hand to her. “I heard you say Tank.”
“Back off,” the woman said.
“I need to find Tank. Where is he?”
“I said, stay away.” She pulled something from her jacket pocket.
Angela gaze went to the knife in the woman’s hand.
The weapon was small, barely bigger than the woman’s shaking palm. Angela was frozen to the spot. “I’m trying to find a man named Tank Guzman.”
The woman’s eyes widened to black pools. “Why?”
The wind whipped Angela’s chin-length bob of brown hair around her face, stinging her eyes. “I know... I knew his brother. We arranged a meeting. Here. But he didn’t show.”
“His brother.” Something shimmered in her expression as she said the words. “So you’re the person from Pacific Coast Investigations?”
Angela tried not to show her surprise. “Yes. I overheard your call. You don’t want Tank to meet with me. Why?”
In an instant, the woman was edging away. “Never mind. Listen to me. Tank was wrong to contact you. There’s nothing going on here. It was a mistake.”
Terror reflected in the woman’s eyes.
Angela hoped she could force out a calm tone. “I can see you’re scared. I’m a navy chaplain. Maybe I can help.”
The woman started. “A navy chaplain? I thought you were an investigator.”
“My family owns an investigation firm, but I’m a chaplain first and foremost.” At least, I used to be.
A bitter smile twisted the woman’s lips. “Then you’d better start praying, because Tank isn’t going to be alive for very long. And if you get involved with him—” she shook her head “—you won’t, either.”
* * *
Dan Blackwater remembered vehicles, makes and models, headlights and license plates. Mechanically, he scanned the parking lot, making mental notes. Since Afghanistan, he’d been forced to notice things, tiny things out of place, little details that could mean something was about to blow up. Something as simple as a soda can in an odd place could preclude a rain of fire and a parade of injuries. Now he couldn’t seem to unlearn the habit. He blinked hard. You’re here now, in Cobalt Cove. He sucked in a huge breath of ocean air. He was home, thank God. Mostly, anyway.
As he jogged toward the beach, carrying the bag Lila had left at the clinic, cutting through the parking area to avoid the crowds, he noted her Camry in the jammed lot. He’d gotten to know that car pretty well when he helped fix her flat hours before at the clinic. Their shifts overlapped sometimes, at the tiny building on the outskirts of town where he volunteered his surgical services stitching up wounds and arranging help for those living on the fringes of society. Lila worked there as a paid employee, a dental hygienist for those who needed one.
They’d chatted about her plans to go to the Beach Festival on her way home from work, but she hadn’t seemed very excited about the prospect. More nervous really, so nervous she’d left without the tote bag she carried everywhere with her. Odd. But people were odd, no two the same, except in some universal ways he’d noted in his time as a heart surgeon at the NATO hospital in Afghanistan. They all loved, laughed and died in pretty much the same ways.
His phone rang, pulling him from his thoughts. He answered. “Blackwater.”
“You missed another one.”
“I called and canceled.”
His physical therapist sighed heavily into the phone. Dan could picture Jeb Paulson’s fleshy face scowling in disapproval, eyebrows like two grizzled caterpillars crawling across his forehead.
“The rehabilitation window is closing , Dr. Blackwater. If you don’t take your rehab seriously, you’ll never return to the operating room.”
I don’t want to return to an operating room. “I’m happy with what I’m doing now.”
“Puttering around in boats? You can’t be serious. You’re the best heart surgeon in the country.”
“Flattery. And it’s kayaks, not boats. You should try it, Jeb. It would relax you.”
“Having you come to your appointments would relax me. I’m scheduling you for Monday noon. If you don’t show, I’m saddling up Old Lucy and coming after you.”
He grinned. Old Lucy was Jeb’s ancient motorcycle, circa 1949. “That I’d like to see.”
“Monday,” Jeb said before disconnecting.
Dan stowed his phone and flexed his hand. It still ached a bit from his bicycle crash on his last race along the coast a month before. Too fast, too tight a turn, his brain had screamed, but the rush of adrenaline proved more powerful. Until he’d flown over the handlebars and skidded along the roadbed. Too bad he hadn’t won the race before he crashed, he thought with a grin. When he flexed his fingers, they were only a little sore, slightly stiff, but little and slightly wouldn’t do for a surgeon.
The window is closing...
Jeb was right. “I’ll make it to the Monday appointment,” he murmured to himself as he took off toward the beach, hoping to spot Lila along the way. He didn’t. Slowing when he reached the top of the rickety wooden steps that led down to the sand, he edged over as he heard footsteps moving quickly up the warped slats.
Lila appeared, mouth open, hair wild. She gaped when she saw him.
“Dr. Blackwater. What are you doing here?”
“You left this at the clinic.” He handed her the bag. “What’s going on? You look scared.”
“Never mind. I’ve gotta go. Thanks for bringing me my stuff.” She darted past him just as another woman reached the top step.
A shock ran through him as he took in her tall frame, the delicate curve of her mouth and cheek. He was back in Kandahar, Afghanistan, delivering devastating news to a young woman, holding her hands as she crumpled to the floor, advising her to take deep breaths as she hovered on the brink of passing out. Her eyes, misty green, had lingered in his memory throughout his transition to civilian life. Those green eyes regarded him now, and she stopped so abruptly she had to grab on to the railing for balance. Her swirl of dark hair was damp from the fog, curling in the barest of waves around her face. Her body was slimmer, her face a touch gaunt, he thought.
“I don’t remember your last name,” he said. “But I think your first name is Angela.”
Her lips quivered. “The hospital,” she said quietly. “You were a surgeon.”
“Still am, at least on paper. Dan Blackwater. And you’re Angela...”
“Gallagher.”
“Navy chaplain.”
A shadow of a smile. “At least on paper.”
He could see the perspiration on her temple now, the
