Page 24 of Hidden Harbor (Evergreen Rescue #1)

Whatever the text message said, things wouldn’t get worse in the few minutes it took to take care of our bill and walk pizza up to Violet.

A muscle ticked in my jaw. Every move felt stiff as we walked back to the house.

I gripped Anya’s hand. Holding her anchored me in the present, a silent message to my nervous system that she was safe.

My mind raced with possibilities, but I couldn’t land on one that seemed likely. Nothing to draw the fear that lurked in her expression every time I snuck a glance at her face. Some people came to San Juan Island to hide. Clearly, Anya was one of them. But what was she hiding from?

While we might joke that Sal at the sub shop was in witness protection because he stuck out like a sore thumb in our tiny town with his East Coast accent and directness, it was just that: a joke. Sal was part of the island, just like Anya. We protected our own.

“Nightcap?” Anya asked as we reached the house. “I’ve got a bottle of wine.”

“Sure.” She seemed to need a drink, even if I didn’t. “I’ll drop off Vi’s dinner. Do you want me to turn on the firepit so we can talk out back?”

“Yes, please.”

Vi accepted her dinner with a wan smile and retreated behind her bedroom door. I slipped outside and turned on the propane before lighting the gas logs. Brushing off the bench took another few seconds. Too fidgety to sit, I adjusted the other chairs in the circle around the firepit.

“I hope pinot noir is okay.” Anya extended a stemless glass to me.

“I’m not picky. Thanks.”

She sat gingerly next to me, her glass balanced on her knee, and stared into the fire.

Night settled around us, a shawl of darkness encircling our shoulders beyond the reach of the flames.

Frogs croaked, providing a gentle melody that should have been soothing.

I sipped my wine, letting the tart tannins roll across my tongue.

Giving Anya time. Space. Whatever she needed, even though I was becoming more desperate for the truth with every passing moment.

Somewhere, a twig snapped, and Anya flinched. Frowning, I wrapped my arm around her. “I don’t like seeing you like this.”

“I’m not exactly your sunny girl right now,” she acknowledged, grimacing softly.

“Nobody expects you to be.” I hugged her closer, counting to ten. When she didn’t speak, I finally said, “Can you tell me what’s bothering you?”

She twitched under my arm. Not shrugging me off, not exactly.

But not settling in either. I tried not to take it as rejection.

But the moment stretched, the silence between us lingering.

I sipped my wine, not sure what to do next.

I didn’t want to push her away. But I needed her to tell me what was wrong.

“I…”

I held my breath, silently urging her to continue.

“I’m here under false pretenses, Drew.”

Her admission came out almost too quietly for me to hear over my pounding heart.

“What do you mean?”

“Anya’s not my real name.” She shook her head, letting out a rueful laugh that broke in the middle. “Well, it is now. But it wasn’t always.”

That broken laugh killed me. Sent me straight to hell. Almost overshadowing the bomb she’d dropped. I’d suspected a toxic family. But changing your identity was extreme.

She worried a string on the hem of her sweater, picking at it until she unraveled the edge, bit by bit. I captured her fingers in mine, threading our hands together.

“Names aren’t that important to me, but can you tell me why you changed it?” I held my breath, not sure what I expected her answer to be.

She laughed again, the jagged sound slashing at my heart. “I didn’t want anything to do with my family anymore. Or my ex-boyfriend.”

I stilled, watching her carefully. She stared into the fire, as if the dancing flames with their hypnotic qualities could soothe whatever hurt she didn’t want to speak about. She kept telling me what she’d done, not why . And it was the why that mattered.

“You changed your name to disown your family. That’s a pretty big step, and I’m sure it was hard.

” I kept my tone neutral, nonjudgmental.

But I desperately wanted to know what they’d done.

How was I supposed to help, to fix it, if she didn’t tell me everything?

She perched next to me like she might fly away, as if the slightest breeze might send her running.

But I needed her to trust me enough to stay. To let me help.

“They made a fool of me.” She said it with such bitterness, I didn’t know how to respond, other than to wait.

Now that she’d started, she seemed intent on letting the whole story spill out.

“They ran—no— run a shipping company. Lots of traffic across the border between Canada and the United States. I used to work for them in the accounting department.” She laughed, the sound mirthless.

My chest hollowed out at the self-derision in her words. The guilt.

“I was so proud to be part of the family business. My mother was the CFO, my dad the CEO. I even met my ex through work. He was some kind of hotshot chief of staff for my dad. I had no idea what that meant. Then,” she looked at me, a wealth of misery in her eyes, “I found out they were really smugglers.” She tossed back the last of her wine.

“And they made me an unwitting part of it. They used me and my boat. I was fucking disposable to them. If I’d gotten caught, I’d be in prison right now. ”

White-hot anger jabbed me like a sword through the stomach, but I kept a lid on it.

She’d given me something precious – her trust. I wouldn’t abuse it by making her confession about me.

Anya didn’t need me going off, even if I wanted nothing more than to give her my list of top five places to bury a body.

She wiped a stray tear. I reached for her hand, squeezing. Striving for control over my racing heart.

“I’m so sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say.

The level of betrayal she’d experienced was incomprehensible.

My family was far from perfect, but they’d never misled me like hers had.

I set our glasses aside and pulled her into my lap, wrapping my arms tightly around her.

Holding her helped me duct-tape back the rage that wanted to leak out in a toxic stew.

“I discovered the real reason my ex always wanted to sail to Canada on a day trip to Windsor. A cache of drugs in my gear locker. He always sent me off to shop or pick up snacks, something to get me out of the way. He must have been doing shady deals behind my back since the beginning, but I didn’t see it. Didn’t suspect.”

“How did you connect your family to the drugs?” I asked, focusing on the facts she presented instead of how much I wanted to rip her ex limb from limb. “Couldn’t it have just been this asshole’s side hustle?”

