SEVEN

***

Arne Hjorth pointed Silver Lady into the tiny opening and nudged her between the rocks. He had discovered the cove years ago when he had been exploring in his dinghy. It was so small it was not even marked on the charts, and only a narrow-beamed boat like his Lady could squeeze in—and then only if the tide was right. It was certainly not big enough to accommodate one of the fish farms he hated so much, and once inside he was completely hidden from any passing boats. No one could find him here.

He had always loved small, private places—hollow tree trunks, caves, overgrown ditches, even the hollow centers of the haycocks left out to dry in the fields. As a child he had played hide-and-seek with his cousins and had been delighted when he realized they couldn’t find him. In the end they refused to play with him at all, saying it was no fun, but that hadn’t bothered him. The hiding places were his alone and they formed a private world where his father’s drunken rages and heavy leather belt couldn’t intrude. Where he felt safe.

Such a strange word that—safe. Where was safe? Certainly not out on the ocean where the water would swallow you if you had even a moment’s inattention or where the wind could flip you over if you misjudged the height or angle of a wave.

Certainly not on a boat in the harbor, where the wires and machinery rusted and the planking warped no matter how much love and attention you gave it.

Not even on the land where he had built his house with his own hands, board by board, each one smoothed with an old hand plane he had rescued from a junk pile. The house was gone now, bulldozed by the town council that said he had never applied for a building permit, and an inspector who said it had been condemned.

Condemned. There was another good word. He used to think it only applied to criminals: murderers who took the life of another man. He hadn’t known it could apply to a house—or to a simple fisherman for that matter. One who wanted nothing more than to mind his own business and pull the silver treasure from the sea. But he knew now, and he knew who and what had done it.

He had been condemned by greed. By the owners of the fish farms who cared nothing for the sea or the life within it. They had forced him to give up his livelihood and spend his days scavenging the shore for crabs and seaweed and scraping oysters off the rocks like some homeless cur. Forced him to watch the boat he had shared his working life with slowly deteriorate to the point where, like him, she was reaching the end.

This was the only hiding place he had left. Where he was safe. Where he could almost believe he was free. He called it Holme after the village his mother had grown up in back in Norway.