Hooked (A Romance on the Edge Novel) (45 page)

Sonya breathed a silent sigh of relief. She’d hoped putting herself in Aidan’s hands would force him to concentrate on her rather than the realities of what had gone on here tonight. At some point, she would need to deal with those realities herself.

Earl had caused the deaths of her parents and Sasha.

She sat in the stern, exhausted, as Aidan untied his skiff and positioned it to be towed behind as he drove his father’s boat to shore. Sonya looked over the side at the black tide steadily creeping to shore, trying not to see Earl’s dead body as it lay bleeding in the bottom of the boat. She swallowed back the bile that suddenly rose in her throat. Everything she’d believed was wrong, twisted.

They’d lived, fished, next to a killer all these years and had never suspected.

When they reached shore, everyone waited for them. Grams with Barbarella cradled against her chest, Gramps armed with a shovel, Lana clutching a lantern with both hands, and Roland, standing stoic next to her, his hands tucked into the pockets of his dirty cargo pants.

Looked as though Earl’s fireworks/pipe bombs had woken up both camps.

“What in dang blazes is going on?” Gramps waded into the surf, his face going pale as he caught sight of Earl’s body. “Do we need a medic?”

“N-no,” Sonya said, stumbling as the skiff rubbed against the rocky beach.

“Why you wearing a sleeping bag?”

“I w-went for a s-swim.”

“What?”

“I’ll explain l-later. Right now, I need to get w-warmed up.” She looked Gramps in the eye. “Aidan’s going to n-need us. P-promise m-me you’ll keep an open mind, okay.”

Gramps narrowed his eyes but nodded.

“What the fuck!” Roland’s voice rang out as he saw their cargo. “Who did this?”

Aidan’s face went white, but he squared his shoulders and stood up to his uncle. “I did. I shot him.”

“You?” Roland advanced on Aidan, splashing into the surf. “You killed my brother? Your own father?”

“Yes.” Aidan swallowed, rolling his lips tight between his teeth as though to hold in his emotions. “He was going to kill Sonya and Garrett.”

Grams and Lana gasped. Gramps cursed, and not with one of his colorful adaptations either.

The rest of the their explanations were interrupted as the
Calypso
finally roared up from the south, her bow slicing through the surf, every light onboard blazing like a beacon in the darkness. She cut her engines, and waves rolled like thick black thunderheads from under the hull, their force tossing the skiffs as they crashed to shore. A high powered spotlight pointed at each person on the beach, settling on Grams. Judd’s voice came over loud and clear from the
Calypso’s
P. A. system. “Lay down your weapons!”

Grams grumbled but laid Barbarella in the sand at her feet. Gramps had already dropped his shovel when he’d waded into the surf.

“Sonya, we were radioed that you and Garrett were under fire,” Judd continued, his voice booming over the group. “That better not be Garrett in the bottom of that skiff.”

“Head up to the cabin, Sonya,” Aidan said, still standing in the stern of the skiff. “I’ll explain to them what happened.”

“I’ll go w-with you. Otherwise they’ll arrest you and ask q-questions later.”

“I don’t care if they arrest me.”

“Well, I do. Don’t turn m-martyr on me, Aidan.”

“They can’t come ashore unless one of us goes and gets ‘em,” Roland sneered.

“We aren’t hiding out from the t-troopers,” Sonya said. Besides, they had a dinghy. They could get to shore without any problems. “We didn’t do anything w-wrong.” Maybe Roland had. Earl didn’t do anything without Roland. Was Crafty as much to blame for this whole mess as Cranky?

Roland must have read something in her expression. “I’m not waiting around to entertain a bunch of fucking fish cops.” He took off toward the Hartes’ camp.

“Halt!” Judd’s voice rang out.

Roland gave them the bird and kept right on moving. If anything, his gait increased.

“Sonya, it’s in your best interest to get one of those skiffs out here and pick us up,” Judd hollered. “Now.”

