On Fire

He narrowed his eyes, the only change in his expression. “No kidding.”

He was making fun of her. No matter how much time she’d spent in Maine, how many degrees she had or what her experience—no matter how long he himself had stayed away—he was the local and she was the outsider. It was an old argument. He still had the scar on his right temple from one installment he’d lost.

“I thought Emile would warn you off. I’m not much company these days.”

“Emile did warn me, and you’ve never been much company, Straker. Where were you shot?”

“Up near the Canadian border.”

The man did try one’s nerves. He always had, from as far back as she could remember. When she was six and he ten, he’d enjoyed jerking her chain. He jerked everyone’s chain.

“Obviously your smart mouth’s still intact,” she stated.

“Everything’s intact that’s supposed to be intact.” He squinted out at the fog and mist; there was no wind now, no birds crying near or far. “You could be here until morning. Have fun.”

Naturally, he had no intention of inviting her back to the cottage to wait out the fog—and Riley would freeze to death before she asked. “I love the fog,” she told him.

He vanished into the trees.

She thrust her hands onto her hips and yelled, “And don’t you dare spy on me!”

He was gone. He wasn’t coming back. He’d let her sit out here and freeze. When she’d been eleven and gotten into trouble in high winds after taking one of Emile’s kayaks into the bay without permission, Straker had plucked her from the water in his father’s lobster boat. He’d been unmerciful in telling her what an idiot she was and had promised that next time he’d let her drown.

And she’d cried. It had been awful. She’d been cold, wet and scared, and there was fifteen-year-old John Straker threatening to pitch her overboard if she didn’t stop crying. “You made your bed,” he’d told her. “Lie in it.”

“Bastard,” she muttered now. She’d never intimidated John Straker. That was for sure.

She scooted off her boulder and unstrapped her dry pack. Damn. She was supposed to be back in Boston tonight, at work in the morning. She’d come to Maine last Wednesday for a round of fund-raising dinners, meetings and informal lectures at the Granger summer home on Mount Desert Island. Caroline Granger, Bennett’s second wife and now his widow, had decided to end her year of mourning and invited the directors and staff of the Boston Center for Oceanographic Studies north, perhaps to indicate she was ready to take her husband’s place as the center’s benefactor.

No one had mentioned Emile Labreque, living in exile a stone’s throw to the north. Riley hadn’t even told her father, Richard St. Joe, a whale biologist with the center, that she was extending her stay a few days to visit her grandfather.

With a groan of frustration, she dug out her emergency thermal blanket. It looked and felt like pliable aluminum foil. She unfolded it section by section, telling herself it’d be worse if she’d been unprepared. There was no shame in having to use her emergency supplies.

Still, she felt self-conscious and humiliated. She blamed Straker. He enjoyed seeing her in this predicament.

She climbed up onto a different boulder and threw the blanket over her shoulders. It was effective, but un-romantic. A fire was a last resort. Fires on islands could be deadly, and even a small campfire could scar a rock forever. She’d have to find a sandy spot.

She clutched her crinkly blanket around her, her windbreaker already limp and cold from the dampness, and followed a narrow path along the top of the rock ledge. It was just past high tide, and below her only the water’s edge was visible through the shroud of fog. Her path veered down among the rocks. She took it, relieved to have a safe outlet for her restless energy.

Fog was normal, she reminded herself. It wasn’t like an engine explosion and a raging fire aboard a ship. This wasn’t the Encounter. This was a great morning on the water with an aggravating ending—but not a traumatic one, not a dangerous one.

The path came to an end at the base of a huge, rounded boulder that Riley remembered from hikes on the island in years past. In happier days, she thought. Her parents, her sister, and later Matthew Granger would pack a couple of coolers and head out to Labreque Island for the day. Emile and Bennett had seldom joined them. There was always work, always the center. Now Bennett was dead, Emile was living in exile, his daughter wasn’t speaking to him and his granddaughter’s marriage to Matthew Granger was in turmoil.

Her sister’s husband had made a brief appearance on Mount Desert Island, long enough to demonstrate he hadn’t put the tragedy of the Encounter and his father’s death behind him. Matt shared Sam Cassain’s belief that Emile should be in jail on charges of negligent homicide.

