She was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.
He must've shifted slightly. She woke with a start, her sleep-softened brown eyes staring into his in momentary confusion. She straightened abruptly. "How do you feel?" Her voice was raspy. "Are you in any pain?"
"I'm okay." Her expression became more anxious, and he smiled to reassure her. "Any chance you can break me out of here any time soon?"
She shook her head, her eyes closing briefly. "I thought I'd lost you."
He reached up to run hand over her hair. The movement caused pain to shoot through his leg, but he needed to touch her. "Same here," he said, his voice gruff. "When I saw Sykes hit you…"
"You saw that?" she asked, surprised.
He nodded. "From Bjorn's boat." That image haunted him and, he suspected, would give him nightmares for some time.
"I'm fine," she reassured him, accurately reading his expression.
"…Chuck?"
"He's still listed as critical, but improving. He lost his spleen and one kidney, but the doctors are hopeful that he'll pull through." She shook her head. "He was trying to protect me."
"It's a good thing that Sykes is dead." Emotion clogged his throat. He cleared it, then said lightly, "Since we've—"
"So you're awake." The voice came from the doorway, interrupting them, and they both turned. Wallace Forbes stood there, looking tired. "May I come in?" the mayor asked, pointing inside the room, clearly not sure of his welcome.
Kaz stood on stiff legs and moved toward the door, giving Michael a small smile. "I'll be back in a few minutes."
He shifted, and the fire that traveled up his leg made his vision blur. He gritted his teeth and rode it out. "Where are you going?" he asked, not wanting her to slip away.
"There's someone who's anxious to see you. I'll go get him."
Michael motioned the mayor in. "You used me to flush out Sykes."
Forbes nodded, his eyes somber. "My town was sick, Michael. I had no choice." He put the stack of magazines he'd been holding on the table next to Michael's bed. "When your resume came across my desk, I knew I'd been given my only chance to bring in someone who could take Jim on. But I didn't think you'd have to move so quickly, or that Jim would be clever enough to turn the situation around on the Jorgensens the way he did."
"Kaz damn near got killed." Michael's voice was arctic cold.
Forbes sighed and reached into his pocket for his cigarette case, then realized that he couldn't smoke in the hospital room and grimaced. "I never meant to put her in danger."
"You had to know that she'd do whatever she had to, to protect Gary."
"Yes, but I didn't know he was involved, not until the fire." Forbes shook his head and sighed. "Jim was more ruthless than I gave him credit for."
But Michael wasn't ready to let Forbes off the hook. "Why didn't you tell me about your suspicions that morning after the fire?"
"Because that's all they were—suspicions. I had no proof, and I didn't want to influence your investigation one way or the other."
"No one influences me. You should've said something."
Forbes looked out the window into the hospital parking lot for a minute, considering. Then he turned back, giving a quick nod. "My mistake. But we can move on now, as a community."
Michael pinned him with a hard stare. "If you ever lie to me again—"
"There won't be a need." Forbes frowned. "I don't suppose you have any suggestions on filling my new vacancy in the police department?"
After thinking about it, Michael replied, "I might." In fact, the idea of luring a certain friend out here from Boston had some appeal. He grinned a little, envisioning Mac's reaction to Astoria.
"Good. Have his resume on my desk by next week." Forbes walked to the door, then turned back. "I know you think less of me because of this little affair, and I'm sorry for that. But answer me this, Michael. What's a little manipulation by an old man who wanted to save his town really worth when you stack it up against a chance for personal redemption?"
Michael said nothing.
Forbes shrugged and turned to leave. "You think about it, son. In the end, I did you a hell of a favor."
Unfortunately, the bastard had a point.
#
Kaz entered Chuck's ICU unit and found Gary sitting in the chair beside the bed. One of the ER nurses had obviously convinced him to let them treat his injuries—his cuts had been cleaned and stitched, and through the open neckline of his shirt, she could see the edge of the white tape bandage around his ribs. The swelling over his left eye had gone down slightly. He turned and smiled slightly at her.
"How is he?" she asked softly, approaching the bed where Chuck lay still and silent, his face pale beneath the bruises.
"He made it through the night—the nurse says that's a good sign." Gary shook his head. "I figured I'd better hang around, though, just in case he wakes up. He'll try to drag himself out of here—he can't stand hospitals."
Kaz sympathized. "You okay?" she asked Gary softly.
He shrugged. "The bastards are either dead or behind bars. I figure that makes it a good day." He straightened and stretched, grimacing at the pain it caused. "But I'll be better when Chuck wakes up."
"I hear Lucy busted you loose at the station."
He grinned a little. "Yeah. Right about now, I don't think she's talking to me. I was pretty sneaky when I put her out."
"You sure as hell were."
They both turned toward the doorway where Lucy stood there, looking tired but calm.
"Everything under control?" Kaz asked.
Lucy nodded. "Svensen's crew is behind bars, along with Jackson. Clint is talking a mile a minute, hoping to use the information he has as a bargaining chip for a lighter sentence." She dragged another chair from the adjoining cubicle and fell into it. "Like Gary told you, the buyer was offshore—we'll probably never be able to lay a hand on him. I've notified the DEA, but…" She sighed. "Sykes was the in-town contact, running everything from behind the scenes and moving the drugs upriver. Svensen was making the drops and pickups for a cut of the profits. Jackson was the muscle, when needed. He's the one who beat up Ken."
"How did Ken find out about them?" Kaz asked.
"According to Jackson, by pure dumb luck. He saw Karl remove something from a crab pot, right after he'd spent that day baiting and laying pots in a different location. That didn't make sense to Ken, so he asked Karl about it. Karl reacted badly, which made him suspicious. He started watching more closely, put it all together, and confronted Karl that night six months ago in the tavern. Karl exploded." Lucy glared at Gary. "Which is where you came in."
Gary shrugged again. "I didn't know what it was about—just that Karl was threatening Ken for some reason. And I wasn't about to stand by and let that happen." He shook his head. "I should've been suspicious, though, when Karl didn't press charges. It wasn't like him to let something like that go. And he had no reason to be nice to me—he's never liked me. But I didn't have a clue until Ken turned up at the boat ten days ago, badly beaten. That's when I made him tell me what was going on."
Kaz pursed her lips. "So Karl broadcast a 'fake' location, which was the signal to the sellers that he was leaving the money in one of his pots with a buoy attached. He goes back out when no one is around and leaves the money, picking up the drugs. He probably figured that anyone who saw him would think he was either stealing some crabs for dinner, which happens all the time, or repairing a line." She frowned. "Why did it take six months for Ken to put it together?"
"I wondered the same thing," Lucy said. "But crab season only runs for six months—they had to have a strategy for the rest of the year. Karl said whenever he was drag-fishing off-season, they simply met in international waters when no one was around."