“I’m fine, Grant.”
Grant. My brain filtered back through years and names, even as I glanced down and saw WILLOUGHBY on his name tag.
“Are you? What the hell were you even doing here?” He glanced at me again, at the hand I still held at the small of her back, and the with him was implied.
Madden’s shoulders squared. “The job your boss refused to do.”
Grant opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off. “We have to go.”
I resumed steering her back to the truck.
The moment we were shut inside, she tugged on her seatbelt. Or tried. Her hand trembled, and she struggled to slot the tab into the latch. Carefully, I closed my fingers around hers to stabilize it and pushed until the belt engaged.
Madden didn’t meet my gaze as she muttered. “He was my high school ex.”
I hadn’t asked, but I didn’t point that out. Instead, I said, “Ah,” and released her hand to crank the truck.
The drive back to the marina was quiet. She said nothing as she stared out the passenger window, one hand clamped white-knuckled around the strap of her purse. The muscles in her jaw worked, like she was chewing on words she didn’t trust herself to say.
I let the silence sit and pushed down my own urge to replay every second between stepping through Willie’s sliding door and finding him on the bathroom floor. The smell. The angle of his arm. The cold under my fingertips when I’d checked for a pulse myself, just to be sure. Too late for CPR. Too late for anything but the call.
He’d wanted to do one thing right.
Now he was a body at a crime scene, and whatever he’d seen behind Home Port had died with him. Unless he’d left something behind we hadn’t found yet. Not that we’d get the chance to search his place under the circumstances.
I turned into the marina lot and pulled into my usual spot. “Come on. I’m clearing your boat.”
She blinked around like she’d forgotten where we were. “I don’t need?—”
“Humor me. The guy we were supposed to talk to turned up dead. I’m not leaving you alone in a place that could be compromised without making damn sure it’s safe.”
She opened her mouth like she was going to argue, then stopped. Some of the fight bled out of her shoulders. “Fine.”
I walked the dock ahead of her, habit making me sweep the surrounding boats with my eyes for anything out of place. Nothing but the usual evidence of life—lines creaking, flags flapping, someone hammering on a distant deck. No watchers. No shadows diving out of sight. Only a bright island afternoon, with no one any the wiser that a few miles away, a man had died.
She unlocked the cabin door of the Second Wind and stepped back to let me go in first.
I moved through the space methodically, checking the tiny head, the closet, the storage compartments where someone could’ve tucked themselves if they were really determined and really bendy. No signs of intrusion, no shifted shadows, or new smells. Nothing.
Satisfied, I stepped back out. “All clear.”
“Good.” She ducked around me to get inside, setting her bag down with more force than necessary. The neat ponytail had loosened, until curls escaped on either side of her face. My fingers itched to tuck them behind her ears.
Opening one of the galley cabinets, she retrieved a bottle of something amber and two short glasses. No ice. She poured, handed me one, and dropped onto the bench opposite the table like her strings had been cut.
I slid into the seat across from her. For a moment, we simply stayed there, the small space filled with the soft creak of the hull as she wrapped both hands around her glass. She stared into it like she could find answers in the reflection.
“You okay?” I asked.
Her laugh was short and humorless. “Define okay.”
“Not in shock. Not about to pass out. Not planning to go find Carson and eviscerate him with pure rage alone. For starters.”
She swallowed a mouthful of whiskey with only a slight tightening around her eyes. “I’m not in shock. And I’m not going to faint, because I’ve never fainted in my life, and I’m not planning to start now.”
“And Carson?”
She tipped her head back against the wall and stared at the ceiling. “Can I reserve the right to eviscerate him later?”
