“Can you blame me for wondering?” she replied honestly. “Now that I know who you are?”
He didn’t reply, but turned the wheel sharply, taking a hard right onto another road. After a couple of minutes, she saw the cottage fly by.
“I think you just passed the house,” she remarked.
“We’re not going home,” he said evenly.
Surprised, she watched in the rearview mirror as the road unspooled behind them in the red glow of the taillights. For a brief, irrational instant, she felt a little thrill of alarm. Where was he taking her? No one knew where she was. They could be headed anywhere in the night. But then she brushed away the thought. She trusted Cole. Despite his surly demeanor, he was an honorable man.
“Let’s play Twenty Questions,” she said. “I’ll start. Are you going to take me somewhere remote and murder me?”
He snorted. “No. I’m taking you to Roche Harbor. Since you seem determined to pry my life story out of me, I figured we should go somewhere pleasant for the interrogation.” He sounded resigned.
“Oh. Well, good...” Feeling satisfied, she stared out into the darkness. After a moment she added softly, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
He didn’t respond. Instead he asked with a touch of incredulity, “Did you really think I was going to murder you and what, feed you to the seals?”
“Well.” She shrugged. “A girl can never be too careful. Now that I know your secret.”
“One of them,” he muttered.
“What?” She turned to him curiously.
“Nothing.” He stared straight ahead. “And seals don’t eat people. Next question.”
“Are you wanted by the FBI or Interpol?”
“No.”
“Are you in the witness protection program?” She was starting to warm to the game.
“Seriously?” He shot her an incredulous look. “Me being on the island has nothing to do with international crimes or espionage. It’s strictly self-imposed.”
They drove into Roche Harbor, and Georgia forgot her questions for a moment. “Oh, how adorable!”
The tiny town of white-framed buildings and picture-perfect Craftsman houses spread below them in a semicircle around a beautiful marina and bay. Yellow lights twinkled on the dark water, and white sailboats and yachts bobbed gently in the breeze.
“Yes, it is. A playground for every rich guy with a yacht on the West Coast,” Cole explained with a touch of irony. “It used to be a company town with a lime kiln over a hundred years ago. Now you can get a fifteen-dollar omelet and rub elbows with retired Microsoft executives all year round.”
“It’s like a postcard,” Georgia said, thoroughly charmed. “Can we walk around a little?”
Cole pulled into a parking spot near the tiny town center. There was a diminutive grocery store called the Company Store, a historic hotel and restaurant, a real estate office, and a few boutiques that looked like they catered to a high-end clientele. In front of the Company Story stood a line of white painted booths, closed now, that Cole told her was a local artisans market.
“Star sells her honey there on Saturdays in the tourist season,” he said. He turned off the ignition, and they got out of the car. She shivered, and Cole reached behind his seat, pulling out a bulky old fleece and handing it to her.
“Thank you.” She put it on gratefully. She was constantly surprised by how cold the island could be in spring. The fleece smelled like Cole, that soap and pine sap scent with a hint ofdark roast espresso. Delicious. She wanted to bury her nose in it but instead snuggled up and tried to get warm. Streetlights illuminated the tiny town center, but they were the only ones out and about at this late hour. In one or two of the houses up the hill there were lights on, but otherwise, everything was quiet. Georgia looked around her, delighted by the quaint charm of Roche Harbor, like a throwback from a hundred years ago. They wandered toward the marina, walking side by side in silence. It felt like they were the only two people in the world.
24
To her surprise,Cole jammed his hands in his pockets and said, “You asked what I’m still doing here? Hiding, I guess.”
“Hiding from what?”
“Success. Failure. The biggest mistake of my life.” He sounded morose. They passed the darkened grocery store and a tiny, tidy park with flowers in the center of the town.
Intrigued, Georgia waited.
Cole sighed. “I told you about how I grew up, right? Dreaming of being Captain Planet.” Georgia nodded and Cole continued. “Aunt Justine always supported those dreams, even though they seemed far-fetched for the kid of a single mom who struggled month to month just to get by. But I had two things going for me. I was smart, really smart, and I was persistent. I knew how to work hard against long odds. I’d seen my mom do it my whole life. After high school, I got a full scholarship to the University of Arizona. I double majored in environmental science and applied biotechnology.”
