On Fire Read online

  The waves pushed her toward shore. Despite the island’s rugged appearance, its ecosystem was fragile, Riley knew. She wanted to find a spot that would provide a smooth landing for her and an unintrusive one for the island. Just an inch of lost soil could take hundreds of years to replace. A sandy beach was her first choice; next best was a sloping rock ledge.

  She found a spot that would do. It wasn’t great—little more than an indentation amid the steep rock cliffs and ledges and deep water swirling around huge granite boulders. The swells had picked up. If she capsized and bonked her head on a rock, she’d be seal food. This, she thought, was why one didn’t kayak alone. She concentrated, maintaining her center of gravity. A tilt to the left or the right could turn her over, even in a stable ocean kayak. She maneuvered her vessel perpendicular to the shore and, with strong strokes, propelled it straight toward the rocks.

  Rocks scraped the bottom of her kayak, and she jumped out, yelping at the sting of the much colder water. Moving fast, she dragged the craft up onto the rocks, not stopping until she was well above the tide line. She sat on a rounded boulder, warmed by the midday sun, to catch her breath. Despite the worrisome fog bank hovering on the horizon, the view was stunning, well worth the small risk of running into Special Agent Straker.

  It was hard to think of him as an FBI agent. The John Straker she’d known had been intent on becoming a lobsterman or a jailbird. She’d never believed he’d leave Washington County. His parents still lived in the same house where his mother had grown up, a ramshackle place in the village. His father was a lobsterman. His grandfather had worked in the local sardine canneries.

  At the thought of him lurking just a few acres through rock, trees and brush she began to set up her picnic: an early Mac, wild-blueberry muffins, cheddar cheese, two brownies and sparkling cider. Using her jackknife, she carved the apple into wedges and the cheese into thin slices, then layered the two.

  Perfection, she thought, tasting the cheese and apple, smelling the sea and the pine needles and the barest hint of fall in the air. Seagulls cried in the distance, and trees and brush rustled in the breeze. Everything else fell away: the stress and trauma of the past year; the questions about herself, her family, her work, what she wanted, what she believed; the break-neck pace of her life in Boston. She was here, alone on an isolated island she’d first visited as a baby.

  She was on her first brownie when she realized the fog bank had moved. She jumped to her feet. “No! I need more time!”

  But the fog had begun its inexorable sweep inland, eating up ocean with its impenetrable depths of gray and white. Riley knew she couldn’t get back to Emile’s before it reached the bay. She paced on the rocks, cursing her own arrogance as she felt the temperature drop and the dampness seep into her bones. The mist and swirling fog quickly blanketed the water, then the rocks, then the island itself. Her world shrank, and she swore again, because she should have known better and skipped her island picnic.

  “No use swearing,” a voice said behind her. “Fog’ll do what it’ll do.”

  Riley swallowed a curse and came to an abrupt halt on her boulder. Straker. He materialized out of milky fog and white pines, exactly as she remembered him. Two bullets and his years as a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation hadn’t changed him. He was still thickly built, tawny-haired, gray-eyed and annoying.

  “You’re the oceanographer,” he said. “You should have known the fog’d get here before you could sneak off.”

  “I’m not clairvoyant.”

  “I knew.”

  Of course he’d know. He was the Maine native who knew everything. As if timing a fog bank were part of his genetic makeup. “Have you been spying on me?”

  His eyes, as gray as the fog, settled on her. He didn’t answer. His heavyweight charcoal sweater emphasized the strength and breadth of his powerful shoulders. He didn’t look as if he’d been shot twice. He didn’t, Riley thought, look as if he’d done anything with his life except fish the coast of downeast Maine. He looked strong, fit, at ease with his island environment—and not happy about having her in it. But wisely or unwisely, she’d never been afraid of John Straker.

  “Well, Straker, if possible you’re even worse than I remember.”

  “Fog could be here for hours. Days. It’s going to get cold.”

  It was already cold. “I tried not to disturb you.”

