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 was diverted from their dark mood. But it was Cate that Harm’s gaze homed on…honed on.
She burst out of the galley, saw the whales and made a delighted sound of laughter. “Aren’t they gorgeous?” she demanded of his boys.
“Why are they still coming so close?” Harm asked.
“I suspect…because they’re curious about us. It’s not as if they’re afraid. Those behemoths haven’t experienced anything they need to be afraid of.”
Curious? Everywhere, these big hunks arched out of the sea, aiming straight for the yacht, parting to surround it, half going on one side, half on the other. Harm figured any second this was going to turn into a Jonah-gobbled-by-the-whale day…and there below was Cate, leaning so far over the rail it was a miracle she didn’t fall in, still laughing, fearless, delighted.
And then he realized she was really leaning over. Her whole body was leaning over.
He reacted by instinct, pushing past Ivan, taking the steps down from the pilothouse in a single leap. She was going to fall. He knew it. He could see it. The least tip, and she’d tumble into that icy water.
Instead of helping her, his three men and Hans, stood like statues against the rail. They were all staring at Cate with a look of shock. It took a heart-thrashing second for Harm to realize what she was actually doing.
She was leaning so far out, with her arm fully extended…
To pet a whale.
The big guy, swimming alongside the boat, suddenly berthed in a smooth arch-close enough to the boat to bump it. In fact, he did bump it. The men all felt it.
And they all heard Cate’s giggle of delight, as if she’d just taught a puppy a new trick.
The whale circled, blew a fountain from his blowhole and dipped beneath the surface again. Harm hoped he’d disappear, go off wherever whales went off to, but instead the huge thing surfaced again. This time it surfaced beneath Cate’s hand. Apparently, it was coming back for another petting.
Harm heard her murmuring love words, crooning. To the whale, for Pete’s sake-who bumped the boat again in response.