Page 2 of Against the Wind

“God knows, she deserves it after everything she’s been through.”

Willa was the poster girl proof that coming from money and privilege didn’t mean she had a good family. She’d been estranged from her parents since she’d turned eighteen. She hadn’t ever talked about the whys around it, but the emotional scars were easy enough to see.

“Gotta be weird for you not having her at home. Y’all roomed together for several years, right?”

“Yeah. It’s stupid quiet at the cottage. I even miss that big lug of a dog.”

Willa’s pit bull, Roy, was her well-known shadow. She seldom went anywhere without him, which I knew was as much because she loved dogs as because of her social anxiety.

“Did you see this coming? Her and Sawyer, I mean.” As someone who hadn’t ever left the island, I wanted Bree’s perspective.

“Oh, I’ve suspected they had a thing for each other for years. I confess, I didn’t quite expect it to go down the way it did, but so long as she’s happy, that’s what matters to me.”

“No question, Sawyer’s been a big support, helping her out with her grandfather’s funeral and facing down her parents.” Part of me wondered how much all of those things had pushed them to take the leap and tie the knot so they could be their own family. I sighed, thinking of all he’d done to protect Willa. “It’s nice to know at least some people have better luck in love.”

It was more than I meant to say, and Bree’s sharpening gaze told me she hadn’t missed it. “There a story about that?”

“Not one worth telling. I was involved with this guy. Thought it was serious. Turned out it was more of a situationship than a real relationship. More fool me.” I washed down the bitter taste in my mouth with more of the excellent IPA, not wanting to dwell on the shadow that had cast a pall over the last weeks of my residency. “What’s going on in your love life?”

Bree scoffed. “What love life? I don’t have time for anything other than casual.”

I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that was true. Even as busy as Bree was running the Brewhouse and keeping tabs on her grandfather to make sure he didn’t overdo, I felt like if there was someone worth it, she’d make the time. But I also knew she had old wounds that were probably mucking things up.

Way back before I’d left for college, Caroline and I had thought for a bit that Bree was finally going to get together with her long-term best friend, Ford Donoghue. Ford was also best friends with our brother, Rios; Willa’s husband, Sawyer; and Willa’s elder brother, Jace. They’d been thick as thieves from elementary school on. The Wayward Sons, they’d dubbed themselves. All four of them had gone into the Navy at the end of that summer, and something had gone horribly wrong between Ford and Bree that had ended their years-long friendship. I had some suspicions about what that might have been, but I’d never asked. Bree and I were friends, but not that kind of close. And, even if we were, I wasn’t sure she’d actually tell.

Lord knew I wasn’t in any position to judge anybody for the way they chose to run their love life.

“Fair enough.” I drained the last of my IPA. “I need to be getting on.” I stood, shouldering my purse. “It’s good to see you. Take care of yourself and Ed during the storm.”

Bree saluted. “Same goes. See you on the other side.”

TWO

DANIEL

My ass was asleep. I shifted in my chair in the conference room at Nag’s Head Coast Guard base that had become my second home the past few weeks. At some dim, distant point in the past, the chair had been padded, but likely years of other briefings just like this one had broken it down to nothing. Shipping routes and tracking data filled the screen in front of me. The cold-hard facts of drug trafficking patterns in the Outer Banks. The reason I was here, so far as the Coast Guard was concerned.

“And here’s where we lost track of the vessel.” Lieutenant Commander Hayes pointed at a blip that disappeared off the coast of Hatteras.

I leaned forward, elbows on the conference table. “We saw the same pattern in the Gulf. They’re using the barrier islands as cover, probably making drops at night when visibility’s low.”

Across the table, a sheriff’s deputy scribbled notes. Working as liaison between the Coast Guard and local law enforcement wasn’t too different from my old post in Louisiana. Drug runners were drug runners, whether they were slipping through bayous or ducking between islands.

“LaRue, what was your success rate with night interdiction in the Gulf?” Hayes asked.

“Thirty percent higher when we coordinated with local boats. They knew the waters better than the traffickers.” I pulled up the stats from my last operation. “Small craft, familiar with the shoreline, able to move quick and quiet.”

The meeting dragged on. We’d already been at this for three hours, and I found my mind drifting south, past Oregon Inlet, past the tourist spots, all the way to Hatterwick Island. Gabi was down there, probably at her clinic. I checked my watch. Or maybe off work by now. Would she be headed home? Out with friends? Over to spend time with the family she adored? I had no idea. Because it had been three months since I’d taken that promotion to Seattle without talking to her first. Three months of realizing what an idiot I’d been.

Getting this transfer hadn’t been easy. I’d called in just about every favor anyone owed me, worked my connections from the Gulf Coast drug task force where I’d done the solid work that had earned me that Seattle promotion in the first place. Burned a bridge or two. The work here was important—these waters were becoming a major trafficking route. But breaking up drug operations wasn’t why I’d fought so hard for this posting.

I glanced at my phone. No messages. And why would there be? She hadn’t responded to any of the ones I’d sent from Seattle. I hadn’t told her I was here. Hadn’t told her I was coming at all. I’d thought this was a gesture better made in person, so she’d see how serious I was. Fixing things with Gabi would be harder than tracking down smugglers in the dark. At least with smugglers, I knew the patterns, could predict their moves. With Gabi... I’d made the wrong move once already. I couldn’t afford another mistake.

It was so easy to picture her, perched in her wrinkled scrubs on a French Quarter balcony at sunrise, her dark hair coming free of the braid she wore for work and curling around her face in the humidity. She’d just come off a thirty-six-hour rotation atTulane Medical Center, as she often did. I’d brought her beignets and coffee, and we’d talked of everything and nothing, until the streetcars started running again. It had been a familiar routine. One I hadn’t realized I’d missed like a limb when it was over.

“These coordinates match previous incidents.” Hayes’s voice yanked me back to the present.

Work. Right. This was what I was good at—uncovering patterns, anticipating moves, coordinating assets. I’d take a maritime chess game with drug runners any day. But telling the woman I loved that I’d screwed up beyond belief? Acknowledging that I’d taken her for granted? Well, I’d rather board a vessel in twenty-foot swells.

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