Riley shoved back the unwelcome rush of images and plunged ahead, leaping from rock to rock, heedless of the fog, her flapping blanket, the memories she was trying to escape.

She walked to the edge of a flat, barnacle-covered boulder below the tide line. At its base, water swirled in cracks and crevices with the receding tide, exposing more barnacle-covered rocks, shallow tide pools, slippery seaweed. Her Tevas provided a firm grip on the rocks, although her toes were red and cold.

Should have packed socks, she thought. Straker had probably noticed her bare feet and smugly predicted frozen toes. She pictured him sitting by the cottage woodstove, warm as toast as he waited for the fog to lift and his unwelcome visitor to be on her way.

She leaped over a yard-wide, five-foot-deep crevice and climbed up a huge expanse of rock, all the way out to its edge. At high tide, the smaller rocks, sand and tide pools that surrounded its base now would be covered with water, creating a mini-island. She stood twenty feet above the receding tide. Ahead there was nothing but fog. It was like standing on the edge of the world.

Straker could have given her five damned minutes to warm her toes by the woodstove and have a cup of hot coffee. He could have lent her socks.

“Never mind Straker,” she muttered into the wall of fog.

Something caught her eye, drawing her gaze to the left. She peered down at water, rocks, seaweed and barnacles. Probably it was nothing. Fog could be deceiving.

Not this time.

Riley felt her blanket drop, heard herself gasp. Oh God.

Amid the rocks, seaweed and barnacles, facedown and motionless in the shallow water, was a man’s body.

Straker heard Riley yelling bloody murder and figured he had no choice. He had to see what was up. He walked out onto his rickety porch, where a pale, white sun was trying to burn through the fog. With any luck, the stranded Miss St. Joe could be on her way in less than an hour. She had always been…inconvenient.

He heard her thrashing through the brush alongside the cottage, heedless of the maze of paths that connected all points of the small island.

“Straker—Straker, my God, there’s a dead body on the rocks!”

He made a face. A dead body. Uh-huh.

He went back inside. His two rooms were toasty warm. He had a nice beef stew bubbling on the stove. The fog, the cold, the shifting winds were all reminders that summer was coming to an end. He couldn’t stay out here through the winter. A decision had to be made. What next in his life?

“Straker!”

Riley didn’t like sharing her island with him. She wasn’t above conjuring up a dead body just to get back at him for leaving her out in the cold fog. He’d known her since she was a precocious six-year-old who liked to recite the Latin names of every plant and creature she pulled out of a tide pool.

She pounded up the stairs onto the porch. She didn’t bother knocking, just threw open the door. “Didn’t you hear me?”

He stirred his stew. The steam, the rich smells were a welcome contrast to the cold, wet presence of Riley St. Joe. She was small and wiry like Emile, with his shock of short dark hair, his dark eyes, his drive and intensity. She had her mother’s quirky laugh, her father’s straight nose. She was difficult, competitive and a know-it-all. And she seemed to have no idea how much he’d changed since he’d left Schoodic Peninsula.

It was a great stew. Big chunks of carrots and red potatoes, celery, onions, sweet potatoes, a splash of burgundy. Not much meat. Since getting shot, he’d tried to be careful with his diet. His FBI shrink had urged him not to isolate himself, but his FBI shrink hadn’t grown up on the coast of Maine. Two hours out of the hospital, John had headed home. When Emile caught him camped out on Labreque Island, he’d offered him use of the cottage. There was no telephone, no mail, not much of a dock and the only power source an old kerosene generator and wood. Straker had accepted.

As a consequence, Emile’s younger granddaughter was in his doorway. He glanced at her from his position at the stove. She was pale, shaking, eyes wide.

“I heard you,” he said.

“Bastard—why didn’t you come? You know more about…oh, damn.”

She turned even paler. Straker put down his slotted spoon. Hell. Maybe she had seen a dead body. “Finish your sentence. This is good. I want to hear what it is you think I know more about than you do.”

“Dead bodies.”

It was almost a mumble. He said, “The fog can fool you.”

“Damn it, Straker, you don’t need to tell me about fog. I saw his—his—his hair and his hand—” Her eyes rolled back in her head. “I think I’m going to throw up.”