  “I spotted you through my binoculars. You’re hard to miss. You looked like you were paddling a pink detergent bottle.”

  “It’s a bright color so boats will see it. Forest green and dark blue wouldn’t stand out against the background of water and trees.”

  He narrowed his eyes, the only change in his expression. “No kidding.”

  He was making fun of her. No matter how much time she’d spent in Maine, how many degrees she had or what her experience—no matter how long he himself had stayed away—he was the local and she was the outsider. It was an old argument. He still had the scar on his right temple from one installment he’d lost.

  “I thought Emile would warn you off. I’m not much company these days.”

  “Emile did warn me, and you’ve never been much company, Straker. Where were you shot?”

  “Up near the Canadian border.”

  The man did try one’s nerves. He always had, from as far back as she could remember. When she was six and he ten, he’d enjoyed jerking her chain. He jerked everyone’s chain.

  “Obviously your smart mouth’s still intact,” she stated.

  “Everything’s intact that’s supposed to be intact.” He squinted out at the fog and mist; there was no wind now, no birds crying near or far. “You could be here until morning. Have fun.”

  Naturally, he had no intention of inviting her back to the cottage to wait out the fog—and Riley would freeze to death before she asked. “I love the fog,” she told him.

  He vanished into the trees.

  She thrust her hands onto her hips and yelled, “And don’t you dare spy on me!”

  He was gone. He wasn’t coming back. He’d let her sit out here and freeze. When she’d been eleven and gotten into trouble in high winds after taking one of Emile’s kayaks into the bay without permission, Straker had plucked her from the water in his father’s lobster boat. He’d been unmerciful in telling her what an idiot she was and had promised that next time he’d let her drown.

  And she’d cried. It had been awful. She’d been cold, wet and scared, and there was fifteen-year-old John Straker threatening to pitch her overboard if she didn’t stop crying. “You made your bed,” he’d told her. “Lie in it.”

  “Bastard,” she muttered now. She’d never intimidated John Straker. That was for sure.

  She scooted off her boulder and unstrapped her dry pack. Damn. She was supposed to be back in Boston tonight, at work in the morning. She’d come to Maine last Wednesday for a round of fund-raising dinners, meetings and informal lectures at the Granger summer home on Mount Desert Island. Caroline Granger, Bennett’s second wife and now his widow, had decided to end her year of mourning and invited the directors and staff of the Boston Center for Oceanographic Studies north, perhaps to indicate she was ready to take her husband’s place as the center’s benefactor.

  No one had mentioned Emile Labreque, living in exile a stone’s throw to the north. Riley hadn’t even told her father, Richard St. Joe, a whale biologist with the center, that she was extending her stay a few days to visit her grandfather.

  With a groan of frustration, she dug out her emergency thermal blanket. It looked and felt like pliable aluminum foil. She unfolded it section by section, telling herself it’d be worse if she’d been unprepared. There was no shame in having to use her emergency supplies.

  Still, she felt self-conscious and humiliated. She blamed Straker. He enjoyed seeing her in this predicament.

  She climbed up onto a different boulder and threw the blanket over her shoulders. It was effective, but un-romantic. A fire was a last reso
rt. Fires on islands could be deadly, and even a small campfire could scar a rock forever. She’d have to find a sandy spot.

  She clutched her crinkly blanket around her, her windbreaker already limp and cold from the dampness, and followed a narrow path along the top of the rock ledge. It was just past high tide, and below her only the water’s edge was visible through the shroud of fog. Her path veered down among the rocks. She took it, relieved to have a safe outlet for her restless energy.

  Fog was normal, she reminded herself. It wasn’t like an engine explosion and a raging fire aboard a ship. This wasn’t the Encounter. This was a great morning on the water with an aggravating ending—but not a traumatic one, not a dangerous one.

