darling.” Wes flashed a smile Owen thought might send the dark-haired girl into a tizzy the way she bloomed into the same shade of red as the netted lobster hanging on the wall behind her. Too bad for the girl if she thought Wes’s flirtations meant anything.
Wes had cut women out of his life the day his fiancée ran off with another man. But unlike Wes, Owen had lost his girl by his own hand.
Twice in two days memories of Rebecca caused his stomach muscles to twist in guilt. He let the feeling remind him to never forget. She was so young and beautiful, glowing with that new-mother look that made him fall in love with her every time he watched her snuggle their son or every time she reached for him, honoring him with her complete and total trust. His jaded heart would swell over her pure one. She was genuine and didn’t deserve to die.
But she had, and Owen had vowed to never ruin another pure heart again. Not another woman’s and not his own son’s. A solitary life would be his punishment.
“Uh, Owen,” Wes held the door handle to the principal’s office and spoke over his shoulder in a hushed voice. “There’s something you need to know.”
“What’s that?”
Wes cleared his throat again, putting Owen on the defensive. Suddenly, the door opened from the inside, yanking Wes’s hand along with it. Whatever Wes planned to say was cut off by a wiry-looking man, about five-eight, with blond hair and gold-rimmed glasses. Owen summed him up in two seconds as a nonthreat.
“Welcome back, Sheriff. We’ve been waiting for you.” The man swept a scrawny arm wide to invite them in, but his tight-lipped words implied they weren’t really welcome.
Owen extended a hand to the shorter man. “I’m Agent Matthews from the Drug Enforcement Agency.”
The man eyed Owen’s hand hanging in midair for an exaggerated second before placing his smaller, skinnier one into it. “Nick Danforth. I’m Ms. Hunter’s interpreter. Where she goes, I go.”
Interpreter? Did she not speak English? Owen thought Nick’s response odd, but he shrugged it off. “Nice to meet you.”
“Owen,” Wes called from the front of the desk. A woman stood beside him, her hair twisted up loosely at the back of her head. Her slate-gray eyes grew wide as he leveled his own gaze on her. Even without the golden-streaked red hair flowing down her back, he remembered her from yesterday out on the rock.
She was the school principal? And the number-one suspect? Could that really be true? A deaf principal in her early thirties didn’t strike him as the drug-smuggler type. Yet he supposed he’d seen all types in his line of work and knew he needed to treat everyone as a suspect.
“This is Ms. Hunter. She’s deaf,” Wes announced matter-of-factly.
Owen caught Nick signing to the principal. An interpreter for a deaf principal. Nick’s earlier response now computed. Nick shut the door behind them and sidled up beside Owen, ready to do his job.
Ms. Hunter raised her hands and signed, “It’s nice to meet you, Agent Matthews.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Agent Matthews,” Nick said from beside Owen, interpreting Ms. Hunter word for word. Only, neither of them knew Owen didn’t need an interpreter. He understood her signs fine.
Owen turned away from Nick for a pointed look at his so-called friend. He could tell by Wes’s prolonged stare and slight shake of his head that he wanted Owen to keep his sign language knowledge under wraps. A little heads-up would have been nice.
“I’ll explain later,” Wes said. “For now I would like you to get acquainted with Ms. Hunter and her staff so we can start the investigation.”
Then it clicked why Wes had brought him there. Owen would be able to spy on what was said between these two when they thought no one else understood. If they really were the smugglers, then Owen stood a chance of solving the case pretty quickly.
Owen fisted his hands at his side. “You, too, Ms. Hunter,” he said. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Nick translate his words to sign language. Owen continued, “It’s my hope we can work together to get to the bottom of this problem on your island and in your school. I appreciate your help.”
She visibly relaxed and her lips quirked up at the edges as she signed, “I want that more than anything.”
“Grea—” Owen started and stopped, almost forgetting to wait for the interpretation. He deserved a swift kick for nearly giving himself away already.
“I hope you mean that,” Nick translated.
I hope you mean that? What? Owen tilted his head and tried to figure out what he’d done wrong. He thought for sure she’d said she wanted to work together more than anything. Maybe his skills were rusty for lack of use. God knows he rarely used them. Having Nick might be a good idea, Owen decided.
He shrugged off his misinterpretation. “I understand I will be a teacher undercover. My goal is to find a leak that will lead me to the source of the drug supplier and then to the person smuggling the drugs to the island.”
Nick signed as Owen spoke, staying at about three words behind him. But Owen noticed Nick signed more than what was said. Owen recognized the extra signs as, “Don’t forget. This guy is here to investigate us. Not to help us.”
Ms. Hunter’s lips twisted and a flash of humor sparked from her eyes. Then she signed to Owen, “I’ve made preparations for you to teach English in Mrs. Standish’s classroom. She’s out on maternity for another three weeks, so you’ll be her substitute teacher. I’m hoping we won’t need more time than that. Nick, stop translating. This is between us. I met Agent Matthews out on the rocks yesterday. He came to my aid when he thought I was hurt. I think he can be trusted.”
Even though Nick stopped translating her final words, Owen kept on reading. He honestly didn’t fault her for sharing their first encounter with her interpreter. He supposed he used secret codes in his line of work, too.
But never had he taught an English class in his line of work.
“Would there maybe be a gym class I could teach instead?” Owen asked. “Shakespeare never made much sense to me. Plus, teaching a class like that would take up too much of my investigation time.”
“You and lifeguards,” Nick signed to Ms. Hunter, ignoring everything Owen had said. “Just because a man comes to a swimmer’s aid does not make him trustworthy. Your breakup with Lifeguard Andy should have taught you that lesson. Although I’m glad to see you’re keeping the investigator busy and out of our hair. Your plan is brilliant. He’s not too happy about teaching English, but he said fine.”
Owen jerked. That’s not what I said at all. Owen now knew he was not misinterpreting Ms. Hunter’s signs, and he needed to inform her that her boy Nick was not translating correctly. But to do so would blow his cover and ruin any chances of “listening” in on these two and their conversations.
Wes believed Ms. Hunter guilty of covering up something. If sticking him in an English classroom had been her idea, Owen thought Wes might be onto something.
It was no wonder his friend had asked him to come all the way up from Texas instead of going with an agent from the Bangor field office or even Boston. These two were probably talking circles around him.
