If She Only Knew Read Free Page A

bay. Rain drizzled from a leaden sky and the wind picked up, lashing at his face. Whitecaps swirled and danced in counterpoint to the seagulls wheeling and crying overhead. The distinctive odors of diesel, rotting wood and brine mingled in the wintry air of Oregon in November.
    Hiking the collar of his jacket around his neck, Nick grabbed his bucket of live crabs and stepped onto the pier just as his dog shot past in a black-and-white streak. A shepherd mix of indecipherable lineage, Tough Guy hurled his body onto the slippery planks and, paws clicking, scrambled up the stairs to the parking lot on the bluff. Nick followed more slowly, past sagging posts covered with barnacles and strangled by seaweed.
    â€œThere’s somebody here ta see ya,” grunted Ole Olsen, the old coot in the window of the bait shop located at the landing. He jerked his chin toward the top of the stairs but didn’t meet Nick’s eyes, just kept working at tying a fly, as he always did.
    â€œTo see me?” Nick asked. No one, in all the five years he’d been in these parts, had ever dropped by the marina looking for him.
    â€œYe-up. That’s what he said.” Seated on his stool, surrounded by lures and coolers holding bait and Royal Crown Cola, Ole was a fixture at the marina. A burned-out stub of a cigar was forever plugged into one corner of his mouth, a ring of red hair turning gray surrounded his bald pate, and folds of skin hid his eyes more effectively than the magnifying glasses perched on the end of his nose. “Told him you’d be out awhile, but he wanted to wait.” He clipped off a piece of thread with his teeth, turned over a bit of orange fuzz covering a hook that looked suspiciously as if it would soon resemble a salmon fly. “Figured if he wanted to, I couldn’t stop him.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œNever gave his name. But you’ll spot him.” Ole finally looked up, focusing over the half glasses. Through the open window, his face framed by racks of cigarettes, tide tables and dozens of the colorful flies he’d tied himself, he added, “He ain’t from around here. I could tell that right off.”
    Nick’s shoulders tightened. “Thanks.”
    â€œEnny time,” Ole said, nodding curtly just as Tough Guy gave a sharp bark.
    Nick mounted the stairs and walked across a gravel lot where trucks and trailers and campers were parked with haphazard abandon. In the midst of them, looking like the proverbial diamond sparkling in a pail of gravel, a silver Jaguar was parked, engine purring, California plates announcing an intruder from the south. The motor died suddenly. The driver’s door swung open and a tall man in a business suit, polished wingtips and raincoat emerged.
    Alex Cahill in the flesh.
    Great. Just . . . great.
    He picked one helluva day to show up.
    â€œAbout time,” Alex said as if he’d been waiting for hours. “I thought maybe you’d died out there.” He hitched his jaw west toward the sea.
    â€œNot so lucky this time.”
    â€œMaybe next.”
    â€œMaybe.”
    Alex’s intense eyes, more gray than blue, flashed. “So you’re still an irreverent bastard.”
    â€œI keep workin’ at it.” Nick didn’t bother to smile. “I wouldn’t want to disappoint.”
    â€œShit, Nick, that’s all you’ve ever done.”
    â€œProbably.”
    In a heartbeat Nick decided his mother must’ve died. For no other reason would Alex be inconvenienced enough to wear out some of the tread on his three-hundred-dollar tires. But the thought was hard to believe. Eugenia Haversmith Cahill was the toughest woman who’d ever trod across this planet on four-inch heels. Nope. He changed his mind. His mother couldn’t be dead. Eugenia would outlive both her sons.
    He kept walking to his truck and slung his bucket into the bed with his toolbox and spare tire. Around the parking lot,