  The path came to an end at the base of a huge, rounded boulder that Riley remembered from hikes on the island in years past. In happier days, she thought. Her parents, her sister, and later Matthew Granger would pack a couple of coolers and head out to Labreque Island for the day. Emile and Bennett had seldom joined them. There was always work, always the center. Now Bennett was dead, Emile was living in exile, his daughter wasn’t speaking to him and his granddaughter’s marriage to Matthew Granger was in turmoil.

  Her sister’s husband had made a brief appearance on Mount Desert Island, long enough to demonstrate he hadn’t put the tragedy of the Encounter and his father’s death behind him. Matt shared Sam Cassain’s belief that Emile should be in jail on charges of negligent homicide.

  Riley shoved back the unwelcome rush of images and plunged ahead, leaping from rock to rock, heedless of the fog, her flapping blanket, the memories she was trying to escape.

  She walked to the edge of a flat, barnacle-covered boulder below the tide line. At its base, water swirled in cracks and crevices with the receding tide, exposing more barnacle-covered rocks, shallow tide pools, slippery seaweed. Her Tevas provided a firm grip on the rocks, although her toes were red and cold.

  Should have packed socks, she thought. Straker had probably noticed her bare feet and smugly predicted frozen toes. She pictured him sitting by the cottage woodstove, warm as toast as he waited for the fog to lift and his unwelcome visitor to be on her way.

  She leaped over a yard-wide, five-foot-deep crevice and climbed up a huge expanse of rock, all the way out to its edge. At high tide, the smaller rocks, sand and tide pools that surrounded its base now would be covered with water, creating a mini-island. She stood twenty feet above the receding tide. Ahead there was nothing but fog. It was like standing on the edge of the world.

  Straker could have given her five damned minutes to warm her toes by the woodstove and have a cup of hot coffee. He could have lent her socks.

  “Never mind Straker,” she muttered into the wall of fog.

  Something caught her eye, drawing her gaze to the left. She peered down at water, rocks, seaweed and barnacles. Probably it was nothing. Fog could be deceiving.

  Not this time.

  Riley felt her blanket drop, heard herself gasp. Oh God.

  Amid the rocks, seaweed and barnacles, facedown and motionless in the shallow water, was a man’s body.

  Straker heard Riley yelling bloody murder and figured he had no choice. He had to see what was up. He walked out onto his rickety porch, where a pale, white sun was trying to burn through the fog. With any luck, the stranded Miss St. Joe could be on her way in less than an hour. She had always been…inconvenient.

  He heard her thrashing through the brush alongside the cottage, heedless of the maze of paths that connected all points of the small island.

  “Straker—Straker, my God, there’s a dead body on the rocks!”

  He made a face. A dead body. Uh-huh.

  He went back inside. His two rooms were toasty warm. He had a nice beef stew bubbling on the stove. The fog, the cold, the shifting winds were all reminders that summer was coming to an end. He couldn’t stay out here through the winter. A decision had to be made. What next in his life?

  “Straker!”

  Riley didn’t like sharing her island with him. She wasn’t above conjuring up a dead body just to get back at him for leaving her out in the cold fog. He’d known her since she was a precocious six-year-old who liked to recite the Latin names of every plant and creature she pulled out of a tide pool.

  She pounded up the stairs onto the porch. She didn’t bother knocking, just threw open the door. “Didn’t you hear me?”

  He stirred his stew. The steam, the rich smells were a welcome contrast to the cold, wet presence of Riley St. Joe. She was small and wiry like Emile, with his shock of short dark hair, his dark eyes, his drive and intensity. She had her mother’s quirky laugh, her father’s straight nose. She was difficult, competitive and a know-it-all. And she seemed to have no idea how much he’d changed since he’d left Schoodic Peninsula.

  It was a great stew. Big chunks of carrots and red potatoes, celery, onions, sweet potatoes, a splash of burgundy. Not much meat. Since getting shot, he’d tried to be careful with his diet. His FBI shrink had urged him not to isolate himself, but his FBI shrink hadn’t grown up on the coast of Maine. Two hours out of the hospital, John had headed home. When Emile caught him camped out on Labreque Island, he’d offered him use of the cottage. There was no telephone, no mail, not much of a dock and the only power source an old kerosene generator and wood. Straker had accepted.