“Aidan, take your other skiff,” Gramps said. “Leave this one here. Lana, help me beach her on shore. Sonya, you’re staying here.” Lana handed Grams the lantern and waded into the water, while Aidan did as Gramps instructed.

Sonya was rapidly getting tired, her limbs not wanting to respond, fingers numb. It had been a while since she’d felt her feet.

“Come on, Sonya.” Gramps reached his arms up for her. “Let’s get you out of this skiff and up to the cabin. Maggie May, run up and heat some water. Lana, you go with her, we’ll meet you there.”

“Your h-hand. I don’t want to h-hurt you, Gramps.” Sonya wanted to sink down into the bottom of the skiff, her muscles seeming to atrophy.

“Fiddlesticks,” Gramps said, making her smile like the word always did. “The day I can’t help my favorite granddaughter out of a boat, they might as well put me in my grave.”

Not a good day for analogies like that one. Sonya put her hands on his shoulders so that most of her weight centered there instead of on his injured hand. Her frozen booted feet landed on the rocky sand and felt as though she’d stood on a bed of sea urchins.

Gramps put a hand around her waist to help her stand. “You’re in bad shape, Sonya.”

She was afraid he was right. She indicated Earl left in the skiff. “W-what about him?”

“He’s not going anywhere.”

It was slow going up the beach to the trail with Gramps’s help, but once facing the trek to the cabin, Sonya knew she wouldn’t make it the rest of the way. Then Aidan was there, accompanied by Judd and Skip. He swooped her up into his arms, and she gratefully rested her head on his shoulder as he carried her up the bluff to the cabin.

Heat blasted her when they entered. Grams had turned up the little propane heater and it was eating up the BTUs.

“Aidan, lay her over there.” Grams indicated the curtained-off area where the bed sat. She bustled Aidan out of the room after he’d laid Sonya down. She didn’t bother with the questions Sonya knew she was dying to ask, just went to work with Lana’s help, getting Sonya out of her wet clothes and into dry ones. Then she piled Sonya high with blankets, stuffing hot water bottles around her. It was heavenly, and Sonya soaked it all up: the undemanding attention, the exquisite heat warming her bones, and the gracious postponement of the troopers’ interrogation.

She crashed.

Aidan’s interrogation started the moment he’d retreated from laying Sonya on her grandparents’ bed. She’d seemed so removed from what was happening. As though she’d somehow…left. He couldn’t lose her too. She’d been in that water too long, had felt like ice when he’d lifted her in his arms. He prayed they weren’t too late getting her care.

They’d returned to the beach, along with Nikolai, after the fish cops had realized Sonya would be no good to them until she was warmed up. The cops had searched his camp for Roland, but there was no sign of him.

Roland wouldn’t be found either, not unless he wanted to be.

Now they sat around the fire pit on stumps. The remains of the last fire was nothing but black, cold ashes, much the way Aidan felt inside. More fish cops had shown up to take care of his father’s body. Aidan tried to put what they were doing to his father out of his mind. The sound of the zipper, as they sealed Earl into a plastic body bag, caused his stomach to churn.

He’d killed his father. He was a killer.

“Harte.” Judd snapped his fingers in front of Aidan’s face, breaking into the horrific replaying of what he’d done. “From the top. Again.”

Aidan swallowed the bile he’d been fighting since realizing that his
own father
had been the one causing Sonya all the trouble this summer. “I woke around 1:00 a.m. when I heard what sounded like a gunshot or a firecracker. At first, I thought my da—” he stopped himself and had to swallow. If he kept referring to Earl by Dad, he wouldn’t be able to hold it together. “I thought Earl and Roland had decided to light their fireworks early—”

“Homemade fireworks, you said?” Judd clarified, looking at his notes. The sun had started to rise, a faint blush in the east, giving enough light for everyone to see too much. “How did your father and uncle know how to make fireworks?”

