Slipping off his dive mask, Cole swallowed a gulp of sea air. The sun’s rays penetrated his dry suit, its warmth radiating along his cool skin.
Landon sank down beside him, tossing him a Gatorade and a granola bar.
“Thanks.” Cole stretched out, his body aching from the day’s heavy labor. Fortunately, all that remained was harnessing and refloating the fuselage. Henry Reid’s body had been retrieved, leaving only Mark Olsen’s unrecovered. Cole hated leaving a man behind.
Landon angled his head back and shut his eyes.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” Cole instructed. They’d be heading back down soon.
Deputies Tom Murphy and David Thoreau chuckled voraciously at the boat’s bow. What they found so funny about today’s events eluded Cole.
“She looked great. And still single,” Tom said.
“Maybe you should drop by, offer to take her out for a drink.”
“We know where that’ll lead.”
Thoreau nudged Tom. “Exactly. Come on, you know us married guys have to live vicariously through those of you who haven’t been taken prisoner yet.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Details, my man. That’s all I’m asking for.”
Landon tossed his empty Gatorade bottle in the waste bucket. “What are you two jabbering about?”
Tom lifted his chin. “Haven’t you heard? Easy Lay Bay’s back in town.”
Cole’s jaw flexed. “Don’t call her that.”
Tom and Thoreau exchanged a knowing glance.
“Why not?” Tom hopped down from the bow and swaggered toward Cole. “Oh, that’s right. I forgot. You two had a thing way back when.”
Tom’s tone and choice of words made what he and Bailey had shared seem dirty, when it was far from it. Or at least he’d believed so until she’d broken his heart and never looked back. “We were friends.”
“Friends?” Tom tilted his head in Thoreau’s direction. “Well, we all know how friendly Bailey could be.”
Cole crushed the empty Gatorade bottle in his fist. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Then you must have been the only one she wasn’t like that with.”
Cole stood and grabbed his gear. He was too old for childish games. “If Bailey’s back in town, it’s for her aunt’s funeral. Show some respect.”
To his astonishment Tom let it drop, and Cole returned to the water, hoping to drown all thoughts of Bailey Craig in its depths. In a few days she’d be gone and he could go back to pretending she didn’t exist.
Cole sat at the stern, bone-tired and ready to be back on shore.
They’d floated the plane successfully and the wreckage was being towed back to shore by their support vessel a few leagues ahead of them. Retrieving wreckage wasn’t his favorite job, but it was a necessary one, and since he was the most qualified diver on Tariuk Island, his help was needed.
That’s the way things worked in a small town, at least how they worked in his town. Everyone helped out—whether it was volunteering with search and rescue, assisting in towing disabled vessels to shore, or running a booth at the Summer Festival.
His parents had fostered a love of service in him and his siblings since they were young.
“Work hard. Serve diligently. Do something you love.” His father’s wisdom had blessed him well. He and his siblings worked hard—running shore excursions for cruise liners docking in Yancey, facilitating corporate retreats, anything that allowed them to run a business they believed in while performing jobs they loved.
He sank back to enjoy the remainder of the trip to shore. The ship was quiet for a change, and he’d swapped his dry suit for a pair of sweats and T-shirt.
Water lapped rhythmically against the hull, and a crisp breeze floated over the bow with each dip. The sun, lowering toward the horizon, pulled the warmth of the air with it. He was ready for a hot shower and a hearty meal.
An enormous beam trawler muddled past, hauling its day’s catch to shore. Their vessel, miniscule in comparison, bobbed in its wake. The fresh scent of shrimp mingled with the salty sea air, reminding Cole of family fish fries on the beach.
“Deputy Grainger,” Fred hollered from the wheelhouse.
Landon got to his feet. “Yep?”
“Call for you on the radio. Sheriff Slidell.”
A minute later, the boat banked hard starboard, nearly knocking Cole from his perch.
Landon emerged from the cabin. “Emergency call from a trawler. We’re closest.”
Cole sighed. The day was about to get even longer.
