Whatever anyone wanted to happen, a death on sea just wasn’t exactly like a death on land. The captain had all the decision-making power onboard. It was his call to radio the coast guard, and when he discovered a CG cutter was less than two hours away, it was his decision to bring them in. Two ruddy-faced uniforms boarded just after ten.
In the meantime, she watched Harm’s men, trying to imagine one of them harming Fiske, stealing that treasure of a formula. The three hung together, and pretty much never stopped talking about Fiske-it wasn’t as if anyone could think about anything else-but nothing sounded odd to her.
“What else could it have been but a heart attack?” Arthur kept saying.
“It could have been a stroke,” Yale kept saying right back.
“He liked his sweets. Didn’t even try to keep the weight off,” Purdue kept pointing out. “He must have had arteries clogged to the gills. And that’s probably what he was doing in the middle of the night in the galley. Going after something to eat.”
“Maybe we’ll never know.” Yale couldn’t sit still, kept jumping up and pacing around the salon, staring at the sea, not seeing it. “But one way or another, I assume we’ll immediately head home after this.”
Cate suspected that going home was the ideal choice for the thief. Freedom of movement was easier in the home environment, where here, everyone was under Harm’s microscope. The culprit could try playing the innocent card, but who could possibly do that 24/7 without a slipup?
Another hour of upheaval followed the coast guard’s arrival. They met with Harm and Ivan, then took Fiske’s body aboard their vessel and left. Moments after that, Ivan and Harm assembled the whole group in the salon to relay what would happen next.
Ivan started talking first. “Coast guard will be taking Mr. Fiske to Juneau. There’ll be an investigation started there, including an autopsy, no different than for any other unexplained death. That’s pretty automatic before a body can be released out of state. For that matter, to you outlanders, I have to tell you, that’ll probably take more time than the same basic investigation in the Lower 48.”
“Which means what?” Arthur asked. “What kind of time are you talking about?”
“A week minimum is what they put on the table,” Ivan said. “After that, Mr. Fiske’ll be flown to Georgia, where I gather his daughter lives, the closest relative, so that’s where the funeral will be held.”
“Not by us, not in Cambridge?” Yale asked.
Harm stepped in then, and Ivan stepped back, poured himself a long, tall mug, braced it with whiskey, and heaved himself in a chair. Harm looked exhausted, Cate thought.
“No,” Harm said. “It’ll be with Fiske’s daughter. I talked to her myself just a short time ago…”
Cate stopped listening for a few minutes, because she had heaps of dirty dishes and messes to clean up by then. And no one was thinking about lunch or dinner, but sooner or later they were both her responsibility. She needed to scour her galley. Think through what kind of foods might help calm down six traumatized men.
She’d just started a dishwasher load when she heard voices raised, grabbed a towel to dry her hands and walked back into the salon-at least as far as the doorway. The stress in the air was combustible. Ivan and Hans had disappeared back to the pilothouse, clearly to let Harm deal with his men.
“We don’t have a choice,” Harm was saying. Purdue and Yale were hunched over, like sprinters ready to race flat out. The older Arthur was the one whose harsh voice rasped in the air.
“It’s just wrong. Being here. Everything’s wrong.”
“I know, Arthur. I feel the same. None of us are going to be in vacation mode after this. But the coast guard wants us to stay here for the next week.”
“I still don’t get it,” Purdue snapped. “Fiske had a heart attack. Or whatever. It had nothing to do with us. You’d think we were under suspicion.”
Cate wiped her hands harder, realizing the sudden silence was an answer in itself. They all felt under suspicion-for the theft in the company. But now Fiske’s death had a question mark about it, as well.
“The coast guard is the authority in these waters. They want us on the boat where we’re all easy to find, easy to question. There’s nothing any of us can do for Fiske’s family-or anything else-until the investigation is done. Cause of death has to be determined.”
“I understand that,” Arthur said. “But I don’t see why that has anything to do with any of us.”