  As a consequence, Emile’s younger granddaughter was in his doorway. He glanced at her from his position at the stove. She was pale, shaking, eyes wide.

  “I heard you,” he said.

  “Bastard—why didn’t you come? You know more about…oh, damn.”

  She turned even paler. Straker put down his slotted spoon. Hell. Maybe she had seen a dead body. “Finish your sentence. This is good. I want to hear what it is you think I know more about than you do.”

  “Dead bodies.”

  It was almost a mumble. He said, “The fog can fool you.”

  “Damn it, Straker, you don’t need to tell me about fog. I saw his—his—his hair and his hand—” Her eyes rolled back in her head. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

  He sighed. Damned if he needed that. “Bathroom’s in there.”

  “I know where the damned—”

  She interrupted herself with a curse and lurched across the linoleum floor to the short hall that led straight to the bathroom. It was in an ell tacked onto the cottage. In the old days, there’d just been an outhouse. Straker had locked her into it once when she was eight or nine and especially on his nerves. Emile hadn’t been too pleased with him. Riley, the little snot, had screamed and carried on far more than was necessary. Straker had it in the back of his mind that was what she was doing now. Exaggerating, going for the drama.

  He followed her, although not with great speed or enthusiasm. Still, if she choked on her tongue or something it was a long trek to an emergency room.

  Between moaning and swearing at him, she got rid of the contents of her stomach. She managed fine. Straker, leaning in the doorway, found himself noticing the shape of her behind as she bent over the tank. He grimaced. He’d been out on his deserted island longer than he’d thought.

  Leaving that realization for later pondering, he went out to the kitchen and checked the kettle he kept on the woodstove. The water was bubbling. He got down a restaurant-style mug Emile had probably lifted from a local diner a million years ago, dangled a tea bag in it and poured in the hot water.

  Riley staggered back into the main room. She was trembling visibly and had a wet washcloth pressed to her forehead. Her color had improved, if only from the blood rushing to her head from pitching her cookies.

  “It was the brownie,” she said, dropping onto an ancient wooden folding chair at the table.

  Straker shoved the mug in front of her. The table was in front of a big picture window overlooking the bay, still enveloped in fog. “I thought it was the dead body.”

  “I wouldn’t have thrown up if I hadn’t eaten the brownie.”

  But she didn’t
smile. There was no spark in her dark, almond-shaped eyes.

  “I don’t have a phone,” he said. “We can use the radio on my boat to notify the police. I’ll go have a look, make sure you weren’t seeing things.”

  “I’ll go with you.” She tried a sip of the tea, the tea bag still dangling. “I don’t want to stay here alone.”

  “If the guy’s dead, he’s not going to come crawling in here.”

  That rallied her. She pushed her chair back so forcefully it almost tipped over. She was still trembling, but she squared her shoulders. “Just let’s go.”

  She took a couple more quick sips of tea, wiped at her face once more with the wet washcloth and pushed past him to the door. She looked a little wobbly, but Straker kept his mouth shut. Riley wasn’t one to like having her weaknesses pointed out to her. He wondered if this was her first dead human. Her job put her in contact with stranded whales and dolphins.

  Then he remembered last year’s tragedy. Five dead, a narrow escape with her own life. She hadn’t retreated to a deserted island to lick her wounds. Physically unharmed, she’d returned to her work at the Boston Center for Oceanographic Studies. Straker doubted she’d acknowledge any mental scars from her ordeal.

  He followed her along a wet, winding path. She pushed hard, although her head had to be pounding and her energy drained from being sick. The fog continued to hang in, thick, damp and cold, reducing visibility to just a few feet despite the sun’s attempts to burn through.

  Straker felt the familiar tightness in his chest and incipient sense of panic that had nothing to do with following Riley St. Joe to a corpse. Fog had come to make him feel claustrophobic, as if his soul had spilled out of him and claimed the rest of the world.