“Earl was an explosives expert in Vietnam. What he knew he taught Roland and vice versa.”

“How did he acquire the necessary ingredients to make fireworks?”

Aidan shrugged. “You can make a bomb using ordinary household materials.”

“A bomb?” Judd jumped on the word. “What was it, fireworks or a bomb that your father made?”

“I didn’t see him make the pipe bombs, but that’s what he was throwing at the
Double Dippin’
. I only saw him make the fireworks.” Aidan sighed. Why hadn’t he paid more attention to what was happening in his own camp, rather than being so concerned with what was happening with Sonya? Maybe he would have figured this out sooner, before someone had to die.

Nikolai raised his hand. “I can verify the fireworks. I witnessed Roland and Earl both working on them last night. I’ve seen them do it year after year. They were planning a late Fourth of July celebration for tonight as the weather was supposed to be nice.” He paused and then his voice got quiet. “We were going to have a bonfire and roast hotdogs.”

“Okay,” Judd addressed Aidan again, his pencil scratching on his notepad. “Let’s get back to when you realized your father was missing.”

“When I woke up, Earl was gone, but Roland was still sleeping. I knew that Earl wouldn’t light off the fireworks without Roland. They were a pair when it came to explosives. Turned them into kids.” True juvenile delinquents. “Anyway, I got dressed and went to investigate. One of the skiffs was gone and then a bomb went off near where the
Double Dippin’
was anchored.”

“It was then that you realized your father was after Sonya?”

Aidan nodded. “I had some suspicions when her window had been knocked out by a rock and it was assumed someone with a slingshot had done it. Earl is—was—real handy with a slingshot.”

“Why didn’t you come forward then?” Judd asked, his shrewd gaze narrowed.

“I couldn’t believe it, or see why Earl would do something like that. It didn’t add up.” Now he knew different. Acid burped in his stomach again as he replayed the scene in his head of his father confusing Sonya for Kyra.

“So you grabbed the other skiff and made your way to the
Double Dippin’.”
Judd pulled him back from the nightmare. “Then what?”

“When I got there Sonya and Garrett were already in the water. I don’t know how, but I assumed they jumped overboard to avoid the pipe bomb. Except Sonya would never jump willingly, so Garrett would have had to push her into the ocean.”

“She must have been terrified.” Nikolai shook his head. “My poor girl.”

“What was Earl doing?” Judd steered the subject back to where he wanted it.

“Ranting.” Aidan swallowed hard.

“What about?”

Aidan turned to Nikolai. This next part was going to be hard for the man to hear. Hard enough for him to say. “I’m sorry, Nikolai. I didn’t know any of this, I swear.” He turned back to Judd and Skip. “When my dad drank, he’d sometimes confuse Sonya for Kyra. He was calling her Kyra, telling her that he wasn’t going to allow her to make a fool of him again.”

“Again?” Nikolai asked, his busy brows furrowing.

“I think the situation between me and Sonya mirrored what happened between him and Kyra years ago, and he refused to let history repeat itself.”

“You mean Sonya leaving you for Garrett?” Judd clarified.

It shouldn’t have surprised him that these cops knew his and Sonya’s history. Whatever Sonya told Garrett about them, he would have shared with his buddies. “Technically Sonya and I have been over for a while. Her decision, not mine. Earl saw it differently.”

“Why didn’t I see it?” Nikolai said to no one in particular. “Earl had always been jealous of Mikhail. Then when Mikhail decided to get into drifting, with Kyra behind him, Earl went ballistic. He caused all sorts of problems, got the set netters up in arms, the drifters worked up. A Fish and Game meeting was held to see if a set netter drifting was even permissible.” He paused as though to gather his emotions. “Chuck Kendrick actually came to Mikhail’s defense. We thought later it was because he wanted to unload the
Mystic
. When she sank, it had the effect of sending a clear message to the other set netters of what could happen if any of them followed Mikhail’s example.”