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finding a friend, but even so she tried her hardest to be nonchalant about the situation. Tentatively, she raised her hands and swirled her fingers in circles. “You sign?” she asked in her language.
His eyes darkened to those murky depths again. He gave one negative shake to his head and averted his gaze past her shoulder.
He didn’t sign.
Miriam did her best to express a lack of caring with a blasé shrug even though disappointment washed over her like a cold wave. Then her mind reminded her of the man’s answer to her question. If he wasn’t able to sign, then how did he understand her enough to answer her?
Unless he did understand her and didn’t want to talk to her.
Fine...whatever. She dismissed him and his possible insult with a wave of her hand and lifted off the rock in one clean arc. Miriam sliced through the cold water with precision, letting it cool off her piqued temper, amazed her anger could still boil over so easily. She thought God had helped her with that unwanted emotion a long time ago, but sometimes her anger reared its ugly head and reminded her she still had some things to contend with.
Another day, she told herself...again. She wondered if there ever was a good time to reopen old wounds. She thought not, but especially not right now.
She was in the midst of a troubling drug investigation. She had a drug supplier to find. Making friends and digging into her past were at the bottom of her list.
In fact, her past was one thing better left buried. Nothing good could come out of unearthing those dreams—or rather, nightmares. Miriam trembled, and it had nothing to do with the frigid northern waters she swam in.
The unnatural bulging eyes from those old nightmares stared at her from behind her closed eyelids; a large hand and a flash of something gold blinded her. Images as real today as they were when she was ten years old. She pushed through her strokes as she pushed the childhood terrors down into the dark abyss.
Mother always said they were figments of a child’s imagination. Except children weren’t supposed to be imagining such horrifying things.
No, I can’t go there. She swam faster, pushed harder. Her hands sliced through the water, propelling her forward. Miriam had a feeling if she continued to delve deeper into that nightmare, she would never emerge. Not even the dark-haired rescuer she left in her wake would be able to save her from the dangers of that dark and menacing grave.
TWO
“You really think the principal is your number-one suspect?” Owen waited with Sheriff Wesley Grant outside the high school’s glass entrance doors. The buzzer signaled their authorization for admittance, and Wes pulled the door open.
“Her assistant’s got a prior arrest for possession of marijuana,” Wes discreetly informed Owen over his shoulder as they entered the school. “They neglected to share that little tidbit with the school board and don’t know I uncovered it. I’m keeping it to myself until I have enough evidence for a search warrant of their homes.”
“You seem to be putting all your efforts on these two. What is it about them you don’t like?” Owen eyed a well-dressed man at the end of the corridor sweeping the shiny floors with an oversize dust mop.
“You’ll see why when you meet them,” Wes answered. “I feel like Ms. Hunter’s constantly laughing at me. I’m a big joke to her.” He sneered.
“Well, you are funny-looking.” Owen jutted a chin at Wes’s head. “And you need a haircut, man. Have I been gone from Maine so long that the ladies dig the unkempt look now? Perhaps your principal is one of them. Maybe she isn’t laughing at you at all. Maybe she’s sweet on you. How old is she? Fiftyish?”
The green-clad sheriff chuckled. “Not quite.” Wes pointed to a door off to their left. He cleared his throat a few times. “So, you haven’t mentioned Cole since you arrived yesterday. How is your son?”
Owen’s back tensed. “He’s still living with Rebecca’s parents over in Bangor. It’s best that way. So, how do you think the drugs are getting here? This island’s pretty secluded.”
Wes nodded, taking Owen’s cue. No more talk about Cole. “My guess is Ms. Hunter and her assistant have a connection with a Canadian drug cartel. They’re helping to get the marijuana across the border by coming through my island. Then distributing it to their dealers on the mainland.”
“But some marijuana was found on school property. Why release it and take the chance of shutting down their operation?”
“Well, that’s where you come in. I need your, um, eyes to listen in on a few conversations.”
“You need my eyes to listen? I don’t understand.”
The men reached the principal’s office and entered. “Hey, Steph,” Wes said to the cute, pixie-like secretary at her desk. “I’m here to see Ms. Hunter.”
“Yup, she’s expecting you.” Steph lifted a slender arm rimmed with gold clinking bracelets and pointed toward the door. “She told me to tell you to go on in.”
“Thanks, 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