Page 63 of False Flag

“You looked cold. Standing in the freezer like that.”

“Hey, I’m the one who’s cold!” Dahlia said, a teasing pout in her tone.

Jake mouthed, I didn’t do anything. With Dahlia.

Staci couldn’t help it and gave him a small smile. Then she rolled her eyes and pushed him away. “Back off. You’re between me and my ice cream. The last person who did that lost an eye.”

She swiped the spoon from his hand and grabbed the pint. Her gaze met Dahlia’s.

The other woman shrugged. “It was worth a shot. He might not be here very long.”

“At least you got a nice shirt out of it.”

She grinned. “I know, right?”

“Hey—” Jake said.

“Have a good night.” Staci was out the door when Jake called her name. She was tempted to ignore him, but for some reason, she stopped.

“I was going to find your room so I could tell you, but since you’re here… I spoke to Gerard earlier. He’s arriving late tonight with the dive boat. He wants to film several dives while I’m here, and since we don’t know how long that’ll be, we’re going to jump right in. Tomorrow. First thing. You’re my dive partner.”

She turned to face him. “Me? Why not Lloyd?”

Lloyd had spent the last several days sharing how excited he was to scuba dive here. He didn’t care how cold it was. Staci was less enthusiastic.

Jake’s gaze fixed on something over her shoulder. “You’ll look better in a wetsuit. Gerard’s reasoning. Not mine.”

Lloyd’s voice came from behind her. “Right. It was Gerard’s idea to cut me and use you. I got you this job, and already you’re stabbing me in the back.”

Jake flushed and his mouth flattened. “Sorry, Dahlia. I’m not in the mood for hot chocolate after all.”

He slipped by Staci and passed his brother without a word on the way to the front door.

Chapter Twenty

Jake was a boat guy. He hadn’t joined the Navy to become a SEAL. No, he’d joined because it was where all the boats were. He stared at the large dive vessel before him and could say with authority, she was a beauty.

Just looking at her made him itch to be out on the Salish Sea.

He and his big brother grew up in Washington. Their house was nothing special, but it was on an inlet of Puget Sound, north of Seattle. Inexpensive waterfront property because it was on tribal land. They’d grown up fishing, swimming, clamming, crabbing, boating. Their free time was shaped by tide and weather, not TVs and computer screens. It had been a magical time.

Their father had been a commercial fisherman, spending his summers in Alaska and earning enough to see his family of four through the rest of the year. They weren’t rich by any means, but eight months out of the year, they had their dad full-time and spent as many hours as they could on or in the water.

The magic ended when Jake was fourteen and their father died in a fishing accident that was all too common in the dangerous Alaskan waters. With their father’s passing happening near the end of the fifty-year lease for their waterfront property on reservation land, the tribe refused to renew for more than five years. It was prime real estate they could develop for themselves or lease to tech millionaires—an invasive species that flooded the area after the rise of Microsoft—to build their dream McMansions.

Jake’s mom, who was more than ready to abandon the battered, run-down home that her sons believed to be paradise, had quickly accepted the buyout the tribe offered and moved Jake and Lloyd—who was then seventeen—to a small house in Arlington in the Cascade foothills, more than twenty-five miles inland from their home on Puget Sound.

Lloyd had been bitter at their mother’s choice. Jake understood. Moving at the start of senior year was far worse than moving as a freshman. But he also understood his grieving mom’s desire to get away from the place she’d shared with their dad. She’d loved their father with all her heart and had enjoyed the months when he was home. But she’d spent all her summers in a state of fear, wondering if this would be the year her husband wouldn’t return.

When Lloyd turned eighteen, he did his own stint in Alaska, much to their mother’s terror. He worked three summers before deciding that being an Alaska fisherman wasn’t the life for him and joined the Navy.

Jake also went north at eighteen, but in deference to his mother’s fears, he spent that first summer on a slime line gutting salmon on a barge. He initially planned to join the Coast Guard, but instead decided to use his slime money to pay for college.

Like his brother before him, he joined the Navy, but on a different track. He enrolled in the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps, which came with scholarships that were much needed, given that his summers after that were spent working in the fleet and not gutting fish in Alaska.

Lloyd, of course, accused him of trying to one-up his big brother by joining the Navy on the officer track.

Jake hadn’t known it was a competition.