Page 18 of Cold Light of Day

Grier’s eyes turned the dark, mossy green of an eerie, forbidden forest. His commanding presence seemed to fill up the entire cabin. She wanted to know more about this stranger who showed up in Shadow Gap a few months ago. Without a legitimate law enforcement reason to look into his background, she had no business checking on him. That would not only be overstepping her authority, but it would also give Wally another item to add to his list.

All she knew about Grier was what she could find via the state database check for his driver’s license and any possible warrants. Her curiosity had gotten the best of her and she’d searched him on the internet but came up empty. He wasn’t even on LinkedIn. She would just have to find out more about him the old-fashioned way. Either he would tell her on his own, eventually, or she’d ask.

She needed to give Grier space to breathe, because that’s whyoutsiders came to Alaska. And like everyone else here, Grier had a right to his privacy.

Uncomfortable under his gaze, she got up. “I’ll make us some hot chocolate. Or would you prefer coffee?”

“I’ll have whatever you make.”

Giving herself time to think about their dive, she turned to the small kitchenette and focused on getting them something warm to drink. She’d seen plenty of grisly sights, mostly while on the job. No heinous murders had occurred near Shadow Gap. No serial killings, that sort of thing. Not yet. But what an animal could do to a man’s body wasn’t something she wanted to see again. She hadn’t looked at the body in the shipwreck too closely and had avoided even trying to get a look at his face. Sea critters had probably made him unrecognizable anyway.

Nausea rolled through her, along with a chill that crept into her soul. She put the teakettle on the small stove and started heating the water.Dad should put a microwave in here.

“Are you okay?” Grier’s question pulled her from her morbid thoughts, his gentle tone sending warm currents curling around her anxious heart.

“I think we’re both shaken.” Time to pull it together. “I’ve seen a lot, but usually when I’ve been searching for a missing person or called out to a situation for which I’m mentally prepared. I wasn’t expecting to see a body today, and it jarred me.” Too much. She was sharing too much. She should have been prepared for anything.

“Don’t beat yourself up. It means that behind that uniform and badge, you’re human. You’re not immune. Your heart hasn’t grown cold. It shocked me too, but to be fair, I knew to expect something gruesome after seeing your reaction.”

“So we weren’t able to confirm Sarah’s boat sank and instead we found a body in an old shipwreck. A body that wasn’t there when the boat went down.”

The water from the teakettle had to be hot enough by now,so she turned off the stove, then poured the steaming liquid into the cups, dumped in the hot chocolate powder mix, and stirred it with a spoon. She stepped to the table and slid Grier’s mug over to him, then sat and wrapped her hands around her own warm mug.

“What’s the next step?” he asked. “Are you going to call Alaska Dive Rescue?”

“Yes.”

Given the political pressure she was under, she didn’t want to make any mistakes. This was simple enough. Recover the body. Take one thing at a time. “Let me see the pictures you took.”

“Sure.” He got up and moved to his duffel, grabbed the camera.

“Smart thinking, taking your camera.”

“I take it on every dive.” He pulled up the images for her and showed her how to scroll through.

She found the pictures he’d taken of the fish swimming behind her and remembered that moment. She felt him looking at her, even now, and somehow had to ignore the heat surging through her.

When she found the images he’d taken of the body, that did the trick.

“About six weeks ago, I went diving here to see the shipwreck,” Grier said. “There wasn’t a body.”

“Makes me wonder what Sarah has to do with it, if anything. I don’t believe in coincidence. But if she’s somehow involved, it doesn’t make sense to me.”

“It could be a simple case of searching for answers and landing in a new investigation altogether. Like when a search-and-recovery group goes out to find a body and locates remains, just not the ones they were looking for. It happens. Doesn’t mean the cases are related.”

Was this a hint into his background? “Were you a cop before you came here, Grier?”

His eyes widened, then narrowed slightly. “Me? No.”

“A volunteer on a SAR team, then?”

He stared into his cup of hot chocolate. “I’ve read my share of mystery novels, Chief.”

He hadn’t denied anything with his answer. Why so mysterious? It only made her more curious.

“If you want to confirm another boat, Sarah’s boat, you’ll have to use sonar.”

“That’s not in the Shadow Gap budget.”

---