Page 3 of Christmas Harbor Secrets
Even though he knew that station had issues, he didn’t move to help.
Echo’s ears pricked. The dog tracked her like a trainer—head up when she grunted, head cocked when she leaned in to read the faded label on the pedestal. She slammed the breaker up, then down, then up again like the world might give on repetition alone. The boat stayed dark. She blew a strand of copper hair off her pale cheek and scanned the cabin windows, then went after them with the same stubbornness. With palm flat to the glass, she shoved, but the salon slider ignored her. The salt seal fought back. She braced, pushed, lost ground, pushed harder. Nothing.
He could’ve told her those frames welded themselves shut the first summer a man forgot to rinse the tracks. He could’ve told her to soak them with fresh water and soap, work a plastic wedge into the grit. He didn’t. Distance was safer. For both of them.
A gull laughed. Water poured from a nearby through-hole. She threw her hands up and marched forward to the bow cleats, testing lines like she meant to know what she was doing now if she hadn’t this morning. The spring line to starboard was tight, two half hitches and a belayed tail. The port bow line… His jaw set. Not even a proper cleat hitch, just three sad wraps around the horn and a prayer.
Echo bunched his muscles to go help. “Don’t,” Rone ordered. He didn’t have the right to order Shade’s dog if the woman was truly his daughter, but the woman needed to leave,and helping her would only prolong her stay. Besides, she couldn’t be Shade’s daughter. He didn’t have family anymore. They’d all died.
She bent to yank the port line tighter, heel skidding on algae. The wrap slipped instead of biting. The boat drifted an inch, testing the remaining lines. Tide tugged; the stern swung. She went wide-eyed, reached to correct, and the port bow line gave a fatal little shrug and slid free.
She was going to lose that boat or get herself hurt trying to save it.
“Hey!” he yelled, already moving.
Water slapped the hull as the trawler eased out of her groove and angled away from the finger pier. She tried to jump to the cleat, too late. The gap widened with a lazy patience that would be comical if it wasn’t about to be disastrous.
“Grab the stern, starboard side. The thick one,” he called, sprinting the planks. “Do not—” She reached for the rail. “—donotstep off that boat.”
Echo hit the corner of the slip ahead of him, nails clicking, leash taut. Rone vaulted the last two feet and landed in a crouch on the finger pier opposite. The stern line kissed the water, and he snagged it just before it slid under, looped it around a cleat, and leaned back with all his weight, snubbing the sixty-five thousand pound trawler’s slow slide with a grunt. The line answered with a creak and then bit, pulling the hull back into the slip with a groan.
“Wrap it!” he snapped, and she scrambled to the stern on her side, got the other end around her cleat, two wraps, a hitch. Not pretty. Good enough. The boat settled, bumpers sighing against the pier. He breathed, just once.
She stood there, hands on the line, chest heaving, and for the first time since he’d watched her roll that suitcase onto the dock, he saw the shake she’d been hiding. It flared in her fingers,then vanished. She didn’t thank him. She squared up, palms still white on the line. “That was tied. I tied it. What did you do?”
He grumbled, heat rising despite himself. “If I wanted you off this dock, I wouldn’t gamble with your neck.” He crouched, running a thumb along the cleat horn. “And I don’t touch another captain’s lines without cause.”
He studied the evidence anyway. The wet sheen on the horn was fresh where a tail had been rolled off, salt grit smeared in a swipe that wasn’t hers. The rope’s memory showed a set hitch—then nothing. Not chafe, not surge. Hands.
“Echo,” he said.
The shepherd eased in, nose working the line, then the cleat, then the rail. A low chuff, not a full alert—interest, not panic. Not her scent. Not his.
“So? Am I wrong or not?” she asked.
“You’re not.” He rose, eyes skimming the slips, the walkway, the black ribbon of channel beyond. “Someone had their fingers on this. Someone who didn’t want you tied up.”
“Why?” She swallowed. “To scare me? To?—”
“To move you.” He kept his voice even. “Off Shade’s boat.”
Her mouth firmed around the name. “Who’s Shade?”
“The owner of this boat. Tall, imposing, but quiet. Eyes green and hair a sparse copper.” He saw it now, the resemblance.
Her eyes went wide and wondrous. “You knew him.”
“Everybody here knew Shade.” He glanced toward the mangroves across the channel. “I never believed he capsized a dinghy and drowned out there.”
He thought about that last morning. The strange Altoids tin he’d insisted Rone keep for him in case something happened. He’d said Rone would know what to do with it someday.
She followed his stare, shivered once, then dragged her gazeback to the trawler like she refused to blink first. “So if he didn’t drown, who’s trying to keep me off his boat?”
His jaw worked. He didn’t have an answer he liked.
Echo’s ears flicked forward, body tightening again—wire strung too tight, tail leveled, drawing the damp air like truth might be hidden there.
“Easy,” he murmured, but the command had no gravity now. Echo wasn’t a dog who wasted energy. If he was amped, there was a reason.
