Page 31 of The Marine's Homecoming

The pleasure of the dream fades a little, but I stay locked in the throes of it, wrapped in his arms as he dotes on me, pushing hair out of my face.

“I love you,” he says. “I’ve been in love with you. I was just waiting for you to stop running.”

I feel tears in my eyes even though it’s a dream. “I’m scared I’ll screw this up. I’m scared of what people will say, Luke. What Nick would think…"

I'm reaching for him, pulling him against my body, when I snap awake and realize it was all a dream. I feel the tingling of arousal between my legs and realize I’m holding my pillow in my arms, not Luke’s body.

But the tears are very real.

I lie there crying softly into my pillow, thinking of how incredible it felt to have Luke holding me. I'm not supposed to want him. He's the one who let Nick die. He's the man I've hated for twelve years. I never wanted to see him again in my life, and now he's back and things happened. I'm pregnant with his baby and I have no idea how to deal with any of this.

This shouldn't be this way. I shouldn’t want him, and I definitely shouldn’t need him.

But it is this way, and I do want him.

In fact, I think I love him. And it terrifies me.

19

LUKE

Rico calls while I'm lacing up my boots, ready to head out for dinner. I need to find Hannah and feel her out. Not for a second do I think that she's involved with Dorsey's plot to mask his illegal shipping through the festival, but the more she knows about his shady dealings, the more danger she could be in if he even gets a hint that anyone knows anything. I put Rico on speaker and answer.

"Hey, Rico, what do you have for me?" The boots lace up tight, but they don't feel the same as the ones I've worked in every day for twelve years. Being back in civilian clothes has its perks when you want to be comfortable, but some things, like my footwear, just aren't as comfortable.

"Well, you're not going to like this." Rico sounds tense, like he's got more bad news, though I'm not shocked. I already know what I'm probably dealing with, so I'm bracing for the worst hoping it's just not that bad. It'd be a relief if it weren't, but I'm ready if it is.

"The shell company Dorsey is running things through traces back to a freight outfit in Panama," he says. "They move cargo through small ports up and down the Pacific Coast. Fishing towns, mostly. Places where customs presence is thin and nobody looks twice at a boat coming in after dark."

"Sounds familiar," I grumble, straightening up. It makes sense, though it doesn't mean I have to like it or approve. Dorsey probably leaves his carrier ships in international waters and ships things in on smaller boats to avoid detection too. It's a trick pirates use in the Middle East to avoid having full shipments confiscated by local authorities when they get caught in port.

"He's known for running this scheme in other places, so I'm not shocked that your small town has become a target. They wait for something to distract locals and then they move as quickly as possible… Or they create a distraction." Rico's words are making my nervous system fire. It's like he's reading right out of Dorsey's playbook here in Bandon.

"So he's using the festival, which he offered to fund, as a distraction to move his contraband?" Tension laces across my shoulders into my chest as I spin in the chair and pick up my wallet, keys, and phone. There still isn't anything more than speculation, but I'm drawing very strong conclusions from Rico's intelligence.

"I'm saying it fits the profile. A town event that requires a lot of supplies coming in from outside, a benefactor bankrolling the whole thing, shipments arriving by water instead of by road… Kinda sounds textbook."

Now my mind is whirring to life. To men like Dorsey, a few hundred grand is pocket change. Of course he'd drop the dime on a festival. He couldn't buy the marina because I won'tsell, and the festival presents a much cheaper option, anyway. It means that maybe this is a singular event, or maybe it means that he's planning other things if this goes well—more "distractions" during which he can move his illegal merchandise right under our noses.

And Hannah trusts this asshole. I scowl, letting my body relax a bit. If I get too uptight about all of this, I'll end up snapping when I see Hannah.

"I still need proof," I say.

"You do, and you need to be careful how you get it. If this guy's connected to the people I think he's connected to, you're dealing with more than a white-collar hustle. These sorts of operations aren't small time, Luke. There could be governments involved, outside agencies… Terrorist cells." Rico's giving me a warning which I intend to heed. No way I can take down these bastards on my own.

"Understood."

"Luke." He pauses. "I mean it—be smart. You're a civilian now."

"I hear you," I grumble. "Look, just keep digging. I have to have absolute proof of what Dorsey is doing, here and abroad. I need a concrete tie somewhere. He might be hiding himself and his business partners through shell companies, but there is a tie somewhere. We have to find it if I'm gonna get anyone to believe me. And in the meantime, I'm gonna try to find out what it is he's shipping.”

"Be careful," Rico warns again, and then he hangs up.

It really pisses me off that all of this is happening right under people's noses. It makes me wonder what other sketchy shit hasbeen happening over the years. Dorsey isn't a lone wolf, and if this kind of thing is going on now, there's a chance he heard Bandon is an easy target somehow, and that's why he chose this place. Well, not on my watch. Dad might've been so lackadaisical that things slipped past him, but I won't be that person.

When I head out, the docks are quiet. Most of the charter captains are either out on the water or finished hours ago, and the evening crowd is still trickling in. I walk past my office and Tank's slip, toward the east end of the pier where Dorsey's crew have been stacking crates in the open storage area near the boat ramp.

There are dozens of wooden crates and heavy-duty plastic containers, stacked three and four high, covered with tarps tied down with bungee cords. I look around but there's no one out here right now. Being dinner time, I assume most people are eating dinner somewhere, leaving me a bit of privacy to snoop around a little bit, but I check over my shoulder every few seconds just in case.