A Killing Tide (34 page)

"Yeah, I heard your broadcast the other night. That husky voice of yours…damn, woman. You're trying to make me regret I dumped you back in high school, aren't you?" He and Erik exchanged a very male look that had her shaking her head.

"I dumped you, not the other way around."

Tim thought about it while he rubbed a hand over his chin, then chuckled. "Yeah, you did, didn't you? Your loss."

She rolled her eyes.

"Still, you've gotta have time for a beer now and then, right? Why don't you drop by later tonight?"

"Can't. Prep party."

"Ah."

Saturday was the official opening of the Astoria Community Arts Center. She'd been working herself to the point of exhaustion, but she hadn't been able to stop. The center and its radio station were her tribute to Cole. If she couldn't lay to rest her questions surrounding his death, then at least she could make his dream come true.

Sensing Tim's regard, she glanced up. His expression was full of sympathy. Her grief—never far from the surface—had to be showing on her face.

Clearing his throat, he returned to the business at hand. "Okay, there she is." He pointed at the freighter now visible on the horizon, several miles distant. He pushed the chopper into a dive. "Here we go, boys and girls."

#

Thursday, 7:45 AM

"Caught a local radio broadcast on the way into town the other night." Keeping his voice casual, Mac brought the cleaver down with a sharp whack, neatly splitting the frozen block of bait in two.

Waves thudded against the hull of the
Kasmira B
with the force of depth charges. A fine mist of spray settled over him, icing his foul weather gear. Even the fur-lined rubber gloves he wore were slick, making it a challenge to hold onto the sharp knife.

Michael Chapman raised both brows but didn't break rhythm as he separated female and undersized crabs from those he tossed into the live tank. "You mean KACR?"

"Yeah, that's the one."

They were just off the South Jetty at the entrance to the Columbia River, around ten fathoms, working a crab season "lift." It was Mac's first time Out There, as the locals called it, on one of the world's most dangerous stretches of water.

When Michael left a message inviting him to be baiter for today's run, Mac had jumped at the chance. Though he was anxious to get to work, pulling together a police department in disarray after the death of its corrupt police chief, Mac's job didn't start until Monday. And the moving van with all his worldly belongings was idling at a truck stop outside Colorado Springs, waiting out a blizzard in the Rockies. The thought of sitting in his empty Victorian, avoiding his own ghosts, held little appeal.

"You can't know what this town is all about until you've experienced the river bar crossing," Michael had said in his voicemail.

He'd been right. When they'd hit the first set of monster waves in the pre-dawn darkness, Mac had instantly gained a new respect for the local fishermen.

The trawler shifted hard to starboard, and he had to scramble to avoid falling on his butt.

Michael caught the movement and grinned. "Haven't got your sea legs back yet, huh?"

"It's been a few years." Almost a decade, to be exact, since he'd retired from the Navy. He'd been off the water for far too long, he realized. "Give me another hour or two, I'll be back in form."

"May take you longer than you think—weather's supposed to worsen by midday." Michael swung the emptied and re-baited crab pot over the side, then lowered it with the boom. Though he spent most of his days heading up Astoria's Fire Department, he pitched in whenever he could on the fishing trawler.

Mac had a satisfying pile of bait prepared, so he pulled off his gloves and fetched a pair of small binoculars from the inside vest pocket of his sou'wester.

To the east, the bridge spanning the Columbia loomed high over downtown Astoria, backlit by the morning light, its four-mile-long, steel structure dropping to water level on the north end. Earlier, a helicopter had taken off from the airport, sunlight glinting off its fuselage before it disappeared into the fog. He could hear sea lions barking through the mists hovering at water level—the trawler passing them a thousand yards off their stern was probably a gill-netter.

Harsh beauty, harsh life. Mind-numbingly hard, dangerous work. His kind of place, possibly. Mac realized he'd gotten distracted. "So this local radio station—a woman was broadcasting." He lobbed a chunk of bait, which Michael deftly caught, frustrating the sea gull that dove in anticipation. The bird screamed and arced over the water, disappearing into wisps of fog. "Some kind of Northwest legend about a coyote, fire, shit like that."

"Got your attention did she?" Kaz Jorgensen, Michael's fiancée, popped her head out of the engine house, a teasing grin on her face.

"Just curious, is all." The woman's voice had stayed with him, popping back into his head at odd moments since that evening, but he wasn't about to admit as much. "Who is she?"

"Most likely, Jo Henderson," Kaz replied. "I've known Jo all my life. She's our only female river bar pilot, and she moonlights as a disc jockey on our new community radio station."

Mac frowned at this surprising bit of news. A detective down at the station had told him all about Astoria's river bar pilots, professional daredevils who risked their lives to bring the big freighters through the mouth of the Columbia.

He refocused the binoculars, searching for the helicopter he'd seen earlier. Somehow, he was having trouble reconciling the sultry voice echoing through his dreams with the kind of woman who was willing to scramble up flimsy rope ladders hung over the sides of rusting container ships. Or drop onto a listing deck from a helicopter.

Moving the binoculars in a slow scan, he caught sight of the helo as it dipped down low over the water. Too low. He'd seen a lot of that kind of flying in Iraq. "You guys hire hotdog helicopter pilots in this neck of the woods?"

"That would be Tim Carter, flying the
Seahawk
," Kaz said drily, tracking its progress. "He flew Blackhawks in the military."

"Anyone point out to him that he isn't flying them anymore?"

#

The helicopter shuddered, as if protesting the sudden drop in altitude. Jo tensed, and Tim frowned, rapping the instrument panel with his knuckles.

Erik stood to lock open the door and position the harness. Once they were hovering over the freighter, he would hold the helicopter steady and lower her to the pitching deck.

Both men acted unconcerned. Jo chastised herself and focused on preparing for her descent onto the freighter. Unbuckling her seatbelt, she stood awkwardly in the encased booties of her dry suit.

As she zipped up the suit, she carefully tucked her clothes inside the rubber seals at her neck and wrists, then shrugged on her bulky flotation vest. Given the current weather conditions, she'd be dealing with an icy deck. But she had to admit Tim was right—the surge didn't look bad. No hard landings this time out. Relaxing a bit, she dealt with the harness while she hummed the Celtic tune she'd broadcast last night.

A loud pop had her jolting.

The helicopter swung wildly, and Tim started swearing. Erik's face went slack.

Jo's first reaction—even as the helicopter canted onto its side—was that she was making it up, that her imagination had created a Technicolor version of her paranoid thoughts.

But then they fell out of Coyote's Sky World.

#

"Hey!" On the
Kasmira B
, Mac lowered the binoculars, stared at the horizon, then quickly put them back up to his face. He watched as the helicopter rolled onto its side and plunged, disappearing behind the swells.

"Hey!"

The sound of the explosion ricocheted across the water.

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A Killing Tide