Hooked (A Romance on the Edge Novel) (27 page)

“Why was your dad in the engine room? What happened to make him go down there?” He picked up a pair of sweatpants, recognizing them as the pair she’d had on the other night. The ones he’d almost stripped her of. Neatly he folded and placed them on top of the individual piles she’d made.

She narrowed her brow in thought. “There’d been a problem with the lights flickering. You know how a boat lists to the right as it climbs a swell and then lists left as it falls into the gully of the wave?” She continued when he nodded. “Well, each time the
Mystic
listed left the lights flickered off, then back on when we’d listed right.” She smoothed the fabric of the fleece sweatshirt in her hands. “Sasha and I thought it was cool. Part of the
Mystic’s
mystique.” She set the sweatshirt on the pile of clothes.

“Electrical short?”

She took a renewing breath and grabbed another article of clothing. “That’s what I think. Makes sense. The boat was also gasoline powered rather than diesel.”

Which would have made it a powder keg if an electrical fire started.

“There wasn’t enough evidence that Kendrick had intentionally sold my dad a boat with faulty wiring.” She reached for a pair of socks and mated them. “Did you know that I had to continue payments on the
Mystic
after she sunk?” She gave an ironic laugh. “It took me ten years to pay Kendrick off.” Her lips tightened into a hard line. “Worse than rubbing salt in a raw wound.”

“Didn’t your dad carry hazard insurance?”

“There hadn’t been enough time to obtain a policy. The kicker was that Dad had put up the set net sites as collateral. He’d only made the deal with Kendrick two days earlier.”

“Two days?”

“Yeah.” She met his eyes with a raised brow. “Interesting don’t you think?”

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“Yo, Captain,” Peter hollered from the deck. “You awake up there?”

Sonya jerked her head up from the wheel. “Yeah, I’m awake.” She shook her head and yawned, her jaw popping, and engaged the hydraulics on the large reel which hauled in the net. She’d been resting between the length of time it took for Gramps and Peter to pick the net clean and her needing to operate the reel.

The sun had risen hours ago. The clock on the control panel confirmed it was just after seven in the morning. The fews hours she’d caught before the fishing period had started, after returning from doing laundry, seemed to have hindered more than helped.

Wes was convalescing at the cabin with Grams nursing
him
to death this time. Lucky bastard. He was probably getting a hot cooked breakfast right about now. Sonya’s stomach grumbled, but she couldn’t drum up any excitement over another cardboard-tasting protein bar. She grabbed a handful of Nutter Butters instead, hoping that if she ate something it would help her stay awake.

Their catch, so far this morning, had been fair, but then she wasn’t fishing aggressively. She knew herself well enough to recognize that she was too tired to fight the line and the cutthroat fishermen today. Instead she’d stayed in view of the docks and the more mannerly-minded group of drifters. Besides, she didn’t want Gramps overdoing it as Wes wasn’t onboard to help pick up the slack. She’d tried to talk Gramps into taking a turn at the wheel and letting her pick fish, but he’d given her a silent stare that was surprisingly loud.

Peter signaled for her to pull in another length of the net. She engaged the hydraulics and the reel slowly began to spin. Suddenly there was a screeching snap, followed by the reel lurching, and then grinding off its track, careening right for Gramps. Sonya slammed the throttle forward, taking the weight of the net off the runaway reel, but not before she heard Gramps howl in pain.

Shit, shit, shit.

Gramps lay pinned between the reel and the pole positioned across the middle of the deck.

“Peter!” Sonya screamed.

“I got him. Keep the tension off the reel!” Peter pushed his shoulder against the reel and heaved until Gramps crawled out from under it, cradling his left arm with his right. Deep lines of pain bracketed his mouth, and his skin was as white as a ghost fish. Sonya throttled the boat forward as Peter rushed to secure a rope around the base of the reel to keep it from somersaulting out of the bow and into the water.

“Gramps?” Sonya yelled, her heart beating a drum solo in her chest.

“Dag nabbit!” Gramps said.

Sonya almost cried in relief. She’d only heard Gramps swear once in her lifetime. When he’d lost his only child, daughter-in-law, and grand-daughter. While Sonya would have colored the air over this, his version of an expletive reassured her and Peter.

“Peter, throw out the anchor,” she hollered, powering down the boat once the reel was secured.

“We still got a net out. A fish cop sees us anchored, we’ll get written up.”

“Let ’em.”

Peter hefted the anchor overboard, and Sonya scrambled from the pilot house to the deck. “Let me see,” she said to Gramps, reaching for his injured arm.

“I don’t think it’s too bad,” he said. Peter flanked one side while Sonya had his other.

“Let’s sit you down.” She pulled up the stool they kept on deck for when fishing was slow.

“Now don’t go treating me like an old man,” Gramps bristled.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” She stared into his eyes, letting him know she meant business. “Let me see your arm.”

With Peter’s help they carefully stripped him of his rain jacket and fishing gloves. His arm was already turning black and blue, but his hand had taken the worst of the blow. It was red and swollen, possibly broken. He put up a blustery front, but Sonya knew he was hurting. They needed to get him to Wanda.

They couldn’t do that until they pulled in the net. “All right, this is what we are going to do. I’m going to wrap your arm, in case there’s something broken—”

“I don’t have anything broken.”

“Doesn’t matter, we’re going to take precautions anyway.” Sonya peeled off her sweatshirt—leaving her in a tank top—and used it as a sling, cradling his arm in the body of the shirt and using the sleeves to tie it around his neck. With that done, and Gramps growing paler by the minute, she and Peter helped him into the pilot house and propped him on the bunk.

