Page 12 of The SEAL and the Sheriff

The chop built as they cleared the shelter of the headland. Hudson found his balance easily, his body making the adjustments without prompting. Muscle feathered over his jaw. A tiny adjustment made by someone who hurt often enough not to mention it. She busied herself reading some gauges, before he noticed her observation.

Forty minutes out. Low cloud hung over the water now, the light bleak and directionless. The coastline to their right was rock and pine, dark against the darker water.

The headland appeared first, a shoulder of rock rising out of the mist. For a moment it was all there was. Then the cannery climbed out of the fog piece by piece. A roofline. A rusted conveyor. The skeletal outline of a loading gantry.

Hudson’s eyes were already on it. Whatever he was searching for out here, he’d stopped looking at the water.

The rest of the cannery sprawled across the shoreline and out over the water on timber pilings blackened by decades of tide and weather. It was bigger than she remembered. Much bigger. Everything sagged where the weight had finally won.

She smelled it before they reached the dock. Salt and the iron-blood smell of rust. Beneath that, something older—the ghost of a million salmon soaked into timber, walls and water.

Walter lowered his coffee.

Sarah frowned. “What?”

Walter looked toward the upper windows. “Nothing.”

He cut the engine, and the quiet of the cannery came out to meet them. For a moment, nobody said anything. The water slapped softly against the pilings. A rope of kelp moved in the current below the dock.

No gulls. Not one. The place should have been covered in them.

Walter tied off without being told. His eyes were already moving across the structure, the same sweep she was doing, the same calculation.

She stepped onto the dock. The boards shifted beneath her boots with a long, tired groan.

Behind her, Hudson and Walter followed. Ahead, the main processing building sat over the water with its dark windows staring back at them.

The hairs at the back of her neck stirred beneath her collar.

Sarah started walking.

5

Hudson followed Sarah up the dock. Wood creaked and gave under his feet, and underneath water sloshed, dark and oily.

He gritted his teeth and kept his eyes straight ahead.

The hush was broken by a wrench against a pipe, somewhere underneath the dock. A stream of invective from a man with a grievance against inanimate objects. Then a clang that echoed out across the water and a silence that suggested the pipe had won.

Sarah cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hello?”

Shuffling followed. A face appeared from below the dock boards—seventies, deeply weathered, a wool beanie pulled down over his ears. “Sarah Meyer.” He peered at her badge and gave a small nod. “Sheriff.” His grease-stained fingers touched the brim of his beanie. “You still climb where you’re not supposed to?”

“Hey, Petey.” Sarah’s hands hit her hips as she deadpanned. “Only professionally.”

“What’d I do wrong?” He grinned, showing irregular teeth.

“Nothing. We just need to take a look around.”

Petey’s gaze slipped past Walter onto Hudson.

Borrowed jacket noted, verdict delivered in the slight twist of Petey’s mouth before he looked back at Sarah. “Who’s this?”

“Hudson Kane. Deputy U.S. Marshal.”

“Ah.” Petey’s eyes narrowed at Hudson. “You here to look at my sump pump?”

Hudson shook his head. “No.”