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“Stop it, you horrid old woman!” she whispered to herself and hurried up to the station feeling neither horrid nor old. She felt better than she had in days, since Chris and Ally had brought their homely comfort into her wilderness. Enjoying being pleasantly foolish, she combed her hair out. Crimped from being confined so long in braids, it fell in waves down around her shoulders. It went against the heat of her mood to put on a lot of clothes, but she’d not yet steeled her thin Texas blood to the northern summer. She pulled on Levi’s and a sweatshirt.
Hawk was sitting on the steps when A
“So, what’s up?” she asked as she sat beside him. “You look like a man with the bends.”
“Do I?” He opened a bottle of beer and handed it to her but forgot to open one for himself. A
Hawk stared down the slope toward the water where it shimmered yellow and blue, the sun still clearing the trees though it was after seven. It crossed A
Content to drink his beer and fill the emptiness next to him, she shifted mental gears from romance to contemplation of nature. Humans were herd animals, like the moose. Sometimes even the most independent needed to clump up, hip and shoulder touching, protecting their soft flanks from the wolves.
“Ever seen a wolf here?” A
“No. Diving’s a noisy business. On shore we’re either jamming jugs or hosting a party.”
A
“You bringing De
“Yeah. Around noon is my guess. There’s an FBI guy flying in from Houghton to be on the scene.”
“A diver?”
“No.”
Hawk shrugged slightly and Frederick Stanton was dismissed as having no real relevance. “I wish you’d leave him there,” Hawk said suddenly. “Jo’ll bury him on land. Plant him down in the dirt like a turnip with a slab of marble at his head to hold him there. That’s not for De
“Can’t.” A
“Even if they had a Golden Eagle Pass?” Hawk said, but he didn’t smile and bitterness took the humor out of his words.
A
“Yeah. Well, no. I think I remember the uniform. De
“What happens to the Third Sister now?” she asked. “Does it go to Jo?”
“She’s been wanting to get her hands on it, turn it into a research vessel. A floating freshwater lab,” Hawk said with disgust. A
De
She took another pull on her beer. The Bradshaws both seemed to hold Jo in contempt. Was it because she would, as Hawk had put it, weasel De
They loved De
Hawk snorted. “Holly and De
It didn’t seem so impossible to A
“The only person I know of that De
“That whole scene was strange. Do
“Especially when Juliet is married,” A
“Yeah. There was that.” Hawk gri
“De
“No wonder Scotty hated him. Did Do
“I don’t know. That was the one way De
“Us” always meant Hawk and Holly. A
“Did De
“Not on the Third Sister. Holly and I have had the boat. De
The question was meant as a joke but when A
“I don’t know,” she answered truthfully.
The subject had reached a dead end. For a while they sat in silence.
“Pilcher’ll go down and Vega-how about you?” Hawk returned to the subject of the body recovery.