“I don’t want to lay up here like an invalid while you two do all the work,” he complained. The complaint didn’t have his normal fire behind it.

“When you’re captain, you can order me around. Until that day happens, you’ll listen to me. Peter, let’s round-haul the net in and then you pick while I get us to the Cannery.”

“Right, Captain.” Peter rushed to follow her orders, which spoke volumes for his worry concerning Gramps. Sonya leveled a narrow look at her grandfather. “Don’t even think of getting off that bunk.”

“Got it, Captain.” He tried to smile, but the effort fell short.

Sonya hurried and joined Peter. They round-hauled in silence, thinking of only speed. Once the remaining net was aboard, Peter pulled anchor and Sonya engaged the engines, motoring them to the cannery. She radioed ahead for medical assistance, and then with only a moment’s hesitation, she switched the VHF to the trooper channel and contacted Garrett.

The steel pin that anchored the reel onto the tracks was in her pocket, sheared in two separate pieces.

“Well, I have to say this for your grandpa, he’s a much better patient than you are,” Wanda said, joining Peter and Sonya in the waiting room of the Infirmary. “Nothing’s broken. He’d have been better off with it broken. The ligaments and tendons took the brunt of the injury, though I don’t believe anything is torn, just bruised really bad. I’ve splinted his hand—make sure he keeps it on.” She eyed Sonya. “You’re down a crewman for the remainder of the season.”

This Sonya already figured. She shouldn’t have had him on the boat to begin with. He should be retired, playing golf somewhere warm. Not out here, fighting the waves, the cold, the screw-ups.

Garrett entered the room like a charging bear. “How is he?” Sonya was taken aback over the height of worry reflected in his eyes. They were usually the color of glacial ice. This morning they resembled blue flames of propane.

Wanda quickly informed Garrett of what she’d just told Sonya and Peter. “He’ll need to keep his hand elevated with cold packs, fifteen minutes on, fifteen minutes off. I’ll send him home with pain pills and anti-inflammatories,” Wanda instructed. “Make sure he doesn’t over do.” She turned to go, and then turned back. “Since you’re here, Sonya, I want to check your stitches. After that I don’t want to see any more of your crew in my Infirmary.” She returned to her patient, the door shutting like a final decree behind her.

“What happened?” Garrett asked.

Peter slumped into a seat, looking spent.

“You okay, Peter?” Sonya ignored Garrett for the moment, and took a seat next to her brother. He seemed younger, as if Gramps’s injury had taken years off his already young life.

“He could have been killed,” he mumbled, his breathing agitated.

“He wasn’t. Your quickness saved him from being hurt worse than he was.” She rubbed her hand along his tense shoulders. “He’s going to be all right.”

Peter raised dark eyes to hers. “How did you deal with losing our parents? Losing Sasha? I don’t even remember them.”

She tossed his hair, which badly needed a cut, and tried for some levity. “I had you to raise, brat.”

He smiled, though she knew he pulled it out for her benefit. He jerked his head in Garrett’s direction. “Go talk to Garrett. I’ll wait for Gramps.”

“Sure?”

Peter nodded. “I’ll be fine.” Sonya stood, but his next words stopped her. “We need to get this son of a bitch, Sonya.”

She sucked in a breath. He sounded so much like a man, demanding justice. Part of her wanted to reprimand him for swearing, but then she wanted to get the son of bitch responsible too.

She motioned for Garrett to follow her outside. In the precarious state Peter was in, he didn’t need to overhear the conversation she was about to have.

Once outside, Sonya glanced around. The area was deserted, most of the village’s occupants still out on the water. Gramps’s accident had put a halt to them fishing out the opening.

She brought Garrett up to speed on how Gramps had gotten hurt. Then she pulled the pieces of the steel pin out of her pocket. “These aren’t supposed to break.”

His knowing eyes met hers. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and drew out a plastic bag. Carefully, he picked up the two pieces without touching them.

Realization dawned. “Sorry, I didn’t think of fingerprints.”

“Chances are we won’t recover any. Salt water destroys most evidence, but we’ll see what we can do. I’ll need your prints to rule them out.” He studied the pieces of the pin. “I don’t see any tool marks where someone could have compromised the pin.”

“They didn’t need to damage it, just replace it with an inferior metal.”

“When Wes was knocked unconscious?”

“That’s what I’m thinking.” She indicated the pin. “When we checked the boat over, it never dawned on me to inspect that.”

“Even if you did, how would you have known it wasn’t the original?”

“I wouldn’t have. Not until it failed.”

“You understand what this means, don’t you?”

She nodded her head. “Someone wants me or one of my crew dead.”

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“Now don’t fuss, Maggie May,” Gramps said, though Sonya knew he loved the attention Grams showered on him as she fluffed his pillow and tucked a lap throw over his lower body.

“You just hush and lay there while I get you something to eat.” Grams had taken the news of his accident better than Sonya had hoped, but then not much ruffled her platinum feathers. She was one classy bird.

“I’ve got an errand to do,” Sonya said. “You two going to be okay? I’ll be about a half hour.”

“We’ll be fine, Sonya.” Grams steady blue eyes met hers. “I’ve got Barberella if the need arises. Her nod indicated the sawed-off shotgun hanging on the beam above their heads. Grams always gave her guns female names out of respect for being dependable girlfriends.