Since Harm had clearly already answered that, he pushed on. “Ivan has agreed that he’ll sail us back to Juneau as soon as we get the okay from the authorities. Otherwise, we keep on the original time schedule. I’ll be in daily contact with the authorities. If there’s any way to get this resolved sooner, Ivan will speed up our return to base. Also…speaking for myself, I wouldn’t want to fly back to the mainland and home, knowing Fiske was still in Juneau, with no resolution for him.”
There, Cate thought. Harm had found the one thing they could all agree on. None of the men wanted to leave Alaska until Fiske did.
“So that’s it for now,” Harm said.
That might have been “it”, but Cate watched the day deteriorate from disaster to major gloom. Once the coast guard cutter disappeared from sight, all of them-except for Ivan-wandered around the yacht like lost souls. No one wanted food. No one wanted to talk. No one wanted to sit. No one could settle down or rest or sleep.
Cate couldn’t fathom how anything could make the situation better…until the whales showed up.
Harm’s ears were ringing. He’d been stuck in the pilothouse for hours because his cell phone connection kept petering out, and the only other means of communicating to the outside was the radio. Ivan and Hans showed him how to work it. Since then, he’d been on it nonstop. There seemed no end to what needed to be communicated- calls to the company, calls to Fiske’s daughter in Georgia, calls to the firm’s attorneys, calls to the P.I. firm he’d been working with.
Cate kept popping into the pilothouse, delivering coffee and food, taking away remnants from the last batch. She was…extraordinary. Yesterday he’d thought she was full of herself…and he knew damn well she had reason to be “full of herself” after sampling that woman’s dangerous kisses.
But today, in a crisis, she’d just stepped up the way…well, hell. The same way he did. No conversation. Just filling in where something needed doing, taking charge without asking or making any fanfare about it. She’d taken better care of his men than their mothers likely would have-all with that sexy butt and godforsaken hairstyle, and now that he realized it, those deep, soft eyes of hers.
“Harm.” Ivan had given up calling him “Mr. Connolly” the instant they’d stood over a dead body together. Still, the captain’s voice maintained a deferential tone. “There’s another message coming in.”
Ivan shifted so that Harm could stand in front of the ship’s receiving device. Few electronics worked this far from the mainland except for the ship’s equipment, Harm was discovering. And the message just coming in put a burr in his pulse.
“Problem?” Ivan asked. Yet before waiting for an answer, he suddenly glanced out the window, promptly cut the engines, and swiftly motioned for Harm to look out.
Harm stepped around Ivan. His jaw dropped when he saw the strange, huge mounds in the sea moving toward the boat. “Those can’t be whales,” he said.
“Oh, yeah, they are.”
For the first time that day-maybe for the first time in weeks-Harm felt something quiet in his soul. Beyond the sea in every direction were mountainous islands, cliffs and ragged slopes that speared the sky. Fragrant pines somehow found purchase in the rock, adding a rich spice to the air, a verdant green against the pale sky. On almost every turn of land there was an eagle-or a nest of them-overlooking its regal domain.
The “mounds” in the sea, though, were something else. Hans had already opened the pilothouse door, directed by Ivan to urge everyone topside.
“They’re humpbacks,” Ivan told Harm. “Looks like an extraordinary sized pod from here. I can count…twelve? Thirteen?”
Temporarily, Harm couldn’t breathe. The whales were giants. From a distance, each one looked bigger than the yacht, and the whole group of them-or pod-was swimming straight for the boat.
“You cut the engines?” Harm asked, trying to comprehend why they weren’t sailing full bore in the opposite direction.
“Yeah. We’re in their territory. Good chance for everyone to see ’em up close.”
The pilothouse was only three steps above the foredeck, so Harm immediately saw when Purdue hustled to the rails, then Arthur, Yale and Cate charging behind him. For the first moment since hearing of Fiske’s death, the group
