Page 56 of Christmas Harbor Secrets
“You keep saying that like I don’t know what death looks like,” she snapped. Heat rose in her throat. “I’ve lived with the absence of a man who left without saying why. I have been able to trust anyone since, especially men. I won’t spend another day pretending that not knowing is the same as being safe. I won’t allow people to use me or manipulate me.”
“You can trust me, and I’m telling you Blake is manipulating you to get his big win with the FBI.” He stopped, throat working. “And I—” He swallowed hard, and then, like ripping off a bandage, he said, “I’m not lying when I say I care about you, and that’s why I can’t let you do this despite any reason you or Blake have that’s valid.”
Something like heat and fear and a ridiculous hope knifed through her. She had not expected that admission, and the world narrowed to that one small hinge of his mouth, the honesty in the tremor of his voice. For a second, she saw him as a man with the same small, fragile edges she’d learned to hide.
Then she saw herself in his eyes and saw how easily he could mistake her for atonement.
“You don’t care about me,” she said, and the accusation wasn’t cruel so much as precise. “You care because I make it possible for you to make up for Torres. And I don’t want you looking back and regretting me.”
The name hit him like a stone; his face closed for the barest moment and then flared hot with denial. “I know you’re throwing my words back and me and I deserve that, but that’s not?—”
“You push people out because you’re scared of failing them again. You see me as a way to fix what happened.You’re not wrong to want to protect me—don’t get me wrong. But don’t pretend it’s not as much for you as it is for me.”
Rone’s hands curled at his sides until his knuckles whitened. He took a breath that trembled with restraint. “You’re cynical enough to think everything has a ledger. I’d protect you because you matter. Not because of some debt. Not because of Torres.”
“You say that.” She laughed but with no humor. “And I want to believe you. God knows I want to. But if I’m honest—if I’m brutally honest—you’re right half the time. I push people away because I can’t trust them. Because trust always becomes something someone else uses to hurt me.” Her fingers drifted to the USB inside her pocket, and the touch made the metal feel like a detonator.
Rone took a step closer, and the air around them seemed too small for two people who had both been punched by life. His voice came low and raw. “You push me away because you’re scared I’ll be the type of man who fails you. You test people before you let them in.”
Her chest tightened. She could have denied it, but she didn’t. “You’re not wrong.”
Silence dropped on them like a curtain.
She about-faced, leaning her back to the cap rail and eyeing a passing Blake through the salon door. In her own reflection, she saw herself as stubborn, tired, unwilling to be erased. “None of that matters right now. We have to survive today to deal with tomorrow. If we sit here because you’re afraid, we’ll have no tomorrow. If Blake’s offer is our one shot—one shot to find Echo and maybe my father… to allow us freedom from hiding—then we take it.”
“Even if Blake can identify the leak, it doesn’t mean you won’t end up in WITSEC. Laurel Tide is too big, so is it still worth walking into a trap? And if you’re doing this for Shade, you need to realize there is every chance he’s already dead.
Before she could answer, feet thudded, door swung open, and Blake stuck his head out. He didn’t look tired. He looked like someone who had rehearsed emergency enough that he had the luxury of being calm.
“Enough. We are running out of time. If the USB has the information I think it does, then Laurel Tide will be scrambling to find you. This is your only out now that you’ve been targeted. But to be clear, Rone is right, I have no reason to believe Shane Daniels is alive,” he said without preamble. The words landed hard and crushing. “We don’t know that he’s alive. Not a single scrap of proof beyond rumors and wishful thinking. If you go in thinking you’ll find him, you’ll be setting yourself up. But if you go, you’ll make his death mean something. He wanted to bring the entire organization down, and that USB you have can do that.”
“Then take it and put us in WITSEC,” Rone ordered, hands fisted and jaw tight.
Blake adjusted the clip on his rifle. “No deal. It won’t get approved without the USB being confirmed and information verified, which’ll take more time than you have left, not to mention I can’t protect you until I know who is leaking intel. And if I take it in without you, you and I both know you’ll be dead in an hour. If I found you, they will.”
The floor slipped under her for a whisper of a second. The idea of looking for a man who might already be gone should have hollowed her out, but instead a strange steadiness set in. “Then there isn’t a choice.”
“She’s not a good little soldier who follows orders and swallows everything. She won’t keep her cool if someone starts pulling pieces apart. She’s not trained for that.”
Isobel’s temper flared. “I’m not a puppet, Rone. I’m not someone you order into play-acting bravery. I survived without you before this. I’ll survive if I must.”
Blake’s mouth thinned. “We’re out of time. Get on board and live, or give me the USB and die. We don’t have time for any more arguments.” He pointed to their speedboat that looked like it could run thirty-plus knots.
Her pulse rattled against her ribs. Rone’s face was set like flint. She read him and understood the coin flip inside him: protector or obstacle. She reached out and took his hand—quick, deliberate—a touch that said: I don’t trust you to be safe, but I trust you enough to hold on while I do this.
Rone’s fingers closed around hers, hard and sure. “We go,” he said at last. “But we go our way. We don’t hand the drive over blindly. We control what we can. I’ll takeFamily Firstto the anchorage to our east, drop anchor, then board with you.”
“We don’t have time for that,” Blake argued.
“Make the time.”
Isobel felt the old terror—of being invisible, of being used—line up beside a strange new thing: resolve. “We go.” She stepped onto the swim platform and then offFamily First.
She watched the only connection to her father shrink behind them. A heaviness weighted her down as if the loss took her muscles from her body. She settled into Rone’s side on a seat, shivering from the rapid, chilling breeze as their boat powered through the waves.
They eased the skiff to a stop in the shallow chop, breathing distance from the island’s ragged shadow. The hull rocked, then settled, the engine ticking as it cooled. Close enough to smell the rot of the shoreline and the iron tang of old hurricane wreckage. The moon lay thin and watery over the water, a cold coin they all kept glancing at.
Blake retrieved his cell; fingers moved with the practiced ease of someone who'd done this a hundred times. “We have the package. We’re inbound—bay side—fast and hard. Prep transfer. No local units. We go in quiet. Copy?”