Alaskan Dreams, a seventy-foot privately owned trawler, sat anchored twenty miles off Tariuk Island’s shore, its fishing net strung high.
As their boat buffeted against the trawler’s side, Cole’s gaze narrowed on the net. Something was caught with the fish.
He squinted and felt the blood drain from his face. A diver’s body hung among the wriggling pollock.
Sid, the captain and owner of Alaskan Dreams, met them as they climbed aboard, his white captain’s cap clutched tight in his fists, his knuckles the same shade as the battered material.
Cole’s gaze traveled back to the diver. Long blond hair trailed from her mask, the strands ensnared in the thick orange netting. Nausea rumbled in his gut as Bailey’s sweet face flashed through his mind. No. It couldn’t be. She was just on his mind because of Agnes’s passing. It couldn’t be her.
“We thought it best to leave everything—” Sid’s voice cracked. “To leave the lass as we found her.” He shuffled his feet, his eyes averted from the victim. “Some of the men thought we ought to cut her free, but—”
“You did good, Sid.” Landon clapped a reassuring hand on the elderly man’s back. “You did the right thing.”
Sid nodded, a flicker of relief easing the ache on his weathered brow.
Landon pulled out his notepad. “I’m going to need some information.”
Pat Wharton, one of the deckhands, leaned against the rail beside Cole while Landon and Sid conversed in the wheelhouse.
“I’ve heard tales of nets dredging up the dead,” Pat said, his coloring green. “I’ve just never seen it myself.”
Unfortunately, working dive rescue, Cole had seen the sea give up more than its fair share of the dead, and contrary to popular opinion, it never got easier.
The pungent odor of pollock and decomposition hung thick in the air, the sea unable to wash away the stench.
Time passed slow as molasses and fast as a firecracker, bringing with it the distinct sensation of crisis and all its distorting properties. The need to respond, to be of help, nearly suffocated Cole. He dealt better in action. Standing on the sidelines was quickly bringing him to his knees.
What if it was Bailey captured in the net? He fought the suffocating urge to race to it, to tear her free, but there was protocol to follow, rules of investigation to adhere to. It couldn’t be Bailey. His mind was playing tricks on him. He needed to wait, to be patient. If only his heart would stop racing.
After what seemed an eternity, Landon ordered the net released.
Hundreds of speckled fish wriggled across the deck, their mouths opening and closing, their gills desperate for oxygen.
“They’ll all have to be tossed back into the sea,” Sid said, and the truth of it washed over the crew’s faces—their day’s work gone in the blink of an eye.
The renewed scent of pollock blanketed the air, clinging like a thick, soupy fog to the fibers of their clothes.
Landon knelt at the base of the net. “Cole, give me a hand.”
Finally he could be of some use. He rushed forward, afraid of what he might find, yet feeling foolish for even thinking it.
“Her body’s caught in the cod end of the gear. We’ll need to cut her loose.”
Cole squatted beside Landon while Tom and Thoreau looked on. For once the two remained silent.
Painstakingly, they worked to free her from the thick orange netting, and then Landon took another round of photographs before removing her mask.
Cole’s chest tightened, and he released a shaky expulsion of air. It wasn’t Bailey, wasn’t anyone he knew, but the fact brought him little relief. She was young. No older than Piper.
Her eyes, a faint blue surrounded by cloudy white, stared up at him.
Landon called for Tom and Thoreau to bring the body bag, and Cole remained ready to help lift her into it.
“On three,” Landon instructed.
Cole nodded.
“One, two, three.”
They lifted and the woman’s gear shifted, her air tank swinging loose.
Tom bent and retrieved it.
Cole and Landon placed her gently in the bag, then stood.
“We’ll need Cole to check the gear,” Landon began, as he had so many times before.
A strange smile curled on Tom’s lips. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Landon cocked his head. “Why not? We always use Cole to check the equipment in this type of case.”
Tom shifted the tank so the writing faced them. “Not when it’s his own equipment.”
Cole gaped at the yellow lettering stamped across the tank—Last Frontier Adventures. He took a staggering step back.
She’d rented her equipment from his shop.