Page 90 of The Words We Lost

Pulse pinging against her eardrums, she plucked two from the mass and nearly tripped as the fourth and final crate crashed onto the bow.She had to get off this boat!

Hal was already walking toward the stern of the cruiser as she raced out the cabin door and leaped onto the dock. It didn’t matter if he saw her now. She had all the evidence she needed to send him away and give Ingrid the freedom she deserved.

“Hey! Stop!” he barked, leaden feet charging after her on the dock. “Stop!”

Cece obeyed only to whirl around and hold her two bags of stolen loot over the lapping water. “No,youstop!”

Instantly, Hal’s hands went into the air as his feet halted. And then he squinted into the dusk. “Curly?”

“Don’t call me that.” She reached for the seal tab on the first bag. “But I do suggest you start talking soon because if I don’t get the answers I need the contents of these bags will go directly into the Sound. And I’m guessing every single one of these pills has already been accounted for.” She shook the bag. “You believe me?”

Slowly, he nodded. Backlit by the lights on the cruiser, the whites of Hal’s eyes shone with the kind of fear she’d expected to see when Joel found him at the sports bar, but there had been no fear in him then. Because Hal had still been playing the game.

This was the real Hal.

“Who were those men at the sports bar, and why did they give you coordinates?”

“What men?”

“Try again or this bag will spring a leak.” She reached for the tab seal.

“No, don’t! You don’t know what you’re doing. This isn’t a game.”

“I know way more than you think.” A bluff she hoped would speed up the process.

With his hands still raised in front of him, he dropped his voice low. “They’re my stateside contacts. They ... tell me where to make the drops after they secure the goods from Canada. Location changed last minute due to bad weather. There’s a storm brewing in the east.”

“Why not just send you the coordinates in a text?”

“I’m old-fashioned. I only work with contacts I can see.”

“How long?” she demanded.

He shook his head quizzically as if needing more of a prompt to go off of. She was happy to supply him with several.

“How long have you been using my family’s resources to smuggle drugs, Hal? How long have you been cheating us? How long have you been lying to your daughter about living the straight and narrow life?”

“Please, keep your voice down,” he hissed.

She held the pill bags steady over the water. “Then you better tell me the truth.”

“I—I don’t know. Seven, eight months, maybe? But it’s not how it looks.”

She actually laughed. “I’m not a stupid little girl anymore, Hal. Your big stories won’t work on me anymore.”

“I was on the wrong side of a bad deal—I’m paying off a debt.”

“What kind of debt? Gambling?” Yet another no-no on her uncle’s list of continued employment stipulations for his favorite charter captain.

He twisted his neck and searched the marina before answering this time. “I lost a few big hands and borrowed money from the wrong people. Darius introduced me to someone who could help me out.” He huffed a heavy sigh. “I only agreed to take one run for them. I thought I could make enough to pay back my loan debt and then be done with it all—I never wanted this kind of life, it was a mistake. But that’s not the way these guys do business. I couldn’t get out.” He stared at her unblinking. “Tonight’s my final run.”

“Why should I believe you?” Cece’s bicep began to shake, and she did nothing to hide it.

“I swear to you on my wife’s grave,” he chokes out. “After this run, my debt will be paid, and I’ll have enough cash to buy a boat of my own and then I’ll be out for good. You and your family will be free of me.”

“Meaning what? You just take off? Leave as if there’s no consequences for smuggling drugs and abandoning your daughter?”

His refusal to answer was answer enough.

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