“I hoped that was all it was.” She hung her head.

“I figured I didn’t really know what was going on.

Pretended I had seen nothing. Instead of taking my time on our next trip, I sped through my grocery run and doubled back to the boat.

I watched him make the exchange. There was no denying what he was then.

But my dad? My mom? I had no idea they were involved.

“I broke it off with Owen without telling him why. But my parents pestered me incessantly about taking him back. Talked about how he was just lost without me.” She shook her head.

“They’d lost. Lost their mule into Canada.

Then Mom gave me a ‘special account’ at work.

The one they used to reconcile their illicit activities, to wash out the payments to Owen.

It didn’t take me long to match the payments to him with our boat trips.

” She shuddered. “They were part of it. Behind it. And they used me .”

“Honey, I’m so sorry. Did you confront them?

” I asked, unwillingly fascinated by her tale.

Cold rage settled over my shoulders like a mantle.

Part of me wanted to stop probing, avoid causing her more pain.

But now that she’d started, maybe excising the wound was best. And I needed to know what I was up against. How deep the rot went.

Anya shook her head. “No. I started planning. Copying whatever evidence I could get my hands on and downloading files. Taking out small amounts of cash until I could fund my escape. My mom took me out to lunch on my last day. She could tell something was wrong, but she made one last attempt at getting me to reconcile with Owen.”

She snorted. “My mom said he was such a ‘good man.’ I knew then they didn’t really love me.

Not if they’d set me up with that monster.

By then I’d found evidence of more than just the pharmaceutical scam.

Drew,” her blue eyes were luminous with tears.

“I think they had at least one border guard killed.”

My heart stilled. She was dead serious.

“There were pictures,” she whispered.

The name change made sense. The secrecy. Fuck .

I’d stack my family and our resources against most foes without flinching. But murder?

Ideas flickered as I considered and discarded each potential defense. Short of blowing up the ferry fleet, I didn’t know how to protect her. And there were always planes. No countermeasure seemed like enough to keep her safe. And that terrified me.

Short of scooping her up and hiding her away, I didn’t know what to do. And she’d never tolerate that. Anya had the strength to walk away from her family once. She’d been fearless when she needed to be. I had to respect that. Follow her lead.

“I’m so, so sorry, Anya.” I paused. “Do you still want me to call you Anya?”

Her smile trembled. God , that lip quiver. “Yes. That’s who I am now. I amassed as much evidence as I could, then dropped it in the mail to the local FBI field office and fled. Changed my name. Started a new life. I thought I’d escaped.”

The heartbreak in her voice knotted my gut. I hugged her tight, as much to reassure myself as to comfort her. She had made it out. I’d keep her out.

“He’s here,” she whispered finally.

I glanced at my sweet sunny girl, her eyes red from crying. “Your dad?”

“My ex. Owen.”

A thousand reactions crowded forward. Anger. Relief. Satisfaction. If he was here, we could confront him. End him. Or at least end his hold on Anya. Friday Harbor was our turf. I wouldn’t let him terrorize her.

“What does he want?” I asked. If it were money, that’d be easy.

But I doubted it would be that simple. And my sense of justice wouldn’t find a payoff satisfying.

Anyone who touched my sweet Anya, made her hurt like he had, deserved far worse than a golden parachute.

A shove out of a sea plane into the big, wide ocean would better suit the situation.

That might calm some of the toxic stew roiling in my chest at the thought of her in danger.

“Help setting up a new shipping lane between here and Victoria, I think. He’s pushing me to introduce him to a local boat captain.” She dipped her chin. “And he’s threatening to tell the sheriff about my past if I don’t help him.”

Our sheriff wasn’t that gullible. But Anya seemed to buy the threat.

“What can he possibly accomplish with a call to the sheriff? So you changed your name, so what? If he implicates you in anything else, doesn’t he implicate himself?”

She looked doubtful. I hated the fear in her eyes. “He’ll find a way to ruin things for me here. It’s what he does.”

“Protecting the people I care about is what I do.” It was my stake in the ground, my promise. My refusal to back down. But all I wanted to do was shove a stake straight through Owen’s heart. Wasn’t that how you dealt with vampires? You didn’t reason with them. Didn’t bribe. You ended them.

“I don’t want to bring you into my mess.”

I lifted her chin, wanting her to see the sincerity in my eyes. “There’s nothing we can’t handle together. If it takes a thousand Owens to prove that to you, I will.”

And I’d fucking relish doing it. She’d trusted me enough to let me in.

“I don’t deserve you.” The self-doubt, the recrimination in her voice, gutted me.

“Not true. You deserve so much better than you’ve had.”

I ached to show her she was precious. Should have been treated as such.

She cupped my chin, stroking the stubble on my neck, the slow scrape turning the tide, electrifying the air.

I let my lingering anger at her family and ex smolder into something else, something warmer.

A fire that burned, not with rage but with the desire to show her I adored her. That she deserved everything.

Closing the distance between us came as naturally as breathing, our kiss made of flickering fire and honeyed sweetness.

I deepened the kiss, and she answered in kind, welcoming my gentle assault.

Kissing her felt like heaven, like coming home.

I wanted to bask in her, soaking up the heat we generated between us.

Slowly, I drew a palm along her ribcage, tracing the valley at her waist, slipping a hand beneath her soft shirt to the even softer skin beneath.

The urge to strip and worship her beneath the moonlight had me grabbing her hem in both hands, slowly rucking up the cotton, exposing her skin to the cool night air.

She arched against my chest, murmuring, “I want you.”

Something kindled in her eyes. A heat I didn’t expect. Maybe it was sheer relief, now that she’d unburdened herself, but I didn’t want her to have regrets.

“You sure, honey?”