire pit, and set it aflame. Fire whooshed to life in the cold air, the warmth almost instant; then he seated himself on the rough-hewn cedar bench opposite her. He leaned forward, forearms on his thighs.

  “What on earth brings you back, Meg?”

  Ryan Millar waited until his wife had disappeared through the back door of the convenience store. He reached for his cell phone, dialed, pressed his cell to his ear. As the phone rang, he ran his palm gently along the body of the tricked-out monster truck he’d jacked up on one of the garage hoists. The chrome, the studs—this was his true passion. This was how he liked to spend his time off, when he could sneak it.

  His call clicked over to voice mail on the third ring.


  “Hey,” he said quietly, leaving a message. “It’s Millar. I heard Meg Brogan was seen back in town—thought you might like the heads-up.” He hesitated, debating whether to say more, then killed the call instead. He stood for a moment, phone in hand, staring at his own caricatural reflection in the chrome hubcap, thinking of dreams versus reality. How you made big shiny goals when you were young, and how life turns out misshapen in the end. How people settled. Found a comfort zone. Or a rut that just kept on getting deeper, and harder to climb out of.

  Wind gusted, sending water drops spattering down from the brooding cedar onto the garage door. He started at the sudden noise. The weather was turning… . something foul carrying on the shift of the wind.

  CHAPTER 6

  Blake had changed. Rougher and more rugged, he’d filled out, muscled up. Fine creases fanned from the corners of his deep green eyes, and lines bracketed his wide mouth. He was sun browned, windblown. He looked like he’d seen and done things. War. Foreign skies. A man of the sea and wild places. Yet there was something beneath his powerful exterior that seemed somehow … fractured. This man who knew her probably better than anyone left in this world did—or could—appeared to have hidden wounds of his own.

  The onslaught of feelings—guilt, remorse, affection, kinship—was so contradictory, so sudden and powerful, it slammed the guts right out of Meg, forcing her to slowly seat herself on the wet log, not quite trusting her legs. A memory simmered to the surface—racing down the gangplank and onto the dock, making for her family’s little tin boat …

  Where are you going, Meg?

  None of your business …

  If she’d made it his business, would everything be different? Time stretched. Gulls wheeled and screeched.

  She found her voice. “I’m sorry about Bull,” she said softly. “I … I had no idea you were back. The last I heard was that you’d enlisted.”