Harrington didn’t say anything for a while. “You saved my life. You know that, right? If you didn’t have your shit together, I would have died on that shipwreck.”
McKenna said nothing.
“But you know what? Even if I had died, it wouldn’t be your fault,” Harrington continued. “This is a dangerous job. People have accidents; people get hurt. Your dad knew that as well as anyone. You do what you can to mitigate the risk, but in the end your luck’s going to hold or it’s going to give out, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
McKenna studied the instrument panel, the engine gauges, the radar, and the dim GPS screen. Anything to keep from looking at Harrington. “I just miss him,” she said finally. “I miss him so much. This is all I ever wanted, but it’s so damn hard without him.”
“But he is here,” Harrington said. “Don’t you see? Everything you’ve done has his stamp on it. Every time I look at you, I see the daughter Riptide raised. And I see a damn fine salvage captain, to boot.”
McKenna laughed. Couldn’t help it. Turned to see Harrington looking at her with such an earnest expression that it only made her laugh harder.
“What?” Harrington held the straight face for another beat. Then he gave it up. “I guess that was pretty cheesy, huh?”
“I just feel like I should be paying you extra, making you play therapist to some raging bitch with daddy issues.”
Harrington’s smile grew. “You’re not such a bitch.”
“You weren’t saying that a couple days ago.”
“You got better,” he said, unfazed, and they smiled at each other until the moment stretched just a little too long, and then he straightened and nodded at the coffee in her hand.
“Anyway, there’s lots more where that came from,” he said. “Coffee, I mean. Plenty of Red Bull, too, if you need it.”
“I should be all right,” she said. “Thanks.”
He turned to go. “Well then, good night, Captain Rhodes.”
McKenna, she thought, but she didn’t want to confuse the guy, and maybe she was getting a little confused herself.
“Good night, Harrington,” she said, and then he was gone, and she stood up by the wheel, replaying the conversation, seeing those green eyes in her mind, and wishing like hell she knew some way to chase them.
82
There was a new buzz in the town of Dutch Harbor. Daishin Sato could sense it, feel the electricity in the air and in snippets of conversation. At the same time, he’d noticed an increase in traffic on the town’s little roads. Something was happening, and it related to the Pacific Lion.
Even Hannah seemed to feel the change. The Grand Aleutian’s desk clerk had been preoccupied all day, typing on her computer and talking on the phone, issuing instructions to the cleaning staff, and primping the brochure rack in the lobby.
Sato was interested. The search for Hiroki Okura had stalled. The Lion’s second officer was alive, Daishin was fairly certain of it. And he’d stolen away to the Lion aboard a local salvage boat, Hannah said. But the body the Coast Guard had removed from the Lion belonged to Tomio Ishimaru. That meant Okura was still out there, somewhere.
“What’s all the excitement?” Sato asked Hannah. “The whole town has changed.”
Hannah’s smile seemed to brighten her whole face. “It’s the shipwreck. That salvage team saved it. They’re towing it to Dutch as we speak.”
“Ah,” Sato said. “That’s big news.”
“You said it. There’s like seven executives from the shipping company coming in from Japan on a private plane. Booked up the whole top floor of the hotel.” She grinned. “I’m hoping they have to stay for a while. This could make our whole season!”
“With luck,” Sato said. Then he frowned. “But is this all that has the whole town so nervous? Everyone is talking about the Pacific Lion, at every store and restaurant. Are visits from the Japanese so rare?”
Hannah looked at him blankly. Then she laughed. “Oh,” she said. “Ha! I see what you did there. That’s funny.”
Sato smiled back. Tried to be patient, though a part of him would have liked to have strangled this happy, cheerful woman.
Polite. Conversational. Friendly.
His patience paid off. Hannah leaned in conspiratorially. “There is something else.”
“Yes?”
“I heard there was a gunfight on that ship,” she said. “Some stowaway was on board for some reason, and when the salvage crew found him, he tried to shoot one of them.”
Sato feigned surprise. “Goodness. I hope nobody was hurt.”
“I don’t think so. Not seriously, anyway.” Hannah shrugged. “They got the guy under control and off the ship, from what I heard.”
“And what will they do with him?”
“No idea,” she said. “But they brought him here, to the cop shop. He’s under arrest. As far as I know, they’re still debating who has jurisdiction.”
Sato nodded. “How exciting.”
“You’re telling me,” Hannah replied. “Gunfights and everything. This is like from a movie!”
83
Hiroki Okura sat in the little cell in the back of the Dutch Harbor Department of Public Safety’s police station, staring at the wall and wishing he’d never encountered Tomio Ishimaru in that smoky mah-jongg parlor.
His head hurt from where the salvage man had beaned him. He remembered trying to work up the nerve to shoot the young woman, remembered a glimpse of her partner before he’d knocked Okura to the deck. Then he’d woken up on the Coast Guard cutter, and nobody would talk to him or look him in the eye.
They’d bandaged his head, refused him any painkillers, kept him under observation, took his belt and his shoelaces.
“Suicide watch,” someone said. “Have to make sure you don’t do anything crazy.”
At that point, Okura would have welcomed death. Certainly, he had no future to live for, not now. The Coast Guard crew had put him on a helicopter, flown him to Dutch Harbor, where a couple of members of the town’s small police force were waiting to take him to jail.
They’d fingerprinted him. Booked him. Refused him a shower, though he smelled absolutely foul after weeks on that ship. They’d locked him up in this cramped little cell, three walls of bars and a fourth of cinder block, a stainless-steel toilet in the middle.
“Debating whether to prosecute you here, or just send you home,” one of the policemen told Okura. “Seems you’ve caused something of an international incident.”
Excellent, Okura thought. So much for anonymity. At the best case, he would spend years of his life in prison. In the worst-case scenario?
Okura didn’t want to think about it. There would be plenty of time for that later. But just as he’d succeeded in chasing the thoughts from his mind, the door in the corridor was unlocked and swung open. And in walked a police officer, trailing that worst-case scenario in the flesh.
“Guess I have some good news,” the police officer told Okura. “Looks like your brother’s here to see you. Moral support, or whatever.”
He unlocked Okura’s cell door. Stepped aside so the man who called himself Okura’s brother could walk in, then locked the door behind.
“Ten minutes,” he said, and retreated to the outer door again, leaving Okura alone with the man.
THE MAN WAS YOUNG, in his mid-twenties, and thin. His eyes were dark, almost as black as his hair. He wore a black suit, a white shirt, a skinny black tie, and his hair was artfully mussed.