Page 45 of Christmas Harbor Secrets
Sleep took him.
When he woke, the berth was empty.
Cold.
Rone sat up fast, the sudden absence more jarring than any gunshot. The pillow beside him was still indented where her head had been, her scent faint but fading.
He swung his legs to the floor and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Isobel?”
No answer. Just the soft creak of the hull and the tick of the clock on the wall.
He found her on deck, standing at the bow, staring toward the gray line of horizon where dawn was still dragging itself awake. The wind pulled at her hair, whipped color into her cheeks. She looked carved from the cold—beautiful and unreachable.
“You shouldn’t be out here,” he said in too quick, too tight. He cleared his throat and softened his tone. “Couldn’t sleep?”
Her arms crossed tight. “Couldn’t lie there waiting for a plan that doesn’t exist.”
He winced. “It exists. I told you I have a contact, we’ll make a deal through him.”
“And then what, Rone?” Her voice sharpened, clear and cutting through the morning quiet. “We keep hiding until they find us? Until they finish what they started? FBI can’t protect us. We both know that.”
He leaned against the railing beside her, the metal biting through his palms. “You want a plan? Step one—we stay alive long enough to make one.”
She turned to him, eyes storm-dark. “I’m not just going to run forever. And what happens once we turn it over? Do they kill my father and Echo?”
He met her gaze, steady but weary. “Your father might not—” Her glower changed his course. “We get them back. My contact will help us. He’s an old buddy of mine from my military days. A brother.”
The words hung there—truth, plea, warning.
Her shoulders dropped a fraction, so he thought she might soften. But she turned away instead, staring down at the water. “You should call whoever it is you trust. Since you don’t trust yourself.”
Ouch. That pierced true. He nodded once.
Down in the galley, he pulled his old canvas bag from under the bench seat and unzipped the side pocket. The burner phonesat where he’d left it—cheap plastic, scratched screen, always off until it wasn’t.
He powered it up and waited for the signal to catch. The glow of the screen painted his hands in cold blue light.
He scrolled to a number labeled only with an initial: D.
It rang once. Twice. Then a click.
“Didn’t expect to hear from you again,” said Blake in his Boston accent—dry, calm, too sharp to ever have been a friend.
“Didn’t expect to need you,” Rone clipped.
“That’s usually when you do. Tell me you’re not standing on a wire this time.”
“I need a trace run. Bullet casing and a thumb drive, both tied to the Laurel Tide shell.”
A pause, then a low whistle. “That’s not a nest you want to stir, my friend.”
“Already did.”
“Rone…” The voice dropped to baritone, warning threaded beneath it. “You need to walk away. That organization doesn’t leave survivors.”
Rone’s jaw popped. “Yeah. But a man on the docks and his daughter put me in the middle. A Shane Daniels. WITSEC guy who returned to the organization after they discovered he hadn’t died in prison.”
“I know that case. Crossed my desk when he turned up dead a few weeks ago. Him and three others were executed. I’m guessing they’re cleaning witnesses.”
